Virtually any reference to American (or Western in general) pop culture is generally reviled as a lame joke added by dubbers or a mere coincidence, even when it is actually a Cultural Cross-Reference. One example is when Tom Hanks and Mariah Carey are brought up in an episode of Wedding Peach, when all are in the original Japanese.
In fact, many Western references made in Sailor Moon were removed from the English dub, such as Rei Hino being a fan of Michael Jackson, or a Princess Diana expy that appeared in the show.
There's also a lot of people who don't seem to realize that some of these Western references put into anime that weren't there in the first place were actually replacing a reference that wouldn't make sense elsewhere. Some manga series leave pop-cultural references intact and explain it outside the panels or on an extra page, and while some fansubs will include a little extra subtitle explaining it — some however prefer not to do this, as it's distracting and may be way too easy to miss. Mangas have the advantage of the reader being able to read at their own pace, whereas anime and film do not have this advantage.
Sometimes, name changes aren't as bowdlerized as you may think. There's the Castle in the Sky example listed on this page, and other examples such as Chi-Chi being changed in Latin America. No, this was done because "Chi-Chi" is regional slang for "Breasts". Would you really think it's a good idea to have a character named "Breasts" in a show meant for children and teenagers? Though it's also slang for "breasts" in Japanese, so it certainly got used in a childrens' show in Japan and would have been Incidental Multilingual Wordplay if it had been kept. Amusingly enough, the name wasn't changed in Spain, despite the fact that "Chichi" is how kids named female genitalia there.
DiC and Cloverway are often blamed for the dubbing of Sailor Moon when in fact Optimum Productions is responsible for most of how the dub turned out.
DiC, Cloverway and Optimum are all blamed for the numerous inconsistencies in the dub (particularly in terms of terminology, such as attacks and plot-important objects). Actually the one most probably guilty for those is Toei Animation itself — the company is infamous for giving other countries English scripts that are inconsistent and full of mistranslations.
A character example: Chibiusa/Rini/Sailor Mini Moon is hated by fans for her sudden promotion from supporting character to main character in Sailor Moon SuperS, and because of her early brattiness in R, people refuse to believe that she's grown up and blame her for why SuperS failed. It's not the character's fault she was shoehorned into main character status. It was mostly due to Executive Meddling. The creators thought that they could try and save the show's popularity by trying to reach a new, much younger audience by making her a lead character, mostly in an attempt to make younger audiences relate/identify with her, which obviously didn't work.
Another Chibiusa-related one. It used to be very common for fans to claim that Chibiusa thinks of Usagi as her "older sister" and criticized the English dub for having "Rini" refer to "Serena" as her mother. In truth, Chibiusa acknowledges Usagi as her mother quite often in the original Japanese. In fact, one of the few times Chibiusa addresses Usagi as "Big Sister," Usagi notes how awkward that is and realizes Chibiusa wants a favor. When that doesn't work, Chibiusa then addresses her as "Mother." The fact that they pose as cousins in the present might be what confuses fans.
Here's one that could have prevented one of the examples on this page from happening. When the second-to-last episode of season 1 aired, children were believed to have gotten sick because they were upset by the deaths of the other Sailor Guardians, but the episode had one moment with bright and intense flashing lights that could cause seizures.
Inuyasha: Many European fans believe the English versions of the songs are produced by The Ocean Group. They are really made by the Italian dub, sung by Italians, and have only aired in Italy. Anyone who has seen the North American TV broadcasts will quickly tell you the English dub uses the original Japanese ending themes, and the openings aren't broadcast at all due to time constraints (though they are on the DVDs and, yup, in Japanese).
In Digimon, dubbers were blamed for things they didn't do. Before the advent of widespread fansubbing, when the details of the original were only known to a few, a lot of blatant lies were taken as absolute fact:
There was also the persistent rumor that the English dubbers removed both a TK/Kari kiss that was supposedly in episode 13 and that both supposedly did end up married in the Distant Finale. Neither the kiss nor the marriage happened, of course, but the blame-inducing damage was done.
The same goes for Matt and Sora being divorced post-series. A statement by one of the script translators that this absolutely did not happen hasn't stopped the Tai/Sora shippers from insisting it did.
Wormmon did not gain an Armor form near the end of season two. The Japanese episode title "The Last Armor Evolution" refers to the show's last use of the gimmick, not a specific user. Wormmon only Armor-evolves in an audio play.
There was a lot of humor that poked fun and lampshaded Davis' arrogant and ignorant characteristics in the dub. Some interpreted this as an insult and assumed the the Japanese version of Davis was much different. This was categorically denied by the production; turns out it was a well-intentioned running gag that people took too seriously. In fact, a lot of the instances where Davis is being an idiot, inconsiderate or generally acting like a jerk are almost the same in the original Japanese version. The only difference is that in the English version, most of these instances are lampshaded by the other characters, and because this occurs quite often it ends up looking like the writers had something against Davis when in reality they were just translating his dialogue. However, many fans swore that the Japanese Davis was different (read: smarter) despite having never seen the original version of 02. One example of a "Davis-is-an-idiot" joke has Kari show him her day planner, and Davis mistakes the date (8/1) for a fraction, and everyone laughs. This joke is almost exactly the same in both versions.
This got so bad that on the then-famous Digimon Couples forum, a long list of obviously fake Censored Dub Evidence was posted for Sora and Cody. At least, one hopes they meant it as a joke. Then again, this is Digimon, where every single character is a Launcher of a Thousand Ships...
