Screwed By The Lawyers / Anime & Manga

• The spectacular legal pileup on both sides of the Pacific Ocean between multiple rightsholders in the Macross franchise has ensured that precious little of the franchise can ever be released in the United States (at least, during the installments' original runs):
  • Bandai was going to release the video game Macross VF-X2 in the US — even releasing a demo disc with the Official PlayStation Magazine. Harmony Gold forced them to stop.
  • Macross 7 took 28 years after the Japanese release to get a Blu-ray announcement, and Macross Zero will most likely not be released, because of bad blood between Harmony Gold and Big West making such a release impossible (at least without having to change all names and logos from the original Macross series). In Macross 7's case, another obstacle was the music licensing, which is a tangled weave.
  • Macross Frontier also didn't make it over (until 2022, that was) largely due to music rights issues (the manga and eventually the two movies crossed the ocean with no problem). The legal snarls over the series are less than they were (Harmony Gold's legal team is a shadow of its former self, a lot of the legal rulings in their favor are unlikely to hold up if they actually get in a fight, and much of the bad blood between the various combatants has dissipated) but the music rights were a tangled mess on the Japanese side at the time.
  • Numerous attempts to bring out the widely praised Yamato's Macross transformable toys have met with C&D letters. Yamato even tried to release the toys with all Macross indicia removed, under the name of "Sunwards". It failed.
  • The only reason, apparently, that Macross Plus and Macross II were released and still enjoy widespread release in the US is that they came out at a time in which HG was "not minding the store", according to rumors that they were weakened after a head-hunting raid by Haim Saban. And that the Japanese side of the pileup was actually listening to the fans and the rest of the industry.
    • Tracks from Macross Plus are being steadily removed from YouTube, due to complaints from the copyright holders to the music.
  • It's still a minor miracle that the original version of Super Dimension Fortress Macross attained a US release, first through AnimEigo and then through ADV.
  • The big one, though, is Macross: Do You Remember Love? This is considered one of the holy grails of old-school anime fandom. However, numerous companies — the usual names in the conflict, such as Big West, Studio Nue, Tatsunoko Production and Harmony Gold, as well as other companies such as Shogakukan, Japan Victor Musical Industries, and even Godzilla studio Toho — are all squabbling, making a veritable legal Gambit Pileup, one so intractable that some names in the anime industry think we'll see a cure for cancer and world peace before DYRL? is legally released again outside Japan.
    • Unlike 7, Zero, and Frontier, though, DYRL? was released on VHS in the US and the UK during the mid-1990s. The US got a heavily-cut version titled Clash of the Bionoids (released by Celebrity Home Entertainment), and also a version with fewer cuts or no cuts titled Superdimensional Fortress Macross (released by Best Film and Video), both of which had an English dub commissioned by Toho, which was similar to the dubs for Toho's Godzilla movies. In the UK, Kiseki Films released a version with the dub and a subtitled version^note this is the version which has the infamous mistranslated line "My engine blocks are angry at me", both uncut. Now that DYRL? has been released on Blu-ray, the unavaliability-to-those-without-a-region-2-player issue has been solved.
  • In an apparent effort to partly apologize for this mess, the official Blu-ray release of Macross Delta has English subs.
  • As of June 2017, looks like the case is ending: a California court rejected Harmony Gold's claim of holding the Macross license in perpetuity (after losing a legal scuffle with BattleTech publisher Paradox Interactive). The license will officially expire in 2022; if Tatsunoko doesn't care, Harmony Gold will also lose the rights to Mospeada and Southern Cross, and Harmony Gold will not be able to produce any Robotech media. This doesn't mean they can't cause this in the meantime, but their days of being able to do so are numbered now. Of course this can make the trope go in the opposite direction for Robotech fans due to the franchise ending.
    • However, news emerged in July 2019 that they managed to hammer out an amended deal with Tatsunoko that extended that agreement until an unspecified date, to the utter dismay of Macross fans worldwide, with another blow dealt when Funimation announced that they too were getting rights to the Robotech franchise in October 2019. On the bright side of things, Harmony Gold has finally lost the rights to Macross in the UK and Australia to Big West, and Big West is currently trying to reclaim the rights to the franchise in the rest of the European Union.
