The culture wars of localisation & dubbing in anime
From "Jelly Donuts" to "Pesky Patriarchal Norms"
Subs versus dubs. If you’re a weeb like me, you probably have encountered this debate before.
Ever since the growing popularity of anime, manga and other Japanese media in the English-speaking world, there have been wild debates between fans about how much should be changed when the products are brought overseas. Should the distribution companies keep the performances in the original language and simply translate what they’re saying through subtitles, or should they be allowed to hire voice actors to dub over the original language and give their own take on the character?
Solidly, from where I’m from, it’s Team Subs. However, because I’m a weirdo, I found myself immersed in the dub world for a long while and hung out among the ranks of American anime fans.
And now that I’ve been through both sides of the glass, I have noticed a change in the climate of the dubs versus subs war. Beneath the petty arguments about whether or not Japanese voice actors sound better than English ones, there’s a looming question about whether the translation of a foreign work should stick as close to the original creator’s vision as possible, or if translators should have be allowed to take creative liberties in their translation in order to cater to the new, primarily western audience (American, really) it’s being marketed towards.
So…what has changed?
The localisation of anime began as far back as early attempts to distribute the product into global markets, during the 1960s to 1980s. The localisation process back then was definitely quite heavy, since the shows would be so altered from the original premise that they were barely recognisable. Some would even combine two separate shows to become one in the western release. The original Voltron series, for example, is a combination of two separate super robot anime: Beast King GoLion and Armoured Fleet Dairuger XV. At the same time, niche markets for the hardcore anime fans did exist and shows that fell under that market generally received more faithful dubs. However, because they were niche products, most of the public remained unaware of their existence.
The 90s marked a change in this process. Anime reached new heights of popularity in the west, thanks to the worldwide success of shows like Pokemon, Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. Western distributors decided to preserve the original “essence” of the show as much as they could, but were still afraid that Americans would not be into a product that was “explicitly Japanese” in its cultural orientation. As a result, they made the decision to “localise” these products. Most of these shows were expunged of explicit references to Japanese culture, notably the names of the characters and references to Japanese food/cultural features. If the company could afford it, they would also airbrush Japanese kanji out of certain shots.
It went beyond the cultural, however. In order to satisfy American broadcast standards and practices, distributors were often forced to censor certain topics or subjects from the shows in question. Explicit violence, nudity, death and other taboo issues were removed from these shows, as the American public were generally more squeamish about showing these topics to children compared to the Japanese. Moreover, for some companies, they changed the music in order to not pay royalties.1
Around the same time, the Internet became common to use among ordinary people. Hardcore nerds or even just normies would discover the original works and once the technology got better in the 2000s, gained access to pirated copies of the original show online. As a result, some of these people became angry when they discovered that these western companies were butchering the original works.
Basically, the first weaboos were born.
This conflict is best embodied in the war between the early “weaboos” and the infamous company that is 4Kids Entertainment. 4Kids was an anime dubbing company frequently lampooned for their trigger-happy censorship and often bizarre choices when adapting various works. Their “nail-in-the-coffin” show, One Piece, embodied those vices, as this teen-marketed show was watered down into an incoherent childish parody of its original self. Characters’ backstories were censored, the violence was badly downplayed and in general the show was filled with bizarre choices in terms of characters dialogue & acting.2
Even in their more well-received shows like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh, there were certainly laughable attempts at censorship that are the butt of many jokes online.
4Kids was certainly not the only company that did this, as it was standard practice for many other companies like Saban Entertainment in Los Angeles & DiC in Canada. Saban was responsible for dubbing several anime, notably the Digimon series. DiC, meanwhile, was responsible for dubbing Sailor Moon during the 90s.
While Digimon’s censorship was surprisingly minimal, many people took issue with the script, as it often inserted humour at inappropriate moments and made random references to pop culture that weren’t present in the original. DiC, meanwhile, took a very similar approach to 4Kids and censored many mature themes on the show, removing references to death and violence, but also removing references to homosexuality, which was still taboo during the 90s. In particular, this was manifested through making Sailor Uranus and Neptune cousins in an attempt to hide their lesbian relationship.
Over time, the demand for faithfully dubbed anime on broadcast television was met. Outside of the 4Kids and Saban bubble emerged competing dub companies who provided more faithful dubs, like Bandai Entertainment, Bang Zoom, Viz Media and Funimation. As a result, classic anime dubs like Cowboy Bebop, Code Geass, Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note were created and received critical acclaim. Although these shows took creative liberties here and there, it wasn’t noticeable and didn’t affect the overall flow of the show. In the rare case where many liberties were taken, it was done precisely because the creators wanted it to be funny, like Samurai Pizza Cats & Ghost Stories.
While many of these “faithful” dubs were DVD-only releases, some of these shows were broadcast on the teen-oriented programming block on Cartoon Network “Toonami,” where these shows gained critical acclaim and popularity. The rise of official streaming services in the early 2010s also helped to facilitate the rise of more “faithfully” dubbed anime to a wider audience beyond niche circles. Because anime fans now had easy access to faithfully-dubbed that didn’t have to be censored, they began to gravitate towards these shows and networks, rather than the childish shows created by 4Kids and those other companies. Subsequently, the “censored” style of dubbing fell out of fashion, with the end of the era marked by the death of 4Kids in 2012.
The golden age of anime dubbing took off from roughly the early to late 2000s, before slowly coming to a halt around the mid to late 2010s, as a culture shift began to occur.
Social justice began to slowly creep into the minds of many people, especially those in industries that traditionally had “liberal” dispositions like entertainment and media. Anime dubbing was no exception & the results were obvious by 2016, following the election of Donald Trump. To put it simply, many voice actors in the dubbing industry collectively lost their minds and began raging against the orange man on their personal social medias. Some would even record messages mocking Trump using the voices of their characters!
