Double Standards between DBZ and American cartoons?

[Super Sonic]

Know it's a question, but thought it fit more here, but has anyone else noticed both in the fandom, and in CN's treatmentof DBZ a double standard on it and American cartoons? For example on the fandom side, people get mad about the actors and changes made, while in American cartoons, no one cares about whether the acting is good or bad, or changes made when they air in foreign countries. On CN's treatment, remember how they took out all the "damns" and "hells" of the broadcast versions of Dead Zone and World's Strongest, but didn't censor them in Antz and Iron Giant. So like I say, would you guys say there's a double standard?

[testing223]

More like different animation companies have their own individual censoring/legal departments, and they each have their own standards as to how far something can go.

[Kendamu]

That, and there's stuff that would've made it onto CN that FUNi didn't put on the air so there'd be a difference between the TV version and the Uncut DVDs.

[TheGreatness25]

Know it's a question, but thought it fit more here, but has anyone else noticed both in the fandom, and in CN's treatmentof DBZ a double standard on it and American cartoons? For example on the fandom side, people get mad about the actors and changes made, while in American cartoons, no one cares about whether the acting is good or bad, or changes made when they air in foreign countries. On CN's treatment, remember how they took out all the "damns" and "hells" of the broadcast versions of Dead Zone and World's Strongest, but didn't censor them in Antz and Iron Giant. So like I say, would you guys say there's a double standard?

Dead Zone and the World's Strongest were made to be TV movies, while Antz and the Iron Giant were actually shown in theaters. They were rated PG, while Dead Zone and World's Strongest were airing on a network that billed them as TV-Y7. There's a difference. Nobody said that nobody cares if the acting on American cartoons is bad. The acting in a lot of more grown-upish cartoons is great. Of course if you watch Foster's Home for whatever the name of that cartoon is, the acting is not stellar. But that's the style now. A lot of cartoons get a dingy look and feel to them. The cartoon it self looks like it was made out of construction paper with markers, so the voices fit along. I don't understand the style of cartoons these days quite frankly. Every new show is getting horrible treatment. The new Batman series, the new Legion of Super Heroes (what a horrible, horrible show) series, the new Spider-Man series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Those are all cartoons that when I was a kid, for example, had their own incarnations and the animation was beautiful. Now whenever I see how they're drawn, it makes me want to laugh. Is it the new style of cartoon making to make everything so...I don't know how to explain it. The point is, in a lot of cartoons that are not meant for toddlers-7 year olds, the acting's not bad. I hate the new Batman show, but the acting isn't bad. In fact, the voice actors are all experienced. It seems like all the voice actors in any show (again I'm not talking about Foster's Home thingy) have experience. You can't compare American cartoons to Japanese cartoons. It's a totally different world and culture.

[TripleRach]

Know it's a question, but thought it fit more here, but has anyone else noticed both in the fandom, and in CN's treatmentof DBZ a double standard on it and American cartoons? For example on the fandom side, people get mad about the actors and changes made, while in American cartoons, no one cares about whether the acting is good or bad, or changes made when they air in foreign countries. On CN's treatment, remember how they took out all the "damns" and "hells" of the broadcast versions of Dead Zone and World's Strongest, but didn't censor them in Antz and Iron Giant. So like I say, would you guys say there's a double standard?

FUNimation has always edited their shows internally. Cartoon Network was only directly responsible for the editing in shows like Tenchi and Outlaw Star before they finally started making everyone censor their own material, the way FUNi and Cloverway and such were already doing. So when people complain about Naruto getting away with more than One Piece, that's not Cartoon Network's fault. It's FUNi or 4Kids being more anal than Viz.

As for the other point, I remember being upset when the new Doug cartoon started and Billy West was clearly missing, and I wasn't the only one. A lot of people were also upset when they heard The Batman wouldn't have Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill. And plenty of people hated that Michaelangelo had his nunchaku replaced by a grappling hook in later seasons, or all the censorship on reruns of Gargoyles (especially the gun episode).

[Vekurotto]

Know it's a question, but thought it fit more here, but has anyone else noticed both in the fandom, and in CN's treatmentof DBZ a double standard on it and American cartoons?

I don't believe that there's a double standard since Funi made all of the edits themselves, since Antz aired years after DBZ was finished, and since Funi knew they could get away with more but were being too safe. Kinda like a person that doesn't want to spend any money because they'll lose some safe. Times have just changed for one and if Funi aired DBZ again yet less edited than it was, they could ala like, when they showed the UUE's without any censoring at all, in 2005, on Toonami and nobody gave a damn even though Funi thought that the sky would fall if they did censor anything before.

Now yeah, CN used to do some of the censoring of anime themselves but then after getting too tired of doing it in around mid-late 2000, CN asked the companies that dubbed and owned the licenses to edit content to their own discretion if need be. It just so happened that Funi and a lot of other companies were so paranoid that if they left anything that "shouldn't be in a cartoon" that they edited any and everything from their TV broadcast versions that might be viewed such a way and mostly stuck to the old rules that they had to follow rather than leaving it up to themselves to do the editing. If Funi left things nearly the same as the uncut version it would have been aired since there's nothing besides nudity that's really needed to be edited. Almost all of the stupid edits that people talk about made to DB/Z with Lunch and her guns and particularly the last 50 or so episodes with Piccolo Daimao and the 23rd Budokai, and Freeza's death not even being shown (but the heavily edited Daimao saga which came after had Cymbal getting sliced) was just Funimation's persisting paranoia moreso than CN telling them what to do.

So there is no double standard it's just people with annoying attitudes about what's considered offensive.