  • Eventually, in 2021, a year before the license would have expired had it not been renewed, it was announced that the main parties had finally come to an agreement in regards to both the Macross and Robotech franchises, allowing for both the international release of most of the later Macross series and films as well as the Japanese release of the upcoming Robotech film. In particular, Macross Frontier, Macross Delta and Macross 7 were all finally announced to get North American releases due to this.
  • And it wasn't just Macross itself that got affected by the whole Macross rights mess. Both Transformers^note due to Hasbro having licensed the Takatoku/Bandai Valkyrie toy to use for "Jetfire". When it became clear that there was zero legal way that a toy-accurate Jetfire would be able to exist on the cartoon, they radically changed the character into "Skyfire" and the tabletop wargame BattleTech^note due to FASA using Macross art from Twentieth Century Imports, an importer of the model kits, who may have unknowingly sold more rights than they actually had, see here for the whole story were also hit tangentially with the legal snarls over the IP.
• Toei Animation is known to be very conservative when it comes to the licensing of their content for both the domestic and foreign markets:
  • Thanks to the myriad of legal issues, Sailor Moon was unavailable worldwide outside Japan for close to a decade. With its popularity resurging in 2009, Toei Animation and Kodansha began licensing the series worldwide for a second time beginning with the Italian broadcast of the 90s anime in 2010. In North America, the manga was re-released in English beginning in 2011 (courtesy of Kodansha Comics USA), and the 90s anime began its re-release (including the unreleased-in-America Sailor Stars) in 2014 (courtesy of Viz Media), both with brand new localizations, along with Sailor Moon Crystal.
  • The 1997-2002 legal battles between the co-creators of Candy♡Candy over ownership of the series led to the prohibition of a massive number of merchandise on the series for a long time. Said merchandise included home video releases, preventing anyone from legally releasing the anime anywhere, not even Toei Animation in their home country; a halting that persisted for several years. Although recent re-releases in Latin America starting in 2012 suggested that the halting was either relaxed or discontinued. (Fridge Logic suggests Kodansha, who published the original manga, could just step in and yank the rights from the creators).
  • The Dragon Ball franchise is humongous and one of their most popular franchises, and it has seen a plethora of legal issues over the years:
    • Kenji Yamamoto, one of the composers for Dragon Ball Z and the main composer for Dragon Ball Z Kai and various Dragon Ball video games, was fired after Toei Animation learned that a distressingly large amount of his portfolio was plagiarized from various Western musicians (two notable examples are Dragon Ball Z's "Battle Point Unlimited" taking phrases from numerous songs on the Propaganda album "A Secret Wish" and Kai's "The Ebb and the Flow" being an almost note-for-note copy of "War" from Avatar). Additionally, Yamamoto's entire soundtrack for Dragon Ball Kai (save for the opening and ending themes) was replaced with Shunsuke Kikuchi's score for Dragon Ball Z,^note Yamamoto's score has since been used in error, in cases such as the Toonami broadcast of episode one and inconsistently on the UK release of "Season One". and the HD re-releases of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai & Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 had their music replaced with the American soundtrack for the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series.
    • As a tribute to Team Four Star and Dragon Ball Abridged, Funimation allowed the Abridged actors to voice a short skit in the English dub of Kai (the So Bad, It's Good re-enactment of the Cell Games). Toei Animation, who have never liked the Abridged series, intervened and refused to allow that to be broadcast, forcing Funimation to re-use their old lines from the original Dragon Ball Z dub. The TFS lines were briefly available on catch-up streaming services but were hastily replaced.
    • Despite FUNimation's association with the Dragon Ball franchise, the company for the longest time did not have the rights to an English-language version of Dragon Ball Super (and neither does any non-Japanese company, for that matter). The reason is that Toei Animation requires Dragon Ball Super to be shown on TV in the country that it's distributed to, and streaming doesn't count. This is an absolute deal: No TV broadcast, no rights, no exceptions. With FUNimation still going through Dragon Ball Z Kai on Toonami and thus there is no room for Dragon Ball Super on US airwaves, Toei withheld Dragon Ball Super from Funimation for a while until November 2016, when it was finally licensed in North America.