Takato Matsuki and Ms. Asaji are different in the original version (Matsuda and Asanuma) but the fault was a misspelled script and not a deliberate change. And again, the difference between Matsuda and Matsuki is hardly world-shaking.
Taichi and Hikari originally had the last name "Yagami". While rumors spread that Saban's translators changed the name due to it being "I'm a gay" backwards, the truth is that "Yagami" became "Kamiya" due to a mistake in reading its characters.
Digimon Frontier is generally considered by the English-speaking fanbase to have been the cause of the Digimon franchise's decline in popularity and the long hiatus until Digimon Data Squad. In actuality, it was the fan darling Digimon Tamers that lost the target demographic of young children (due to the Audience-Alienating Premise in its total Continuity Reboot and writing they couldn't appreciate until they got older), the changes that made Frontier unpopular were just a failed attempt to reverse the loss. Real Life circumstances outside the show's control (the decline of the virtual pet fad that was the base for the franchise, poor merchandising attempts, Disney's apathetic treatment) didn't help.
Oh my God, look at what Light says in Death Note! He says, "I'll take a Potato chip, and EAT it!" Death Note is ruined! Look at what they added! ...added what? That scene is pretty much exactly the same as the anime, and the subtitles even say "I'll take a potato chip..." (pause) "And eat it!" while the so-called dramatic music that people claim was added plays. And in fact, it's even the same in the manga! Sans the dramatic music and the epic chip-split-in-half.
There's a conspiracy theory in the fandom that all PokéShipping is a product of 4Kids. Actually, the dub took out as much as was put back in, with the added reminder that as a kodomo series, it never had huge romantic overtones anyway. A rumored scene in Misty's departure episode that showed Ash giving his cap to Misty was never in the original to begin with.
Some Pokémon fans go further, and blame 4Kids for the many name changes that are actually the fault of Nintendo of America (changes, incidentally, that few if any fans of the original games ever complain about), even those "changes" that were just faulty translations to begin with.
4Kids is often blamed for "removing" the backstory of Mewtwo in Mewtwo Strikes Back, where Amber teaches Mewtwo about life, for being too sad, or because it involved cloning human children. In actuality, this prologue was never part of the original theatrical release in Japan, and was created much later for DVDs and various other re-releases.
The Advanced Generation series has a number of very weird edits and censorship, like the removal of Poké Ball symbols on Ash's badge case and removal of crosshairs on some of Team Rocket's devices, that get blamed on 4Kids. In reality, these edits were entirely due to the laws of American TV at the time and are only present in the American airing of the episodes. The edits don't appear when the same episodes were shown outside America.
An interview revealed that the series becoming more culturally generic after the first saga was a decision made solely by the Japanese creators, who were very much aware that they had a worldwide franchise on their hands. It was not forced upon them by 4Kids as one faction had been insisting for years.note The original head writer, Takeshi Shudō, also left around this time; he had wanted the series to stay very Japanese and was not pleased with the subsequent seasons.
Related to the above, an episode in the first series had Brock take out Onigiri (Rice balls) but these were called "Jelly Donuts". Most people talk about how 4Kids assumed this was due to them thinking Viewers Are Morons - it was actually recommended by the Japanese execuives.
In the first episode that introduces Crasher Wake, the character of the day is redrawn compared to the Japanese version. People thought it was Pokémon USA, but it turns out it was the Japanese who changed it because he was based off the protagonist of Dokonjou Gaeru, and they presumably wanted to avoid a lawsuit.
Fans of May are quick to complain that they Bowdlerised her by decreasing her breast size in her Sinnoh reappearance onwards. They didn't, they just followed guidelines better. May's chest was never consistent throughout Hoenn and it was considerably larger than her game version most of the time, so they just updated it to her correct (smaller) size.
The 2011 Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster catches the blame for pushing Team Plasma into an arc after the badge quest, as well as, for some fans, dramatically changing (for the worse) a saga that started off strong, or at least decent. In reality, the production of sequel gamesinstead of the usual third version is what caused the Plasma arc to be temporarily aborted and the series to change so dramatically. This also made the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma! two-parter, which was cancelled because of the earthquake and would have resolved the Meteonite plot, a Morton's Fork. If it did air, the fans would be on the writers for giving Team Plasma as short a shrift as they gave Teams Magma and Aqua. That said, it certainly didn't help matters.
Some game-to-anime mistakes aren't due to the translators. For example, Misty accidentally called Furret a "ground type" in the Japanese version as well.
There was a conspiracy theory in the American fandom that the dub was responsible for changing Yammy ripping Chad's arm apart (as in the manga – a scene that appeared even in the more strictly censored American version of Shonen Jump)* Please note that the collected volumes of Bleach are almost completely uncensored (one major exception being to cover up the rare nude shot, even if said shot was already obscured by fog in the original) – to Yammy simply knocking Chad down. That change was made by the original animators, not by the localization team.
A good part of the blame for "Kubo's horrible pacing" doesn't come from Tite Kubo himself, but from Executive Meddling: The editors at Shueisha pushed for the Soul Society Arc to start earlier, instead of giving Kubo more time to develop Ichigo's classmates, and for extending the Arrancar Arc due to the unexpected popularity of the Arrancar characters. Go tell that to the fans, though.
It was widely believed that Keyop in Battle of the Planets has his strange speech pattern because swearing was censored out in the original Gatchaman, though this belief has pretty much ended now that unedited dub Gatchaman by ADV Films is commercially available and can be compared. It seems more likely that the Sandy Frank adaptation team gave him the speech pattern to emphasize how "strange" he is as an engineered clone (while Jinpei in the original Gatchaman has no such origin).
