Dub Localization - Controversial Dub Localizations

Controversial Dub Localizations

Many localized dubs are the object of much controversy. One relatively famous example of a controversial dub localization is the Sailor Moon series, which was heavily edited to remove episodes, change the animation (such as flipping the animation in some scenes so that cars were not driving on the "wrong" side of the road compared to American driving laws) and extensively using valley girl slang and other slanguage. The first 65 episodes were the most famous for this. Later seasons had less editing on the Japanese cultural contents and virtually none of the animation. However, the Cloverway dub of the third and fourth seasons is still controversial due to multiple character name changes, inconsistencies in things including names of attacks or plot-important items, the changing of a crossdressing character's sex, the making of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune into cousins in an attempt to disguise their originally lesbian relationship, and the referring of Japanese kana in the context as "symbols" instead of the original context of having no Kanji. Despite these changes, several fans of the series like the dubbed version. The first two seasons of Sailor Moon were eventually released in unedited, subtitled DVD box sets, and the third and fourth seasons had uncut dubbed, edited dubbed, and subtitled home video releases in addition to bilingual DVDs.

Many of the anime dubs by 4Kids Entertainment, such as those for Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Sonic X, Tokyo Mew Mew, Pokemon, Shaman King, and One Piece are controversial amongst many anime fans largely because of localization issues, including extensive and sometime bizarre censorship (such as changing a gun to a pop gun or a cigarette to a lollipop) in order to release it on American children's television.

Many anime English dubs contain mild to strong language that is non-existent in the original Japanese versions. The best examples include the Yu Yu Hakusho and unedited One Piece dubs.

One series in particular, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, was given two heavily localized English dubs in the form of Battle of the Planets from Sandy Frank, and G-Force: Guardians of Space from Ted Turner and Fred Ladd. The Battle of the Planets production added new animation to the series, changed one character from a young boy to an artificial life form with a speech impediment, added a whole new main character, anglicized all the character names, deleted several entire episodes, and was heavily edited for content. G-Force was a more accurate adaptation, but still anglicized all the character names, and heavily edited the footage for content (though to a lesser extent than Battle of the Planets). The first localization was a mild success, wheres the second was more popular overseas, but was still shown in the US. It's two sequel series, Gatchaman II and Gatchaman F were also heavily localized by Saban Entertainment in the form of Eagle Riders, and also experienced the same heavy censoring of episodes, and character names. This localization was only briefly shown in the United States, but was shown in full in Australia. The original Gatchaman series was finally given a straight, uncut English dub years later by ADV Films.

Another highly controversial dub localization was Kids WB's broadcast of Cardcaptors, the English dubbed adaptation of Cardcaptor Sakura from Nelvana, which not only Americanized the setting and names, but actually changed the personalities of the characters and the focus of the show, to the point where the hero was Syaoran Li instead of Sakura, and the series' genre was effectively switched from shōjo (girl-oriented) magical girl, to shōnen (boy-oriented) action-fantasy; this alteration proved to be unpopular, with the American DVD and VHS releases of Cardcaptors being canceled after only 27 episodes due to poor sales and the uncut subtitled release actually outselling the dub in the end, despite being released separately with little fanfare and virtually no extra features. However UK and Australian broadcasts of Nelvana's localization featured less edits (albeit still heavily edited), and even featured English adaptations of the original Japanese theme songs.