I do mean stuff like removed scenes from international airings, replacing objects like cigarettes or vine with any other objects.
The 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. not only had superflous CGI E.T. scenes (no doubt inspired by Lucas), but also all guns of the federal agents were changed to walkie talkies.
Spielberg later apologized for the changes and rolled them back.
The version of From Dusk Till Dawn that aired on German TV with age 16+ rating was half an hour shorter and was cut so badly, it hardly even made sense anymore.
It’s basically just a couple of dude(tte)s going to a gas station, then walking into a bar and starting to shoot at nothing for no reason.Ugh, that version is so bad. You see a character build this awesome vampire killing machine in a montage. And a minute later you see them throw it away without ever having used it.
Also for some inane reason the only way to get an uncensored Planet Terror with the helicopter chopping up zombies is by renting it. Good luck finding a video rental place nowadays.
I could look this up but what is with germany and blood censorship?
What is it with USA and boob censorship?
women scary 😨
It’s just different values. I could ask the same about the US and nudity. In German media, blood and violence is fine, but it’s considered a topic that you need to be able to handle, so you need to have a certain age, depending on how gruesome that is.
Tbh, I’m European and therefore biased, but the way the united states have no problem with people harming other in media but being offended by something like “bodies” or “sex” does seem a little weird. Like, if my kids normalised harming others I’d be much more concerned than if they normalised making love.
Little story to that point: In 2000 I flew NWA from Europe to the states. That time they still showed the movie on a big screen in the front of the cabin. The movie that day was Gladiator.
The airline did not censor gore and violence even though children were also flying.
But of course there was no nudity to speak of in that movie at all.
There is nudity in the original, when emperor rapes his sister(?) and I believe there’s other scenes as well. They usually showed the made for TV edit so that’s probably why you didn’t see.
Their solution for kids was to not give us headphones lol.
Watching TV:
Here in the EU it is offensive/inappropriate to kill people.
There in the US it is offensive/inappropriate to make people.
So the difference is whether to make love or to make war. Personally I’d rather be a bononbo than a chimpanzee.
Bonobo Love Island:Chimpanzee Gladiators.
Some of us here think it’s backwards as well. The thing is that it’s a hard cycle to break. Because nudity is so taboo here and pretty universally related to sex rather than art or nature it ends up with any place it show up being taken as scandalous ‘uh oh, they showed the naughty bits’.
Nudes in art are viewed as high-brow, guns and violent sport as more low-brow, but we"re also a place who make icons of the blue collar ‘Joe Sixpack’ sort and for a large part treat intellectualism is snobby elitist shit.
Maybe one day we’ll unga bunga our way out of the caves, but nobody knows when.
That’s not a movie that you can make TV appropriate.
Omg! Is THAT what they did? I remember when that movie came on tv and Ioved the road trip bit in the beginning and then it suddenly all stopped making sense all at once. I never watched it again because I didn’t realize that wasn’t just what the movie is. Mind blown. Thank you.
Yes. They cut out a lot of dialog, and most of the transition to vampires and the final fight.
This is what happen when you find a stranger in the Alps!
That’s the one! Do you see what happens Larry?!
And when you feed a stoner scrambled eggs!
?
TV edit of Big Lebowski to be shown on US daytime.
The TV edit of The Big Lebowski is hilarious.
Attack on Titan, in the anime they decided that having a mother tattoo her kid was too much (in a show where giants casually eat people alive) so they made her do an embroidery with the same symbol instead.
During season 4 where the tattoo was relevant for the first time (and they included it in the show), it was fun watching anime-only watchers complain it was a total ass-pull with no prior setup.
“Göre? Yeah whatever, submit the full folder by 8 pm.”
“What… She’s wearing a bra! Censor that! And… And what’s this… Why are we hinting that he is gay!? Remove this dialog right now!”
Dragon Ball, second episode. They removed the part when Goku removes Bulma’s panties, affecting the events of the third episode.