When Attack on Titan's English dub premiered at Anime Boston 2014, ADR director and voice of Jean Kirschtein Mike McFarland revealed to fans that the English Dub Name Change of "3D Maneuver Gear" to "Omni-Directional Mobility Gear" wasn't in fact the choice of the dubbing team. When FUNimation acquired the rights to dub the show, they were given the name to work with by the Japanese licensers.
Most complaints about Naruto's English voice being "so annoying" ignore the character is a Bratty Half-Pint and state that it just doesn't show up as much when listening to his voice in another language. Instead of sounding like he has a sore throat in English... he sounds like he has a perma-screech in Japanese.
Another common complaint is that the dub replaced a swastika on Neji's head with an X. Except the anime did that originally.
The dub even got blamed for some art changes made for the Japanese DVDs!
The Naruto fandom complained that Tayuya of the Sound Five doesn't swear in the dub, as her rudeness is not only a key character trait but also a plot point at one point in the story (when a character attempts to impersonate her and doesn't pull it off); however in the dub her simply being rude is still evident because of the choice of words she uses anyway.
Though there's quite a lot of stuff 4Kids certainly does deserve to be blamed for, one thing they don't is not dubbing "Season 0" of Yu-Gi-Oh! (which covers the earliest chapters of the manga). Here's why: that first season was actually a completely different series, made by a different animation company (Toei), with sometimes drastically different character designs, and sharing no continuity with the more popular followup series.
Speaking of, considering all of the wacky things that Konami and Upper Deck Entertainment have done to the Yu-Gi-Oh!card game, it's hard for fans to keep track of who did what, and they'll often misblame one company for a screw-up that the other did.
Remember that scene where Joey punches Tristan in the Duelist Kingdom, and how it was removed (or as LittleKuriboh put it, "It is implied dat I am punching you"?) Well, it's your imagination, because the scene is not there in the original either (Joey punching Yami Yugi was cut, though).
4Kids was also blamed for making up "the heart of cards", which is in the original, albeit not to the extent as in the dub, and a bit different in concept.
They also got blamed a lot for making up the concept of the "Shadow Realm" from whole cloth. They didn't; it exists in the original, inasmuch as the dark bubble dimension the characters slip into during a Shadow Game is the "Shadow Realm". It's just that the dub adds a bunch of occasions where just dying is changed to getting sent there.
4Kids is often blamed for turning Anzu/Téa into a "friendship nut", citing the speech she gives before Yugi and Kaiba's first duel as if 4Kids had created the whole scene themselves out of thin air. The speech in question and Téa's tendencies were, again, almost utterly unchanged, being slightly exaggerated at most.
You want to talk about getting blamed for stuff that wasn't their fault? Their page on this wiki reminds people that they weren't the ones responsible for the editedCardcaptors translation of Cardcaptor Sakura: Nelvana was* also misblamed, see below. Yes, their reputation for screwing things up was so bad that they got blamed for bad dubs they didn't even do.
Similarly, the original TV dub of The Vision of Escaflowne, produced by Ocean Studios and with changes ordered by Fox, was at one point attributed to 4Kids on this wiki. And those who do attribute the changes to Fox would constantly claim that they "redubbed" the series, and that the "American" dub was different from the "Canadian" one. Actually, they didn't rerecord a single line, only got rid of some for censorship reasons. The Ocean Group dub was the only English dub in existence at the time. (The later release from Bandai Entertainment is uncut.)
Digimon was frequently blamed on 4Kids too; that dub was actually Saban's. You'd think the group of voice actors used (literally from the other side of the country)* Saban was based in (and Digimon was dubbed in) Los Angeles, whereas 4Kids was based in (and always recorded in) New York City. would be a strong hint.
MegaMan NT Warrior as well, which actually belonged to ShoPro Entertainment (who would eventually merge into Viz Media). One must wonder if everybowdlerised televised anime dub from the early-to-mid 2000s was blamed on 4Kids at some point.
Their One Piece dub is their most infamous and the one that earned them a lot of ire from the fandom, held up as the ultimate example of how 4Kids only sees anime as for children and has no respect for the original source material. However, 4Kids never even wanted to dub the show- it was Toei Animation who forced them to do it under threat of taking away their license to Ojamajo Doremi, the show they actually wanted to dub.
Related, the 4Kids Dub of One Piece has Bowdlerised Sanji's cigarette into a lollipop. This is actually in order to comply with American laws about depicting cigarettes in works that are intended for minors.
Speaking of Cardcaptors, Nelvana gets a lot of flack for the dub (even here on this very wiki), and for cutting roughly half the series and editing it into a jumbled mess. While they did make some changes, such as trying to tone down the romantic subtext, applying the Cultural Translation that was so common at the time, and adding more of an Arthurian Legend theme, they did in fact dub all 70 episodes, and even the first movie, and were relatively accurate when doing so. But then Kids' WB! strolled in and got the rights to air the series in America, and proceeded to cut it down to 39 episodes, reorder episodes to try to make Li Syaoran the main character, rip multiple episodes up and sloppily patch them together, then promptly left Nelvana to take all of the blame. Many a non-American English speaker has been quite confused when discussing the dub with Americans as a result.
Some seem to think Nippon Ichi Software America made a new dub for their DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Cardcaptors. In reality, they had used the old Animax dub for the release. Whether or not they should have made a new dub is a source of debate, but NISA had nothing to do with the dub beyond getting the rights and putting it in their release.
A large quantity of the complaints about the My-HiME and My-Otome manga stem from not being faithful to the "original anime", despite the fact that the production teams were each given settings and characters whose traits they would establish themselves, and were made at the same time. This means that neither was an adaptation of the other.
