Ask John: What Anime Has Been Heavily Americanized?

Question:
What anime has been heavily Americanized? I have noticed that ADV Films has Americanized the Ghost Stories anime and a few other titles. Why is that?

Answer:
In most cases, I, and, I think, most serious American anime fans, can breath a sigh of relief that the practice of heavily “Americanizing” anime is largely something of the past. At this point in time I think that American viewers have become savvy enough to comprehend the unique appeal of Japanese animation and develop a respect for the creative integrity of the cinematic art form. Looking even beyond the realm of anime, the widescreen theatrical aspect ratio has become commonly adopted in the American home video and television industry, and “director’s cuts” and other “uncut” versions of films have become commonplace and desirable among viewers. Thankfully, at this point in time, analysis of heavily “Americanized” anime is largely suited to understanding the past rather than preparing for the present or future.

In the early days of anime reaching America, drastic alterations to hide Japanese origins and make anime accessible to American viewers were common practice. Early American imports like Mach Go Go Go (“Speed Racer”) and Tetsuwan Atom (“Astro Boy”) were censored to reduce their violent content. But while the earliest anime imports to America in the 1960s were merely censored, the most drastic alterations to anime occurred in the 1970s and 80s. Gatchaman (“Battle of the Planets”), which premiered on American television in 1978, not only had its violence drastically trimmed, in order to capitalize on the massive popularity of R2-D2, the robot from 1977’s Star Wars, Battle of the Planets inserted original American created animation footage of the robot character 7-Zark-7, a character that has never appeared in any Japanese animation. 1984’s Voltron introduced the technique of combining unrelated Japanese series to create original American programs. The American series Voltron consisted of the 1981 Japanese series Hyakujuu-Ou Go-Lion and the 1982 series Kikou Dantai Dairugger XV.

Following the success of Voltron, 1985’s Robotech combined the unrelated Japanese Macross (1982), Mospeada (1983), and Southern Cross (1984) television series with an original American story. Also in 1985, the American series Macron-1 combined the unrelated Japanese Go-Shogun (1981) and Srungle (1983) series with an original American story, and the American series Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years merged the tangentially related Japanese Captain Harlock (1978) and Sennen Jou (1981) television series. Also in 1985, New World Pictures released “Warriors of the Wind,” a drastically edited version of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, cut from its Japanese running time of 117 minutes down to an American running time of 95 minutes.

As the American anime fan community began to significantly assert its presence in the late 1980s and the American anime distribution industry sprouted, interest in authentic, unaltered anime began to influence and direct the importation of anime, and drastic alterations became less common, although not entirely extinct. The 1995 American television broadcast of Sailor Moon was heavily altered. Character names were changed. The deaths of Sailors Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter at the end of the first season were rewritten. The androgynous male character Zoisite was adapted as a female character for American audiences. Extensive animation footage was altered to obscure the fact that the story occurred in Japan. Similarly the 1996 American television broadcast of Cat Ninden Teyande as “Samurai Pizza Cats” left out Japanese episodes and featured drastic dialogue and story re-writes. Drastic changes to characterizations and the exclusion of select episodes was also inflicted upon the 2000 American television broadcast of “Card Captors,” a heavily “Americanized” version of Card Captor Sakura that sought to make this sweet shoujo anime appeal to American boys. The 2005 American television broadcast of Tokyo Mew Mew under the name “Mew Mew Power” was also characterized by numerous video footage edits, name changes, changes to the music, and a complete dialogue re-write including the elimination of the show’s original Japanese environmental protection theme.

Drastic alterations to anime released exclusively to American home video occur less frequently, but aren’t entirely unknown. As part of a failed attempt to earn a mainstream American television broadcast for Initial D, TOKYOPOP created a “tricked out” version of the show the employed name changes, music and sound effect changes, and major alterations to the original video footage. And despite being voted superior to anime series including Urusei Yatsura, Naruto, and Fushigi Yuugi by Japanese fans, American distributor AD Vision and numerous American anime fans considered Gakkou no Kaiden (“Ghost Stories”) such a weak and uninteresting series that ADV felt obligated to create a totally original American script for the series’ 2005 English language release, both discarding the original Japanese language script and the series’ original tension and drama in favor of comedy. Additional contemporary examples of drastic alterations imposed on anime include AD Vision’s construction of an English dub for the Oh! Super Milk-chan Show bearing little similarity to the original Japanese script, and FUNimation likewise producing an English language adaptation of Crayon Shin-chan that largely discarded the original Japanese script and drastically increased the amount of double entendre and off-color humor in order to remove the program from its originally intended children and family audience demographic to the realm of American adult entertainment.

These examples consistently illustrate the tendency to “Americanize” anime in an attempt to maximize a series’ American commercial potential at the expense of its defining artistic characteristics. Logically one may assume that if a Japanese series isn’t suitable for American release in its original form, an American distributor would either select a different series that is suitable for unmolested American release, or create an original American production inspired by the Japanese series. But ideals sometimes conflict with the efficiency of business, and editing an existing program is cheaper and easier than creating a new one. I hope that American consumers have become sophisticated enough to appreciate the unique characteristics of original artistic works, thereby eliminating the need to drastically censor imported film to suit American tastes. To encourage that situation, I offer this retrospective in the spirit of the adage that those who fail to understand the past are doomed to repeat it.