Anime I have a question about animes in america.

[Solo Tremaine]

[quote name='Dagger]You can't slice out an aspect of someone else's creation and act as if the resulting product will be better for [i]everyone[/i'], no matter how much more you may like it--or, in the case of 4Kids and One Piece, how much better it might sell. That's the essential problem I have with how they're treating One Piece; what they're doing to the broadcast version is honestly very silly (in rushing to alter anything which might be even minutely edgy, they've pretty much ruined whatever appeal the show could hold for kids and people of any age group, as is evidenced by its dismal ratings). But I wouldn't care much if I were able to choose between edited & unedited DVDs. Unfortunately, it looks as though I won't have that choice.[/quote][color=#503f86]That wasn't what I was intending to say- I've a great respect for people's creative purpose. But that doesn't mean that I can't be objective about plot and character elements that are thrown into a story. I guess I'm just being pedantic- people smoke just for the sake of smoking and it's hardly an aspect of real life you can pretend doesn't exist.

But I don't even know how many characters in the anime do smoke- I'm just reacting to what I've heard, which I know is incredibly naive of me. This is where your knowledge of the show comes in- I don't know anything about One Piece or its original intended audience; I've never watched an episode all the way through nor have I ever read the manga. I can only assume now that it's aimed at a region between kids and adults that can accept both styles of animation and humour.

[font=Verdana][size=2]I have a strong objection to Yu-Gi-Oh's 4Kids dub. Yeah, paint in bikinis where you need to, but airbrushing out guns to leave people holding out empty hands is just pointless. It's not as if you can pretend violence doesn't exist, either.[/size][/font][/color]

[quote name='Dagger']I sort of went off on a tangent here. To clarify: I do understand why they edited One Piece, at least in regards to the smoking (which continues to be a hot-button issue here in the States). But I felt that you were saying you didn't have a problem with cigarettes being edited out because you personally dislike them. I'm sure I'd be tempted to edit Ayeka out of Tenchi (yeah, I know that's an awfully silly parallel to draw--just bear with me) if I were given the option. That doesn't make it right. CMX's version of Tenjho Tenge may be somewhat less likely to corrupt the youth of America, but that doesn't make editing the manga acceptable.[/quote][COLOR=#503F86]Yeah, I completely agree. Trying to market something for kids that needs such heavy editing seems stupid, which was why I was objecting to the cigarettes in the first place. Had they chosen a different anime series to distribute instead of One Piece that didn't contain so much 'offensive' material in the first place, it wouldn't matter.

And I do personally dislike cigarettes. But I also said that they can be a very effective dramatic tool, and not that I disagree with having them in [i]anything[/i]. I just don't think they're appropriate for a series that's being marketed at kids. But if that wasn't the intended audience in the first place then it doesn't matter either way- 4Kids just have incredibly poor judgement.[/COLOR]

[Twilight_Kioku]

*looks over the previous posts* OK, smoking sucks, editing sucks, a lot of the dubs suck. i watched a little bit of One Piece on CN, and it was the penicle of all suckdom, like a new Dragonball, only lamer. and why do they call alcoholism a disease? how do u get infected? its not a disease, its an addiction.

i agree that the .hack//dusk anime wasnt the best in the world, they 'kiddiefied' it, so to speak. ...oh wait, i remember now, they dont have Zyphe, but they have another Vagrant AI named morgan or sumtin like taht. *MORGAN!?!?! ITS MORGANA U FOOLS!!!*. i saw that and it pissed me off so bad, cant even get the names right. the .hack//sign was great though

oh, and 4Kids can go to hell, get caught up in purgatory for a while, finally get to hell, get rejected, and sent back to purgatory, but theyre not wanted there either, so they go to limbo for a while, get rejected there too, end up floating in nowhere for a non-amount of time, therefore making them nonexistant.
hey, Escaflowne needs to be redubbed!

[Guest HeavenlyDemonic]

[QUOTE=GTK]I thought I'd post this because I found it interesting... it was taken from the journal entry of someone on Livejournal (Nyanko-chan, if anyone happens to know who she is?).