Viz Media was blamed for the horrific dub of Eyeshield 21 when the blame actually goes to "The Eyeshield 21 US Project", a group of Japanese companies who took a bunch of episodes of Eyeshield 21 and merged them into five episodes for a test run.
While Hiruma's... distinctivespeech pattern is heard clearly in the Jump Festa OVA, it is not heard in the actual TV series.
Many yaoi shippers have claimed that the English dub of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing edits out "definitive proof" that the five Gundam pilots are gay, up to and including a wedding for one of the most shipped pairings and a sex scene for another. As the show is easily available unedited, this information can be proved false by simply watching the show and not the fantasy version cooked up by yaoi fans.
In another case, certain fans often badmouth Mark Hildreth for portraying Heero as robotic rather than subdued; at conventions, Hildreth has said this was the decision of the voice director, not him.
In a variation, Christopher Sabat, a regular voice director for Funimation and frequent voice actor, was often leveled criticism for the heavy dialogue alterations for Dragon Ball Z from the third season on. He pointed out that it wasn't his department, the scriptwriting was out of his hands and his job was to do the best he could with the performance. To Funimation's credit, though, they took the time to make both acceptable to fans. (Interestingly, Sabat and Sean Schemmel have admitted to altering their lines in Dragon Ball Super to add jokes, but generally don't get flack due to said alterations being entertaining and less glaringly out of place.)
At one point in Z, Goku says that Dr. Briefs modified the space pod Goku landed on Earth in to be able to fly him to Namek. The problem with that plot point is that Piccolo had blown up Goku's spaceship in an earlier episode. DBZ Uncensored, a popular fansite back in the late 90's and early 2000's, blamed Funimation for creating a Dub-Induced Plot Hole, and claimed that in the original Japanese, Goku had modified Raditz's ship instead. However, Funimation actually translated the line accurately, and the plothole exists in the original Japanese as well — the scene where Piccolo finds Goku's spacepod and blows it up is a filler scene that doesn't exist in the original manga. While the original line does mention Raditz's spacepod, it's only in passing and explicitly says that it "got blown to bits".
In yet another dubbing-related example, Funimation is frequently blamed for the changing of characters' names and the title of the American dub and English manga* published by Viz Media, who also gets a share of the blame of Case Closed, which was originally called Detective Conan. The name changes were actually requested by the Japanese licensor Tokyo Movie Shinsha, while the title change was the result of a complaint by one of the owners to the rights of Conan the Barbarian.
They were also blamed for changing Kimi ga Nozomu Eien to Rumbling Hearts. As it turns out, the decision to use it as the English title was made by the Japanese licensor (it was the subtitle for one of the PS2 ports, as well as the title of the main opening theme for incarnations of the original game), not Funimation.
The English Market-Based Title of Soukou no Strain, Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry, has been criticized for misrepresenting the series as battle-oriented (when some episodes don't even feature any fighting) and doing a bad job describing the role of the main characters. Actually, "STRategic Armoured INfantry" has been the official full name for the Strain units piloted by the Spatial Armour Division ever since the series first came out, and if you notice, the original title is also named after the mecha!
This was inverted with Funimation's initial Dragon Ball Z dub. The Ocean Group is often blamed for the severe censorship found in the first two seasons of the original English dub, when it was in fact FUNimation (and to a lesser extent Saban) who were responsible.
The dub's use of "Saiyan" instead of "Saiyajin" is often accused of being a Dub Name Change, when it's really more of a translation. "Saiyajin" means "people of Saiya", and that phrase in English would usually be shortened to "Saiyan" (similar to shortening "people of America" to "American").
When Dragon Ball Z Kai was licensed, Funimation caught some flack for changing the title from Dragon Ball Kai. In reality, Toei chose that name for international distribution due to how the franchise has always been split outside Japan. Pretty much every country outside of Japan got the series with that name.
The old Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie anime OVA, which was made sometime after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, refers to Knuckles the Echidna (introduced in that game) as a mole. This was preserved for the dub, where it is often misinterpreted as a translation error.
This applies whenever a voice actor is criticized for "not sounding enough like the Japanese voice" or something to that effect. In reality, besides that being a dubious assessment of voice acting quality, it's not the voice actor who has the ultimate say on how a line is interpreted and delivered, but rather the voice director. Bizarrely, people also complained about Yuki's voice actress (Michelle Ruff) in the English dub of The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya sounding too much like the original Japanese.
Rather famously, one anime fan complained — to Johnny Yong Bosch's face — that his Ichigo voice didn't sound enough like Masakazu Morita's. Bosch's response was: "I'm an actor, not an imitator."
At a convention panel, Todd Haberkorn related a story in which he ended up auditioning for Hetalia: Axis Powers using a very stereotypical accent for Italy after the authentic Italian accent wasn't what they wanted. He was sent a letter from someone, informing him that his accent was very inaccurate and giving him instructions on how to do a proper one. Haberkorn found the whole thing very amusing.
Ironically, the Japanese producers often have the final say on a dub cast. This is especially true of high-profile shows like One Piece (the Funimation audio commentaries make this abundantly clear), as well as titles where a major member of production takes a personal interest in the localization — as happened with FLCL (for better) and Love Hina (for worse).
Parodied in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: An episode begins with the main cast watching a bad movie, whose director defends it by saying that it's 100% faithful to the source material and it's not his fault the original story sucks. The rest of the episode consists of other people making similar excuses, such as a housewife blaming her recipes for the soup her husband didn't like.
