On One Piece, American remix
Sep. 20th, 2004 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotSo the One Piece fandom is making a bid for fanwank of the month, over the new dub, the first ep of which aired on Fox last Saturday morning. The majority of the arguments go thusly: someone cries that it's the end of the world as we know it and 4Kids deserves seven plagues for the travesty they have wreaked upon anime, and why couldn't OP at least be shown on CN's Adult Swim, since it's not for kids. Someone else counters, but it is for kids, and don't you want OP to be popular, and we always have the fansubs, after all? And then everyone says, "oh, you're right" and goes to listen to the new rap opening, either sobbing or shrieking with hysterical laughter, because the OP fandom is not really into protracted flamewars.
The problem is that neither side quite has it right. And frankly, though I'm one of those who can and does laugh at the horror of the dub, and enjoys how much more it makes me appreciate the original, and I'm getting annoyed at the repetitive "4Kids must DIE!" - all the same, we have reason to be pissed.
One Piece is for kids. Well. Yes and no. To begin with, that's not really what's at stake; what's at stake is what America - the FCC, Fox, 4Kids, parents - thinks is right for kids. The Japanese obviously see OP as child-appropriate; the manga is published in Shounen Jump, the most popular manga mag for boys 10-14 years old. But America is more (insanely) sensitive about entertainment's impact on developing youth, and since parents obviously cannot be expected to monitor their children, it must be the job of broadcasters. So, don't put anything in a cartoon that might cause trouble, since children are far too stupid to understand the difference between a 2-dimensional boy made of rubber on their TV and a real living person. Don't swear, don't mention pistols, or, god forbid, booze. In a cartoon about pirates. Because, you know, most kids don't know what alcohol is, most kids have never heard "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum", and most kids' parents wouldn't dream of drinking beer or wine, not when they have impressionable youngsters in the house.
Even in Japan, One Piece is not intended for really little kids; it's put in the age bracket above the Pokemon crowd. They don't allow that level of violence on the shows for young kids (watch GetBackers; the blood is all faint black marks; and Pokemon isn't censoring it - there's none in Pocket Monsters either). OP airs in the evening in Japan; it's "PG", not "G" as all Saturday morning cartoons are supposed to be. And the Japanese do have some sensitivities; the OP anime is already censored from the manga (the anime never explains where Luffy got that scar under his eye, for instance.) OP is not meant to be innocuous as Pokemon, for all that 4Kids is trying to make it so; even the Japanese don't see it as appropriate for the same ages, so to willingly accept all the censorship on those grounds is absurd.
But there's another issue here, one which causes trouble with much anime. "Appropriate for children" does not mean the same thing as "intended only for children". Yes, Shounen Jump is aimed at boys. But 30% of its audience is female (so Oda-sensei stated in a Q&A), and many of its readers are adults of either sex. The One Piece anime airs on Sunday evenings, when everyone can catch it. You may be hard-pressed to find an older Japanese teen who will 'fess up to watching it - I have anecdotal evidence that Japanese fans tend to be very much closeted - but at the same time you'll see adults with Luffy danglies on their celphones, and certainly all those doujinshi are not being produced and bought by little boys.
In America, plain ratings used to matter, but then demographics became all the rage. So now broadcasters work to find their "target audience", and make sure they tailor their productions to specifically appeal to one group, and one group alone. A kids' show is for kids; adults aren't expected to get anything out of it. There are productions that play with this concept - Powerpuff Girls or Shrek 2, which might look like kids' cartoons but make references and parodies most small kids wouldn't get. But in those cases that's part of the joke - innocence defiled, and what the adults are supposed to laugh at is not what the kids are meant to find funny.
So One Piece, which doesn't by and large have such adult themes, is put on Saturday mornings, expected to play for an audience almost exclusively of children. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim probably wouldn't be interested in it for that reason - there's no sex, no mindboggling psychological themes, and the violence is more cartoony than some; anime is becoming popular enough in America that blood in cartoons is losing its novelty. And besides, it doesn't take much watching of OP to realize that it is a "kid's show." The cool teens who swim with the adults presumably wouldn't be interested - and besides, you'd be missing all those children who would love it. (Maybe. I have no idea what the true demos of AS are...anyone know?)
