I do mean stuff like removed scenes from international airings, replacing objects like cigarettes or vine with any other objects.
In the 1900s I worked at a physical media store. Someone complained about the Titanic playing overhead having boobies visible in it, and I was tasked with using a VHS splicer to remove the boobies.
That should have been foreseen. Why didn’t they just put something on with a G rating?
They were trying to sell Titanic
You are getting old, when you start specifying a whole century when talking about past experiences XD
What is playing overhead? Searching gave me nothing of use
Just a public tv playing on the wall
There were multiple TVs throughout the store hanging from the ceiling.
A TV on a ceiling mount
About 2% I’d say.
In the 1900s I was on the Titanic, and I remember that someone complained “at least there ought to be some boobies”.
Selma can really pack away them hot dogs.
?
Russian channel 2x2 censors cigars / pipes and replaces them with hotdogs. (Insane for an adult channel tbh)
Apparently this is a thing for Russian TV in general, can’t have characters smoking or drinking, otherwise it’s rated 18+ and can be only shown at night, which they don’t want to bother with shows like Spongebob
Homer: "… I’m in flavor country. "
Dragon Ball, second episode. They removed the part when Goku removes Bulma’s panties, affecting the events of the third episode.
In this case the uncensored version is much crazier.
It did however at least lead to the pun in the Funimation dub about a “fishfull of dollars,”, since they baited Oolong with a wad of cash on a fishhook rather than Bulma’s panties.
I remember the censorship for hiding his genitalia at one point was a really badly drawn flower overlaying the area that didn’t match the existing art in the slightest
Dragon Ball has so many censored scenes. I love it
Dragon ball did not age well. It’s a classic nonetheless, but it’s kind of awkward to watch at some points.
That’s putting it really mildly.
I don’t want to insult the fans, I how fans can be.
they censored blood so theres no blood when a characther recieves severe or fatal injuries. even inuyasha had blood and some gore.
“Conveniently placed shrub” became a running gag in my 4th grade friend group because of this.
In the Teen Titans Go! episode “Uncle Jokes”, Robin says “Ground cow” in Asian airings instead of “Ground beef” during the cow with no legs joke, thus making it unfunny.
The VH1 edit of showgirls. Movie was cut shorter… Meaning what actual plot there was was even more chopped up .
And when they couldn’t edit out the nudity, they “Ms painted” bikini tops on the actresses.
It’s absolutely hilarious to see https://www.reddit.com/r/Corridor/comments/1bs47qn/showgirls_movie_edited_for_tv_vh1_no_joke/
Here is a reddit link
Here’s an example
Qatar Airlines does something similar with their movies - took me a bit to realize I was being “protected” on that tiny screen 😆
Here’s the non-reddit link. https://archive.org/details/showgirls-tv-version
Thanks for linking that!
Moloko plus velocet. My fave.
4kids animes replacing rice balls with donuts, sandwiches or cookies.
One piece. Zoro tied up and starving. Little girl tries to feed him rice balls, a common item for lunch that’s easy on the stomach.
Edited to cookies
I think that was Funimation though.
Can’t have kids learning anything about foreign culture
And then replacing it with the sugary crap.
In Pokemon they didn’t even bother replacing the rice cakes, they just called them donuts and confused an entire generation of English speaking kids.
They couldn’t even bother to orient the milk carton correctly…
I know a protest when I see one… I am guessing they are forced to so they go out of their way to make it as obvious as possible to the viewer
“Yippie kay yay, MR FALCON.” from Die Hard is pretty infamous.
Not crazy but in the 80s France imported a fuckton of anime from Japan without thinking about the original target audience.
Since they wanted to show that to kids, they had to censor a lot of stuff. The most funny was when blood was colored in black everywhere (only a black liquid gushing out of bad guys), or when characters were getting drunk on orange juice.
Don’t forget City Hunter and Hokuto no Ken. French dubbing replaced love hotels with vegetarians restaurants, and characters said puns and stupid stuff instead of talking seriously.
When 4kids imported anime to the US there are some rather infamous scenes where they censor blood making it white instead. So instead of looking like a bloody mess they look like they did bukake.
There’s a Pokémon episode with guns and they just took the guns out lol.
There’s a Pokémon episode with guns and they just took the guns out lol.
No, they cut the whole episode. So now American viewers had no context for why Ash suddenly had thirty Tauros.
The 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. not only had superflous CGI E.T. scenes (no doubt inspired by Lucas), but also all guns of the federal agents were changed to walkie talkies.
Spielberg later apologized for the changes and rolled them back.
Damn I just thought it was a random south park episode
Attack on Titan, in the anime they decided that having a mother tattoo her kid was too much (in a show where giants casually eat people alive) so they made her do an embroidery with the same symbol instead.
During season 4 where the tattoo was relevant for the first time (and they included it in the show), it was fun watching anime-only watchers complain it was a total ass-pull with no prior setup.
“Göre? Yeah whatever, submit the full folder by 8 pm.”
“What… She’s wearing a bra! Censor that! And… And what’s this… Why are we hinting that he is gay!? Remove this dialog right now!”
In Germany for some inane reason the only way to get an uncensored Planet Terror with the helicopter chopping up zombies (and several other scenes, like Tarantino’s balls rotting off) is by renting it. Good luck finding a video rental place nowadays.
You don’t get it by buying the “uncensored” version. I was lucky that my first time watching the movie was as a rental.
When Sailor Moon was airing on American TV back in the late 90’s, they completely censored out every aspect of romantic relationship between Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. Turned them into cousins.
It was a shock to me when I bought the subtitled version and they were suddenly lesbians.
