A lot of it stems from what I consider to be other countries over sensitivity to violence, sexuality, and other things they deem "inappropriate" in comparison to Japan. Japan, to be fair, does push the boundaries on what we see and consider "normal" in North America but a lot of that has always been cultural differences which makes total sense. So when anime is looked at when it's brought over a lot of the times it is given a "think of the children" mentality by censors. I think that with something like anime the biggest reason that I'm against it being censored is that it is the art form of another culture, whether other people see it that way or not, and I think that us censoring it to bring it to the West or to have it localized in any other country in the world is just bastardizing it.
Alrighty, with me not being a huge fan of how anime is censored in the first place let me bring to attention some of the ways they do censor it and some of the dumb methods they use.
SHADOWS AND BEAMS OF LIGHT
A lot of censored things that we all remember from when we were young was the infamous black bar, when things were censored there was was always that black bar and while it covered whatever was inappropriate it never really went super far. Well in anime now they take the black bar to a whole other level with the "shadow" and "beam of light" methods.
I do enjoy when anime poke fun of the censoring itself though when they use it with comedic effect like this scene in Renai Boukun (Love Tyrant) where the main character's sister Akua meets one of his girlfriends for the first time when she gets out of the shower.
ARTISTIC SWITCHES As far as I am aware this one is exclusive to Tokyo Ghoul which to my knowledge is still one of the oddest censored anime I've ever come across, like censored to the point where it's like "don't put this on television". Yet another thing they do during their heavily violent scenes in that show is invert the colour so that isn't blood red colour with multiple stabbings or whatever the case may be. It reminds me of when they did that garbage censorship in the 90's where they made everyone bleed green. Dragonball Z did something similar to that artistic colour switch during the death of Raditz as well but not to the same degree as Tokyo Ghoul. |
Now, censoring swears isn't exclusive to anime it's done to television and music constantly here but it's the context of what language they consider "poor taste" that changes the entire meaning of the show. A lot of times anything to do with violence is censored and to prove my point I'm going to just post this video of Cartoon Network's censored version of Naruto and tell me that it doesn't sound WAY DIRTIER than it would if words like "fight", "punch", "kick", etc. were used in their proper context. It's honestly absolutely hilarious to watch.
Speaking of Naruto, when it was brought over to Germany it was hit by the countries massive censorship laws and they had to get rid of all of the weapons and blood and everything about it. It destroys most of the show to be honest because though Naruto is not necessarily an incredibly violent show it has moments where it is important that the weapons and things be shown. The image directly below is important too because it's when Naruto stabs himself with a promise to never run away during a fight again, it's the first time he receives respect from Sasuke and Kakashi & Sakura see him grow up a little bit. Yet if you see it in Germany....he crushed an apple. It's sad, so sad to see this stuff sometimes.
IT'S NOT RIGHT BECAUSE IT'S GAY
One of them I didn't find out about until recently that I believe takes the cake as far as censoring something and for no reason at all other than our typical "it's not right" way of thinking is that of Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus.
By the time these two Sailor Scouts were introduced I had long stopped watching Sailor Moon and during my childhood was watching mostly Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing. Which is why I never heard much about it but if you did watch the show you saw that the two were "cousins" in the show even though they acted more lovingly towards each other. That is because in Japan Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were a lesbian couple but here in North America "it doesn't matter what people do at home as long it's not around my kids" mentality kicks in. So apparently at the time making them cousins and creating a sort of incestuous relationship was better than a gay relationship. It's awful to think that anyone who saw that when they were young weren't able to see it properly because they were so ignorant in North America and worldwide that they had to do this.
SO WHAT DO I THINK ??
Full circle, censorship is dumb in most everything that it touches it breaks. I still think very strongly that with anime being a style of art specific to Japan it's a cultural thing and it bastardizes the art form like if someone were to constantly change Disney films in the same way to censor them. Regardless of how we do it, it doesn't work. I think that if it's on a streaming service or bought through Blu-Ray/DVD then no things should change at all, it should be an unedited proper version from Japan just with subtitles so we are able to watch it and understand what they are saying. If you do want it to air on television, pick and choose what style of anime is appropriate, Tokyo Ghoul isn't an appropriate anime for any time of the day, make it typical Shonen anime. Also, Germany please lighten up on your censorship laws for violence not being able to mention words or having weapons Photoshopped out of pictures is ridiculous.
Long story short, try to hold back on your use of censorship please, it is dumb and no one benefits from it despite what you might be thinking.