Hello again everyone. I trust everyone's having a good day. As for me, my little town just experienced a massive rainstorm that just now finally seems to be letting up. It was almost like someone had let Kyogre out of a Pokeball and let him run wild for a bit. Anyway, this next post is going to contain yet another link to an article on the Anime News Network. I know I've been linking to a lot of these articles lately, but some of these articles have some really good topics of discussion and I'd like to have some of these discussions opened up here on TheO. And I think that this particular topic is something that those of us who are fans of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! can really get into.
I've come to browse the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki pretty regularly these days. At minimum, I usually go to the site once every two or three days to see if there are any new Arc-V episode titles or new card release information, since these days the Wiki seems to get that information long before any of the Yu-Gi-Oh! news blogs out there. Lately though as I've been growing the Wiki, I've been noticing updates to articles that show that more and more Arc-V characters have been getting their names altered in the dub, and many of them are really atrocious ones at that. I had thought that this practice might have stopped after the dub butcher known as 4kids went out of business. But the fact is that this practice will never end where shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! are concerned, and the article linked below explains why.
Why Are Adapted Dubs Still Being Made? - Answerman
Truth be told, I had already figured out the reason for these dub adaptations for myself, but this article confirmed it. The simple fact is that Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are shows primarily aimed at kids. Heck, Pokemon was aimed at children since the very beginning. In the mainstream video games, you always play as a ten-year-old kid. I mean there's still an appeal to older fans as well, but kids are the primary target. So when one considers the cultural difference between Japan and those of us in the west regarding what's considered suitable entertainment for children. I don't know how much has been edited out of those classic Pokemon anime episodes beyond the certain "banned" episodes, but beyond the name changes I'm assuming the edits to that series are fairly minimal. Though I could be wrong about that, and if so I welcome anyone reading to correct me about that.
As for shows in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, the "damage" in those dub adaptations is a bit more extensive. Yet at the same time a lot of those edits are still necessary because Yu-Gi-Oh! is a franchise aimed at kids. It is true that the franchise didn't start out that way. The first seven volumes of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga and the "Season 0" anime based on those volumes are a testament to that fact. But the moment the original series came up with a collectable card game is the moment its target audience changed a bit and certain things needed to be "retooled". Hence why there's a bit of a "disconnect" between the beginning the the "Duelist" anime and the events of "Season 0". The beginning of that second anime series was pretty much a reboot.
Even so, there was still quite a bit of stuff that needed to be edited out of that original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime before it ran on T.V. in the U.S., just as there was with both the GX and especially the 5D's anime. In fact it seems like there was more that had to be edited out of 5D's since that was probably the edgiest series out of the first three. I don't know if that's because 5D's had a slightly older target audience in Japan of if it's simply because of the previously mentioned cultural differences. Either way, as someone who watched the original Japanese version of 5D's from almost the beginning, I found many of the changes that they made in the dub to be absolutely appalling. Yet, knowing that Yu-Gi-Oh's main target audience here in the states to be kids, I find many of the changes to be quite understandable.
It also kind of seems like the shows in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise have started becoming more kid friendly even before they get handed over for a hideous dub adaptation. If you look at the ages of lead protagonists of ZEXAL and Arc-V, you'll notice that they're quite younger than the protagonists of the first three Yu-Gi-Oh! shows. Even so, there are still some things about ZEXAL and Arc-V that are rather "edgy" and probably get edited out upon their English adaptation. For instance in Arc-V, the current setting known as the Synchro Dimension is a dispotian future that's at least ten times worse than the original setting of 5D's, and the Academy in Arc-V's Fusion Dimension seems to be a twisted version of the Duel Academy in GX that seems to specialize in raising child soldiers for the purposes of conquest. I'm sure that many if not all those details will be glossed over in the English adaptation.
So the fact is that us older fans in the west of shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon will always get the short end of the stick. At most, the best we can hope for is a DVD release of each Yu-Gi-Oh! series that has an option for seeing uncut episodes with unedited subtitles. It may suck, but this is the world we live in and it will never change. That pretty much does it for this post. Until next time.