A parable - I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, but when Escaflowne was aired on Fox, there was a guy on the anime ng who claimed to be a Fox employee working on the production. He apologized for the butcher-job done on the series, and explained the reason thusly - that Fox had wanted an anime for 10 year old boys. They had shown the first Escaflowne eps to this target audience, and said audience had by and large not shown any interest. ...Unsurprisingly, since Escaflowne's intended audience in Japan, going by the main character rule-of-thumb, was 14 year old girls (and older). But not to be defeated, they chopped and hacked at Esca until they produced something that better kept the interest of the boys.
Even if they wanted to ignore who the Japanese meant Esca for, they might have tried a different experiment - say, showing it to a mixed audience, seeing who was interested, and then putting it at a time and editing it appropriately for that group. I don't actually know for myself how Japanese television works, but I suspect it's more along these lines. At the very least, once something is airing, if they realize they've caught a different audience, the Japanese seem to do all they can to pander to this audience (while not losing their original group). So Prince of Tennis or GetBackers may be meant to be watched by boys - but nearly all the merchandise is the posters and keychains and pencil boards of the pretty boys, obviously aimed to interest girls; and the OP anime includes more moments of Zoro and Sanji's (sexy) antagonism than are in the manga.
But 4Kids has OP now, and is going to do all it can to make it popular with the 10 year old boys. In addition to placating the parents by chopping out the alcohol and smoking and violence (certainly this isn't for the kids' sake; little boys love violence. Look at what any of them draw on their school notebooks - it's almost always guns and explosions and monsters), this also means, apparently, changing the opening to a rap, writing all new BGM, and redoing the sound effects. And then showing it on Saturday mornings.
Which is where OP is losing out tremendously. Because if it were airing in the evening - say, at 7:30 like it does in Japan, easily early enough for children to catch it before bed, but late enough that the parents will be around too - the kids would start watching it for the rubber boy and the pirates, and the adults would catch it in passing, and gradually realize how tremendously entertaining it is. The truth is, OP is appropriate for kids - but it's appropriate for adults, too. The proper age range is really "10 and up". It's not that it has adult jokes, or adult themes - it's that it has universal themes. It doesn't presume that once someone grows up, they lose all interest in stories about friendship and love and following your dreams. Most of the American OP fans presently are older teens and young adults - we don't like One Piece because we're all immature losers stuck in our childhood, but because it's a damn good series with a creative enough story and awesome enough characters that it doesn't need "adult" elements like sex to be entertaining. (I was going to list other adult elements - but violence? It's got it. Political maneuvering and questioning religion? Got it. Adult chars? Got them, too, and parents especially should appreciate all the amazing things OP has to say about the importance of fathers and mothers, even if not by blood...) Guess what? Incredible as it is, children are people, too. Some stories appeal to people, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or anything else.
4Kids is shooting themselves in the foot. Part of the reason behind OP's immense success is that it appeals so broadly. Little kids can't afford all the merchandise that's produced, and aren't the only ones buying it; the movies do well because the parents are as eager to see them as their children are.
In an interview with Tanaka Mayumi (Luffy's seiyuu) for the 3rd movie, Tanaka-san mentions that more and more she's been talking to mothers who started watching with their kids and became enamoured of the show themselves. She tells everyone to watch it together, with their families, to talk about it and let it be a bonding experience. In an ideal world, that's how I'd love to see OP shown - in the evenings, on a special "Family Swim" intended for all ages. Don't censor all the objectionable elements, with the assumption that parents are meant to be watching with their kids, so they can explain that drinking is for adults and it's bad to hit people with hammers. (Frankly, if your kids don't know this already, you suck as a parent and have no right to be blaming the poor TV - after all, it's doing the hard work of raising your children. But whatever.)
