Analysis of Western and Japanese Censorship of the Pokemon Anime

In Japanese, the term anime (アニメ) refers to all forms of animation, whereas in the Western world it strictly denotes a “Japanese-style animated film”. The word is the abbreviated pronunciation of “animation” in Japanese.

The first anime were produced in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was not until the 1970s that they became commercially profitable in Europe and America. Their international success has since then increased, particularly in countries such as Italy, Spain, France and the United States, due to their cheap selling price and productive output. Nowadays, as Nakamura and Onouchi (2006: 30) reports, “in terms of international dissemination, anime occupy 60% of the TV animation broadcast worldwide, with the ratio in Europe exceeding 80%”. The market of anime in Japan is extremely vast and it provides cartoons aimed at a very heterogeneous public. Unlike Western cartoonists, anime creators do not always have children as the target audience of their products. Age and sex of the viewers are two of the most important parameters used in order to classify the innumerable genres and sub-genres of anime.

For example, the so-called kodomo are those intended for children up to 10 years of age, shōnen and shōjo are for male and female teenagers respectively, while seinen are designed for young men and josei for young women. Additionally, these categories can be further divided according to the subject of the cartoon and its specific narrative techniques. In Japan, there are proper broadcasting time slots for each age group, during which anime are shown in conformity with their characteristics. On the other hand, in Western countries cartoons are usually aimed at children.

Therefore, when anime are imported to Europe and America, they are all basically classified as a product for young viewers and the rigorous Japanese taxonomy is thus lost. This is primarily due to economic reasons, as the merchandise related to such cartoons is generally directed at children and teenagers. Consequently, it is necessary that the products shown comply with certain standards regarding content and language. Considering the rather diverse range of themes and imagery represented in anime, when it comes to adapting them for a younger public – especially the cartoons originally intended for adults – the process of editing will inevitably alter or even censor some of the images, dialogues and characters in order to make the product more suitable for the new audience.

The focus of the analysis

As a meticulous and comprehensive examination of all anime that underwent censorship would turn out to be quite an arduous challenge, this analysis will mainly focus on the worldwide famous Japanese cartoon Pokémon (1997-ongoing). Apart from being extremely well known among the enthusiasts of the genre, this anime can provide useful material in order to outline an almost complete and exhaustive overview of the phenomenon. Pokémon, originally Poketto Monsutā (ポケットモンスター), is a media franchise created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995. It is centered on fictional creatures called Pokémon, which humans known as “Pokémon trainers” catch and train to battle each other for sport. The franchise began as a video game which was subsequently adapted, among other things, into a successful anime television series, still running since 1997. As briefly pointed out in the description above, the world of Pokémon involves a great quantity of battles and matches between trainers and, however peaceful, they can easily become the target of just as many censorship issues. Needless to say this cartoon has often been criticized for depicting too much violence on screen.

Violence and death

As suggested by various studies (e. g. , Huesmann and Eron 1986; Huesmann and Moise 1996), exposure to violence through media, especially during childhood, can have damaging effects on spectators, who may become desensitized to violence and prone to aggressiveness. For this reason, in the Western version of Pokémon many violent scenes are altered or even removed. Unlike human beings, Pokémon cannot bleed, therefore blood is not a major problem for adapters. Instead, the most demanding difficulties occur when editing particularly violent episodes featuring an extensive use of weapons or scenes revolving around the topic of death.

In fact, Western children are not usually considered mature enough to understand and accept a situation in which a character actually dies, hence translators tend to sugarcoat such events by changing the original lines of dialogue. As a result, the character who is meant to be dead is said to have left for some inexplicable reasons or to have mysteriously vanished, often confusing the audience. Mainly for comic reasons, the most tolerated form of violence is the one that occurs when a character – often a girl – hits another one with strange and unlikely objects, such as mallets, paper fans or frying pans. These scenes are usually left untouched and over the years they have managed to become an anime trademark, immediately recognizable by the public. However, when it comes to a more direct use of violence, such as footage involving slaps, lighters or guns, the modus operandi of the adapters is usually stricter. In one of the very first episodes of the series, a couple of scenes in which the female protagonist Misty was depicted slapping the male protagonist Ash were poorly edited out, so that the viewers could still hear the sound of the smack without actually seeing any movement.