The Government's law enforcers are referred to in Japanese as the "Kaigun" with the word "MARINE" written on their clothes. Thus, most fan-translations went with "Marine" to translate "Kaigun". However, "Kaigun" doesn't actually mean "Marine"; it means "Navy". All official English versions correctly translate it as "Navy", and this usually gets a backlash from fans claiming mistranslation. Funimation, aware of this, would — at least for the first 3 seasons — use "Marine" in the dub but translate it correctly as "Navy" in the subtitles; starting with the fourth season, though, they switched to using "Navy" in both. The word choice itself is somewhat misblamed, however; Marine is technically synonymous with navy, making them interchangeable rather than "right" or "wrong", but that use of the word has fallen out of favor in English.
Another good example is that Mr. 2 Bon Clay constantly refers to himself as a crossdresser ("okama") in the Japanese manga. Toei — the company who produce the anime adaption — objected to this for some reason (probably because he's a walking stereotype) and, in the Japanese version, they changed all his references to being a "crossdresser" to being a "ballerina". This is often called out as a form of "Funimation censorship" when seen in the dub or official subtitles, despite the fact that it was there in the Japanese version too... including pretty much all fansubs.
Mr 2 is himself a subject of this. The upper-echelon of Baroque Works work in male-female pairs, the man designated by a number and the woman with a holiday. Mr 2 — a self-declared transvestite — is given both; the holiday is meant to be bon kurei, the Festival of the Dead. Fans blame the spelling "Bon Clay" on Viz either due to mistranslation or thinking Viewers Are Morons, but actually both "Bon Kurei" and "Bon Clay" appear in Japanese materials and the "Bon Clay" spelling was used at Shueisha's request.
Yet another example is the Zoro/Zolo thing, a spelling difference that many a fan hates. 4Kids and/or Viz typically get the blame for this, and his name is supposed to be a homage to Zorro. But that was exactly the reason it was changed; at the time OP was licensed, Zorro was the subject of a copyright lawsuit (in part because nobody is willing to admit in open court that it fell into the Public Domain years ago). 4Kids, Viz, Shueisha, and Toei (initially) all agreed that it was better to be safe than risk a frivolous lawsuit from a very litigious company. By the time Funimation got the anime out of 4Kids's clutches in 2007, Toei had decided there was no risk in using the original name, but Viz's agreements with Shueisha still specify using the altered name.
The story goes that the reason the DVD sets of Funimation's One Piece have the characters swearing as much as they do is because a large fraction of the OP fandom requested they put the swearing in. Funimation representatives would go to the forums and ask for feedback and fans who watched the fansubs would ask for stuff like Luffy saying he'd "kick [the bad guys'] ass". As a result the Funimation uncut dub at times sounds like it's overcompensating (thankfully, it gets less ridiculous as it goes on).
In Brazil, in a time where fansubs were popular but 4Kids itself wasn't so recognized internationally, many fans blamed the dubbing studio or the networks which broadcast the anime for censoring it rather than 4Kids, leading to a trauma years later when a hoax started to spread in the Internet where Fairy Tail would be broadcast on the same channel which used to broadcast the censored version of One Piece before. Sadly, it was just a hoax, as TV channels in general in later years refused to broadcast any anime mostly because the managers think anime in general are too violent to be broadcast.
Allegedly, many of the changes 4Kids made to their dub were approved by Toei themselves. This includes infamous changes such as turning Helmeppo's pistol into what appeared to be a spring loaded hammer and editing out Laboon the whale.
Some people acusses Eiichiro Oda of sexualizating the female characters by giving them, among others things, huge breasts. This despite the fact that Oda usualy draws the women's body anatomicaly proportional, and the "enhanced" breasts are from the anime, and thus Toei's fault.
Many 4Kids dubs, such as Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and Sonic X, airbrush out English writing from certain scenes or replace them with generic symbols. Many detractors like to blame this on their usual low opinion of their viewers' intelligence ("kids can't read"), but this was actually done for the convenience of foreign localizers.
Anyone that tells you Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or Tokyo Mew Mew were shows for teens or adults that were "kiddified" by their English dubs. These are all, in fact, shows for children, general audiences, or at most young teens. Sometimes these complaints are justified, such as only airing Sailor Moon during timeslots for pre-schoolers or severely censoring the content, but sometimes they seem to stem from a mutation of the Animation Age Ghetto in which the fan doesn't want to admit they're watching a kids' show. This could also stem from the difference in cultures between what Japan/whatever country permits in Japanese kids' shows, when there's usually no way they'd appear in many Western shows made for the same age group.
Even though the modern Disney-produced dubs of the Studio Ghibli films have won over many fans, there are a number of naysayers who have been overly critical of them, and that Hayao Miyazaki must surely be ashamed of them. He isn't. Miyazaki approves of Disney's work (at least since the Mononoke censorship scare), and the only dub he or Ghibli has ever actually disowned is the old bowdlerized dub of Nausicaa from the '80s. Miyazaki's actual thoughts about foreign dubbing, paraphrased: "My films are meant to be watched, not read."
And let's not mention the "omg Castle in the Sky should be Castle Laputa". This was changed because "Laputa" happens to resemble the phrase "La Puta", which means "The Whore" in Spanish, a language that more people in North America are likely to understand than in Japan. What would you think if you saw a film on shelves that was called "Castle The Whore"? Would the Animation Age Ghetto cause you to think it's a stupid cartoon kids should be watching, or would you actually wonder why the hell it's called "Castle The Whore" when it's pretty PG-rated (at worst)?
