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Why do people complain so much about the name changes in Detective Conan?


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randomuser2349



Joined: 24 Dec 2011
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 10:38 am Reply with quote
I know many of the changes are really stupid (I mean seriously, Anita Hayley?), but they don't affect anything in the plot. It's just the names-Even the Latino dub was way worse (Shinichi Kudo=Bobby Jackson). But seriously, they don't make a difference. Even if they did have meaning in the original nobody would understand it when it comes to America.

So why do people keep complaining about the name changes like it was the end of the world?
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:14 pm Reply with quote
Because people will complain about the smallest changes. There's also the fact that some people don't realize it was done at the behest of the licensor, who thought The Children's Murder Mystery Show might actually be able to do well over here outside of the fandom.
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 2:36 pm Reply with quote
Name changes are always terrible, especially when 99% of the other countries in the world get it unaltered. I've heard that 'creators requested it' thing before, but no one ever provides any proof. Not that it matters, even if it was true, they probably just saw what 4Kids does with anime and assumed that was the standard here.. Funimation should have took them aside and said "Actually, most fans don't like it when things they changed, trust us" as the licencor and insisted it was for the series best intrest.

And changing everything from Japanese to America ruins a lot of things. Ignoring the fact it's blatant racism/whitewashing, these characters are Japanese and it's important to the story. Heiji being Osakan is a huge part of his character and the source of a lot of jokes and plot points, and trying to pass this off as American is just silly.

Not to mention there's lots of American characters who play a big part in the series, and one of the main plots about that is they're American FBI and CIA agents in Japan, so their authority is severely limited and they have to operate undercover and not be involved with the Japanese police much. Not to mention they often have language barriers with characters who can't speak English and English being fairly common in the series. If everyone is American that entire dynamic goes right out the window.

Conan is a very multicultural series with a lot of diversity which is an important theme and plot to the series, and removing it severely altered the original presentation, and kind of goes against it in all honestly.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:08 pm Reply with quote
I do not have anything against name changes, in principle, but they can have some annoying consequences.

With a popular show like Detective Conan/ Case Closed you often have a situation, usually in an anime forum, where people who are having a discussion about the show are using different names for the characters. It is almost certain that at some point somebody will say "Why don't you use the 'right' name?". Then the thread becomes an argument about the names instead of a discussion about the show. Most people get to know both names for the major characters but it can be a problem with the less prominent characters. I still can never remember Serena's real name. I sometimes use "Rachel/Ran" for the characters when I know both names, but that gets tedious and I do not know both names for many of them.
I do not think that Funimation was wrong for changing the names, but it would have been more convenient, for some of us, if they had not made the changes.

Another problem with the Case Closed DVDs is that Funimation did not make a second subtitle track for text on the screen. If I want to see a translation of the text I have to turn on the full subtitles, which means that I am hearing the dub names and seeing the real names. That can be educational, but it can also be annoying. I know that I could also switch the audio and just watch the show subtitled, but I don't want to.

What bothered me more with Case Closed were the futile attempts to make it seem like the show was set in the US. That fell into the "How stupid do you think I am?" category.
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:39 pm Reply with quote
Perhaps because people watched 500 episodes of it beforehand?
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:42 pm Reply with quote
Touma wrote:
With a popular show like Detective Conan/ Case Closed you often have a situation, usually in an anime forum, where people who are having a discussion about the show are using different names for the characters. It is almost certain that at some point somebody will say "Why don't you use the 'right' name?". Then the thread becomes an argument about the names instead of a discussion about the show.


While I see that for older shows that were dumbed down for kids, I never see that for Conan. Then again, the only place I discuss Conan is on Conan forums where most people hate the dub and the treatment it got. It also probably helps the only way to watch it is through fansubs, and there's no more dub for people to watch and get names from. Worst case scenario you get some old Adult Swim nostalgia guy on occasion in a random thread who watched it in passing.
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randomuser2349



Joined: 24 Dec 2011
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:46 pm Reply with quote
TitanXL wrote:

And changing everything from Japanese to America ruins a lot of things. Ignoring the fact it's blatant racism/whitewashing, these characters are Japanese and it's important to the story. Heiji being Osakan is a huge part of his character and the source of a lot of jokes and plot points, and trying to pass this off as American is just silly.



The manga keeps all the name changes, but keeps the setting in Japan. Also, Haibara never appeared in the anime, but she did in the manga.

