A few weeks ago Hinako Tamayouchi the creator of Yugi-Oh: The Lost Saga brought up an interesting point about dubbed anime on her Deviant Art page. She believes that there is nothing wrong with the heavily edited dubs of anime for children. And after some thinking, I believe she is completely right.

Now, before the Otaku community starts sharpening their pitchforks, here me out.

I know that edited series have been a major thorn in a lot of Otaku's side for a long time. The fact that plot points, character relationships or even cultural references are cut out or changed has irritated many a fan, myself included. Modern Anime companies for the most part do a very good job about staying faithful to the original versions in their translations and their dubs, to a point where even tiny changes that were accepted in Japan cause An Uproar in the US and other places. So if even I find majorly edited dubs often times so infuriating, why am I defending heavily edited, cut and spliced series for children?

Follow up:

It's for the next generation of Otaku

While many Otaku find out about anime while in High School or college, most of the people I know started watching anime as a kid. Most of the Otaku my age (in their late teens-to mid twenties) got started on Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Yugi-Oh and Sailor Moon. Even those who got started on Tenchi on USA Network got a heavily edited version. Even hardcore fans that I know can belt out the English 'Rock the Dragon' opener from DBZ and still refer to Satoshi as Ash Ketchum, or interchange the dub names of the Sailor Scouts with the Japanese ones without even thinking about it. I've said this before: Pokemon made me a gamer, Cardcaptors made me an Otaku--which is one of the reasons I defend the series so vehemently.

The fact is the standards for children's programming in the US and Europe are incredibly stringent, and while one can argue about free speech and the necessity of exposing kids to reality, those standards aren't going to change any time soon. If anything they've gotten more strict from when I was a kid. Go ahead and compare an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, or even Batman Beyond and compare it to The Batman. In The Batman the contact with punches and kicks is never shown, the female characters aren't portrayed as sexy and talk about 'death' is totally cut out and they don't even show realistic looking guns. And this is a span of about ten years. And this isn't the only factor for cutting. The reason for change of background music and opening/closing credits is because of Japanese laws dictating what can be broadcast in foreign countries--American companies often have no choice but to record and put in their own music. Likewise change of names are often for marketing reasons, as Western sounding names are easier for kids to remember, and are more approachable.

The reality is if there are no animes marketed to children, Anime is likely to turn back into a niche market. Back in the day, anime was incredibly hard to find, only available in specialty stores like Media Play and Suncoast, where even Miyazaki films like My Neighbor Totoro or Pokemon tapes weren't easy to track down. The late 90's-early 00's were the golden age of anime because of so many kids shows on TV. But by being so incredibly nitpicky, we may be damning ourselves and a time when the industry is already suffering.

This being said, there needs to be a secondary side of children's animes, and that is the availability of uncut, unedited dubbed series should also be available to the older set. A lot of companies already do this for the tweeny series like Bleach and Naruto, and I'm all for that, but now that I'm older I would love to get the full versions of the shows I watched as a kid. So this is in no way a defense of 4kids. In fact, in my next blog I will talk about why I hate 4kids so much.