In this case the uncensored version is much crazier.
It did however at least lead to the pun in the Funimation dub about a “fishfull of dollars,”, since they baited Oolong with a wad of cash on a fishhook rather than Bulma’s panties.
Dragon Ball has so many censored scenes. I love it
they censored blood so theres no blood when a characther recieves severe or fatal injuries. even inuyasha had blood and some gore.
I didn’t know the blood got censored out too… Wow that’s gotta be a lot. I knew of plenty of the sexual / dirty scenes with Bulma and Roshi, I knew of Mr Popo being turned blue in some places, but I didn’t know the blood too
“Conveniently placed shrub” became a running gag in my 4th grade friend group because of this.
Dragon ball did not age well. It’s a classic nonetheless, but it’s kind of awkward to watch at some points.
That’s putting it really mildly.
Nothing wrong w/ using gramp’s pillow for a nap, time to time.
I don’t want to insult the fans, I how fans can be.
I remember the censorship for hiding his genitalia at one point was a really badly drawn flower overlaying the area that didn’t match the existing art in the slightest
My name is Buck… And I’m here to- PARTY!
also the most famous one:
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps
I’m glad someone else remembers the hilarious travesty of TV censored kill bill
I don’t get the latter.
Also where is it from?
lol John Goodman is on the hood of a car smashing the windshield with a golf club or a baseball bat. Completely destroying the fuck out of this car. And he’s yelling “this is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!”
I don’t know where the line is from, but gonna guess from context it’s “fuck a stranger in the ass”.
From The Big Lebowski. Youre correct in your translation :)
Moloko plus velocet. My fave.
I read some years ago that in the Arabian version of Simpsons, Homer drinks lemonade instead of beer.
That’s kinda sweet but also completely steam rolls a very big part of Homer’s character.
Moe is such a talented lemonade merchant he has to stay open till the early hours to sate the townsfolk’s addiction to his citrus crack.
“Moloko” on the wine carton.
Viddy well my droogs. Viddy well.
I am afraid to ask, but… wine carton?
America does have boxed wine (just a bag of shitty wine in a cardboard box). But yeah, it’s probably a wine bottle.
shitty wine
I don’t know if this is the case in the US but at least in Finland they do that to just normal wines too. Lasts longer and it is a handy container.
Maybe there’s better out there. I’m not generally a wine fan to start and boxed wine in college was a cheap not beer or vodka option.
You mean a shitty bag of wine? You can get good wines in carton, and it’s more environmentally friendly.
I have a brand I like which comes in both carton and glass. Glass tastes a bit better, but not by much, and since the carton is ~30% cheaper by volume, and can be open for 4 weeks, I’ll easily get the shitty bag of wine 🤓
in OP, alwo cheap wine is sold in cartons in France or Italy
I was worried that nobody had made the joke yet
Not crazy but in the 80s France imported a fuckton of anime from Japan without thinking about the original target audience.
Since they wanted to show that to kids, they had to censor a lot of stuff. The most funny was when blood was colored in black everywhere (only a black liquid gushing out of bad guys), or when characters were getting drunk on orange juice.
When 4kids imported anime to the US there are some rather infamous scenes where they censor blood making it white instead. So instead of looking like a bloody mess they look like they did bukake.
There’s a Pokémon episode with guns and they just took the guns out lol.
There’s a Pokémon episode with guns and they just took the guns out lol.
No, they cut the whole episode. So now American viewers had no context for why Ash suddenly had thirty Tauros.
Maybe it was later idk, there’s a version of the episode where they’re doing finger guns. Yugioh had a similar situation too.
Don’t forget City Hunter and Hokuto no Ken. French dubbing replaced love hotels with vegetarians restaurants, and characters said puns and stupid stuff instead of talking seriously.
Don’t remember the movie or show but on aired in Korea I saw they would blur out parts such as cigarettes as well as arm pits (male actor) and a chef’s knife (prop was being held with the actors intention to defend herself).
