Bowdlerise / Anime & Manga S-Z

S

• The American series Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs completely changed the original Sei Juushi Bismarck:
  • Bismarck was not originally a Space Western.
  • The character that World Events Productions called "Saber Rider" is made The Leader of the Badass Crew. in Bismarck, he's not even Second-In-Command.
  • For some reason the Bismarck space cruiser was given a voice in the dub, which was ironic because the voice was never used when the ship was in complete robot transformation (but knowing the ship didn't speak in in the original anime, some would disapprove of the ship voice. But given that said voice was Peter Cullen doing a John Wayne impression by way of Optimus Prime, maybe not).
  • Although the enemy forces are from the same dimension as the good guys, the dub states that the enemies come from another dimension, and if they get shot or stabbed or such the enemies are said to be "forced back to their own universe for a short amount of time". One such example: the slain alien spy from the first episode appearing as a major character in some non-Japanese episodes, which were used to make up for the Bismarck episodes WEP did not want to pick up.
  • In fact, nobody died in Saber Rider. This was not the case in Bismarck, but the dub was rewritten and edited to soften the violence. For example, you know the human settlements the villains are always attacking? In Saber Rider, the dialogue always assures us that everyone has been safely evacuated. In Bismarck... not so much.
  • Also, there was a handsome Anti-Villain whom the dub stated was human... but was originally not. In a case of reverse bowlderisation, the dub has him commit Attempted Rape to help explain his Face–Heel Turn.

• The "Knights of the Zodiac" Cartoon Network broadcast butchered Saint Seiya to the point of being almost unrecognizable. Even ADV Films' uncut and much more loyal to the source material DVD release couldn't gain much traction with fans, and after the 60-episode license ran out, that was it. No More Export For You. The most glaring examples:
  • Dyeing blood various colors and calling it "spiritual energy".
  • Eliminating all religious references (This being a series about warrior-saints fighting holy wars in the name of their goddess Athena)
  • Toning down fight scenes to be less violent
  • Never Say "Die"
  • Upping the characters' ages so they're talking about 17-year-olds going into battle rather than 14-year-olds. (Granted, the art makes that part easy...)

• The anime to School-Live! censors both much of the gore and the zombies, though it's still violent. In the anime the zombies are covered by a black mist — clearly for the viewers sake — that makes it harder to see how decomposed they are. In the manga they're inhumanly black and shadowed however there are more instances of their decaying and bloody bodies being shown. The manga has a lot more on-screen violence, featuring several scenes where the characters graphically 'kill' the zombies. For example when Kurumi killed her senpai the anime has a Gory Discretion Shot that shadows out her stabbing him in the head, but the manga has a different angle that showed it going through his skull and splattering Kurumi with blood.

• A surprisingly well-done example of Bowdlerization is School Rumble, when depictions of underage drinking in the manga were removed in the anime. The lost gags were replaced with new ones that generally worked just as well and were not at all awkward, so unless you'd already read the manga, you'd have no idea any "censorship" occurred at all.

• Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi: The scene of Yoshiyuki brutally raping Chiaki in the Light Novels was downplayed to just a Forced Kiss in the anime (as far as it shows).

• The Shadow Star anime ended before the major violence happened however with the scenes it adapted several were toned down, usually given a Gory Discretion Shot instead.

• Shaman King actually wasn't edited as much as other shows, but it was still edited in some ways:
  • Mostly, it was the removal of violence and potentially sexual imagery. (For example, Ponchi attacking with his testicles.)
  • The most well-known example regards one of the characters. One of the shamans, an American kid named Chocolove, had his name changed to Joco in English. This was done because, thanks to Values Dissonance, he could have been perceived as a racist caricature (and actually is by some people, despite their efforts). On top of that, he had his name changed in the manga (where everyone else had their Japanese names), and his lips were edited out (oddly enough, they didn't edit his lips in the anime).
  • Lyserg's spirit partner, Morphine, had her name changed to "Chloe". Also, the many jiganshi that showed up throughout the anime were always referred to as "hunter spirits".

