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NEWS: Yo-kai Watch Anime to Premiere on Disney XD

Oh and, yes, if the English version of Doraemon is anything to go by, expect the characters of Yōkai Watch to undergo some Americanization with their names and [possibly] their settings, particularly since the manga has undergone Americanization already.

though not all blame should go to Disney. the Japanese rights-holders had to sign off on these adaption choices at some point, and might have been the driving force behind many of them for all we know.

Isn't there a point in the series where Keita travels to the United States? I wonder how'll they'll handle that little plot development.

Although, fact is, US kids' censors don't want the idea of "ghosts" in a kids' TV show. (Which is why the original Scooby-Doo kept having to pull masks off of fakes at the end.) Most US kids don't know the classic Yokai out of a GeGeGe no Kitaro episode, let alone the crazy ones from Watch, so the lyrics do a good silly job of explaining they "play tricks", which is as good an explanation as any to start with.

Shizuka in the Japanese episode wanted to put her doll in the time capsule hoping it would be valuable in a hundred years--
The dub instead had her hoping her diary would become famous in a hundred years. Same ambition, but different.

Yeah, these companies seem to think North American kids are too brainless or uninterested to know what Japan is. The irony is that learning about another culture at a young age is a good thing since they absorb information readily and can build up a good database as they get older. Not to mention, younger age groups are becoming regular anime fans these days. It's not a newly blooming phenomenon for anyone anymore.

The reason given for Doraemon's changes was to be accommodating of American culture, though it does seem overtly silly. For one thing, the changes have been an odd mix of things that clearly shows a lack of consistency. We know about the infamous cross band-aid to garlic pizza change (yes, Japan doesn't given a flip about Christianity, but they were simply going for the "crosses frighten Dracula" angle with that one) and the even more infamous case of Shizuka's doll becoming a notebook for the time capsule episode. (What was the reason for that change again? To avoid her being represented as too girly?)

But other cases such as Nobita's uncle giving him dollars instead of yen and changing the chopsticks to forks and knives is really unnecessary in addition to being somewhat insulting to viewers (I think by now even an eight year old would know what yen and chopsticks are). The simple word alteration of phantom thief becoming a magician was probably a "it's all about morals" concern, since Disney doesn't want to encourage little kids to steal from one another or whatever (though I think it has to do more with the term phantom thief not really being well known here as it is in Japan).

Of course, despite these changes, the English dub's one saving grace is the fantastic voice acting for literally everyone in the show, with Johnny Bosch and Mona Marshall really driving the energy into Nobita and Doraemon's lines respectively. I can tell they're having fun whenever their characters panic and run around screaming (which is all the time really). Brian Beacock, Kaiji Tang and Cassandra Morris are also great in their roles as Suneo, Gian and Shizuka too. And there are times the dub does add some amusing punch to the dialog.

I wonder how bad the dub will get edited both content and audio wise. The japanese version of the Pokemon anime is far superior to the dub as it retains all the awesome OST's and music, wheras the dub company makes it's own crappy music for it.

Pretty sure that's not how it works, otherwise replacing music would be much more common.