Official Releases
After several years of petitioning, 4Kids Entertainment released a few volumes of uncensored versions of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Shaman King on DVD. In addition to containing scenes originally cut from the features, the new versions contained the original music, Japanese language tracks, and new English language tracks with unlocalized dialogue that more closely matched the original Japanese dialog. These unedited DVDs sold poorly, being purchased only by a subset of fans within the wider anime market. Indeed, by the time that the unedited DVDs were released, both Yu-Gi-Oh! and Shaman King had been running on television in their localized forms for several years and had been released in that format for years as well. The first two volumes of Yu-Gi-Oh! were released uncut in 2004, and the third volume was released in 2005. Two volumes of Shaman King were released uncut. After time, both projects were canceled. 4Kids drew the ire of One Piece fans for its heavily edited English dub up until Funimation acquired the rights to produce and distribute One Piece. Recently, 4Kids has begun distributing uncut, Japanese episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! through YouTube.
One of the first airings of uncut anime on cable television was shown on Cartoon Network's block Toonami entitled, "The Midnight Run". This block aired late at night and featured uncut versions of many of Toonami's anime including, Gundam Wing, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Blue Dragon, and Sailor Moon. This block helped launch the popular Adult Swim block which now shows/showed uncut versions of Bleach, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Yu Yu Hakusho and also TV-MA-rated anime like Blood+ and Code Geass.
In addition, Funimation Entertainment began releasing uncut versions of Dragon Ball Z to DVD and VHS in 2000, beginning with the third season. The dub was the same, but cut scenes were restored and certain portions were re-dubbed to better fit the original script and to leave no trace of editing. The whole series was released in this format, and, by now, the edited versions are only seen through the old edited VHS releases.
Read more about this topic: Editing Of Anime In American Distribution, Uncut Anime Releases
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