• Slayers suffered some Bowdlerization during its conversion from light novel to anime in Japan.
  • The infamous "Noonsa" scene early in the first story: In the original book, Dilgear tells Noonsa to "rape" Lina. The anime changes this to "kiss".
    • This scene was also Bowdlerized in Tokyopop's translation of the light novel, where the "rape" order is accompanied by an inside joke that involves egg-laying and him fertilizing them—meaning, he has no idea about the concept of human procreation. Tokyopop kept in the part about egg fertilization; only the word "rape" was removed, changed to "kiss", as in the anime.
    • The same scenario was used in one of the manga adaptations (Super Explosive Demon Story), and when it was translated, the rape threat was also censored (although whether the original Japanese manga used the word "rape" like the novel did is unclear).
  • During the anime adaptation of the third novel, where Rezo the Red Priest appears to come back from the dead, but is actually just a copy, a chimera created and experimented on by the original (still dead) Red Priest. During the climax of the battle, he opens his eyes—big deal considering he's supposed to be blind. The anime shows him with golden demonic eyes, whereas in the original novel, his eyes have been removed completely, replaced with demonic mouths filled with sharp teeth and snake tongues.
    • A more minor one occurs mere moments later when Copy-Rezo destroys Sairaag. Both versions result in the deaths of the entire city's population. In the anime, although they said everybody died, visually the city appeared to be deserted long before its destruction. In the original novel, the battle explicitly took place in the middle of town, and Lina mentions that hundreds of citizen-spectators were watching the fight minutes before the entire city was vaporized.
  • The anime adaptation of the second novel went even further in its Bowdlerization. Lina has to deal with two powerful sorcerors, Tarim the Violet and Daymia the Blue, who hate each other's guts. In the anime, both are alive in the end and attempt to get along better after nearly being killed by their former mentor Halcyform the White, who'd made a pact with a Mazoku to revive his dead wife. In the original novel, however, the Mazoku attacked Daymia the Blue and used the legendary "Raugnut Rushavna" spell on him, turning him into a formless mound of writhing flesh, constantly eating itself and repeating his final words—a crazed laugh—for all eternity. The scene makes Lina want to throw up.

• Sonic X was frequently Bowdlerised:
  • "Real" firearms became lasers (quite tricky when you consider there was a large backstory involving a military organization), several shots of human-shaped characters being hurt were removed, all upper-front shots of the character Rouge were eliminated, and some scenes made no sense whatsoever. Some say the Bowdlerizing of the final episode was so blatant it actually knocked several scenes out of sequence. What made it even more amusing was that they put in lasers, but didn't edit out the spent cartridges ejecting from the guns. In another example, the first episode with Eggman after the premiere cut out all of his robot's rampage at the beach and through the city, going almost immediately from the robot emerging from the water to Sonic fighting it atop a building.
  • Early in the Sonic Adventure arc, the scene when the police fire at Chaos only to find their bullets do nothing is cut for obvious reasons. Note that this scene is one of the first things you see in the actual game.
  • In episode 59, when Sonic confronts the Chaotix, there was originally a shot of Espio holding a knife. This was cut from the dub.
  • When the Chaotix introduce themselves to the viewer in episode 39, they had an image of them on the screen while they talked about themselves. Espio's had him holding a throwing knife, the background was covered in blood, and while this was shown he talked about how he was responsible for the attacks. 4kids replaced the images with reused clips of the character talking, and what Espio said was completely different. Originally, the episode had Charmy rent some Sonic X DVDs in as a way for the Chaotix to figure out what's going on, as they don't know what the newspaper is talking about^note  "ARK was falling?" What's ARK? What was falling down?. They realize they don't have the right kind of device to watch them, so Espio steals a DVD player. 4kids didn't want to have Espio stealing, so they removed everything related to the DVDs and added a long montage when Vector reads the newspaper which he now understands completely.
  • The scene of Maria being shot by a GUN soldier is cut and the dialogue insists on using ""lost" and "taken away" to refer to her death.
  4Kids Dialogue: Please sir, you've just got to tell us what happened! You're the only survivor. Everyone else was... lost. ...Even my father... I'm begging you, please tell us! You owe it to the memory of all those innocent people!
  • Molly doesn't die in an explosion in the dub. Instead, she "flies her ship into space to help other planets fight the Metarex."
  • They couldn't remove Cosmo's death scene completely, so they instead tried to remove emotional depth. Tails manages to keep it together enough to say 'goodbye', whereas in the Japanese he's barely able to manage to do anything more than screaming, crying, arguing, and slamming his head on the control panel for the Sonic Driver Also when Cosmo grows up, there are a number of shots of the most obvious developments, some of which are removed in the dub.
  • In episode 67, Chris getting stabbed is changed to him being punched and knocked out.
  • Almost all blood was erased. Almost being because in episode 73, Shadow has a small cut above his eye at one point, which 4kids either didn't see or forgot to erase.
  • In the episode where Sonic meets Helen, one character holds a wine bottle and starts pouring it. 4Kids painted a giant salami over it and cut out the shots of him pouring the drink.

