Censorship is used to remove or edit questionable scenes that might be considered problematic for the potential audience. While sometimes necessary, there are many examples where censorship in animation has completely changed the essence of a story and its intention. Let’s take a look at some of the examples of popular anime franchises that were censored abroad.
For some unknown reason, the FoxKids channel decided it was necessary to change the name of onigiri (a traditional Japanese snack made of rice and various fillings) and call them “jelly-filled doughnuts” instead. That is despite the obvious fact that the two have nothing in common. We still don’t know what their issue with onigiri was, but at one point they even replaced this snack with a huge sandwich!
One Piece also got its dose of censorship. FoxKids swapped cigarettes with lollipops, and many fans were quick to create memes around it, like the one where Sanji trades his cigarettes for lollipops. Pistols and weapons have also been transformed into water guns and even toilet plunger at some point!
There is this one scene in Naruto where he takes the kunai out of his hand with blood gushing from the wound. Well, FoxKids decided to substitute it with Naruto holding a red apple and a children’s lunchbox instead. His painful expression looks completely ridiculous next to these random objects. It’s almost as if Naruto is cringing at the prospect of eating healthy food instead of ramen. Who came up with this ridiculous choice?
Malaysia took it a step further and censored the Attack on Titan manga with pants-wearing Titans, which made many Japanese fans laugh out loud. Although there is no solid evidence that these pictures were actually taken from the original Malaysian version of the manga, there are examples of some censored images from Attack on Titan being published in the local Malaysian magazine called Kreko.
Dragon Ball Z was shown during daytime hours in America, so it had to go through some of the most ridiculous edits to make it suitable for minors. One of the most iconic ones was the creation of H.F.I.L Goz and Mez were two ogres who appeared during the filler episode. They both wore tank tops with HELL written on them. Well, in the American dub, Hell was changed into H.F.I.L (Home For Infinite Losers). The time spent to create this edit was tedious, to say the least, because both ogres appear a lot in the episode.
These censorship ideas were actually hilarious.
Censorship is used to remove or edit questionable scenes that might be considered problematic for the potential audience. While sometimes necessary, there are many examples where censorship in animation has completely changed the essence of a story and its intention. Let’s take a look at some of the examples of popular anime franchises that were censored abroad.
For some unknown reason, the FoxKids channel decided it was necessary to change the name of onigiri (a traditional Japanese snack made of rice and various fillings) and call them “jelly-filled doughnuts” instead. That is despite the obvious fact that the two have nothing in common. We still don’t know what their issue with onigiri was, but at one point they even replaced this snack with a huge sandwich!
One Piece also got its dose of censorship. FoxKids swapped cigarettes with lollipops, and many fans were quick to create memes around it, like the one where Sanji trades his cigarettes for lollipops. Pistols and weapons have also been transformed into water guns and even toilet plunger at some point!
There is this one scene in Naruto where he takes the kunai out of his hand with blood gushing from the wound. Well, FoxKids decided to substitute it with Naruto holding a red apple and a children’s lunchbox instead. His painful expression looks completely ridiculous next to these random objects. It’s almost as if Naruto is cringing at the prospect of eating healthy food instead of ramen. Who came up with this ridiculous choice?
Malaysia took it a step further and censored the Attack on Titan manga with pants-wearing Titans, which made many Japanese fans laugh out loud. Although there is no solid evidence that these pictures were actually taken from the original Malaysian version of the manga, there are examples of some censored images from Attack on Titan being published in the local Malaysian magazine called Kreko.
Dragon Ball Z was shown during daytime hours in America, so it had to go through some of the most ridiculous edits to make it suitable for minors. One of the most iconic ones was the creation of H.F.I.L Goz and Mez were two ogres who appeared during the filler episode. They both wore tank tops with HELL written on them. Well, in the American dub, Hell was changed into H.F.I.L (Home For Infinite Losers). The time spent to create this edit was tedious, to say the least, because both ogres appear a lot in the episode.
