Anime in Arabia.

I meant literal, the latter of what you said, where they are all wives and concubines to the guy, who has sex with all of them. If I meant it in the generic Harem Anime sense, then the location/cultural change would be pointless.

edited 21st May '11 9:01:42 AM by shiro_okami

You missed the word "actors", didn't you?

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Yes, I did. What do you mean by actors, anyway? Weren't we talking about anime?

I meant the voice actors/actresses (or seiyuu, in animanga-lingo), obviously.

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Excuse my temporary stupidity. Anyway, why would the voice actors being in a Love Dodecahedron have anything to do with Harem Anime?

Because that's what I initially thought you meant with "How about a Harem Anime with an actual harem." Now I realize that I completely forgot to consider the simpler and straightforward interpretation instead of taking a leap of logic.

edited 21st May '11 10:04:31 AM by MarqFJA

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Oh, OK. Yeah, I thought it would have been obvious what I meant.

So, back to a previous topic: Arabic cartoon-channel Spacetoon's decision to broadcast the infamous (among othe things) "urban low fantasy/slapstick comedy/sex farce/romance" Ranma One Half under the dub name of Fountain of Dreams. Yes, dreams. How do they get "dream" from "Cursed Springs Land", I would never know. And if my source in the Arab region is correct (which he usually is), a considerable portion of Spacetoon's older audiences

who knew of the original Ranma One Half via older fansubs and such were stunned by Spacetoon's decision. "I used to laugh and think 'It would be the seventh of all impossibilities!'", to paraphrase one commentator.

Okay, let's make a checklist of issues that they have to address (I've yet to actually watch the Arabic-dubbed show, so I know as much as you do. And yes, I can understand what it would be saying. I'm multilingual.):

• The Gender Bender premise. Especially the many instances of unwitting guys hitting on or kissing/groping girl-Ranma.
• The absolute overload of "indecent" scenes (by Islamic/Arab standards). And kisses between members of different sexes - even if only on the cheek - are usually considered indecent enough to warrant censoring, unless they're between parents and children (and maybe siblings) due to the obvious platonic context.
• The Love Dodecahedron. Forget turning Shin'ichi Kudo and Ran Mouri from "childhood friends who are definitely-not-a-couple" to fiancees - which actually makes it even worse due to Unfortunate Implications; how are they going to handle a multiple-fiancee/suitor situation that not only involves the male lead, but the female lead too?!
• Happosai. Oh for the love of God, Happosai. 1,000,000 TCU
  ^{Trope Currency Unit(s).}
  say that they'll cancel dubbing mid-show once they learn of his existence, because I see no way for them to be able to rewrite his character without crippling the show.

edited 21st May '11 10:56:37 AM by MarqFJA

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The "alien planet" thing for the Dragon Ball Z dub sounds more ludicrous than the Shadow Realm. I lol'd.

Having seens most of the Ranma anime, I actually wanna see how they butcher it up. I'm curious to see if it surpasses 4Kids's One Piece dub in terms of censorship idiocy.

I can give one example, which comes from one Arab anime-fan who apparently is a frequent criticizer of Al-Zuhra (Arabic "Venus"), an Arabic-dubbing animation studio that handled several anime imports into the Arab world, and is the current Arabic dubber for Ranma One Half.

Okay, if you remember episode 1, Ranma Saotome goes into the Tendos to take a hot bath (and not-so-incidentlaly change back to his original sex). Akane Tendo, under the impression that "the redheaded girl" is inside, goes in to join "her", only to walk in on Ranma while he was stepping out of the tub, and after a few silent seconds of staring, she closes the door, stands still and silent for a few more moments, before erupting in a deafening scream of mixed shock, fear and/or rage.

The Arabic version keeps the the premise of Ranma (who, in the typical tradition of most official Arabic-dubbings, is renamed to Noor "Light") taking a hot bath.... but that's where the "fun" starts. You see, their Akane (who is, for similar "reasons", is renamed to Reem [affectionate name for the gazelle]) goes in, sees the "redheaded girls'" clothes, and decides to be a helpful host and wash them for her.... and then realizes that there are male clothes (I assume it's male underwear that tipped her off) in the pile, and screams. That last bit has severe Unfortunate Implications - you do not scream your head off when you realize/think that there's a uninvited stranger in the house, because that may prompt the (possibly unscruplous) stranger to take a hostage or otherwise do something dangerous to the screamer or inhabitants. Akane/Reem is a 16-year-old adolescent and a martial artist, not a helpless and naive kid; she shouldn't be making such a stupid mistake.

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Wow, that's unbelievably stupid. I've seen a couple of girls get freaked out by male underwear (my sister being one such girl), but to scream in terror at the very sight is facepalm worthy. First episode and already it sounds like it's going down. Hopefully other information pops up, because I'm ready to see just how stupid they're gonna make this.

Evolution isn't allowed to be said on tv there?

Flat "What".

The videos are on Youtube, for whoever either has enough knowledge of Arabic to understand the dialogue, or does not really care about the dialogue and just wants to see how much visual censorship they went for. Personally, I'm going to have to delay watching the vids until after my finals, which will start in a couple of weeks.