So I'm living in a dream world, and even if the FCC would allow it, parents would revolt. Even so, yes, I'm mad at hell at 4Kids. They're taking one of the best series I've ever seen and changing it to be as much like their other stuff as possible. Even though it is, in its original form, one of the most popular anime ever--more popular than any cartoon here. Even though one of the reasons for One Piece's success is probably that it is so unique. 4Kids bought One Piece entirely because it was such a financial hit. So why do they have so little faith in it?
I'm not complaining about it being dubbed. (Much. Dubs suck, I'm sorry, they do, the American dub industry by and large has no respect for the series they mangle. And we're talking about a show that has some of the top talent in Japan; there are few enough other seiyuu who could come close to matching Tanaka-san's Luffy, so I can't expect any dub to. But.) An average American 10-year-old cannot follow subtitles; I could at that age, but most have not the experience or reading speed. So if OP is going to be accessible to them, the dub is necessary - which is why I get more pissed. It's all very well to tell us that we have the fansubs, and we might get uncut DVDs (this hasn't been confirmed, to my knowledge, and 4Kids' record is spotty enough that I'm not believing 'til I see it). What about the kids who can't watch it that way? Why do they have to watch a bastardized version, because 4Kids doesn't have faith enough in the original's score to keep even the music the same, much less preserve the script? It's true, some folks probably will like what's left enough to seek out the real thing. But more will probably dismiss it as the silly cartoon it can appear to be, if 4Kids cuts everything that makes it more than that.
Yes, it's just a cartoon. Yes, I take my entertainment too seriously. But it would be so awesome for people across America, kids and grown-ups alike, to fall in love the same series that I have. And with 4Kids at the helm, it doesn't look like anyone's going to get that chance.
The problem is that neither side quite has it right. And frankly, though I'm one of those who can and does laugh at the horror of the dub, and enjoys how much more it makes me appreciate the original, and I'm getting annoyed at the repetitive "4Kids must DIE!" - all the same, we have reason to be pissed.
One Piece is for kids. Well. Yes and no. To begin with, that's not really what's at stake; what's at stake is what America - the FCC, Fox, 4Kids, parents - thinks is right for kids. The Japanese obviously see OP as child-appropriate; the manga is published in Shounen Jump, the most popular manga mag for boys 10-14 years old. But America is more (insanely) sensitive about entertainment's impact on developing youth, and since parents obviously cannot be expected to monitor their children, it must be the job of broadcasters. So, don't put anything in a cartoon that might cause trouble, since children are far too stupid to understand the difference between a 2-dimensional boy made of rubber on their TV and a real living person. Don't swear, don't mention pistols, or, god forbid, booze. In a cartoon about pirates. Because, you know, most kids don't know what alcohol is, most kids have never heard "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum", and most kids' parents wouldn't dream of drinking beer or wine, not when they have impressionable youngsters in the house.
Even in Japan, One Piece is not intended for really little kids; it's put in the age bracket above the Pokemon crowd. They don't allow that level of violence on the shows for young kids (watch GetBackers; the blood is all faint black marks; and Pokemon isn't censoring it - there's none in Pocket Monsters either). OP airs in the evening in Japan; it's "PG", not "G" as all Saturday morning cartoons are supposed to be. And the Japanese do have some sensitivities; the OP anime is already censored from the manga (the anime never explains where Luffy got that scar under his eye, for instance.) OP is not meant to be innocuous as Pokemon, for all that 4Kids is trying to make it so; even the Japanese don't see it as appropriate for the same ages, so to willingly accept all the censorship on those grounds is absurd.
But there's another issue here, one which causes trouble with much anime. "Appropriate for children" does not mean the same thing as "intended only for children". Yes, Shounen Jump is aimed at boys. But 30% of its audience is female (so Oda-sensei stated in a Q&A), and many of its readers are adults of either sex. The One Piece anime airs on Sunday evenings, when everyone can catch it. You may be hard-pressed to find an older Japanese teen who will 'fess up to watching it - I have anecdotal evidence that Japanese fans tend to be very much closeted - but at the same time you'll see adults with Luffy danglies on their celphones, and certainly all those doujinshi are not being produced and bought by little boys.
