Forum - View topicWhat determines if an anime is butchered or not when it is licensed?
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Lavnovice9
Posts: 276 |
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Over the decades of anime licensing there have been dubs that range from good to bad, and companies which range from good to bad. But over there years we've had some truly controversial and altered adaptions from Japanese anime.
From the 80s we had Robotech, Voltron, and Battle for the Planets. From the 90s we had G-Force Power Rangers, Pokemon, Dragonball Z. From the 00s we had Case Closed, Shin-Chan, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and One Piece. Even before then there was Speed Racer and Astro Boy, probably the precursor to these dubs. Anime on TV in the 2010s seems to have gone away. perhaps for the better, aside from one or two random shows, so maybe this issue isn't as prevalent as it once was. But it was a serious problem for most anime fans who grew up during these eras, and the eras after them when they had to suffer seeing their favorite shows cut up. I personally can't tell how you heartbreaking it was tuning into seeing the premier of the Shin-chans dub and how it was reduced to some clone of Fox's Animation Domination bock with it's crude and 'adult' humor which disrespected the original series. This was the same franchise I grew up with as a kid and gave us classic movies like Otona Teikoku no Gyakushū , often considered one of the greatest anime movies ever produced. Can you imagine if Doraemon was treated the same way? So the question I propose to you, what is it that makes companies abandon artistic integrity and respect and for such classic and iconic shows? Are there certain dubs that had an impact on you like Shin-chan's did on me? Is this a dying practice with anime seemingly leaving television? Or will it return in a near future as more companies try their hand at an anime block of some kind? |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9853 Location: Virginia |
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Money mostly.
The company that licensed the anime felt that they could make more money with their edits. It is usually an attempt to appeal to the general public, which means that they don't care what anime fans think. I should note that this usually requires the approval of the Japanese company that sold the rights. |
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ZorgonXtreme
 Posts: 251 Location: Anchorage, AK |
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I don't know if I would consider Dragon Ball Z 'butchered', especially when compared with others on that list.
It's obvious, but when 4Kids got hold of a show, it was their prime directive to point it towards kids and make it as safe as possible, so that's what their determination was. Like the above poster said, it's all about what makes the most money. When a show was acquired, demographics were probably evaluated and then the show was cut to appease a certain one and to make sure that it didn't hurt any others. |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3888 Location: New York state. |
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You could also include Cardcaptors (2000s), Lupin the 3rd (2000s), Star Blazers (1970s), Warriors of the Wind (1980s), Digimon (2000s) and Sailor Moon (1990s) into the list of notable butchering as well.
Ask that to New World Pictures when they butchered Nausicaa into Warriors of the Wind in 1985. Hayao Miyazaki wasn't exactly thrilled to hear his work got heavily edited without Studio Ghibli's consent. But to answer the topic at hand, yes, most cases of anime being edited and/ or altered involved trying to gear it for a wider audience and making it accessible to American audiences for financial profit from those that do the butchering. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Tezuka as well vocally disliked the way his work was edited as well. The whole "Japanese companies approve of edits" thing I see some people say is an over statement I find. Most likely it's just an agreement of "We give you permission to market this property as you see fit" in their licencing deal. They have better things to do than play babysitter for every change that gets made or proposed in every dub across the globe, especially when it airs in dozens of countries/languages. But yeah. It comes down to greed. Either they dumb shows down so they can appeal to 6 year olds, or the 'Family Guy' demographic, as I would call Shin-chan and similar 'crude adult' dubs. All those dubs are pretty bad, but I guess if I had to pick my least favorite, I'd probably say Yu-Gi-Oh's treatment in the US. Skipping dozens of episodes/arcs, inane censorship like creating the "Shadow Realm" to explain everything bad, bad VAing and unfitting voices, changed plot and character personalities, and worst of all, replacing one of the best anime soundtracks with stock music. It's pretty much what happens when you try to market something meant for 13+ (as it says on the Japanese packaging) to 6 year olds (what the dub DVD cases say, apparently) Got to wonder if companies even watch these shows before they license them (not even 20 episodes into YGO we get nudity, death, and a rape scene) Maybe they like challenges... I admit I'm half tempted to want to see how they try to edit/market the girly figures for kids here. |
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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G-Force was in the 80s. Battle of the Planets was in the 70s. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18212 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Lavnovice9, a simple question: would Shin-chan have sold in the U.S. if it had been left "as is?" While there are some ardent fans, they constitute a very small minority of anime fandom, and I cannot see it having any breakthrough potential to general American audiences. (Especially since its design aesthetic is, frankly, ugly.) I know I wouldn't have touched it in unaltered forum. You may think the English dub massacred it; I think it made it watchable, even entertaining.