--start copy/paste--

I never understand why they take a popular kids show and repackage it so much for american audiences. Ok, no scratch that, I DO understand but I hate the reason they give for their changes.
They always say American children are different than Japanese children and wouldnt like the same things.
I find that to be a load of bunk, it's not the American child and the Japanese child that differs, its the American PARENT and Japanese PARENT that differs.
Kids are simple, kids are entertained by the same basic principles, if its entertaining to a billion kids in one country, you can pretty much bet the same property is going to entertain a billion kids in Japan,America, Mexico, France, Botswana, you name it.

Now, if the companies would say:
"We are editing this for the American parents who underestimate the intelligence of their children. We are editing out any cohesive story that might be in here as we feel that pesky little plot might distract our children from the bright colors and flashing lights. We feel American children arent mature enough to handle adult topics like death, homosexuality, or god forbid, SMOKING...even tho we are well aware that middle school kids are out having babies. We are editing this so that it narrows down the veiwers who will enjoy this to our specific age demographic no more no less, in order to target our "key" audience, in doing so we know full well we are alienating anyone outside of that group, but we dont care because clearly any adult that would enjoy a cartoon and wish to support it must be a social reject and live in their mother's basement, and thus have no money."

I think thats what bugs me about it, not that they DO edit it, but WHY they edit it. It seems a hypocritcal act the censor something so mundane when we have far worse thing on the tv, radio and in movies, but not in cartoons because american children are stupid.



---end copy/paste--

the whole thing can be found here~ [url]http://www.livejournal.com/~nyanko_chan/260594.html[/url][/QUOTE]

Well...she has a good point. many of todays anime/manga is changed because of the raings. like Battle Vixen. its for 18+ so parents wouldn't are let there child read it. but in the anime its 16+ so parents who never heard f the manga just let there kids watch it. basically if its not 18+ and your kid is like 10 then anything below that is okay for him to watch

[Starwind]

As bad as the crossover from manga to anime may seem it's reasonable in the case when the anime is released before the end of the manga. Sometimes to ad new edge to the series their needs to be changes. The methods used to create tension in an anime is different than the one needed for a manga. The crossover process is not as simple as directly mimicing the manga, sometimes you need total scene changes. Doesn't mean it can't be annoying... but still.

[Otaku America]

[QUOTE=Solo Tremaine][COLOR=#503F86]That is something I can actually understand. Having characters smoking, good or bad, and regardless of whether the kids' parents actually smoke it's going to promote it in some way, and I completely abhor smoking.

You're speaking as if everyone's going to start anyway, which isn't something I agree with. Having drink in animes aimed at kids is one thing, but cigarettes is another. I know this argument begs the question 'Well, how can you be for one evil and against another?', but I just disagree with smoking more than I do with drinking (so long as it's in moderation).[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

[COLOR=Navy]I highly disagree. Just because someone smokes a cigarette in an anime doesn't mean the tobacco company is behind it. If you see an anime like One Piece and a pirate is using a gun, doesn't mean it promotes guns in some way. It's the viewer who is responsible for what he does. It doesn't matter if a person is sensible or not, humans aren't perfect and it doesn't matter if you know that. The simple point is, if a child chooses to smoke because one of his favorite anime/cartoon character does it, his the one at fault. Therefore, editing is just a disgrace to the original creator's intent.

Editing in general whether it's aimed at children or adults is just plain stupid. I remember watching Kenshin on Cartoon Network, and they replaced Saito's cigarette with a toothpick. Did this guy just have a thanksgiving dinner? The worst part is, Saito throws down his toothpick and tries to put it out like if it were a cigarette. Nothing should ever be edited in anime. If I created an anime and a viewer watches it for the first time on Cartoon Network and sees a guy shoot another guy and blood doesn't come out, the viewer is going to ponder, WTF?