In America, plain ratings used to matter, but then demographics became all the rage. So now broadcasters work to find their "target audience", and make sure they tailor their productions to specifically appeal to one group, and one group alone. A kids' show is for kids; adults aren't expected to get anything out of it. There are productions that play with this concept - Powerpuff Girls or Shrek 2, which might look like kids' cartoons but make references and parodies most small kids wouldn't get. But in those cases that's part of the joke - innocence defiled, and what the adults are supposed to laugh at is not what the kids are meant to find funny.
So One Piece, which doesn't by and large have such adult themes, is put on Saturday mornings, expected to play for an audience almost exclusively of children. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim probably wouldn't be interested in it for that reason - there's no sex, no mindboggling psychological themes, and the violence is more cartoony than some; anime is becoming popular enough in America that blood in cartoons is losing its novelty. And besides, it doesn't take much watching of OP to realize that it is a "kid's show." The cool teens who swim with the adults presumably wouldn't be interested - and besides, you'd be missing all those children who would love it. (Maybe. I have no idea what the true demos of AS are...anyone know?)
A parable - I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, but when Escaflowne was aired on Fox, there was a guy on the anime ng who claimed to be a Fox employee working on the production. He apologized for the butcher-job done on the series, and explained the reason thusly - that Fox had wanted an anime for 10 year old boys. They had shown the first Escaflowne eps to this target audience, and said audience had by and large not shown any interest. ...Unsurprisingly, since Escaflowne's intended audience in Japan, going by the main character rule-of-thumb, was 14 year old girls (and older). But not to be defeated, they chopped and hacked at Esca until they produced something that better kept the interest of the boys.
Even if they wanted to ignore who the Japanese meant Esca for, they might have tried a different experiment - say, showing it to a mixed audience, seeing who was interested, and then putting it at a time and editing it appropriately for that group. I don't actually know for myself how Japanese television works, but I suspect it's more along these lines. At the very least, once something is airing, if they realize they've caught a different audience, the Japanese seem to do all they can to pander to this audience (while not losing their original group). So Prince of Tennis or GetBackers may be meant to be watched by boys - but nearly all the merchandise is the posters and keychains and pencil boards of the pretty boys, obviously aimed to interest girls; and the OP anime includes more moments of Zoro and Sanji's (sexy) antagonism than are in the manga.
But 4Kids has OP now, and is going to do all it can to make it popular with the 10 year old boys. In addition to placating the parents by chopping out the alcohol and smoking and violence (certainly this isn't for the kids' sake; little boys love violence. Look at what any of them draw on their school notebooks - it's almost always guns and explosions and monsters), this also means, apparently, changing the opening to a rap, writing all new BGM, and redoing the sound effects. And then showing it on Saturday mornings.
Which is where OP is losing out tremendously. Because if it were airing in the evening - say, at 7:30 like it does in Japan, easily early enough for children to catch it before bed, but late enough that the parents will be around too - the kids would start watching it for the rubber boy and the pirates, and the adults would catch it in passing, and gradually realize how tremendously entertaining it is. The truth is, OP is appropriate for kids - but it's appropriate for adults, too. The proper age range is really "10 and up". It's not that it has adult jokes, or adult themes - it's that it has universal themes. It doesn't presume that once someone grows up, they lose all interest in stories about friendship and love and following your dreams. Most of the American OP fans presently are older teens and young adults - we don't like One Piece because we're all immature losers stuck in our childhood, but because it's a damn good series with a creative enough story and awesome enough characters that it doesn't need "adult" elements like sex to be entertaining. (I was going to list other adult elements - but violence? It's got it. Political maneuvering and questioning religion? Got it. Adult chars? Got them, too, and parents especially should appreciate all the amazing things OP has to say about the importance of fathers and mothers, even if not by blood...) Guess what? Incredible as it is, children are people, too. Some stories appeal to people, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or anything else.
4Kids is shooting themselves in the foot. Part of the reason behind OP's immense success is that it appeals so broadly. Little kids can't afford all the merchandise that's produced, and aren't the only ones buying it; the movies do well because the parents are as eager to see them as their children are.
