When I was a child, I ended up watching a lot of series that I would later discover were anime series. From Pokémon to Beyblades to Yu-Gi-Oh! to Medabots to many more, it’s surprising how much anime I watched back then. However, I was completely unaware that these shows that I enjoyed so much were from Japan! Why was I and so many others oblivious to this information? The answer is surprisingly straightforward, because the American licensors didn’t want you to know! Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at why anime is sometimes localised to hide their country of origin.
I should start off by clarifying that I will be looking at localisation when it comes to English language releases of these shows. Anime has been incredibly popular internationally for decades and it’s explosion in popularity in the English speaking world was actually later than many other countries. However, I’m quite unsure about how heavy-handed censorship and localisation were in these countries and, if you’re aware of how this was handled in particular countries, feel free to comment below.
Having covered that, let’s begin by looking at the history of anime localisation in English. One of the earliest examples of localisation to strip away the foreign qualities was the US release of the 1958 anime film Panda and the Magic Serpent. Released in 1961 in the US, the editors made numerous changes to the film such as referring to the red panda character as a cat and, abhorrently in my opinion, they made the decision to remove any mention of the Japanese staff who worked on the film.
These localisation changes continued as anime made their way to American television. Settings were changed to America, names were americanised and references to Japanese culture were purged. Once we hit the 90s, about the time I was watching these shows, the differences between the Japanese versions of these shows and the American versions started to become much more well-known, probably due to the internet. Famous examples include changing food from Japanese to American cuisine, removal of Japanese text from signs and, of course, setting it in America. Interestingly, not every piece of Japanese text is removed sometimes and one particularly noteworthy example of this was from when I used to watch Digimon. During Digivolutions, you see the Digimon’s name in the background. Amusingly, the text is displayed in both the Latin alphabet and Japanese katakana, something that would have tipped me off about the Japanese origins of the series if I’d known it was katakana and didn’t just assume it was some kind of Digimon language.
As time has progressed, we’ve seen less and less anime series subjected to this treatment. However, that’s not to say that it’s gone completely. When Doraemon was released in America in 2015, we saw numerous changes made to strip the show of its Japanese identity and to become more “palatable” for American children. Another interesting example is when Yo-kai Watch was released in America with some particularly notable changes as well.
While it’s true that more and more anime are available to watch in their original form, it’s interesting to see that some companies still see something being “foreign” as a negative and try to strip this aspect away. Let me know your thoughts on why anime is sometimes localised to hide their country of origin, your thoughts on excessive localisation, if you’re aware of any post-2015 examples of anime receiving this treatment and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!