Castle in the Sky ran into another issue, regarding the redone score. Many American "real" fans went ballistic and unfairly excoriated Disney for Filling the Silence (there was also extra comedic chatter from Dola's sons thrown in during the chase scenes). In reality, the rescore was done by original composer Joe Hisaishi with Miyazaki's blessing, and Hisaishi had said that he was never pleased with the original score and liked the new one better. Unfortunately, the complaints from the American fanbase were so loud and relentless that when the film was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray years later, the rescore was dropped (much, ironically, to the disappointment of the Disney dub's fans); this despite the fact that the rescore is on the Japanese Blu-rays. (A similar change occurred for Kiki's Delivery Service's dub, which had a lot of extra chatter from Phil Hartman including two lines at the end implying that Kiki can still hear him and some additional pieces of music; when both were dropped, fans of the dub complained.) Gkids reissued the film on Blu-ray in 2011, providing viewers with the choice of viewing the Disney dub with either the rerecorded score or the original.
Although the dubs for Transformers: Armada and Transformers: Energonweren't all that great, the writing wasn't good in the original Japanese shows either. (Notably, the more favourably received Transformers: Cybertron and Robots in Disguise were both full of Woolseyisms.) The same is by and large also true for the animation, in that while the versions seen in the dubs were incredibly sloppy and incomprehensible, the Japanese releases weren't much better even with the additional time put on them (as Cartoon Network forced Hasbro and Actas into rushing the original versions out, with the latter being unprepared to handle a 52-episode series and outsourcing most of the episodes to other companies). Many of the CGI and editing faults in Energon were in fact, there from the beginning regardless of which version you watch.
Poor Carl Macek can't catch a break. Although he was responsible for many Macekres, he is frequently given "credit" for almost every poorly localized release of '80s anime. Some even blamed him for the American versions of Warriors of the Wind (which was produced by New World Pictures), Macross: Clash of the Bionoids (which was dubbed by the original Japanese studios and bowdlerised by Just For Kids Video), Battle of the Planets (Sandy Frank) and Tranzor Z (3-B Productions).
Also, he's blamed for removing death and violence from the three series used for Robotech; in fact, not a single death was removed from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, nor was any violence. In fact, the adaptation added some deaths at the end of The Macross Saga. He is also blamed for Robotech: The Movie; the studio in charge of the film rejected his original script, which apparently was mostly a straight dub, and demanded all the changes made to it as they had found the original depressing.
Tokyopop was accused of "flipping" the first series of the Kingdom Hearts manga. They didn't. The manga was released that way in Japan as well, and Tokyopop made this very clear in their press releases about the series.
ADV Films occasionally caught flak for their Gag Dub of Ghost Stories from fans who accused them of completely throwing out the original material just to move a few more DVDs. Granted, that's exactly what ADV did, and they were never shy about admitting it. However, the idea that they did so against Japan's wishes is ridiculous. The reality is that Aniplex, the studio responsible for the show's production, told ADV to do whatever they wanted to make the series sell, and approved all of ADV's changes. According to the dub's ADR director, the order from Japan amounted to, "Do what you want; we don't care." Though they did have one request: Don't change the names of the ghosts or any of the major characters (which ADV complied with).
Geneon and adaptation studio New Generation Pictures caught some grief (on this very wiki, no less) for spelling Alucard's name as Arucard. The facts: They wanted to use "Alucard", but the Japanese producers insisted on "Arucard" since by their logic, "it's Dracura backwards" (good ol' Japanese L-R confusion at work). At least they got away with pronouncing it "Alucard" in the English dub.
They also caught flak over the casting in the dub, with fans excoriating them for the "horrible", "fake" British accents. In reality, all the major British characters (Integra, Walter, Anderson) were played by British expats... except Seras, whose actress is American-born but spent a lot of time growing up in the UK.
Geneon was blamed for "changing" Higurashi: When They Cry's name to "When They Cry", when in fact the Series Franchise that Higurashi belongs to is known as When They Cry in Japan. ("Higurashi" is the Japanese name for a type of cicada).
And the anime of Umineko: When They Cry, which was never dubbed, got blamed for an instance of Kinzo turning into a dragon in the final episode that a lot of fans found to be rather ridiculous. Thing is, if you read the original VN, you'll see that the scene is, um, also there. It's just described in the narration and not visually rendered on the screen.
To hear some people, the blame for the late-2000s collapse of the anime market lay entirely on the backs of harem shows. There were several reasons besides that, such as overbidding, not reaching the right market, the changing market, and the collapse of the whole American economy. In fact, many harem series, especially fanservice-laden ones, were surprise successes at the time — Ikki Tousen and SHUFFLE! come to mind — while cleaner or less formulaic shows were left in the dust. And even then, that's blaming the wrong demographic— lobbying insults at the shows that come on at Otaku O'Clock obviously didn't help with what shows came on during the average Japanese Sunday morning, for example.
A member of Media Blasters stated that getting titles returned is a normal part of releasing anime, except for hentai which is never returned. This is why they don't dub regular niche titles, but will dub things like Queen's Blade. Sex sells, so Media Blasters will release it just so they can release shows they do like.