    • Toei animation insisted that the English subtitles for Dragon Ball Super: Broly use the dub terminology and spellings (i.e. "Frieza" over "Freeza"), despite Funimation using a consistent set of more accurate transliterations for every previous entry in the franchise.^note Their first releases (the Captain Ginyu Saga in 2000) used dub terms on the subtitle track, but these were superseded in 2007. Toei is assumed to be the reasons why the simulcast of Dragon Ball Super also used the dub terms, which in that case were corrected for home video.
• In 1982, TMS and DiC decided to collaborate to create a spin-off series of Lupin III that took place in the future, titled Lupin VIII. One episode was already completely animated and given sound and music, but before they could add a vocal track, the Maurice LeBlanc estate (who owned the rights to the Arsène Lupin name) threatened to sue their collective butts if they were to broadcast it in Europe, so cancellation was inevitable. VHS tapes containing the first episode without voice-overs are still in circulation, however. Incidentally, the cancellation of Lupin VIII directly resulted in the creation of Inspector Gadget, when DiC was told to come up with a replacement.
• Viz has not yet released the majority of the Monster anime on video, nor will it ever, due to the series's use of licensed music. The first half was released on DVD with the licensed music replaced, but the second half has "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" as a plot point and thus cannot be easily changed to something else. (This hasn't stopped Viz from distributing this show digitally or it airing in its entirety on television, however. The fact that the series apparently sold very poorly is probably a bigger factor than the music.) The Australian company Siren Visual has released the entire series on coded to region 4 DVD.
• In 2008, Disney's Brazilian branch announced they would be publishing the Kingdom Hearts manga in the country (it was a match made in heaven — Disney's comics were already good sellers, so the manga served as a way to attract both readers of those comics and manga readers). However, Square Enix objected to the idea and stopped it from being published (after it was already announced), for the (rather odd) reason that the game was never officially released in the country, therefore getting Adaptation First on shelves was a no-no. BR Disney and Square Enix's squabble lasted for quite a while before the manga could finally be released in 2013, 5 years later.
• A legal squabble between Shogakukan and Makoto Raiku over Zatch Bell! resulted in Raiku gaining all rights to the series (including the anime). He proceeded to immediately void all international licence agreements, which forced Viz to halt their manga release three-quarters of the way through.
• While Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam was released in the US, the DVD/Blu-Ray release had altered opening and ending music. This is because the opening and ending themes were written by Neil Sedaka, who for reasons unclear (whether licensing fees, Creator Backlash or worries about being seen as Japandering) has not assented to their use outside of Japan. This also affects Japan as whenever Zeta Gundam is used in a Super Robot Wars or Gundam Vs Series game, they end up using one of the series' incidental musics or the themes GACKT made and sang for the A New Translation compilation movie trilogy.
• A peculiar case of this trope in Gundam Build Fighters: Due to legal agreements with Japanese TV networks, Mobile Suits that have aired on MBS and TBS in the last 5 years cannot be shown. This means the suits from the latter half of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 and from Mobile Suit Gundam AGE cannot be entirely used. Apparently averted with the Gundam 00 movie and Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, due to their nature as a feature film and OVA, respectively.
  • That said, the appearance of the Amazing Exia Repair in the final episode made fans squeal for joy... especially when they remembered that 00 Season 2 suits became fair game two days before Episode 25 aired. Even so, the Amazing Exia is a double case of this: Careful examination reveals it's not actually an Exia, but an Exia Repair II. The staff did mention on Twitter doing something that pissed off the brass...
• Similar to the Zeta Gundam example, the first opening of Kodocha suffered the same fate. Tokio's contract prohibited their music to be used overseas so Funimation used the second season's opening instead. Furthermore, a member of Tokio cameos in the first episode while the forbidden song plays in the background. The English dub track simply renames the band "Kyoto" and again swaps in the 2nd opening song. On the Japanese track...silence. This will be adverted by the rerelease by Discotek Media. Due to a change in management by Johnny's, the first opening and the Tokio cameo will remain intact.