When Sailor Moon was airing on American TV back in the late 90’s, they completely censored out every aspect of romantic relationship between Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. Turned them into cousins.
It was a shock to me when I bought the subtitled version and they were suddenly lesbians.
Out of curiosity, (if you’d like to share), how old were you when you found out and how did you take it? Were you on board with it or did it feel weird?
::: I spoiler tagged this long ass post in order to hide it from folks who don’t care.
I’m not that person but I had the exact same thing happen to me! And let me tell you, when I was first watching it as a middle schooler, I knew they were in love! I didn’t know that women-who-like-women had a word (lesbian), so I thought, “Well, if you’re in love with someone, they’re probably your friend. Probably your best friend, so that makes sense. But you can’t just call them your girlfriend, because-”
I grew up in rural Oklahoma (and now live in Tennessee). A woman, who has a friend, and that friend is a woman, makes her a girlfriend. I still call women who are my friends, ‘girlfriends,’ even though it obviously could mean something romantic. So Uranus and Neptune probably couldn’t just say ‘girlfriend,’ because all the girls who were their friends were their girlfriends, so ‘best’ friend is probably a friend who is such a good friend, that you’re also in love with them. (This was the logic of a sixth grader.)
It’s one of the reasons that Sailor Moon fans have always been so inclusive, have always stood up for other presentations or orientations. Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?
To add to that, I might have had a very unique interpretation of the situation, because I would later learn that I was a demi bisexual (we didn’t even have the word ‘demisexual’ when I was a girl) and what that means is… For me, I usually only want a relationship with the person who is such my best friend, that I also am in love with them!
:::
Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?
I watched Sailor Moon on German TV in the 90s (RTL 2 gang unite!). And whenever this topic of changes in the dubs comes up I struggle to remember how they put it in the German translation exactly because of what you said. It doesn’t matter how they translated it. It was so obvious. I haven’t known anyone who didn’t know exactly what was going on (but to be fair, it was common knowledge what lesbians were).
(Also 90s German dubs in general sometimes turned out weird - looking at you, first three seasons of FRIENDS - so I kinda didn’t over interpret the exact wording because I was so used to strange ways of putting things.)
And now we are friends!
That’s the other cool thing about the Sailor Moon fandom. I’ve never once met a Sailor Moon fan who was a racist, or a bigot, or… anything. It comes with the ‘love and justice’ thing.
Now you must tell me about the first three seasons of FRIENDS. (Please?)
I was a freshman in high school when I found out, and I was dumbfounded. I’d always chalked the wonky scenes up to being a culturally Japanese thing. And anime in itself was more “effeminate” overall than anything we had in America.
I was shocked, but it all suddenly made sense. I was fine with it. Early 2000s where I lived at the time was pretty accepting. I had friends in high school who were openly gay, and no one bothered them about it.
I think now it’s pretty wild that sailor moon was even on the air back then, though. There were definitely series they could have played that wouldn’t have to edit out huge chunks just to keep in line with broadcast regulations. The fact it got airtime at all is astounding. I mean, I’m happy it did, because SM is awesome, but still.
lol yeah. They didn’t edit out all the flirting though or all the embarassed or indignant reactions by the characters around them, which presents those “cousins” in a really interesting light ;)
The US version of Sailor Moon was also censored and edited in different other ways. IIRC:
- All Tokyo references were changed to New York. So they’ve changed where the whole thing took place.
- They changed all Japanese writings (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji)
- Multiple characters had their gender or sex changed as to avoid homosexual relations.
- The music was completely changed for some reason
- They took out many scenes or even whole episodes if they thought, they might vaguely get into conflict with the FCC.
- They scrapped a whole season, because the Sailor Starlights (I think that was their name?) changed gender in their magical transformation.
