Depending on who you ask, localisation is a very dirty word amongst anime fans as it can make or break a franchise, with some of these decisions having consequences that still affect the series to this day.
Not all of this is censorship, keep that in mind.
10. Jelly Filled Donuts
A classic anime meme, as Pokemon's Brock calls rice balls, donuts; this is not an isolated case as other food gets edited around in Pokemon. Pretty low on the list as it's the official meme of Lost Pause.
9. Allowing Central Park Media to License MD Geist
I've brought up this story before, so I'll keep it brief. CPM liked this anime too much and kick started the ultra violent era of anime, this has always given older fans a bitter pill to swallow compared to younger generations of fans.
8. Next Dimension/Shadow Realm
Death was hard to sell for any network, especially when it had to be on TV. This was more the Ocean dub of Dragonballz as Funimation played it more straight seeing as death is merely a slap on the wrist anyway, Yu-Gi-Oh was much worse for it, particularly in Season 1.
7. Painted Bikinis
Tenchi Muyo's run on Toonami came with some strange forms of censorship, the weirdest one being the clearly MS paint job bikinis, although this had a more beneficial effect as early internet otaku sought out the uncut version, I know I did.
6. Naming HoroHoro Trey Racer
Shaman King despite being localised by 4Kids kept a fairly unchanged cast naming until you get to the whole Trey Racer moment, the funny thing about it is, it's used as a nickname as his actual name is kept, wouldn't mind digging up a back story for this.
5. Making Big Cheese a Rat
Tell me, what animal this is below.
If you said fox, you are right, if you say rat, you are as blind as the people at Saban. I know they had very little to work with but seriously?
4. Making Uranus and Neptune Cousins
A classic bit of early censorship, only it just made the whole thing creepier in context when it was more obvious that these two were much closer to the point it couldn't be ignored.
3. Giving One Piece to 4Kids
How and why this decision was made is still a mystery, the aftermath has caused it to slip behind other Shonen Jump powerhouses over the years but on the other side it made the series more adult back in Japan to avoid a repeat of it happening ever again.
2. Renaming Pretty Cure, Glitter Force
The sad thing about this one, it was already in English as Pretty Cure is the English translated title anyway, the Canadians got it right why didn't Netflix? Glitter Force is a stupid name and because of this disaster, Precure may never see localisation ever again.
1. Inserting American Political Commentary
This is an uncomfortable trend that started in the height of the Trump administration, Funimation were the main culprits for this. Within a few of their dubs, first noted in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, the dubbing team would go off script to bring up a political subject or something woke which has no context in the anime at all and was never referenced in the original script. Basically they've taken Japan's property and inserted political propaganda that has nothing to do with Japan, this is the type of bullshit I expect from Russia!
This is also why I don't watch dubs anymore.