  • It's not just overseas releases that suffered this fate. Johnny's Entertainment has a reputation for having a controlled, iron grip over its acts. The opening theme for Akazukin Chacha was originally sung by SMAP, but in all home releases, the opening theme was re-arranged and sung by a different vocalist. Also, 4Kids Entertainment originally streamed the original Japanese episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!, but were forced to take them down because of contract regulations with Shunsuke Kazama, Yugi's voice actor (who is part of Johnny's as an Idol Singer).
• Funimation was forced to rename their release of Case Closed by TMS Entertainment because they (the licensors) were afraid of a lawsuit by the estate of Robert E. Howard over the trademark of "Conan". Moreover, the name changes (which include the show being renamed "Case Closed") were even forced on Viz by TMS, making it one of the rare examples of a Market-Based Title that actually wasn't the English production company's decision. Viz's English release of the manga was also affected as a result.
• An insane legal wrangling involving Viacom (the English version's original distributor, and Nickelodeon's parent company), WildBrain (formerly DHX Media, who absorbed Cookie Jar, who were previously known as Cinar, the original producers of the dub) and licensors Studio Ghibli (the successors to the original studio that produced the series) and Tohokushinsha Film Corporation have kept The Adventures of the Little Koala from seeing a Region 1 DVD release. Only one VHS release was ever sold in the US, and that was only because the series was still running on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block at the time. Hope you were lucky to have taped the show then.
• The first three Pokémon movies had not seen the light of day in the U.S. and the rest of Region 1 since their original theatrical and DVD releases. With the exception of occasional TV broadcasts^note Either on syndication, WGN America and Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. (who distributed the three films to theaters) wasn't been able to warm up legal relations with Nintendo, The Pokémon Company (both of whom license the anime) and Toho (the owners of the Japanese versions of the movies), making the prospect of a remastered DVD or Blu-ray release highly unlikely. The issues were finally resolved in December 2015, just a few days after a Blu-ray set of the movies was released in Australia, and both Warner Home Video^note Who, by coincidence, is contracted to distribute Viz DVDs and Blu-rays and Viz Media confirmed that a Blu-ray set containing all three movies would be released in February 2016 in a Limited Edition Steelbook (albeit presented in the 4Kids dub and no special features).
  • The fifth, sixth, and seventh movies are affected as well. Unlike the first three did for so long, they never went out-of-print, but because they were distributed by Miramax, whose distribution rights to the four they released did not expire a decade after each film's release, The Pokémon Company International was unable to release them digitally along with the other films for the franchise's 20th anniversary. What makes this somewhat confusing is that the fourth movie was released on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon with the other movies, but current DVDs of said film were released by Lionsgate (Miramax's distributor at the time) instead of Viz Media. Said movie was recently removed from iTunes and Google Play (but not Amazon) for reasons unclear^note either there were still rights issues with Miramax that were not sorted out, or in hindsight of the Harvey Weinstein scandal (he and his brother Bob are credited under "Special Thanks" on all Miramax-distributed films).
    • Paramount, which acquired the distribution rights to the four Miramax movies, released Jirachi and Deoxys digitally in 2022. Heroes and 4Ever were released digitally in 2023, after Miramax's rights to the four films expired and reverted to TPCI.
  • The Pokemon TV series is an odd duck in the states. Because of the various Channel Hopping caused by the series' meteoric rise to fame — from syndication to Kids' WB! to Cartoon Network to Disney XD - various portions of the anime can only be seen streaming-wise on different programs. For instance, Netflix only has the first 52 syndicated episodes, Sun and Moon, and Journeys (whose dub premiered on Netflix); Prime Video has Gold & Silver, Advanced Generation and Diamond and Pearl; Hulu has XY, and YouTube has various side series, like PokéToon and Hisuian Snow. This may be why The Pokémon Company launched Pokémon TV, a free streaming service that has the entire anime series, all of the side series, and as many of the movies as they're legally allowed to have, all in one place, albeit not all of it is available at once.