• The anime adaptation of Soul Eater bowdlerized a fair amount of content
  • All of Maka's panty-shots were removed.
  • Much of the nudity is more toned down, especially with Blair.
  • Free's brutal slaughtering of the prison guards was absent in the anime.
  • The rabbit that a young Crona was forced to kill was changed to a... dragon.
  • The entire second fight between Maka and Crona was much more disturbing in the manga, especially when Maka grinds Crona's face against the blade of the Scythe, only for Crona to look back up at her sporting a long scar across his face along with a nice Slasher Smile.
  • Words like "fuck" and "pussy" are used frequently in the official English translation of the manga, but are rarely used in either the English sub or dub of the anime.

• The English version of Speed Racer deleted a portion near the ending of episode 50 where Speed's brother cries and calls himself a deadbeat for abandoning his brother for his mission. It makes the ending less bittersweet.

• Spy X Family, the series is a comedy at heart but around the humor there’s a fair share of drama and violence, considering the setting is about war, spies and assassins; the manga does show a little of said bloody action, not in gruesome detail but is quite strong enough for the anime to dial some of it down, it does so by using some camera angle tricks so goons being shot in the head, or just killed in general, are often out of frame, and bodies laying around are obscured by lack of ambient lighting.

• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie had two home release versions. One version removed Chun-Li's shower scene. Another version, in a pink box, included Chun-Li's shower scene, and was less edited from the original version. Both replaced the Japanese soundtrack with US bands. The UK and Australia releases retain the edits while leaving in profanity. The version included on the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is further edited. Eventually, uncut versions were released on DVD and Blu-ray.

• The Street Fighter II: Ryu manga was released in English as Street Fighter II, as single issue comics with rearranged panels and censored nudity, covering the first two volumes. Eventually, UDON released all three volumes uncut. In Japan, the 2004 "Complete Edition" censors nudity.

T-V

• Televix Entertainment did this with some anime that it distributes in Latin America, such as Inuyasha or Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), making visual edits to remove blood and tone down scenes that they considered violent or inappropriate. The most infamous example occurs in Inuyasha episode 1, where a digital bikini was added to Mistress Centipede to hide her nudity (ignoring that bikinis didn't exist in the Sengoku period). However, the scripts do not feature major changes and remain faithful to the Japanese versions, and the visual censorship is only for the TV versions, since streaming or video releases are uncensored.
  • Televix also used 4kids versions as a base for several animes that they dubbed, so their dubs inherits all the censorship and changes of 4kids dubs.
• Tenchi Muyo! really suffered from this when aired on Cartoon Network, especially the OVAs. This was the series that created the Digital Bikini to get the Hot Springs Episode past the censors (and there were plenty of them) and avoid having to cut any scenes that had nudity in them, but were plot relevant. (For a comprehensive listing, click here).
  • Another thing they would do is relabel the sake (Japanese rice wine) the characters drank from time to time (especially Ryoko) as "tea", leading to moments where Ryoko would be drunk off her ass after drinking tea and one hilarious moment where Tenchi calmly tells Ryoko "I don't want to drink tea".
  • The editing also leads to an interesting but minor plot hole due to this — in the seventh OVA episode, Tenchi is stuck in Washu's lab and the scientist is in need for "samples". After Tenchi complains about Sasami waiting for them, it jump cuts to Sasami, who asks where everyone was. While they explain where Tenchi, Washu, Ryoko and Ayeka were, nothing is mentioned of Mihoshi. That's because she was in Washu's lab during the cut segment!
  • Then there's the scene when a very young Sasami falls from an arboretum balcony during Ryoko's attack on Jurai. An expanding pool of blood oozes from her shattered body (mercifully unseen even in the original), eventually spreading to Tsunami's irrigation pool, awakening the goddess and alerting her to Sasami's grave condition. Except the Toonami audience never sees this because the blood is digitally erased—and because of it, and the scene loses all logic and most of its impact.