I believe there was also a scene in Sailor Moon where a character was in the bath. In order to make the water opaque the censors decided that red would be the best colour to use, so it looks like she’s bathing in blood.
That honestly sounds absurd to me and makes me want to see sailor moon or (but the uncensored version).
When I was a teenager, I bought a DVD that had a few Sailor Moon episodes that I had never seen before (being from the U.S.) In these episodes, Makoto (or “Lita” AKA Sailor Jupiter) develops a crush on Haruka (or “Amara” AKA Sailor Uranus) and has to cope with her being unattainable. The DVD included both an English dub and the original Japanese with English subtitles.
In the original Japanese version, the crush is treated as romantic in nature, with Makoto’s friends telling her that Haruka already has “a girlfriend” (Michiru AKA “Michelle” AKA Sailor Neptune.) In the English dub, Makoto wants Haruka to be her “best friend,” with the rest of the Sailor Scouts telling her that Haruka already has “a best friend.”
The visuals all stay the same, complete with roses and Makoto’s starry love-eyes. The romantic implications are so obvious it’s painful.
That’s so disappointing. To me, Sailor Moon is the OG all inclusive series. (It was my very favorite show ever as a kid and probably still is.) I kinda love how they didn’t make a big deal out of it. The star sailors change sex when they transform and it’s not even talked about. It just is how it is and nobody wonders about it. Neptune and Uranus having the hots for each other is portrayed as any other romance is and iirc no character ever addresses the “taboo” of it. Even the alien incest is somehow fine (I mean they are aliens and extinct so they do them).
I understand the LGBTQ+'s struggle for representation and acceptance, so probably they do need somewhat of an over accentuated representation on screen to eventually reach full acceptance. But Sailor Moon seems to be what comes “after” this, just normalization without it ever being a question. All the while sparking an interest in astronomy in kids who then know all the names of the dwarf planets in our solar system before they know the multiplication table.
Man I can’t wait till my kid reaches Sailor Moon watching age.
I hope your kids like it.
It has always seemed to me that my kids have gone out of their way to avoid liking anything I like. That’s fine, but I never could relate to them.
I adopted my son so it was different with him. We did everything together and he was happy to look into my interests sometimes. He and I played world of Warcraft together for a decade and I’d cut off a couple toes to go back and have that with him again.
The most infamous would be South Park episodes S14E05 and S14E06 named “200” and “201”. The central theme of the episodes: Censorship. Something South Park had been subjected to ever since its inception. And this time, they centered around the limits of what is allowed around depictions of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. For context: These episodes aired after controversies around such depictions in media around the world had people killed.
So in an attempt to protect themselves, the network engaged in censorship of the episodes and it is sometimes unclear, what was intentionally in there as a plot point from the creators and what was added by the network. Although some egregious examples are clear, such as the complete bleeping of Kyle’s “I’ve learned something today” monologue at the end. While Stone and Parker inserted clear plot points like characters like Moses of all people asking, whether something was OK to show or say. I’m still uncertain whether the huge censorship bar over the Prophet is a plot point, or censorship or both.
The kicker: Prophet Muhammad had been shown in earlier episodes already, without sparking controversy and in “200” and “201” they even reference those episodes. As expected, they received death threats after the airing of the episodes and later pulled all five episodes with Muhammad depictions from their streaming sites (Super-Best Friends, Cartoon Wars 1+2, 200, 201).
After this they actually pulled super best friends from syndication as well.
I’ve not been privy to much censorship in my life (that I noticed) but I distinctly remember in Giants: Citizen Kabuto, there was a quest to slay some sheep and bring back their meat for food and the meat was green. As a 10 year old, I thought it was part of the lore. Since you were on another planet, it made sense to me… maybe these are alien sheep!
I only realized it years later when I had forgotten the game’s title and asked about it, describing the green sheep meat, on a forum. I was told it was censorship and which game it was. Replayed it in its pure form and the meat was red.Is Simpsons on the Disney Channel now?