  • And then there's Kadabra. Because Uri Geller thought the species was an unauthorized spoof of himself, it hasn't appeared in the anime since the 2006 episode "Fear Factor Phony", or the trading card game. However, Geller lifted the ban in November 2020, meaning Kadabra can now appear in the trading card game and anime again (although Kadabra has yet to return in Pokémon: The Series itself, Pokémon Evolutions does include it).
  • When it came to Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened, The Pokemon Company couldn't obtain the rights from Takeshi Shudo’s estate (the original head writer of the anime, and of the first three movies) to use the original Mewtwo. As a result, this movie uses a different Mewtwo (to legally distinguish it from his). However, this seems to no longer be the case as of fall 2020, when the original Mewtwo was featured in episode 46 of the Pokémon Journeys season.
  • The 23rd Pokémon movie is known as Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle outside of Japan because the original name, Koko, shares its title with a Pixar film, albeit spelled differently.
• When the Haruhi Suzumiya anime's first season was finally licensed in North America, it came with a massive viral marketing campaign that often reached out to fans, and one of the things Bandai Entertainment did with that was regularly promoting fanworks. However, this was at the exact same time that Kadokawa in Japan was sending out wave after wave of copyright claims on Haruhi videos. An effort to try and clamp down on full-episode uploads ended up making it so that the AMVs, cosplay videos, and fan performances of things like the ending theme dance that the North American licensors were actively promoting were quickly shut down by the original copyright holders in Japan.
• Streams of Shirobako had the endings revolving around Mari Tateo's play removed because it's an all-female version of Waiting for Godot. Samuel Beckett, the original writer of the play, hated the very idea of all-female versions and would frequently sue any theatre that even tried it, a practice his estate still seems to practice. The episode was later revised with new dialog that doesn't quote the play.
• Eden of the East uses the Oasis song Falling Down as the opening theme song... in the Japanese release. While FUNimation was able to license the song for the English release they could only do so for the first episode with later episodes (and other international releases) replacing the song entirely.
  • A similar case happened to Speed Grapher, as the Japanese original uses "Girls On Film" as its theme song. The dub uses a different theme song.
• Western releases of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure suffer from a lesser version of this trope: The series is packed with references to famous songs and musicians, but in order to avoid legal repercussions many of them have to be changed. However, the localization crew usually tries to preserve the references obliquely; Josuke Higashikata's Stand goes from Crazy Diamond to "Shining Diamond", and a minor character from Part 3, Captain Tennille, was renamed "Captain Dragon" (the Captain's real name was Daryl Dragon).
  • JoJo creator Hirohiko Araki even suggested some of the alternate names himself, such as the villain J. Geil being named "Centerfold" after one of The J. Geils Band's albums.
  • Averted with the ending themes; the fact that Warner Bros. Entertainment Japan is one of the companies that funded the anime means they can license music from the Warner label, including Yes's "Roundabout" and The Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian".
  • Humorously enough, there's some name changes that just seem quite ridiculous. For instance, a Stand called Limp Bizkit was renamed Flaccid Pancake.
  • The GioGio's Bizarre Adventure video game by Capcom was set for an international release, but Prince's lawyers didn't approve of Gold Experience being referenced in the game and Hirohiko Araki was unwilling to change the name, so the international release was cancelled.
• D.Gray-Man was hit with this in terms of releasing the second half of the 2006 series. Funimation initially licensed episodes 1-51 and released them in 2009-2010. They were originally going to release episodes 52-103, but those plans were scrapped due to Dentsu asking for more money than FUNimation was willing to pay. Five years later, FUNimation licensed the 2016 series, Hallow, as part of the 2016 Summer Simulcast season, along with licensing the second half of the series a week later on June 30th, 2016.
