Edits of anime and manga.

It’s nothing new that the content of anime and manga get changed when it is brought officially outside Japan. Anime and manga are two superior media of storytelling in my opinion. In manga you get a dialogue like form a book, where the images represent the text that is not dialogue and you always get to se exactly how things look like. And in anime you can visualise so many more things then what can be done in a regular movie, and as you have possibly even more genres found in manga and anime then in movies and books it is something I found to be a interesting media with my broad taste when it comes to entertainment. Now, people generally edit the contents of anime and manga, and here is my view on this phenomenon.

First of all, I can understand why they censor some content in anime. I don’t like it or agree with the reasons, but I can understand them. I mean, when you air something on TV, anyone can accidentally come across it and thus it has to meet a few standards so it won’t upset someone that might not want to se some of that content. In Japan, those requirements aren’t that strict, and anime in general are not thought of as something for kids, so that is why anime can have basically any kind of content, anime for kids and school drama, to horror anime and hentai. Any possible genre is there. And even though some stuff has more critical content then a similar show would if it wasn’t anime, those that decide what to air on the TV really should not buy the rights to a show if they have to change the content in order to air it. Nothing good will come of it, other then the fact that those that buy the rights will make more money that way. A lot of fun for us fans and anime lovers. Not.

Secondly, as I said, I can understand why they edit anime, even though I don’t like it or agree with it, one thing that makes me pissed as hell is when they edit manga. There is absolutely NO reason to do that out of another perspective then for the greedy bastards that buy the rights to sell it will be able to sell it to more people that way. Like they did with the Tenjou Tenge manga in the US. They edited the pages, made speech bubbles to cover up nudity and almost changed the entire dialogue so it would not sound as extreme. Now, a manga is something you pick up, buy and read. You are responsible for what you are buying yourself, and it isn’t like something you might come across on the TV by accident. Editing manga is the most disgraceful thing someone can do to an artist’s original work. There is no respect in that from those that made that decision, and in such cases I would like to go out to everyone and tell those to download the fan translated ones, those are the REAL translation of the manga. It’s the same with the One Piece anime. Everyone, downloads the fansubed episodes of such animes, or buy the DVDs if they are uncut.

I just can’t stand see some greedy bastards destroy anime and manga just because they want to earn a few more buck to but I their already disgustingly thick wallets. Boycott edits, there is no reason that anyone should accept that people can destroy a story or artists original work for more profit then if they didn’t. Not in my opinion at the least, and I'm sure many agree.

I personally don’t run across this luckily. The anime and manga I have read that was released here in Sweden haven’t been edited to my knowledge, but I really think this is something that people should not have to put up with. It makes me pissed enough to hear about it, and what is probably even more sad is when people become really big fans of an edited show without having really seen the actual show as it gets turned into something else after it is edited.

For some links you may find interesting on this issue:

Info on the Tenjou Tenge manga edits: http://digitalsin.bebopboard.net/

A few things from the One Piece anime: http://www.arlongpark.com/?page=dubedits

General editing info: http://www.animeprime.com/edit/index.shtml

(By the way, the image for this topic originally showed a person holding a gun in his hand... until someone wanted to turn the adventure anime One Piece, into a kids cartoon that is. Seriously, what is that, a hammer?)