There was also a Media Blasters panel in which they said that Japanese companies will often bundle titles together and force the company to release all of the titles before giving them a title they did want (also known as a "package deal"). This was the case with the Genshiken OVA and Genshiken2. The Japanese licensor refused to give Media Blasters the rights to any more Genshiken unless they dubbed and released Kujibiki♡Unbalance (2006 version), which they did, even though they knew fans would complain (and they did). Eventually, Media Blasters did get to release a set of all 29 Genshiken episodes sans Kujibiki.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is often accused of Character Exaggeration, but in at least two cases, it's really not the fault of the producers at all. The reason why Kimblee in the 2003 series is a fairly one-note psychopath as opposed to the surprisingly Affably Evil version of the manga is that at the time the 2003 anime was made, all of the manga material on Kimblee consisted of references to him being a gleeful war criminal, and so the 2003 anime's presentation of him is the result of making his character based on those references. Similarly, Mustang is a lot more of a Jerkass in the first anime (as opposed to having a Hidden Heart of Gold), because it wasn't yet established in the manga that Mustang had an Urban Legend Love Life and wasn't actually a lech, and so, understandably, the writers of 2003 went ahead with this vision of him.
As a result of Adaptation Displacement, some fans of the 2003 anime made accusations that Brotherhood is a poor man's retelling of the first anime, without realizing there was a manga, and that Brotherhood is far more faithful to the source material than the 2003 version.
Bang Zoom! Entertainment, a dubbing company, was accused of using interns in dubbing some anime (in particular Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and The Familiar of Zero). While Bang Zoom did use people new to the business because it was cheaper (as these particular dubs had a very low budget as they were made right as Geneon collapsed), none of the major characters were voiced by interns. Any interns who did voice work were playing incidental characters.
Many grossly uninformed warriors in the Subbing Versus Dubbing conflict will claim that all English dub voice acting is done by interns, the director's friends/family, homeless people off the street, etc. In reality, many voice actors in the anime world have extensive experience in commercials and/or stage work; some (like Laura Bailey) even have on-camera work in their résumés. In short, they are actors... just not prominent or necessarily full-time ones.
There's one Internet forum where one poster said that "Dragon Ball GT was a non-canon cash-in made by Funimation". A lot of people who were apparently so scathed by Dragon Ball Z assume that anything Akira Toriyama even does the art for is somehow his writing. For one, no, he is not responsible for the filler and poor pacing of Dragon Ball Z. He wrote the story for Dragon Ball, etc, but the anime is purposely padded and has a lot of filler episodes merely because they didn't want to overtake the manga. He also did not have as much involvement over Dragon Ball GT as some people say he did.
This "Toriyama is Anime POISON!" attitude has also unfotunately spread into other stuff he is involved in. Chrono Trigger is often given a free pass, but would you believe people sometimes refuse to play games like Dragon Quest and Blue Dragon because they assume they're Dragon Ball Z? Akira Toriyama has little to no involvement with the writing and game design of Dragon Quest (which is handled by Square Enix and other companies such as Level-5).
Dragon Ball Z and the franchise both going forward and back are often subject to this. Fans will blame anything they don't like about the series, from the change in tone between the original series and Z, to Vegeta's resurrection and Heel–Face Turn, to Gohan never replacing Goku as the hero, to how long the series ran, to Dragon Ball GT as a whole, to Vegeta's mustache on absolutely anyone but Toriyama even when he is actually to blame.
Many Spanish Dragon Ball fans blame the Spanish translation team for all the sillyorstupid changes in the anime. Actually, Spain bought Dragon Ball from France (like Portugal, Germany and many other European countries did; it was common at the time), and about 90% or more of said changes are France's fault, not Spain's (just ask any German person about THEIR translation, for example.).
Speaking of the Dragon Ball fandom and contrary to what they thought, the 2018 anime series of Gegege No Kitaro had nothing to do with Dragon Ball Super's hiatus; Toei Animation previously announced that Dragon Ball will be on hiatus so the staff would be able to work on the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie.
Macross Frontier is a strange case. Fans blame Shoji Kawamori for not resolving the love triangle in the last episode because of favoritism and marketing, but this belief was due to a bunch of faked interviews made up by a once-respected fan. In actuality it was Yoshino, the series' scriptwriter, who is at fault for the love triangle never resolving, and for none of the reasons previously thought. But he also can't be blamed too much, due to him being quite chatty when it comes to clarifying how the series ended. But this doesn't stop some of the Fan Dumb who didn't do their homework from blaming Kawamori for what happened for shipping reasons.
The ending sequence of Ookami Kakushi is almost entirely different from the actual ending in the Visual Novel. Those familiar with Higurashi claimed Ryukishi didn't even care about his own story, not realizing that, unlike Higurashi and Umineko, he had no involvement with this adaptation whatsoever, and that many plotpoints that are heavily criticized—including the aforementioned ending—aren't even in the original story.
Many people who've seen the English dub of Xam'd: Lost Memories claim that the story makes no sense. While the story does get rather complicated with time, the primary reason for this is that the English dub is a "Blind Idiot" Translation. Context is off, word choice is misleading, and translations are inconsistent. For example:
"One more red mark (akaboshi) and I'll get disciplinary training." -> "Akaboshi's disciplinary committee's coming by again!"
"Don't be stupid. We purged those a long time ago." -> "Don't even joke about that. I don't want to be purged..."
"It's a 3 hour wait at the military hospital. You'd be long dead before the examination." -> "They always glare at you before examination."
The Mysterious Cities of Gold is a joint French-Japanese program written by Frenchmen and animated by a Japanese company. This hasn't stopped accusations of French Bowdlerization of the "original Japanese" popping up when differences between the two translations are noted. In reality, the differences were due to a mutual agreement between the French writers and Japanese localizers to fit plot details to the differing expectations of their respective 80s-era audiences.
