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.

Comments

Well you know...

[Microlith]

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.

Typical Editing Practices

[Maul]

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.