• Osomatsu-san's entire first episode had to be pulled and replaced with another episode, as it contained a number of parodies of other anime. As Japan lacks any laws pertaining to parodies, some of the rights holders deemed the parodies as copyright violations and, collectively, permanently got the episode off the air, off of streaming in any country, and off home video releases. The rest of season one still references it from time to time, awkwardly enough. (The third episode had an Anpanman parody removed, but that was due to Executive Meddling—an executive on the channel the anime airs on considers Anpanman sacred and does not allow parodies of it—the Anpanman rights holders were completely uninvolved in it.)
• After Speed Racer Enterprises's North American rights to the Speed Racer franchise expired in 2011, Tatsunoko Production filed a lawsuit against SRE over who owned the franchise in October 2012. When the legal issues were sorted out one year later, the rights were reverted back to Tatsunoko. Because of this, all Western comic book adaptations of the franchise are out of print, with Digital Manga continuing to publish the original manga, as its publication involved directly working with Tatsunoko.
• Studio Ghibli:
  • In July 2017, GKIDS acquired all of Studio Ghibli's films from Disney for a home media release in North America in late 2017 and early 2018. They, however, weren't able to license Grave of the Fireflies or The Wind Rises for their releases at that point. The former film's rights are owned by Shinchosha instead of Tokuma Shoten; it had already been licensed to Central Park Media, and Sentai Filmworks would pick it up in the early 2010s after CPM's demise. As for the latter film, it was still licensed to Disney. In 2019 once they began to open the films up to digital distribution, they were able to work out a deal for The Wind Rises with Disney. It became available with the rest of the catalogue for purchase and rental in December 2019 and for streaming on HBO Max the following May. However, they were only able to get the theatrical rights for Grave of the Fireflies so it is not included in either.
  • Compared to the rest of the Ghibli library ^note  sans Ocean Waves and Only Yesterday for being more mature in nature being released by 2005 by Walt Disney Home Entertainment, My Neighbor Totoro and Whisper of the Heart were released in 2006 due to rights clearance issues. For the former, Disney had to wait for the rights of the Streamline Pictures dub of My Neighbor Totoro, owned by Fox, to expire, and for the latter, they had trouble clearing the rights to the late John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which plays a major role in Whisper Of The Heart's plot. (oddly enough, this didn't happen with My Neighbors the Yamadas, which had the characters singing Doris Day's "Que Sera, Sera" towards the end of the movie.)
  • This was the reason the opening and ending songs were different in the pre-2010 releases of the English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service: Disney wanted to redub the original Yumi Arai songs into English, but couldn't get the rights to them.
  • Tales from Earthsea wasn't released in the United States for years after its Japanese release in 2006 due to copyright issues with the Sci-Fi Channel's own Earthsea adaptation.
• When Hasbro purchased Saban Brands' properties in May 2018, they started to block videos on YouTube related to Saban Brands' properties, including the English dub (or basically, ANY dub based on Saban's) of Digimon Adventure 1 and 2, as well as both Digimon Fusion seasons. They even did this to shows that aren't licensed in English yet but are still part of franchises like Power Rangers and Glitter Force, like Uchu Sentai Kyuranger and HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!.
• Reportedly, certain characters have certain rights to them, so Cure Mofurun is partially obscured in episode 37 of HuGtto! Pretty Cure.
• The localization team behind Yo-kai Watch wanted to name Hailey Anne's favorite show Sailor Star instead of Sailor Pierce. But because there was a Sailor Moon season with that exact same name, it was renamed Sailor Cuties.
• The 2019 Netflix release of Neon Genesis Evangelion had the various versions of "Fly Me to the Moon" during the end credits replaced outside of Japan due to rights issues with the estate of songwriter Bart Howard. Similarly, the international Blu-ray release also has the song omitted.
• YouTube uploads of Jewelpet Kira☆Deco! remove Mana Ashida's opening and ending theme for the show due to rights issues. This may also be why Sweets Dance Princess is out of print on home media, as it also used one of the aforementioned Mana Ashida songs.
• Digital and home video releases of GO-GO Tamagotchi! do not have the ending theme "Baby I" for this reason. Instead, it's replaced by the insert song "Nanairo Melody" being played as the credits scroll on a black background.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba's movie is known as Mugen Train in English since its translation is Infinity Train, which is also the name of an animated series.

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