The portrayal of lighters is often treated likewise and when characters are seen using or simply holding a match, adapters usually replace it with a candle, perceived as more innocuous. Furthermore, the entire Miniryuu no Densetsu episode (The Legend of Dratini) was accused of displaying extremely violent content and, as a consequence, it was never dubbed into any other language. The episode featured a rather overprotective man, the4Safari Zone’s Warden, repeatedly pointing his rifle towards the three main characters, who were just ten-year-old children. Ultimately, this led to its removal from the Western version of the series, causing a certain degree of incongruity in the storyline.

Epileptic seizures and crossdressing

In addition to the rather violent Safari Zone incident, two more episodes were excluded from the first season of Pokémon in many Western adaptations. Dennou Senshi Porigon (Electric Soldier Porygon) is easily the most famous among the banned episodes. Its first broadcast in Japan triggered frightening epileptic seizures to hundreds of Japanese children who had watched it. These convulsions were all caused by a 15-second-long scene in which one of the Pokémon (i. e. , Pikachu) produced a huge explosion. The blast occupied a large portion of the frame and included a very rapid sequence of red and blue flashing lights. Due to the controversy surrounding this event, this episode was never broadcast again and neither was it exported from Japan.

Instead, the Aopuruko no Kyuujitsu episode (Beauty and the Beach) was indeed dubbed into English, but with plenty of its footage carefully removed. The potentially problematic missing scene was the infamous one in which James, the male main antagonist, took his crossdressing skills a little too far. James was not new to crossdressing for criminal purposes, since he had often resorted to it up to that time, but in that occasion he was depicted sporting a rather revealing outfit and an inflatable bathing suit. Moreover, he even taunted Misty and repeatedly flaunted his gigantic inflated breasts in front of her. The scene was considered inappropriate for a children’s show, thus leading to the cancellation of the entire episode in many countries and to a 2-year-late re-edited broadcast in others.

Cultural references

The last topic of this analysis is the one concerning cultural references and the way they are transposed when editing the cartoon. Typically, anime display a large amount of references to Japanese culture, all of which are cautiously eluded in the Western versions. The main purpose of this domestication is to make the final product more familiar to the audience. This common process implies both the verbal and the visual code and it usually focuses on written texts, proper nouns and food.

Generally, Western editors tend to delete all the Japanese writings which may occur on screen (i. e. , street signs, billboards, fliers and the like) and replace them with texts in the target language. However, it is not uncommon for adapters to remove some of them completely resorting to the use of freeze frames. As mentioned above, this domestication often affects the names of the characters and places as well, with the aim of making them more pronounceable by foreign viewers. For instance, the English names of the three main protagonists of Pokémon are Ash, Misty and Brock, whereas in the original Japanese version they are known as Satoshi, Kasumi and Takeshi. As far as references to Japanese food are concerned, a typical example often recurring in the series is onigiri (small snacks made up of rice balls with a plum in the center).

On several occasions Brock can be seen preparing them for his friends. However, these little treats have been alluded to as a variety of different types of food, namely donuts, sandwiches and even ice creams. Moreover, sometimes this manipulation also implied alteration of the visual code, such as when editors actually altered the footage by painting away onigiri in favor of sandwiches.

Two sides of the same “story”

By focusing on the process of censorship that Pokémon anime typically undergoes when imported to Western countries, this essay has provided a general analysis of both the levels – visual and verbal – upon which the Japanese source cartoon is mainly altered. In particular, it has shown that this practice not only flattens most of the original content, but it can also affect the initial6storyline and even lead to the dramatic alteration of some footage, seen as inappropriate for the new audience. As a result, the edited product will likely contain rather obscure passages, incongruous gaps between episodes, as well as scenes that apparently do not seem to follow the plot.