When I was a teenager, I bought a DVD that had a few Sailor Moon episodes that I had never seen before (being from the U.S.) In these episodes, Makoto (or “Lita” AKA Sailor Jupiter) develops a crush on Haruka (or “Amara” AKA Sailor Uranus) and has to cope with her being unattainable. The DVD included both an English dub and the original Japanese with English subtitles.
In the original Japanese version, the crush is treated as romantic in nature, with Makoto’s friends telling her that Haruka already has “a girlfriend” (Michiru AKA “Michelle” AKA Sailor Neptune.) In the English dub, Makoto wants Haruka to be her “best friend,” with the rest of the Sailor Scouts telling her that Haruka already has “a best friend.”
The visuals all stay the same, complete with roses and Makoto’s starry love-eyes. The romantic implications are so obvious it’s painful.
That’s so disappointing. To me, Sailor Moon is the OG all inclusive series. (It was my very favorite show ever as a kid and probably still is.) I kinda love how they didn’t make a big deal out of it. The star sailors change sex when they transform and it’s not even talked about. It just is how it is and nobody wonders about it. Neptune and Uranus having the hots for each other is portrayed as any other romance is and iirc no character ever addresses the “taboo” of it. Even the alien incest is somehow fine (I mean they are aliens and extinct so they do them).
I understand the LGBTQ+'s struggle for representation and acceptance, so probably they do need somewhat of an over accentuated representation on screen to eventually reach full acceptance. But Sailor Moon seems to be what comes “after” this, just normalization without it ever being a question. All the while sparking an interest in astronomy in kids who then know all the names of the dwarf planets in our solar system before they know the multiplication table.
Man I can’t wait till my kid reaches Sailor Moon watching age.
I hope your kids like it.
It has always seemed to me that my kids have gone out of their way to avoid liking anything I like. That’s fine, but I never could relate to them.
I adopted my son so it was different with him. We did everything together and he was happy to look into my interests sometimes. He and I played world of Warcraft together for a decade and I’d cut off a couple toes to go back and have that with him again.
lol yeah. They didn’t edit out all the flirting though or all the embarassed or indignant reactions by the characters around them, which presents those “cousins” in a really interesting light ;)
The US version of Sailor Moon was also censored and edited in different other ways. IIRC:
- All Tokyo references were changed to New York. So they’ve changed where the whole thing took place.
- They changed all Japanese writings (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji)
- Multiple characters had their gender or sex changed as to avoid homosexual relations.
- The music was completely changed for some reason
- They took out many scenes or even whole episodes if they thought, they might vaguely get into conflict with the FCC.
- They scrapped a whole season, because the Sailor Starlights (I think that was their name?) changed gender in their magical transformation.
I believe there was also a scene in Sailor Moon where a character was in the bath. In order to make the water opaque the censors decided that red would be the best colour to use, so it looks like she’s bathing in blood.
That honestly sounds absurd to me and makes me want to see sailor moon or (but the uncensored version).
Out of curiosity, (if you’d like to share), how old were you when you found out and how did you take it? Were you on board with it or did it feel weird?
::: I spoiler tagged this long ass post in order to hide it from folks who don’t care.
I’m not that person but I had the exact same thing happen to me! And let me tell you, when I was first watching it as a middle schooler, I knew they were in love! I didn’t know that women-who-like-women had a word (lesbian), so I thought, “Well, if you’re in love with someone, they’re probably your friend. Probably your best friend, so that makes sense. But you can’t just call them your girlfriend, because-”
I grew up in rural Oklahoma (and now live in Tennessee). A woman, who has a friend, and that friend is a woman, makes her a girlfriend. I still call women who are my friends, ‘girlfriends,’ even though it obviously could mean something romantic. So Uranus and Neptune probably couldn’t just say ‘girlfriend,’ because all the girls who were their friends were their girlfriends, so ‘best’ friend is probably a friend who is such a good friend, that you’re also in love with them. (This was the logic of a sixth grader.)
It’s one of the reasons that Sailor Moon fans have always been so inclusive, have always stood up for other presentations or orientations. Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?
To add to that, I might have had a very unique interpretation of the situation, because I would later learn that I was a demi bisexual (we didn’t even have the word ‘demisexual’ when I was a girl) and what that means is… For me, I usually only want a relationship with the person who is such my best friend, that I also am in love with them!
:::
Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?
I watched Sailor Moon on German TV in the 90s (RTL 2 gang unite!). And whenever this topic of changes in the dubs comes up I struggle to remember how they put it in the German translation exactly because of what you said. It doesn’t matter how they translated it. It was so obvious. I haven’t known anyone who didn’t know exactly what was going on (but to be fair, it was common knowledge what lesbians were).
(Also 90s German dubs in general sometimes turned out weird - looking at you, first three seasons of FRIENDS - so I kinda didn’t over interpret the exact wording because I was so used to strange ways of putting things.)
And now we are friends!
That’s the other cool thing about the Sailor Moon fandom. I’ve never once met a Sailor Moon fan who was a racist, or a bigot, or… anything. It comes with the ‘love and justice’ thing.
Now you must tell me about the first three seasons of FRIENDS. (Please?)
I was a freshman in high school when I found out, and I was dumbfounded. I’d always chalked the wonky scenes up to being a culturally Japanese thing. And anime in itself was more “effeminate” overall than anything we had in America.
I was shocked, but it all suddenly made sense. I was fine with it. Early 2000s where I lived at the time was pretty accepting. I had friends in high school who were openly gay, and no one bothered them about it.
I think now it’s pretty wild that sailor moon was even on the air back then, though. There were definitely series they could have played that wouldn’t have to edit out huge chunks just to keep in line with broadcast regulations. The fact it got airtime at all is astounding. I mean, I’m happy it did, because SM is awesome, but still.
The Malaysian version of Matrix cut out the kissing scene at the end.
MASH on Channel 10 (Australia) used to be so heavily censored they would splice two episodes into one.