But that doesn't apply to all of the the titles that have been mentioned. Others were "Americanized" to appeal specifically to American broadcast standards and younger audiences. In a couple of cases (Case Closed in particular) things had to be changed to conform to American copyright standards. Basically, though, as others have said, it all does eventually come back to money. Companies don't arbitrarily do dubs like that; they're always done for a reason. You rarely see that kind of dramatic alteration to dubs these days because companies servicing anime fans know that fans, in most cases, prefer the content without significant alterations. If they think that they could gain a significantly broader audience than they would lose by changing things, though, then they will do it. Besides, anime is hardly the only media affected by this. I've heard of cases of American TV shows and movies that sometimes have content adjusted or cut out entirely when imported into other countries; probably the most famous example of this is Independence Day, where the key date was changed depending on the nation in which it was being shown. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9853 Location: Virginia |
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When I first got into anime in the late 90's, I found it fascinating that many of the fans that complained so much about "butchered" shows, (Robotech mostly) also noted that the shows in question were their gateway into anime since they showed on TV. Things have changed since then and very little anime shows on TV.
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richfam
Posts: 34 Location: Lindsborg, KS |
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Well, I know of one instance in which an American distributor and the Japanese licensor did get into a battle over a translation issue. In an extra on one of the Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum edition DVDs, an ADV staffer describes the battle they had with Japan over how to translate the reference to Shinji. The Japanese licensor was insisting that they call him "the third children" (technically the correct translation), but ADV believed that would be very awkward for an English-speaking audience and was wanting to use "the third child" instead. ADV eventually got permission for the edit, but not, apparently, without a fight. |
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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Personally I'm of the opinion that the only ones with a right to complain about what happened with Robotech are only those who would've if given the choice would have and could have watched Macross and the other 2 shows subbed at the time. That doesn't include me as I was 2 going on 3 at the time of Robotech's premiere, and couldn't read yet.
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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I agree with Key here. I saw Shin-chan in Japan (in a ramen shop no less) and while it was funny....quite a few fans wouldn't get the jokes because they only know very basics of Japanese culture and humor. However, I watched the dub during a sleepover at a friend's this past September and we had to practically suffocate ourselves with pillows to make sure her parents didn't wake up from us laughing so hard. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3894 |
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Even though it was Robotech that introduced me to Macross, it was the Japanese version of DYRL that turned me into an anime fan. I was actually rather disappointed when I learned that Robotech was made from three unrelated shows connected together. Luckily, all three shows have since been released in their original formats, which I feel are much better than their Robotech counterparts. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Wow, you really don't know much about the anime industry do you? In actuality, the Japanese anime companies are notorious for being extremely picky and controlling. They routinely do demand excessive oversight and approval on every little thing (much to the chagrin of those working in the R1 side of things). |
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Lavnovice9
Posts: 276 |
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It airs in many other countries far less altered and does just fine, while to my knowledge the American dub is cancelled and wasn't successful anyway. I doubt it'd be a smash hit. I don't think any show over 700 episodes and 20 movies can be in America, but it's still unfortunate if one needs anime to have all those crude jokes to be entertaining. When I watch movies and episodes that involve all those touching and heart-wrenching moments, like losing loved ones, suicide, or the movie I mentioned when Hiroshi breaks down crying when he has to relive his childhood with his father and losing his wife and child, that's something anyone from any country can relate to and feel empathy for. I think of those instances and there's no way anyone could take them seriously in the Funimation dub with those kinds of jokes they make all the time, even if they did try to keep those moments faithful. It's not like Steins;Gate's dub where they remove references to other anime and throw in Dr. Who references, this is pretty much turning an iconic classic into a crude Animated Fox Sitcom. |
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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If you're asking "What", it's whether or not the company believes they can do what they like with them once they buy them. The Japanese companies aren't actively involved--most producers aren't, even when an American show goes overseas--and most buyers believe they CAN. One of the few known exceptions is Disney with Studio Ghibli, who had "No cuts" specifically written into their contract after Warriors of the Wind. WotW is more an example of the former: Up to the mid-90's, most of mainstream US was literally unaware there was a Japanese industry at ALL. (ahemlionking  )
Speed Racer, Robotech, Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets, and even Angel's Egg and Nausicaa were all sold to distributors because they resembled a popular stateside franchise--or was nice generic sci-fi/fantasy with no ethnic background--and wouldn't need much cultural translation apart from putting English words in badly-synch'ed mouths. Robots were the universal language, even if the spoken language wasn't, and with a little creative editing, no one had to know about the original's "little problem". And on that ballpark, insert long bio-recap of Carl Macek: the Legend here. Saban wasn't interested in cultural content when they bought Jyu Rangers to turn into Mighty Morphin Power Rangers--They inserted US footage, and kept the fights, so long as the original Japanese characters kept their masks on, and no one could tell it was "foreign". (I remember in the Robotech/Voltron days, when "foreign" was considered "cheap", for a station that couldn't afford anything better.) They almost bought Sailor Moon, but DiC got it instead, and also tried to pretend the stories were taking place on any North American streetcorner. It's only recent phenomenon--only since the end of CardCaptors--that producers have more open about admitting that a foreign show isn't actually from around here, and haven't tried to sweep overseas references under the rug. As for Funi and Shin-chan...think they went in the other direction, and got a little TOO caught up in the fan-legend of "They'd never show it over here!" when Adult Swim came along. By the time they tried it with Sgt. Frog, just to get "that Adult Swim Shin-chan vibe", we knew a Frankenstein had been created... |
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