#i would say 'The Nineties (derogatory)' but things have not necessarily improved | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shihalyfie · 2 years

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I’ve noticed that some of the dub writers have gone on record as saying that some of the changes they made were not because of censorship or network reasons, but rather because they thought it would be “funny” or “better”.

I don't doubt that. Basically, my perception is that of all of the potential answers to what went on in the dubbing process are "all of the above".

This was industry standard, so it was an expectation that this would be the norm for dubbed children's anime, especially because it is true that there was no precedent for more closely translated anime so you could really assume anything about how audiences would take it, especially since even if the kids were open-minded you couldn't necessarily say the same about their parents who get the final say in what they can and can't watch

Saban, the company in charge of the older Digimon dubs, infamously had a very derogatory view of Japanese media and had an aggressive attitude towards pushing dub changes to make it "better" for Western audiences (and the biggest evidence that the company itself had a lot to do with this is that the dub changes drastically toned down once Disney took over dubbing, then shot back up when Saban took it back again for Xros Wars/Fusion)

The networks that aired Digimon wanted it to be localized to their tastes

Even the Japanese companies themselves pushed for aggressive changes to "Americanize" their own content because they were genuinely that convinced it wouldn't catch on stateside otherwise (I don't know if this happened specifically in Digimon's case, but this is actually on the record as having happened for several children's anime dubs such as 4Kids ones)

The dub writers themselves had a dim view of the Japanese script and felt they were making it funnier/improving it

...are all probably true at once. The late nineties and 2000′s were full of systematic racism and xenophobia all over the place. The conviction that "American (or other Western) kids can't handle media that's too Japanese" came from every single direction in every possible place. And for an example of this in the opposite direction, the Japanese Transformers: Beast Wars dub infamously turned what was originally a serious show into a gag dub as well, presumably because they thought the Japanese audience couldn't handle the original content. It’s not really an issue of boring or funny or America or Japan; it’s being xenophobic about any Weird Foreign Thing that comes from another country and being certain it won’t sell unless you “fix” it.

All of it is the same thing: racism, xenophobia, and underestimating kids' ability to be open-minded. Cultural localization is necessary, but beyond that, I honestly believe it would have caught on fine with the kids either way -- but also, I am not sure about the parents, and perhaps it is true it wouldn’t have caught on without all of those changes, if only because parents of that generation were liable to be equally as xenophobic and refuse to let their kids touch those Weird Foreign Things. (It’s not like we don’t currently have issues with video games that are “too Japanese” not catching on well with modern adult Western gamers, so there is some truth to that. Look what happened with the Survive review bombing incident and the heavy stigma that still surrounds visual novels here.) I do hold the writers responsible, I just don't think it's productive to hold a grudge against them or to consider them the sole perpetrators of the issue because even if one given factor had been different, the others would still have been in place, and there's not a lot we can do about that.

#jaredthedecimator #dubbing discourse #shiha's ask box

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