• The English TV broadcast of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann edited a scene in the bath house episode where the heroes are seen floating along a glowing purple band through a group of well-endowed playboy bunnies. The band keeps you from seeing the heroes' heads rubbing across their funbags.
  • The very same episode had to be heavily edited before it was even allowed to air on Japanese television, removing almost all of its naughty bits (including the episode's main plot of Kamina wanting to see the girls naked), and turning it into a Recap Episode. Both versions are available on the DVD. The edited episode is the one that is currently streaming online, meaning Region 1 DVD buyers have to deal with Aniplex USA's high prices or resold copies of the out-of-print Bandai Entertainment release.

• When CMX, DC Comics' former manga label, first started, they got a lovely title called Tenjho Tenge. In the contact with the Japanese licensor, they stated they would release it with a "Teen (13+)" rating. Then they got ahold of the actual Japanese version, said "Aw shit", and tried their best to make 18+ content suitable for young teenagers. Just in the first volume:
  • Cleavage and panty shots were either painted over or were zoomed in so nothing was visible.
  • Bare breasts and similar nude shots were either zoomed in or given lingerie.
  • Sexual dialogue was watered down to a PG rating.
  • Middle fingers and other strong language was given tamer translations or, in the case of the middle finger, covered up with the chapter information.
  • They changed the word "die" to "smash" on one occasion. (13-year-olds can't handle threats of death according to CMX.)

• The TV cut of TerraforMARS as seen on Crunchyroll has the gore censored to a ridiculous degree. Those Blu-Rays don't sell themselves, after all.

• The TV version of To Love Ru Darkness, censors out all of the nudity with white light.

• Tokyo Mew Mew:
  • The 4Kids dub of Tokyo Mew Mew is very infamous for its cuts, name changes, music replacement, and plot-holes:
    • When introducing Zakuro/Renee, they removed the cross on her necklace and whip, which signified that she was a Japanese Christian. Fearing any religious controversies, they removed the horizontal part of the cross.
    • Aoyama finding out about Ichigo's secret incredibly early in the series. The original episode ended on a very bitter and downer note, with Masaya calling Ichigo by name (But did not learn the truth at that point), and the episode ends with her terrified reaction.
    • They even removed Lettuce's transformation. It's understandable since she's naked through most of it (And not in a Sailor Moon transformation way) but this leads to her never transforming on her own in the dub.
  • While most anime are uncut in most Asian regions, Berry Berry Mew Mew (Korea's dub of Tokyo Mew Mew) had a fair amount of bowderlization. To aim it towards an audience of five year old girls, a lot of bowderlization was done. In some scenes, Kisshyu's pants are raised up to keep his stomach lines from showing and the blood on him was removed in episode 39. All close up, onscreen human kissing was cut out but it was still said by the characters that Kisshyu stole Berry's first kiss and that she has to get kissed to turn into a cat and back, so kissing wasn't totally taken away from the show. The Chimera Anima in episode 51 was also edited slightly to keep its breast lines from showing. Despite that, all the death and dark tones of the 2nd half of the series were kept in. Also, the Insert Songs were changed. For example, Glider became the Opening Theme to The Fantasy Game.

• Transformers: Energon has "sparkling grape juice." Kind of like the "synthetic orange juice" served at the mess hall on Vehicle Voltron.
  • Also, Mirage's (same gender) crush on Galvatron. Like the Sailor Moon example with Amara and Michelle, they edited the dialogue, but not the animation itself, which leaves the giant heart that Mirage manifests at one point more than a little suspicious.
  • Considering how hyperactive anime double-takes are, they probably felt that part could be handwaved as easily as Louis Armstrong's zany beefcake heartings.

• Trigun:
  • In the manga, when Vash destroyed July, he vaporized all of the citizens along with the city. In the anime, the people miraculously survived.
  • In the manga, Legato makes one of the slavers graphically rip out his own heart. In the anime it's turned into a Gory Discretion Shot.

