ITT: We Bowdlerize anime...

...while still making everything logical and consistent with the original, uncensored version, or at least make the censorship entertaining in its own right.

If you were contracted by a Western company to localise an anime and they wanted it censored for children (and if you refused to do so they blew up your house or something), how would you go about changing things while still making the show watchable?

I'll start us off:

One Piece: Replace all the flintlock guns and such with laser guns. I don't know that much about One Piece, but this seems like the obvious Macekre choice. I mean, pirates with laser-guns, people.

Naruto: If I had to remove the blood from the show, I'd have to come up with justifications for how summoning jutsu work (they need the person's blood in the original) and Gaara's freak out upon him finally bleeding.

My justification for the jutsu would be replacing the blood-writing with the person's chakra. It sort of makes sense; you can claim that each person's chakra is unique, so only they can summon that creature.

Gaara would be tricky to get past censors; I'd have to be implying that he's intensely murderous all the time, which is hard, but I'm sure I could manage. The "It's my blood" thing, though, I could explain. Gaara constantly covers himself with armour made of sand (which is why he's Nigh-Invulnerable), which I could extrapolate as him not liking being touched. His freak out would then be because despite using absolutely everything he had to stop Sasuke, he still got through.

As for the Fanservice...wow, I'd need to pull a lot of all-nighters to hide that.

Re: One Piece - isn't that what they actually did?

Fanservice can be omitted or digitally removed. See Tenchi Muyo and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Let's see, how about Bleach... OK. First of all, say that Hollows eat ghosts, and thus prevent them from going to Heaven. Don't mention that the ghosts are dead people; as long as you don't actually use the words death and dead, moral guardians often won't mind.

The blood is pretty easy to omit, for the most part. The hardest aspect would be to remove Aizen's false corpse. I guess the easiest thing would be to digitally edit it out, and instead say that he has mysteriously disappeared, and Unohana is looking for him.

No, with One Piece they replaced them with water guns or something. Oy.

I mean, laser gun violence is not imitatable. If any child has a laser gun at their house, it's hardly the company's fault.

No, One Piece replaced them with spring-loaded hammer guns.◊

Okay, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Nude characters have a Digital Bikini, bleeding EVAs, blood is replaced with wires and electrical shocks, and disturbing images toned down. Characters are still a Dysfunction Junction, sometimes Played for Laughs, but others stay to the original, and sexual images toned down.

edited 7th Jan '11 11:33:04 PM by AwesomeZombie22

Death Note - instead of making people die, it makes them disappear; shinigami eyes just give someone a few years to remain on Earth. Light's porn stash is edited to just be attractive girls. Otherwise, the plot proceeds as normal.

I could actually see that sort of working. Like a 'sent to the Shadow Realm' thing, except the Shadow Realm equivalent would be filled with Eldritch Abominations or something.