Editing as a whole sucks for the entire manga/anime industry. It's the creator's ambition to get his vision out and to have a distribution company edit something in it is like having someone spit in your face.[/COLOR]

[Solo Tremaine]

[color=navy]
[/color][QUOTE=Otaku America][color=navy]I highly disagree. Just because someone smokes a cigarette in an anime doesn't mean the tobacco company is behind it. [color=navy]If you see an anime like One Piece and a pirate is using a gun, doesn't mean it promotes guns in some way. It's the viewer who is responsible for what he does. It doesn't matter if a person is sensible or not, humans aren't perfect and it doesn't matter if you know that. The simple point is, if a child chooses to smoke because one of his favorite anime/cartoon character does it, his the one at fault. Therefore, editing is just a disgrace to the original creator's intent.[/color]
[/color][/QUOTE][color=#503f86]I never said anything about corporate sponsorship o_o; I mean 'promote' in an artistic sense.

And it's all very well saying that the viewer has responsibility, but that doesn't mean to say that the choices he or she makes won't be affected by what they see. There's a case in point in the UK at the moment- the live-action soap operas which contain a lot of violence and nasty behavious have been getting more and more extreme lately to try and re-attract viewers. It's almost to the point where it should be shown after the watershed, but it still has a prime-time viewing place where kids can see it, and the consequences of actions aren't always portrayed sensibly. Since it's been getting worse, there's been a much greater increase in things like underage pregnancies, rapes, beatings, 'yob culture' and all sorts of things.

Now, I'm not saying that that's the sole cause of rises in crime, but the thing is that if children are seeing things that they're not supposed to without the consequences being explained, they aren't going to know whether something is right to do or not. Characters, likeable or not are portrayed as idols to which fans will adhere to, consciously or unconsciously. There've been times where I myself have imagined shooting someone in the same way that I've seen done in dramatic anime moments. i could argue that it's because I have an active imagination and daydream a lot for dramatic tension, but the fact is that I am still thinking about it. I've not carried it out, but people with less rational thought aren't going to be as careful.

I'm not an advocate of non-violence and I don't believe that violent TV programmes/video games are the root of all of society's evils. I don't even like edited anime, really. But to argue that things have no effect whatsoever is wrong. Everything will have an effect, but the extent of that effect is down to the individual and it's not always a conscious response.[/color]

[quote name='OtakuAmerica']Editing as a whole sucks for the entire manga/anime industry. It's the creator's ambition to get his vision out and to have a distribution company edit something in it is like having someone spit in your face.[/quote][color=#503f86]There's editing all the way through the creation process- what comes out on screen is often far from how the creatpr originally planned things, simply because the act of putting it into physical terms potentially changes the effect a certain idea has. And even hentai, which seems to be the most blatantly graphic form of anime there is in terms of explicit content, often blanks out certain areas [i]not[/i] because it's the law (the law prohibiting them from showing everything was lifted a while ago), but because it's now a tradition.

I don't think editing is like 'spitting in someone's face'. Like I said in a later post; try[color=#503f86]ing to market something for kids that needs such heavy editing seems stupid, which was why I was objecting to the cigarettes in the first place. Had they chosen a different anime series to distribute instead of One Piece that didn't contain so much 'offensive' material in the first place, it wouldn't matter. Like Saito's toothpick cigarette, it's just a case of common sense with knowing which bits to edit to make the anime seamless and not-too-obviously chopped up.[/color][/color]

[Dagger]

[quote name='Solo Tremaine][color=#503f86']There's editing all the way through the creation process- what comes out on screen is often far from how the creatpr originally planned things, simply because the act of putting it into physical terms potentially changes the effect a certain idea has.[/color][/quote]
Not to butt in again (sorry about that, heh), but I kind of wanted to pick on this particular paragraph. "Editing" during the making of a show is something completely and utterly separate from cuts being imposed upon the final product by a different agency. As editing is a word with several shades of meaning, try substituting in "censorship" or "censoring." It hardly counts as censorship when a writer's idea evolves during the transition from mind to paper, for example. Even when aspects of a manga are altered in the making of the corresponding anime (Kaga doesn't smoke in the Hikaru no Go anime, for example), that isn't really censorship in the usual sense of the word--it's just the way they're choosing to make the show, for whatever reason.