• Ultimate Muscle:
  • Overall the anime is much Lighter and Softer compared to the far more adult manga, removing most of the blood and sexual gags. Funnily enough, the 4Kids Entertainment dub actually has more adult humor!
  • In the manga, Hanzo has the gimmick of cutting the faces off his opponents and using them for his Tatami Puppet attack. The anime changes this to the faces being absorbed into his arm blade, still leaving his victims dead and The Blank but in a less disturbing way.
  • A couple early episodes edit out Kid Muscle wetting himself, with the second example turning it into him farting. Later episodes have no problem showing Mantaro wetting himself, though.
  • In the manga and Japanese version of the anime, Bone Cold, a major villain from the No Respect/Gruesome Threesome arc kills Minch, revealed to be Meat's father, by impaling him with his Hook Hand. The 4Kids dub attempts to dance around this by stating Bone Cold only shattered his hip, even though the characters still react as if he's been murdered.

• The anime version of Venus Versus Virus removed teenager Lucia's heavy smoking habit. In the manga it is a minor plot point, and sign of character development, when she quits but the anime was vastly different so it didn't include it (plus the scene happened after the anime ended).

• Video Girl Ai was originally uncensored in Japan, but later volumes were released by the publisher, Shueisha, with censored nudity. The censored versions were brought to the US by VIZ Media, along with the first twelve volumes of I"s censored for nudity.

W-Z

• The Wandering Son anime removed Fumiya smoking. Justified in that he couldn't have been any older than thirteen at the time of that scene.

• The Warrior Cats manga, which, despite following mostly non-violent (except for Rise of Scourge) backstories, still manages heavy Bowdlerisation in the form of Bloodless Carnage. The fact that these mangas still manage to get a 10+ rating makes this one wonder what they would do with an uncensored adaptation of the original novels. However, they're still allowed to say "die", and one significant character in the Tigerstar and Sasha manga does die a somewhat unpleasant death. Somewhat averted by Shattered Peace. Although the art style still makes things seem Lighter and Softer, the artist clearly wasn't trying to hide any blood in the chicken coop scene.