In an interview with Tanaka Mayumi (Luffy's seiyuu) for the 3rd movie, Tanaka-san mentions that more and more she's been talking to mothers who started watching with their kids and became enamoured of the show themselves. She tells everyone to watch it together, with their families, to talk about it and let it be a bonding experience. In an ideal world, that's how I'd love to see OP shown - in the evenings, on a special "Family Swim" intended for all ages. Don't censor all the objectionable elements, with the assumption that parents are meant to be watching with their kids, so they can explain that drinking is for adults and it's bad to hit people with hammers. (Frankly, if your kids don't know this already, you suck as a parent and have no right to be blaming the poor TV - after all, it's doing the hard work of raising your children. But whatever.)
So I'm living in a dream world, and even if the FCC would allow it, parents would revolt. Even so, yes, I'm mad at hell at 4Kids. They're taking one of the best series I've ever seen and changing it to be as much like their other stuff as possible. Even though it is, in its original form, one of the most popular anime ever--more popular than any cartoon here. Even though one of the reasons for One Piece's success is probably that it is so unique. 4Kids bought One Piece entirely because it was such a financial hit. So why do they have so little faith in it?
I'm not complaining about it being dubbed. (Much. Dubs suck, I'm sorry, they do, the American dub industry by and large has no respect for the series they mangle. And we're talking about a show that has some of the top talent in Japan; there are few enough other seiyuu who could come close to matching Tanaka-san's Luffy, so I can't expect any dub to. But.) An average American 10-year-old cannot follow subtitles; I could at that age, but most have not the experience or reading speed. So if OP is going to be accessible to them, the dub is necessary - which is why I get more pissed. It's all very well to tell us that we have the fansubs, and we might get uncut DVDs (this hasn't been confirmed, to my knowledge, and 4Kids' record is spotty enough that I'm not believing 'til I see it). What about the kids who can't watch it that way? Why do they have to watch a bastardized version, because 4Kids doesn't have faith enough in the original's score to keep even the music the same, much less preserve the script? It's true, some folks probably will like what's left enough to seek out the real thing. But more will probably dismiss it as the silly cartoon it can appear to be, if 4Kids cuts everything that makes it more than that.
Yes, it's just a cartoon. Yes, I take my entertainment too seriously. But it would be so awesome for people across America, kids and grown-ups alike, to fall in love the same series that I have. And with 4Kids at the helm, it doesn't look like anyone's going to get that chance.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:12 am (UTC)And I think I am going to send that letter - I'll post a copy of what I send when I send it (am thinking I should wait 'til the weekend. Since I, er, haven't actually seen the dub in question yet...) But send a letter yourself - send a copy of this if you'd like, if you agree with it, it can't hurt to have as many of us as possible expressing our feelings! Someone also suggested that I send the rant as an editorial to an anime mag...might try that, too.
And while I have you, thanks for the fic reviews - glad you've enjoyed the stories, and I'm always happy to find another friendship fan! ^_^
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 12:13 pm (UTC)And you're welcome for the reviews. Thank you for writing such fantastic stories-- it's nice to find something to read that you genuinely enjoy reading and aren't doing so simply for the sake of having something to read once in a while. It's nice to find someone that thinks friendship is just as, if not more interesting for these characters than conviluted romance.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 12:29 pm (UTC)And oh, yes, absolutely - I quite honestly find friendship a more compelling read than romance most of the time, perhaps because it is the less explored territory. We're not alone, though; I've ranted about this on my lj before and found quite a few other friendship fans. Unfortunately none of them seem to be writing OP...!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 01:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think that's it-- not many people have decided to take the plunge into friendship fics and explore relationships that can't be described with flowery cliches and overused metaphores. I reeeeaaaaally wish we'd get more OP ficcers like that! There are so many possibilities like that just waiting for someone to roll up their sleeves and plunge in there, but nobody seems to want to. And unfortunately, I have absolutely no ideas whatsoever or I'd try my hand at it. Sigh. Characters I can write-- plots elude me. Still, I comfort myself in knowing that you and Croik are still writing, anyway, and maybe you'll inspire someone to do the same. :)