That's because "evolution" is almost always associated with Darwinism (i.e. "man evolved from monkeys/apes") in the Arab world, and Darwinist belief clashes very strongly with very the nonnegotiable Islamic principle of Mankind being a divine creation of Allah (i.e. God), as well as basic notions of human dignity (you can have much of that if Mankind were originally animals, can you?), plus it has Unfortunate Implications of Allah/God's creations being able to "evolve" features that Allah/God never intended for them to develop. Some more liberal Islamic scientists, instead of rejecting "evolution" outright, would require explicit stipulation that "evolution" is a God-given gift to living beings.

edited 21st May '11 3:52:51 PM by MarqFJA

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Theistic Evolution is pretty common in Christianity is considered to be non-contradictory with biblical principles by the Catholic Church. I can't see it having much problem in Islam.

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Oh man, Kodachi's Arabic voice actress is awful.

Life is like a game of Mahjong. Sometimes you need to take risks if you want to come out ahead.

I have yet to actually watch the Arabic dub, but I'll hazard a guess and say that might have done it deliberately to ensure that no one sympathizes with a character seen as demented by in-universe standards.

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Well to be fair, not all Muslim countries (which is what I presume what the OP means when he says Arabic) does the same censored treatment that some of the other countries does.

From where I come from, we get Pokemon, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece (though not anymore since it's been taken off of our CN), Gurren Lagann, in their original English Dub without any censoring. A lot of my friends and relatives (who are all Muslims save for me since I'm an atheist) are huge anime/manga fans who have no problem with the copious amounts of fanservice or gore.

Again, it depends on the region and whom you are speaking to. It's mostly the older generation that tries to block out the sexually explict or violent shows and cartoons, while many of us just need a good internet connection to watch something in all it's glory.

Well I think there's a difference culture between the Middle East and say Indonesia.

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Yeah, I know. That's what I said. Just pointing out that not everyone probably finds it acceptable. The dubs are pretty much the Arabic equivalent of 4Kids in America (going by their dubbing of One Piece).

What other anime are being aired in the Middle East?

edited 22nd May '11 5:29:46 AM by TheDrifter

Too many to count, AFAIK; there's a lot of stuff that used to air two or three decades ago (e.g. Heidi Girl Of The Alps, UFO Grendizer, Dinosaur War Aizenborg), but their TV broadcast discontinued by the mid- to late-'90s in favor of newer imports - Don't ask me how Ranma One Half counts as "new" in comparison to, say, Digimon Tamers or Digimon Frontier, though. To my knowledge, the Spacetoon channel that I mentioned before is mostly anime stuff, so you can look at their list or something. And then there's MBC3, though it also broadcasts a lot of Western stuff like Totally Spies and WITCH. Yes, I'm well-informed.

edited 22nd May '11 6:17:35 AM by MarqFJA

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It's a problem with one studio, not the Arab world as a whole. It's much or less an arabic 4-Kids monopolising (almost) anime imports nowadays.

Treasure Island anime and Sandy Bell back in the eighties had in their arabic dub -and its nowadays reruns- explicit mentions of ghosts, demons (Silver about the treasure island), angels, romance (Onisama-e 39-ep arabic dub, edited to remove only incestuous or lesbianism things), (Sandy evoquing prostitution as one possiblity for her mother fate, albeit thinely-covered), crossdressing (Lady Oscar), alcohol (Future boy Conan arabic dub). It has been accepted back then because everybody took into consideration the Value Dissonance into account. Contrarily to what you may believe, arabs are very open-minded, save for a few minority. Critisism made to anime here limits itself within the violence advoating concerns, not the other aspects mentioned here (which are cut nowadays by that one dubbing studio) since they are more or less a part of our lives. The ones preaching such cuts are the same who want Arabian Nights to be censored.

edited 15th Jun '11 5:35:48 AM by GHANMI

I think what we need here for people to specify it by country instead of just the Arab World as a whole. Because when you say 'Arab World' or Middle East you are referring to a sizeable chunk of the world with many countries, cultures and beliefs.

This. Also agreed on Arabs being more open minded than people think.

Well, according to what I've seen, the rule of the thumb is this: If it's done by an Arabian-based studio, you could be well-assured that its gonna get macekred and bowdlerized like there's no tomorrow to appease the much more (ultra)conservative Moral Guardians; whereas if it's done by a studio based outside Arabia (e.g. Egypt, Syria), then there's a greater chance of the censorship being limited to only the "more offensive" and "explicit" stuff.

Point is: Arab can either refer to the Arab-speaking peoples of the whole Arab world, or just to the Arabian peninsula's native peoples.

edited 15th Jun '11 8:47:17 AM by MarqFJA

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Oh! Im glad my topic brought a quite interesting debate!

For the record, outside of Wahhabist countries like Saudi Arabia, are Muslims generally socially moderate? Its hard to tell from the outside looking in, but I know countries like Iran and Libya have large socially liberal youth movements.

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