• Yo-kai Watch:
  • The English dub of Yo-kai Watch gets away with much more than you would expect, especially compared to other Mon series dubs and considering it's on Disney XD in America, however it still has its fair share of censorship to fit differing cultural standards.
    • Harmeowny's bikinis were edited to be more modest, but the implication of them being on an adult fanservice show was left intact.
    • Manjimutt's peeing scenes were kept in, however the peeing stream was removed.
    • Jibanyan's backstory of him dying due to getting being hit by a truck is kept, although images of his dead body were edited out. Later episodes avert this by clearly showing his body.
    • Shots of Eddie's butt in the Roughraff episode are covered with underwear, although Bear still mentions that they can see his butt crack.
    • The Robonyan vs B3-NK1 scene where Robonyan acts rather suspicious after B3-NK1 sticks his sword into him was censored in the Disney XD English dub, however very lightly as the joke is still kept. The second time B3-NK1 does it was reanimated so that he's sticking it into Robonyan's body and not through his butt. In the original Robonyan moans and describes it as him being "rubbed" while in the dub he laughs and plays it off as tickling. Later he shakes his butt at B3-NK1 to get him to "rub" him more, which was reanimated. There is a scene that shows a city being bombed in the Japanese version but the English version fades to a white screen before it explodes. In the Singapore Toonami English dub the scene was edited even more so it looks like Robonyan's moaning in pain (though Nate still believes he's enjoying it). The part where he gets stabbed in the rear is kept (and it's called "rubbing") but the rest of the scene where he writhes in pleasure is cut, making him go from lying on the floor to B3-NK1 holding him up for no reason. The dub also keeps the city being bombed uncensored. Essentially the Disney XD dub kept the scene intact but made it slightly less sexual whille the Toonami dub kept the dialogue intact but censored the actual scenes.
    • Manjimutt taking photos of a woman's breasts when he becomes a photographer was censored in the Toonami Asia dub, but not the Disney XD dub.
    • A show featuring topless, muscular men was edited to be a cooking show in the English dub.
  • The Cartoon Network UK airings cuts out some scenes that the US airings were fine with. In episode 5, when Whisper strangles Jibanyan with his collar and later when Nate slaps him with a paper fan were cut out. Unlike the above mentions, these scenes are harmless (the edits possibly had more to do with a rule the BBFC has where any show with imitable behavior will be given a high rating if left unedited).
    • Happens in the UK again with the Signibble episode. Not a single scene of the naughty channel makes it in and they even changed it to make it look like Nate and his friends WANTED to watch the cooking channel.
    • Also in the UK, the Negitibuzz episode doesn't include the very end where the dentist enthusiastically drills Nate's tooth.
  • Yokai Watch has been censored in Japan as it is extremely popular with children but has some content considered unsuitable for little kids even by Japanese standards. For example, Dirty Old Man Manjimutt and Fidgephant (who is an elephant yokai that makes people need to pee and sprays liquid out of his nose) were either downplayed or removed in future episodes. There's even a segment called Komasan Taxi that has real-world complaints against the series (such as a parent disliking the scene where Robonyan acts too excited at being stabbed in the rear).
  • The Arabic dub aired on Spacetoon is edited to give Katie blue leggings, and any instance of the character Sproink was edited out.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • Yu Yu Hakusho's dub broadcast edits out smoking, which removes Yusuke's strategy for victory in one fight. This also counts for the transition from manga to anime — in the manga, he uses one of his own cigarettes, while in the anime, he uses one that Genkai (who smokes in that scene and never smokes again), threw at him. In the Three Kings saga, the demon who Kurama hired to attack Yomi, resulting in him being blinded, appears mostly intact, but emaciated in the anime, while in the manga, much of his body, including a good part of his chest, and one of his arms, has rotted away
  • Yu Yu Hakusho also had some edits in its transition from manga to anime (and Japanese manga to English manga).
    • Mukuro's past was so utterly horrific that it was removed from the anime altogether. In the manga, she's a sex slave who was raped repeatedly by her father, who actually had her fitted with cybernetics at birth so she would be unable to fight back, until she finally disfigured herself with acid so that he wouldn't want to do it any more? This culminated in Hiei's idea of a good birthday present being to bring him to her, trapped inside a special plant that granted him paralysis and a Healing Factor so that she could torture him all she wanted, potentially for the rest of eternity. In the anime and the English-translated manga, Murkuro is a cybernetically enhanced ex-slave who paid for her freedom by cutting off the flesh from half her body. However, in the OVA, Eizou Hakusho, her father appears to have met the same fate as he did in the manga.
    • The anime is generally good about making its bowdlerization look natural, but there's an odd bit in Hiei's fight with Seiryu. In the manga, he literally falls apart after the delayed effect of Hiei's slashing. In the anime, he starts cracking and bleeding—and then disappears in a whirlwind of mist.
    • Yusuke was shown to smoke cigarettes early on in the manga, as an example of his delinquent behavior. The anime removed the instances of smoking (due to him being underage) or replaced shots of him smoking with shots of him eating a cracker. In order to defeat his first opponent in Genkai's tournament, instead of using one of his own cigarettes, he takes one that Genkai threw at his head when he paused to taunt his opponent.

• The English dub of Zatch Bell!, aside from a title change (from Gash Bell, because "gash" in English can mean "a type of severe wound", and is also a euphemism for female genitalia), had an edited broadcast dub like the rest of Viz Media's anime, but because it never had the same Cash-Cow Franchise power as, say, Naruto, it was edited at an inconsistent rate:
  • A big inconsistent edit is in the guns; sometimes they appear normally, but in the episode where Kyo and Gash/Zatch aid Li-en in saving her Mamodo partner Wonrei, the guns the guards have are painted green, but they fire regular bullets.
  • This series is also huge with the Dub Name Change trope (including the titular Mamodo). Just go there and see.
  • And the flamboyant singer Folgore had a signature song he sang for fun; in the Japanese version, he sang about his love of breasts; this was changed to a generic "let's have a good day" song in the English dub.
  • Characters who smoked in the original were (surprisingly) allowed to keep their cigars or cigarettes in the dub, though the actual flames and smoke were edited out.
  • Most of the above statements were carried over in the translation of the manga as well.

• Zoids, had the T. rex-ish Berserk Führer changed into the more ferocious sounding, but less Hitler-y Berserk Fury in the English dub.

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