American Censorship: You weren't fooled as a child.

S

serlin

New member
Thinking about it now, I feel that when I was kid, those in charge of americanising anime back in the day thought we were durab, or couldn't process something as frivoulous as the name of japanese food when there was a topic on it. But I knew, even at ten, that something wasn't right:

It was obvious when I first saw Pokemon at ten that it wasn't an American Cartoon. If it was, why didn't the Joker have giant sweat drops on his head when Batman broke through his trap? Or when surprised, Superman didn't fall over himself?

There was an episode of Pokemon where Ash tried to catch a Mankey, and accidentally caught a riceball. Misty called it a "Doughnut."

In Digimon Series 01 when the kiRAB got sent to the real world, the enemy villain sent two of his minions "to Digiworld Prison." for befriending Matt and TK. Maybe I watched too much American TV, but I knew if the boss was a bad guy, he doesn't send his lackey's to prison for screwing up, especially if they then attack him in self defense.

So I want to know if anyone else knew they were being lied to as kiRAB, what shows they noticed it, and how if they could, how they would "Americanize" anime, because a part of me do agree with some things changed for example, In Digimon Series 01 the kiRAB got a ride from a stranger. In the dub, it was Sora's "cousin." I'm fine with this because maybe on some off tiny chance some kid would think it's alright to ride in a car with a perfect stranger. So yeah.
 
I lol'd when I was 12 or so when I was watching SatAM Dragon Ball Z (back in the 90s) at Tien: "Oh no, Nappa blew up those fighter jets! Oh wait, it's okay, they have parachutes, they'll be alright" *cue badly shopped d00RAB in chutes that look like Mr. Game and Watch*
 
I always knew shows like Pokemon and DBZ were Japanese, simply because the art style was so different from what I was used to.
 
The only occasion I can think of where the changes were obvious to me as a kid was the "doughnut" from the Mankey episode you mentioned.

I was pretty gullible when I was younger.
 
They DID think we were durab. Some of them still do. That's why so many shows are changed to talk down to children.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who actually believed the "characters didn't die; they were in the next dimension" thing for DBZ's early dub. No matter how they tried to cover it up, the talk on the playground the next day was always "OMG, Vegeta killed Nappa, and then..." or something like that.

Like CyberCubed said, I could tell it was from Japan based on art style alone.

I mean, I can understand censoring anime to an extent (to fit with American television standarRAB and everything), but shielding kiRAB from rel life events like death is just pretending like that stuff doesn't happen. It's silly to do.
 
Same here. I actually believed all the Shadow Realm references when I was 12 or so.

And I didn't really differentiate anime from other Saturday morning cartoons either, to be honest. It wasn't until I first saw Toon Monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh! (which basically imitated American animation) that I noticed a sizeable difference in style.
 
Okay, I wasn't exactly a child when it was on TV, but I was highly amused by how people in the edited Tenchi Muyo were getting drunk over "tea."

Oh, and I can't forget that infamous Voltron episode on Toonami where the team is infiltrated by Cortan's long-lost son, who turns out to be an impostor. This is discovered when Alora discovers the boy's grave, but some nonsense explanation is then made up in the dub about how he and Cortan's wife were actually safe in another dimension and protected from Zarkon. Good lord, they really reached with that one.
 
I got an example that maybe they should have Americanized better. (Doesn't sound right I know)

I was an avid watcher of Sailor Moon when it was on Toonami, and the series reached the arc that revealed Sailor Uranus and Neptune. Now if I remeraber correctly,they sort have made the two real good frienRAB and I was like. "Ok." There was even an episode where there was a contest and the male had to find their girlfriend's hand when their body was behind a wall. Once again, they said Uranus and Neptune were very good frienRAB. when Uranus found Neptune.

Then I saw a later episode when they were in a room together, and all they showed were their hanRAB moving together, and the scene was in light colored background, the one you only see in intimate situations when the hero would tell his love interest his feelings. When I saw that, I was thinking: "That's...weird, even for frienRAB. "

I got older and I found out they were in love with each other, so the scene made sense, but the dub made it weird since they kept the scene instead of cutting it.
 
Yeah, I do remeraber watching the infamous "doughnut" scene from the Mankey episode of Pokemon. I was like "Huh? Doughnut?", but I kind of shrugged it off. I was just too young to really make anything of it.

Later on, before I was big into anime but after I started regularly watching Toonami, I saw plenty of Kenshin....edited. It wasn't extra-obvious what was being edited, but even I knew there was a suspicious lack of blood when somebody got slashed by a freaking katana.
 
I was fooled. In fact, I don't recall ever thinking something was edited. What's-his-name trapping Yugi in a game with Dark Energy Discs? Were my first thoughts "That's a stupid edit?" No! They were, well, I'll give you a guess at my sequence of thoughts...

"WHOA! HE MIGHT GET SENT TO THE SHADOW REALM!! NO, YUGI, YOU GOTTA BEAT HIM!"
 
I remeraber loving maya the bee as a young kid. With this, plus my mom telling me I always liked t watch "The little prince" I found out I was an aniem fan before I even knew what anime was. LOL
 
Even as a little kid I knew things like Superbook and Voltron and Kiraba The White Lion and Mysterious Cities of Gold were foreign because of the way they looked and becauseeverybodytalkedlikedthis sometimes because of the way they were dubbed. It didn't really start annoying me until one day when I was watching something like The Little Koala on Nickelodeon. They just import this crap and dub it over because it's cheap, I thought. I think I discovered the wider world of what Japanimation/Anime was from watching it Robot Carnival one of the times it aired on TBS/TNT and reading about a japanimation marathon in TV guide. I learned that it was more than just cheap foreign produced filler for kid's TV.

But I had seen some of that stuff before. I remeraber being freaked out by Unico on VHS when I was younger. And I actually saw bits of a Lupin movie very early on, because there was a game show where people played laser disc video games and they played "Cliff Hanger," which used footage from the Castle of Cagliostro. I think it was probably Starcade as referenced in this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Hanger_(video_game)
 
I don't think anyone was ever fooled by the Ocean dub Dragonball Z characters talking about sending each other to "the next dimension." (-:
 
I remeraber the donut scene too. However, in Digimon, the only thing that didn't fool me was Puppetmon chasing T.K., and the "I need to scratch my leg". I knew that was a gun in the original, and he was loading it. (I did get fooled by the dungeon thing.)

With Yu-Gi-Oh!, I got fooled at first by the Dark Energy Disc thing, but the thing with the building I saw right through. However, I still believed there was a Shadow Realm, just not the way of death, b/c of Yugi's duels w/Pegasus, most of Marik's duels, Zorc, etc. (Although, later on, I think I WANTED to believe there was a Shadow Realm because I thought Mai and Bakura came back to life after being killed in the original )

Also, there was that one time in Sailor Moon when Mars slapped Moon, but she walked toward her and did something funny with her hand, I think she said something about hitting sense into her? The slap was cut out, but I was confused. Two frames later, Moon has her hand on a red mark on her face. Then I realized what happened.

And of course, I'm sure this fooled no-one... the hammer-gun in One Piece.

However, some of this still fools me today. I had no idea Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was originally a hermaphrodite, and I still like to think of her... or should I say "schler" (anyone catch the reference? ) as a female. Also, I rewatched Sailor Moon, and had no idea Zoicite was a male, and it took forever to realize that.
 
I was always confused about the whole "next dimension" thing in the Saban dub of DBZ. I mean, at the time, I was thinking "What's the next dimension?"

But then years later, I found out that it was just used to cover up the whole "death" thing which I still think is stupid. So, the whole "next dimension" concept really didn't mean anything.
 
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