~Dagger~

[Otaku America]

[COLOR=DarkGreen][BIG EDIT] [/COLOR] [COLOR=Green]Sorry, my post was off-topic. [/COLOR]:sick:

[QUOTE]I don't think editing is like 'spitting in someone's face'. Like I said in a later post; trying to market something for kids that needs such heavy editing seems stupid, which was why I was objecting to the cigarettes in the first place. Had they chosen a different anime series to distribute instead of One Piece that didn't contain so much 'offensive' material in the first place, it wouldn't matter. Like Saito's toothpick cigarette, it's just a case of common sense with knowing which bits to edit to make the anime seamless and not-too-obviously chopped up.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR=Navy]Common sense or not anime shouldn't be edited. Children read the Holy Bible everyday and it contains massive amounts of violence that it would be any anime to shame. What if someone edited the Holy Bible by altering God's words? Surely, God would cast a hellfire. It's like replacing a cop's 9mm bullets with pellets to shoot down the criminal. Altering a manga or anime in any kind of form is absurd and uncalled or.

I'm also not speaking of anime translated from the manga because what works chronologically with a manga might not work chronologically with the anime & vice-versa.

I have to watch Tengo Tenge now.[/COLOR]

[Solo Tremaine]

[quote name='Dagger']"Editing" during the making of a show is something completely and utterly separate from cuts being imposed upon the final product by a different agency. As editing is a word with several shades of meaning, trying substituting in "censorship" or "censoring."[/quote][COLOR=#503F86]Heh, I was hoping I'd get away with that ^_^;

[quote name='Otaku America][color=#000080']Common sense or not anime shouldn't be edited. Children read the Holy Bible everyday and it contains massive amounts of violence that it would be any anime to shame. What if someone edited the Holy Bible by altering God's words? Surely, God would cast a hellfire. It's like replacing a cop's 9mm bullets with pellets to shoot down the criminal. Altering a manga or anime in any kind of form is absurd and uncalled or.[/color][/quote]I can see your point- in effect it'd be like trying to find every Greek or Roman statue in a building and covering up the naughty bits just because children are going to go into the museum. But fine and classical art is widely accepted for what it is, whareas anime isn't, and if you're broadcasting to such a wide audience the chances are at some point you're going to come across someone who'll be offended by what they see and kick up a fuss.

As I've already said, I don't like editing. But at least it helps save a little of anime's reputation when it's actually broadcast. Yeah, the people who count (i.e. the anime fans) can spot the good edits from the bad ones, but at least if it helps build it up towards a wider audience, then there's a greater possibility that more animes will be broadcast and hence, more will be available on DVD. That's something I'm really after, certainy on the UK market.

As long as the uncut versions are available for me to buy somewhere they can show what they like on TV- I quite like spotting what they've omitted, anyway. But considering there's little to no anime shown in the UK anyway, it doesn't make a great deal of difference to me right now.

Although, this reminds me of a show I used to watch- Beast Wars. I bought the DVD set of Season 3 recently and I compared it to the shows I recorded from GMTV when it was being shown. The differences between them were enormous- I couldn't believe how much they'd censored. And even though there are some quite adult references in there I couldn't believe how sensitive they were being. I mean, they were cutting out stuff that would be acceptable even to kid's programmes being shown beforehand. That annoyed me, because at that point I didn't have access to the whole thing if I wanted it.

So yeah. I think this'll be my closing post. My arguments will get too confused if I try again, heh.[/COLOR]

[Guest YamiMoonMage]

[QUOTE=Shinichi Kudou][COLOR=Navy]
As for the Anime being different then the Manga.... it has to different. It can't be exactly the same, also...it would be kind of a drag if it was. Originallity is good. [/COLOR][/QUOTE]
Yeah, plus as someone else said anime is based on manga. Based and identical aren't the same thing. They're not supposed to be. I live in America, and I do understand the annoyance with all the changes. But I also agree with what EVA Unit 100 said:

"You are aware that it is possible for you to not like an anime the way it was invisioned it Japan, aren't you?"
As for:
"I have a strong objection to Yu-Gi-Oh's 4Kids dub. Yeah, paint in bikinis where you need to, but airbrushing out guns to leave people holding out empty hands is just pointless. It's not as if you can pretend violence doesn't exist, either."

They're not trying to pretend violence doesn't exist. Kids that little are extremely impressionable, they see one guys shooting guys, they'll start wanting to mimic it. I'm sure everyone knows that little kids mimic what they see on TV.