[Vegard Aune]

So when people complain about Naruto getting away with more than One Piece, that's not Cartoon Network's fault. It's FUNi or 4Kids being more anal than Viz.

Actually, FUNi has said themselves that the reason why they censored cigarettes, impacts when people get hit and all that is because CN told them to. And by the way, Naruto is pretty much uncut these days anyway. (They actually showed the completely uncensored version of a scene that was in fact censored on the JAPANESE TV-broadcast, and the uncut footage was only on the DVDs... I think it was some guy getting blown up from the inside or something, though I haven't actually seen the scene in question.)

[Brakus]

FUNimation has always edited their shows internally. Cartoon Network was only directly responsible for the editing in shows like Tenchi and Outlaw Star before they finally started making everyone censor their own material, the way FUNi and Cloverway and such were already doing. So when people complain about Naruto getting away with more than One Piece, that's not Cartoon Network's fault. It's FUNi or 4Kids being more anal than Viz.

To a degree that's true. The production companies usually edit the shows for broadcast. This is done with the younger-skewing shounen shows like DBZ, Naruto, and One Piece.

For older-skewing shows like Bebop and FMA, Cartoon Network will do edits: some mostly for time, others for content. I know that Bandai didn't edit "Faye barges in on two men in bed" scene in that one episode of Bebop ("Waltz For Venus"), and I know the FUNi didn't take out Scar blowing up Basque Gran's head in Episode 14 of FMA.

Still, some of the editing for broadcast done to shows like DBZ and One Piece seem to be overkill sometimes. I'm not talking about stuff like cigarettes and such; I mean stuff like blood being edited and punches making contact being edited. Who do they think they're fooling?

[Raki]

Know it's a question, but thought it fit more here, but has anyone else noticed both in the fandom, and in CN's treatmentof DBZ a double standard on it and American cartoons? For example on the fandom side, people get mad about the actors and changes made, while in American cartoons, no one cares about whether the acting is good or bad, or changes made when they air in foreign countries. On CN's treatment, remember how they took out all the "damns" and "hells" of the broadcast versions of Dead Zone and World's Strongest, but didn't censor them in Antz and Iron Giant. So like I say, would you guys say there's a double standard?

Dead Zone and the World's Strongest were made to be TV movies, while Antz and the Iron Giant were actually shown in theaters. .

You know they were originally made for theaters right?

[TheGreatness25]

That's why in the original Japanese version they say "hell," "damn," etc. But when FUNimation got their hands on it, THEIR intent was for it to be on TV, that's why they dubbed it with all the semi-curses thrown out of it. Does that clarify what I meant?

[Hao_Kaiser]

That's why in the original Japanese version they say "hell," "damn," etc. But when FUNimation got their hands on it, THEIR intent was for it to be on TV, that's why they dubbed it with all the semi-curses thrown out of it. Does that clarify what I meant?

But... In the Japanese TV show, they say "Hell," "Damn," and the like.

I know thats not what you mean, but... Just sayin'.
---

I think the thing is... Cartoon are, for the most part, meant for little kids. Little kids don't care if voice acting or BGM sucks. I was actually pretty young when season three started, so I'm just now discovering that there was an entire music and voice change early on in the dub. When you're younger, you usually don't notice stuff like this. I'll agree that cartoons aren't as good as they were when I was younger, but, that could just be retrogoggles, so, yeah. I'm sure kids will be saying the same thing in ten years.

As for censorship... That's really more about differences in our cultures.

Though, I have to say, I'd rather not see "Two men in bed" or "Someones head exploding." Haha...

[Brakus]

I think the thing is... Cartoon are, for the most part, meant for little kids.

Just because most cartoons are for kids doesn't mean that it should be exclusively marketed to that demographic. Cartoons are for everyone, not just for little kids.

Yeah, DBZ may be a kids' show at its heart, but I'm sure when it was being shown first-run in Japan, most kids watched it with their parents. It ran in a cushy evening timeslot every Saturday for well over a decade, right? Somehow I have more faith in the parents of Japan (in the '80s/early '90s, at least) in having an interest in what their children watched on TV than the parents of the US. Kids in Japan understand about things like life, death, and honor through shows like DBZ. There's not much sugar-coating involved, not having to worry about self-righteous types complaining about "kids shouldn't be exposed to real life when they're that young" and all that. Perhaps that's why some people prefer to watch good anime from Japan than standard cartoons from the States.

As for censorship... That's really more about differences in our cultures.

Though, I have to say, I'd rather not see "Two men in bed" or "Someones head exploding." Haha...

The Bebop scene I alluded to was a little gratuitous (although hilarious when seen in its edited form on TV), while the FMA scene I alluded to was an important plot point. Some could argue that it, too, was a little gratuitous, but then again, that's a damn good way to get the point across.

As far as DBZ goes, I don't remember any scenes where two men were in bed, but I'm sure there've been some episodes where a head or two explodes... right?

[B-kun]

You guys do realize there aren't any real curses in Japanese, right? It's all context. Some translators just seem to prefer using curses in certain scenes. Some use them appropriately, others use them for the hell of it (Anime Labs with DBZ or Dattebayo with Naruto or Bleach come to to mind).

... I could've sworn I had another point to make. Oh well.

[caejones]

My japanese teacher said this to the whole class, and still, a few months later while walking to the parking lot, everyone was talking about how much more cursing there is in the Japanese version of Naruto compared to the dub.
I'm thinking maybe a lot of people are thrilled in a sense when coming across stuff that is forbidden in their culture, so kind of glorify it (hence why some stereotypical people who think they're mature when they really aren't like to show it by making lots of sexual references and cursing and watching gory movies under the impression that this "intense" stuff makes things better).
But... we knew that, I guess. :huh: