Wow! Doom is legal in Germany

[WizardStan]

At least, they keep the original musik and Names in Animes, I've really seen horrible stuff from US americanized Anime shows, you can't imaigine what they did with Sailor Moon i America for example, really bad IMHO. :wacko:

I've noticed that US media has a major problem with silent epicness. The old westerns used to have a stand off and the two guys would stare each other down, and there's be minutes of camera angles and buildup. A lot of foreign films (and anime specifically, to the current thread) still do this.


Modern action movies coming out of Hollywood, there's no silent build up: either the characters are yapping at each other or they just go guns blazing. Which is fine for Hollywood, making its "original" movies, but this culture unfortunately bleeds over into stuff which gets localized: dialog and action are added where there was none before because it is (sometimes correctly) assumed that an American audience won't enjoy it without it. And that is one of the chief complaints I have about a lot of localization of anime: the genre is incredibly vast, if you want something that will fit a certain demographic you will be able to find it; you don't need to take one thing that is kind of close and jam more action and dialog into it (in some cases cutting or rearranging scenes and whole episodes) to force it into the demographic you think you're targeting. In doing so, you'll frequently hit your demographic, yes, at the cost of alienating a different demographic. Pick a show that is what you want, localize it to keep it true, and everyone is happy. It's not that hard.

 

[Prometheus]

I've noticed that US media has a major problem with silent epicness. The old westerns used to have a stand off and the two guys would stare each other down, and there's be minutes of camera angles and buildup. A lot of foreign films (and anime specifically, to the current thread) still do this.


Modern action movies coming out of Hollywood, there's no silent build up: either the characters are yapping at each other or they just go guns blazing. Which is fine for Hollywood, making its "original" movies, but this culture unfortunately bleeds over into stuff which gets localized: dialog and action are added where there was none before because it is (sometimes correctly) assumed that an American audience won't enjoy it without it.

I once watched a Dragon Ball Z movie in Japanese, but it had "dubtitles" (i.e., subtitles that match only the dubbed version, not the original language-track). It's a real eye-opener how much unnecessary junk they added to it. There was probably just as much unnecessary (and often irritating) dialogue crammed into the silent moments as there was in the parts where people were actually speaking!


It was also cringeworthy how they opted to change the term "itadakimasu" (something traditionally said as thanks before eating) to "CHEW ATTACK!!" in some sort of attempt to turn it into a childish catchphrase of some sort. That's a whole other rant, though. Suffice to say that there were several better ways of properly localising it that immediately sprung to mind (one was simply a very literal "Thanks for the food" or something in that vein - much easier!).

And that is one of the chief complaints I have about a lot of localization of anime: the genre is incredibly vast, if you want something that will fit a certain demographic you will be able to find it; you don't need to take one thing that is kind of close and jam more action and dialog into it (in some cases cutting or rearranging scenes and whole episodes) to force it into the demographic you think you're targeting. In doing so, you'll frequently hit your demographic, yes, at the cost of alienating a different demographic. Pick a show that is what you want, localize it to keep it true, and everyone is happy. It's not that hard.

This, this, a thousand times this.


Pray I never regale you with the tragic tale of the localisation of the Rockman.EXE anime into "MegaMan NT Warrior"!

 

[Blue Protoman]

Let's hear it.

 

[Prometheus]

If you're sure...


For starters bear in mind that the main characters of the games (and therefore the anime) are kids with little internet-capable handheld devices. It all goes wrong within moments, when you hear that everyone sounds like they're thirty years old.


Attempts to sound "technical" are utterly cringeworthy, as real technological terms are used to mean nothing more than utter gibberish.


Things were chopped up and sugar-coated where, frankly, it wasn't really necessary. It's not a "worrying" cliffhanger if you shoehorn dialogue into the silence to eliminate every bit of possible suspense!


And, the big one... They changed the names of quite a number of characters, for no apparent reason other than to pre-emptively avoid causing offence to the over-protective or the excessively easily-offended. I'm sure we all know that Mega Man characters quite often draw their names from elemental or other theming, or from obvious traits. This is mind, the most contentious example was changing FireMan.EXE to "TorchMan.EXE", mainly because it was ridiculous and pointless, but also because FireMan.EXE was based on Fire Man, who, being from the first ever game, is a very long-established character in the series. Other bizarre changes included renaming the rainbow-hued ColorMan.EXE to "WackoMan.EXE", and, strangest of all, changing WindMan.EXE to "WindBlastMan.EXE". The latter one continues to make me chuckle even all these years on, because it was clearly done to try to prevent immature joking around with the name, but inadvertently made it worse - which one do you think an immature individual is going to find more funny? WindMan.EXE or "WindBlastMan.EXE"?


It was the second-worst example I've ever seen of localising animation based on a property that's pre-established and better-known in another medium, the worst being the truly dire "Kirby - Right Back At Ya!" (which even in its original language, takes plenty of liberties I didn't personally like - the localisation just takes it to a whole other unwatchably cringe-inducing level).

 

[fusion_power]

Pray I never regale you with the tragic tale of the localisation of the Rockman.EXE anime into "MegaMan NT Warrior"!

You should see the difference between various other original and western localized Animes like YuGiOh or Sonic X and so on. The alternations are really incredible, starting with Music, Names, dialouge, Plot... everything. Sadly, in Germany usualy are only the wester licenced versions sent, so nobody dies for example in YuGiOh, they all are "banned in the Phantom Zone"...


Some animes were later showed uncut, like Naruto but AFAIK, all the Dialog censorship remains.


Same for various Hollywood Movies, you may know, in the german Version of DIE HARD, the german Terrorists are NOT german terrorists. XD They even have different names which gets funny in the scene where MCLane writes the names of 2 of the bad guys on his Arm, In german, this scene makes 0 sense at all because they use other names in the dialoges.


Or in Starship Troopers, the entire meaning of only being a citizen when were in Army was written out of the dialogues, same for mentioning that democracy was a failure.


There are really tons of such censorship here which still makes me pretty angry. I hate nothing more then Censoring.