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Toonami Producer on Editing Process
Bonker writes "Anime News Network is featuring an interview with Jason Demarco, senior writer and producer for Cartoon Network's 'Toonami' block. Mr. Demarco explains why and how the editing process for several anime shown on Toonami, Midnight Run, and Adult Swim happen, as well as the pressure they're under to produce a product acceptable not only to fans but to parents as well. " Gives an interesting perspective on what CN goes through
to get certain anime on US TV. I've said it before, but I'd still love a Toonami channel that didn't need to edit (or maybe just less). I watch more Toonami then any channel.
Why does the adult swim have to be so highly rated if they censor it? I watch anime to see lots of action (with blood of course) and at least some partial nudity. They might as well censor it down completely if they cut that stuff out.
Nothing's gonna solve the editing problem. It's on a network aimed at children, and children do watch.
Only way to get around that here in the states would be to have sci-fi suck it up and show it uncut with a (frequent) TV-M rating (though many shows would be unfairly labeled as such).
Even then, many of the best shows won't ever make it on TV here, simply because they don't have the style of Bebop, the Action element of gundam, and the "crap" that somehow attracts people like Dragonball Z does.
Editing will likely bar some shows entirely from network TV. ADV, who holds the N. Am. license to Evangelion have said it won't be licensed for TV if it has to be edited.
Or sometimes it's politics. The head of Toonami is a BIG Rurouni Kenshin fan. Problem is, Media Blasters can't show their (the original version) on TV. If kenshin ever hits the air in the US, it'll hit as "Samurai X," a hacked up, rewritten version of the original show (not related to the ADV release of the Kenshin OAVs as Samurai X).
Screw TV. I'll stick with my DVDs thank you.
Oh Good Lord! You have no idea! It would be too easy to fill a Toonami channel. There are more themes in Anime beyond just big robots, "big" girls in big robots, reluctant boy with 6 girlfriends, etc.
The editing requirements could be Promethian, however.
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
Typically, I've seen a few types of editing of anime when they make a US version, especially for TV. Here are just a few:
Crappy 80's Hack and Slash:
We saw this with "Robotech" and "Voltron," where
huge portions of things were hacked out. In the case of Robotech, they combined multiple series, that had no relation to one another, into one. Thankfully, most people remember Robotech for the sections that were really Macross.
Pointlessly stupid cultural editing:
This includes changing the names of characters to
sound more American, and attempting to remove all
hints that the characters were originally supposed to be Japanese, living in Japan, etc, even though it is obviously Japanese animation.
God forbid that little Timmy realizes that there are other cultures out there that aren't American.
Pointless Censorship
This is mainly what Toonami has to deal with.
Typically, people feel the need to edit out "Bad Stuff". However, it always seems that people FAIL at this. An example is that there was a drink that was supposed to be sake in an episode of DBZ, and they ended up making it milk or something. This is all fine and good, but this is a series that features huge muscled guys blowing eachother up with high powered energy attacks. I guess it is
important that we sheild Junior from alcohol, but
showing him acts of superhuman violence and fights that span several weeks worth of episodes is OK.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
There is plenty of good anime. However, I'm not sure
how much of that would really be very successful on American television.
For Example:
I don't think showing Love Hina would survive through the censorship ringers. If every
panty shot and accidental incident of the male
character walking in on the females while they
are naked is removed, there wouldn't be that much
to put on air.
Nadesico is just full of parody and references to other anime. I don't think most American viewers
would appreciate the show within the show, Gekigangar 3, very much.
InuYasha is probably too heavily based on Japanese
mythology. Plus, while it is an excellent series,
it has lots of violent fighting that would probably
be destroyed by censors.
And showing Evangelion would probably make Toonami the target of every religous, human rights, parenting, whatever group in the country unless they edited it so much that it wouldn't be the same series.
....
Though there is probably plently of lucritive opportunity for someone to start a tentacle pr0n channel on Pay-Per-View. (Joke)
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
...I'd like to see Encore (the Action Channel people) fire up two all-Anime, pay TV networks. One subbed, one dubbed. That way all types of fans are happy. Both would be unedited, and anything that comes in Widescreen would be shown as such. With all the options on Digital Cable these days, why not add these two?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Of course Merry Melodies and countless pre-1970's era cartoons (especially earlier in the century) were full of stereotypes and underlying racial/political/religious/nationalist things. And they were geared soley toward adults.
But even now you still see them on CN. And even on normal network stations at 10am on a saturday morning for kids to suck up.
Which reminds me... whatever happened to saturday morning cartoons? I'm in my early twenties but even I can remember back when ABC,CBS,NBC,UPN,FOX all had hours and hours (about 6am to 3pm) of cartoons and kids would sit in front of the tube enjoying them all morning, like a kid should.
Now it's all infomercials and purchased religious programming with a few political shows and a martha stewart thrown in here or there.
Got to love that broad brush you paint alot of people with. Sort of the same brush folks use to paint people with above-average computer skills as "nerds" and "geeks" -- you know, lower than them because of being "less normal". Whatever the fuck that means -- I've never met a normal person -- but I digress.
I take the view that the original article was nothing more than food for the bean counters. Anime fandom is a bit like most other geek-leaning fandoms: tons of anal-retentives who ignore normal things (taking baths, socializing, etc); all for the joys of super-analyzing their particular hobby down to the sub-atomic particles. What do you want? The original article is on a column about edits to anime. Of course it's going to be spacious and go into detail that's not important to the normal viewer.
But I do find it rather funny that Yet Another Idiot is pushing the "anime is kiddie p0rn" angle. From your chest-puffing boast regarding having written a "manual" that says anime cons are big circlejerks to your quickness in pointing out the obvious content of the questions that relate to sex or sexuality; I'd say you're the one with the "sex" problem here. I suppose you could just be a sexually-frustrated middle-aged pot-bellied fella who wants to feel bigger by shooting at a rather harmless fandom (and one that doesn't really roll through Slashdot in any significant numbers).
If the only significant thing you have to say is "anime is kiddie p0rn", then why the hell are you responding to this? Somehow, in some small way, you hope to find fans who will rally around your silly and unimportant assertions? Rah rah for you. If you even knew what the hell Toonami was, you might actually be capable of contributing a worthwhile response; but alas, you're simply a windbag like many a "superior" nut I've run across. Perhaps you lazily typed in a worthless source of info in your quest for truth, and decided this was anime as far as you could find it with the search tools at your disposal. Did you even bother to Google your way to a passing understanding?
Read. Watch. Learn.
Do these things BEFORE you open your mouth (or pound your keyboard); you might actually (gasp) change your view of things!
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.