Touma wrote:

What bothered me more with Case Closed were the futile attempts to make it seem like the show was set in the US. That fell into the "How stupid do you think I am?" category.


That I can fully understand, but I'm talking about how everyone whines over the names.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 10:52 pm Reply with quote
TitanXL wrote:
Touma wrote:
With a popular show like Detective Conan/ Case Closed you often have a situation, usually in an anime forum, where people who are having a discussion about the show are using different names for the characters. It is almost certain that at some point somebody will say "Why don't you use the 'right' name?". Then the thread becomes an argument about the names instead of a discussion about the show.


While I see that for older shows that were dumbed down for kids, I never see that for Conan. Then again, the only place I discuss Conan is on Conan forums where most people hate the dub and the treatment it got. It also probably helps the only way to watch it is through fansubs, and there's no more dub for people to watch and get names from. Worst case scenario you get some old Adult Swim nostalgia guy on occasion in a random thread who watched it in passing.


Well, I am talking about "Case Closed" that was released by Funimation, which is an older show.
The newer episodes of Detective Conan are not relevant to this discussion because they do not have the name changes.
And there are people who still, to this very day, watch the Funimation release. I am one of them. It has not been more than a week since I last watched an episode of Case Closed.
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4828
PostPosted: Thu Sep 06, 2012 11:26 pm Reply with quote
I simply find changing "foreign" names into English names very ignorant and close-minded.

They seriously thought Americans couldn't pronounce "RAN"?
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4750G



Joined: 24 Aug 2011
Posts: 546
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:09 am Reply with quote
randomuser2349 wrote:
The manga keeps all the name changes, but keeps the setting in Japan. Also, Haibara never appeared in the anime, but she did in the manga.

Sorry but...um what? These two sentences are confusing me like hell. Isn't Anita Hayley Haibara? How can you say she never appeared in the anime?

Anyway. If you've watched every episode of Detective Conan subbed, hearing the Japanese names of the characters every time, I don't think you'll be able to stand the name change. But if you're a dub fan, I don't think you'll have a problem, unless you find the names too ugly.

There are episodes/OVAs/movies of Detective Conan that bank on the Japanese names of the characters, if I'm not mistaken. For example, in the movie The Fourteenth Target, the connection of the victims of a serial murder case was spoiler[the presence of a number in their names.] Changing the character names will most definitely bring along with it a change in the script, the jokes, the episode as a whole.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 10:33 am Reply with quote
Chiibi wrote:
I simply find changing "foreign" names into English names very ignorant and close-minded.

They seriously thought Americans couldn't pronounce "RAN"?
Americans are notoriously close-minded; almost all foreign shows are instantly relegates to a niche audience of fans of that country's shows. A bit of whitewashing would be needed for any possible mainstream success the licensors thought it could have.
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4828
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 12:32 pm Reply with quote
Polycell wrote:

Americans are notoriously close-minded

......I hate Americans.
*shot*
(Is also American) Anime hyper

What I DID hear was that the show was originally going to be aired on Toonami so they white-washed it for "the little ones". *spits in disgust*
BUT at the last minute, they decided it wasn't going to work for kids and put it on Adult Swim instead. All of the changes were already made so they just kept them that way instead of redoing it.

That is what I heard. If it's true, it makes a lot of sense, though it's hard to swallow that Funi was dumb enough to think a murder-mystery show could be marketed to a children's network in a children's time-slot in the first place. Can anyone confirm?
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 12:41 pm Reply with quote
That's one reason I'm confident that the change actually was mandated by the Japanese.
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:57 pm Reply with quote
4750G wrote:
randomuser2349 wrote:
The manga keeps all the name changes, but keeps the setting in Japan. Also, Haibara never appeared in the anime, but she did in the manga.

Sorry but...um what? These two sentences are confusing me like hell. Isn't Anita Hayley Haibara? How can you say she never appeared in the anime?


I assume they mean the dub anime. The dub ended before Haibara was introduced in the series.

"Anita Hailey" is the name Viz gave her.. but in the movies Funi dubbed she is in, her name is "Vi Greythorn". So she has two English names, if it wasn't confusing enough already.
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Vata Raven



Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 710
Location: TN
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:51 pm Reply with quote
Find it hard to believe, the Japanese did okay the name change. Since DC has copy rights to the name Canan, they had to change the name to Case Closed. I'm not sure how DC can a copy right to a name, but whatever.

So, I think since the title changed happen, I'm sure they thought it would just be better to change the character names.
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