# Americanizing anime



## RayLee (Feb 10, 2014)

People, for years, I never realized that some anime out there has been  americanized, until now. Practically, there has been anime that has been  heavily edited and sometimes poorly dubbed, like the sailor moon DIC  dub. But most distrubutors tend to take a step. further. Like godzilla,  king of the monsters!, which involved taking the japanese version of the  first godzilla movie, and added scenes with raymond burr, the same has  been done for some anime. Seeing how successful king of the monsters  was, and with the trend of other kaiju films being americanized, people  knew that it was so easy to do the same thing with anime. Since  animation is much easier to edit than live action, some american  distrubutors decided to take the route of westernizing japanese  animation, whether it was too violent, too sexual, "too  japanese"(what?Tongue)or for no reason whatsoever.

Perhaps the  most perfect example of this process has to be battle of the planets,  the first english adaptation of gatchaman, where not only they took the  gatchaman footage and dubbed it, they added in new scenes with 7-zark-7.  Of course, anime like voltron or robotech had the same treatment, but  were lucky enough to suffer only with having several shows mixed into  one.

Though, one rare example of this process has to saber rider  where not only the distributor, WEP, rewrote and reorganized the entire  series, but removed five episodes for their content and replaced them  with six newly animated episodes! Yeah, weird huh! You don't see that in  most anime these days, don't you!? And there's not much information for  the episodes, like who animated the episodes, and who directed them,  the only info I know has to be the characters designs and differences to  the regular japanese episodes or settings.

But the most  controversial one of all has to be the never-before seen pilot of the  american version of sailor moon, dubbed "saban moon" due to the  confusion of many people believing that the show has to be made by  saban. But in reality, the company behind the pilot was toon makers. The  only thing that exists of this pilot has to be a 2 minute music video  that is now currently shown on youtube. This probably has to be the most  rarest example of americanizing anime there is.

So, this brings  me the question, will there be any more anime that'll be americanized,  and well will this process come back? But most importantly, how good  does americanized anime stand to regular anime? And what do the japanese  think of it? Comment me on what you think. That's all for now, I hope I  explained enough. I rest my case.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Feb 10, 2014)

What we know as 'Samurai Pizza Cats'  (Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee) suffered horribly from this. They literally ad-libbed all dialogue, and even changed the main villain's species. Because, obviously, a flambuoyant gay crossdressing fox is too hard to imagine :V


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## Imperial Impact (Feb 11, 2014)

[video=youtube;e8um1N78AhY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8um1N78AhY[/video]


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## Batty Krueger (Feb 11, 2014)

What's worse is amercan animation companys copying the animation style (ie the new teen titans series and shit like that)


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## ElectricBlue1989 (Feb 11, 2014)

d.batty said:


> What's worse is amercan animation companys copying the animation style (ie the 2003 teen titans series and shit like that)



Fixed it for ya.

Anyways, that's the reason why it took me awhile to take that show seriously (and that lack of taking seriously is why I don't have a problem whatsoever with _Teen Titans GO!, _which I don't find it anime-ish whatsoever. It feels like its own thing). It's one of the reasons why I disliked _Transformers: Animated_, too, regardless that it (allegedly) had decent writing. 
And don't get me started with American manga (_*coughs* *Ghostbusters* *coughs*_).

But the North American dubbers aren't the only ones that tweak their imported animated entertainment.
Sticking with _Transformers_, I've read that for the Japanese dub of _Transformers: Prime_ they tweaked some of the characters. 
Example: making the tough and sadistic Decepticon Hardshell into a comedy relief sort of character (!). Yeah, it seems small potatoes compared to the lengths other dubbers go through, but still...

Oh, and regarding the OP, before I forget:

_*coughs*_ _4Kids *One Piece* English dub_ _*coughs*_


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## Twylyght (Feb 11, 2014)

ElectricBlue1989 said:


> Fixed it for ya.
> 
> Anyways, that's the reason why it took me awhile to take that show seriously (and that lack of taking seriously is why I don't have a problem whatsoever with _Teen Titans GO!, _which I don't find it anime-ish whatsoever. It feels like its own thing). It's one of the reasons why I disliked _Transformers: Animated_, too, regardless that it (allegedly) had decent writing.
> And don't get me started with American manga (_*coughs* *Ghostbusters* *coughs*_).
> ...



Oh, they did a number on Transformers Prime.  Take Airachnid for example.  She's a killer, she had heads on her ship as trophies and tried to hunt the human Jack down for his head.  They dubbed it so she was boy crazy, chasing Jack around making kissing noises and wanted to marry him XD Wow, just wow...  Or how about not airing the Beast Hunter episodes or the Predacon Rising movie.  They turned a somewhat serious show into a comedy lol

I remember when Robotech was aired on broadcast TV.  Loved the show.  Years later I heard about a show called Macross.  I had no idea they were the same show until later on or something like that.


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## ElectricBlue1989 (Feb 11, 2014)

Twylyght said:


> Oh, they did a number on Transformers Prime.  Take Airachnid for example.  She's a killer, she had heads on her ship as trophies and tried to hunt the human Jack down for his head.  They dubbed it so she was boy crazy, chasing Jack around making kissing noises and wanted to marry him XD Wow, just wow...  Or how about not airing the Beast Hunter episodes or the Predacon Rising movie.  They turned a somewhat serious show into a comedy lol
> 
> 
> I remember when _Robotech_ was aired on broadcast TV.  Loved the show.  Years later I heard about a show called _Macross_.  I had no idea they were the same show until later on or something like that.



About Japanese _Transformers: Prime_: Good Lord! 

I too saw _Robotech_. Not all of it, but enough to leave an impression. When I asked so-called pop-culture fans about it, they just gave me a blank stare. It's as if they've never heard of it before! I felt like I was the only person in my country that actually watched it instead of that girly schoolgirl show (9 year-old point of view. You know which one).
Then I too learned about _Macross_ (found some trading cards that clearly had _Robotech_ artwork on it, but labeled _Macross_) and little by little I came to know the difference.


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## DarrylWolf (Feb 11, 2014)

I think adding an ignorant "ugly American" stereotype to every anime is necessary to Americanize it.





"Thanks to me, you can see Yugioh... IN AMERICA!"- Bandit Keith


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## BRN (Feb 11, 2014)

[yt]GXrAYdSeWY8[/yt]

Always relevant


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## RayLee (Feb 12, 2014)

BRN said:


> [yt]GXrAYdSeWY8[/yt]
> 
> Always relevant



What does that to do with americanizing anime?


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## RayLee (Feb 12, 2014)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> What we know as 'Samurai Pizza Cats'  (Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee) suffered horribly from this. They literally ad-libbed all dialogue, and even changed the main villain's species. Because, obviously, a flambuoyant gay crossdressing fox is too hard to imagine :V



I understand your opinion, but you gotta admit, a lot of people love the dubbed version, even the tatsunoko, the studio behind samurai pizza cats, loved it as well, seeing how the dialouge fit so well with the humor. Also, I must point the reason the dilouge was ad-libbed because saban(the company that dubbed it) couldn't afford the scripts, or rather they did, according to one writer, but were badly translated.


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