In the manga for Video Girl Ai, certain scenes with nudity in several volumes were edited to add panties or Scenery Censor to cover up Ai's naked lower body. Since VIZ Media was in the middle of a minor censorship controversy elsewhere, fans tend to blame the company for these edits as well. In reality, it was Shueisha, the original Japanese publisher, which requested Video Girl Ai's creator, Masakazu Katsura, redraw his own art. This is plainly visible in the second Japanese run of the trade paperback (and all subsequent reprints,) which sported these edits long before Viz even acquired the rights to the series. Unfortunately for Viz's reputation with fans, it's this version, and not the uncensored one, that Shueisha provides to licensees (even the Latin American version from Editorial Vid, a Mexican publishing house older than and completely unrelated to Viz Media, uses it).
Bee Train took a lot of flack for the adaptation of CLAMP's Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- which is considerably Lighter and Softer than the original manga. Bee Train was the animation house, but NHK Network was the main producer and wanted to make TRC a more kid-friendly show to complement Cardcaptor Sakura, which they had produced. It doesn't help the series was rushed to air with an appallingly tight schedule of six months. A typical anime can take ten months to a year or more.
Fairy Tail: Jellal regarding a lot wrongdoings that have occurred throughout the manga. Fans tend to forget that not only is Jellal brainwashed and controlled by Ultear for the duration of all his evil deeds, but he spends six years hunting evil and still feels his life is worthless due to what he'd done. It's surprising that he never got more of a break from the fans (although his Creator's Pet status via Mashima could be a very prominent reason). Surprisingly, Ultear never got such a Never Live It Down reputation, despite not only freely chosing to Mind Rape Jellal for years but torturing and massacring huge numbers of people (Ultear's very prominent Freudian Excuse is one reason why she gets so much compassion). There was an attempt to rid Jellal of his Never Live It Down reputation after Mavis herself says he isn't evil — and she puts the 'God' in Word of God — but with not a huge amount of success. Part of this might be because he is responsible for the series' only on-screen death, Simon, and part might be because of the completely psychopathic Stalker with a Crush way he treats Erza in the Tower Of Heaven arc.
The "Duwang" translation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable is fairly memetic in the fandom for its baffling quotes, which many fans assume to be the result of "Blind Idiot" Translation. After all, where else could something like "His hair styled got trashed so he was too mad to even know what drawings are" come from? Pretty much the original source, as it turns out; though the Duwang translation is very incompetent, it's actually pretty accurate to the original in terms of conveying its events. For instance, in the above example, Josuke really does get his hairstyle insulted, and, that being his Berserk Button, falls into such a blind rage that he is unable to recognize a drawing being held in front of his face (the character he's fighting has power over people who see his drawings). A lot of why the Duwang translation sounds the way it does is because it's already an adaptation of a fairly strange series, and the genuinely accurate weird stuff ends up blending with the terrible syntax and occasional lapses into Chinese characters.
Disney XD got blamed for whitewashing Yo-kai Watch by giving everyone American names and having it be set in America. This has nothing to do with Disney. Notably, another anime on the same network, Beyblade Burst, predominantly keeps the Japanese names intact. The "Americanization" of the anime comes from the game translation that the anime follows.
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid genuinely does have a few bits of dialogue that were rewritten in the English dub to reference Western and/or American cultural issues, but the "cultural appropriation" line was not one of them. The original Japanese dialogue is along the lines of "it's like when white peoplenote the word used is "gaijin", which is a general term for a foreigner, but almost always refers to one of European descent dress up as Ninja or samurai". The concept was there from the start, even if the phrasing wasn't.
Both SD Gundam World Sangoku Soketsuden and SD Gundam World Heroes had a rumor going around that the latter got the former cancelled back when it was announced, due to Sangoku Soketsuden having the misfortunate timing of the COVID-19 Pandemic outbreaking when it was airing and there being complete radio-silence on anything regarding it after a year of being delayed. Then the last episode of Sangoku Soketsuden had a "New series production" announcement at the very end, meaning Heroes was always meant to continue off of Sangoku Soketsuden. Turns out the production staff was just really bad at communicating.
Magic Knight Rayearth: Some fans weren't happy with director Toshiki Hirano for the changes to the second season compared to the manga, but CLAMP encouraged Hirano to take the show in his own direction since the manga was still ongoing and they didn't want him to spoil it.
The English Saban dubs of Smile PreCure! and Doki Doki! PreCure (where they were renamed to Glitter Force) made fans weary as they assumed the cut-down Americanized dub would prevent Pretty Cure from succeeding outside of Japan... except the Ashcan Copy nature of the dub combined with the Troubled Production as a result of Toei forcing the show onto Saban meant that regardless of how well it did, Glitter Force was doomed to fail no matter what. Glitter Force was then blamed for killing any shot at the franchise getting future localizations... only for this to be disproved when Toei secured a deal with Crunchyroll in 2020 to begin simul-subbing the then-most recent season Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure. After the release of the already completed Kira Kira Precure Ala Mode and the continuing of the simulcasting arrangement for Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure onwards, Glitter Force's unfortunate circumstances had no impact on anything but future seasons of Glitter Force.
The One-Punch Man manga has people blaming changes from ONE's original webcomic - such as the Super Fight arc, which is seen as filler - on Yusuke Murata, the manga's artist. However, everything added to the manga is either ONE's idea or an idea approved by ONE himself (meaning any kind of "filler" is actually canon). If anyone's to blame, it'd be the original author himself.
. People thought it was Pokémon USA, but it turns out it was the Japanese who changed it because he was based off the protagonist of Dokonjou Gaeru, and they presumably wanted to avoid a lawsuit.
Fan Dumb who didn't do their homework from blaming Kawamori for what happened for shipping reasons.