This politicisation started to bleed into the realm of the dubbing itself, where localisers would insert references to political topics unrelated to the anime at hand. In particular, this problem was recurring in anime dubs created by the Texas dubbing company Funimation. Previously hailed as one of the “saviours” of anime dubbing, Funimation began losing its fanbase when fans began to realise that certain political views were being inserted into shows in unnecessary places. For example, the anime Prison School had a character randomly reference the GamerGate scandal in the English dub for no reason.3 This problem continued again with a few more dubs, like the popular Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, where a busty female character said that she covered up because of “pesky patriarchal norms,” when she simply wanted to wear comfortable clothes in the original.
The turning point that ramped up politicisation at Funimation was the #KickVic scandal. A veteran Funimation voice actor named Vic Mignogna was fired and blacklisted from the industry after he was alleged to have sexually assaulted female fans at conventions, before some of his colleagues alleged that he had assaulted them too. Fans were outraged, as they saw this situation as a “smear campaign” against Mignogna, as he was previously picked on by fans for being a Christian. In contrast, the people instigating the accusation were noticeably all in the progressive camp, including his now former colleagues. The actual details of this situation…are too complicated to explain in full, so I will direct you to two videos you can watch to get a summary of the case.
Regardless of your personal judgement on Vic, the affair caused many fans to completely abandon Funimation, as well as for the company to double down on inserting politics in their dubs. Perceived offensive subjects were removed from various dialogues, as well as inserting political topics into scripts when it was completely unnecessary.
It wasn’t just with the scripts, however, as this policy of social justice began to influence casting choices as well. Previously, voice-acting was seen as a “colourblind” field, as nobody cared what you looked like so long you sounded the part. However, under this new ideology of “diversity & inclusion”, there was a greater demand for people to be cast on the basis of “matching” a character’s minority status, whether that be on skin colour, sexual orientation, gender identity and even disability. This has been the rallying cry of various pockets of voice actors not just within the Funimation bubble, but also the general industry as a whole.
However, this call for “diverse” voices has its share of holes and contradictions. Apart from the hypocrisy of some of these voice actors who cry “minority character minority actor” yet freely get away with voicing characters outside their groups, minority voice actors are occasionally harassed for not sounding stereotypical enough. A rather egregious example came from My Hero Academia, where the dark-skinned character of Mirko was criticised for not having a “black” voice in English.4 When people pointed out that her voice actress was actually a black woman, the critics doubled down and claimed that she “didn’t sound black enough.” Yikes.
The culture wars of subs versus dubs is not exclusive to anime, as this also affects most other “localised” media like video games. The anime industry is simply one of the many places affected by this new culture, where localisers alter a foreign media product to the point the original intentions are watered down, or have a western ideology imposed above it.
Both eras dealt with this issue, but under different socio-political circumstances. In the 90s, America was still socially and politically conservative. As animated mediums were generally seen as being for children, anime had to be censored to meet those cultural and societal sensibilities when it was shown on broadcast television, regardless of the show’s actual target demographic. Moreover, Americans were not as readily accepting of foreign-made media, so localisers did everything to make the show “relatable” to American children. The weebs fought against this “dumbing down” of anime, as they believed that this prevented Americans from appreciating and learning the nuances present in Japanese culture as presented through the medium of anime.
Almost 20 years later, the same question has come back to haunt them. However, rather than localisers dumbing down anime for the sake of pandering to children, localisers pander to specific political ideologues and alter content in order to not make it “offensive” to certain groups of people. While it is certainly true that Japanese & Americans have vastly different cultural sensibilities, the way that these changes are being carried out is frankly cringey and intentionally polarising, which perhaps explains the explosive reaction fans have when they hear about such changes.
One of the factors that might have contributed to this current railing against the dub industry is the role of social media and how personal drama factors into this mess. In the past, voice actors who worked on “censored dubs” created by 4Kids and others were generally kept out of the conflict. Yes, they would occasionally receive a nasty AOL message or email from an angry weeb, but they were otherwise doing their own things and their personal lives/views were generally not in the public eye. Moreover, the companies they worked for were also just as “distant” from the fans and means of contact between companies & fans were limited.
However, in this new age of social media, the personal actions of the voice actors and dubbing companies on platforms like Twitter are just as tied to fan perceptions of their products. As seen with the various Funimation dramas, the unpopular dialogue changes seem to be tied to the personal politics of the voice actors they employ, as well as the dirty laundry within the company that was aired on social media.5 As a result, the disgust expressed by fans at these changes is likely tied to personal judgements of the people involved in the dubbing process, regardless of the actual quality of their performance.
Now, I don’t know how this issue is going to be resolved. This culture within localisation has only ramped up over the pandemic years and is certainly no longer confined to Funimation, but the general industry of localisation and voice-acting. And of course, the American entertainment industry as a whole has been infected by this culture for quite a while. Many fans, increasingly turned off by this trend, have opted to switch to purely subtitled works or even fan-translations of their favourite Japanese media which line up more closely with the spirit of the original work. So far, this isn’t enough to put a dent in the profits of these companies, but the sentiment is certainly growing.
Ultimately, it seems likely that this culture will either change once the culture war finally dies down, or consumers vote enough with their wallets to warrant changes in their practices. Hopefully, we will return to those previous localisation practices which allowed anime to become popular worldwide and be taken seriously as a medium.
This reason for the music change was only confirmed years later by a veteran 4Kids voice actor who worked on both sides of production by the name of Eric Stuart.
I should note here that despite 4Kids being notorious for their censorship, the company, at least on the dubbing side, were not prudes. The dub scriptwriters enjoyed playing with “borderline adult humour” which would fly past the heads of young children but be amusing to the adults. Additionally, the company was notable for having progressive policies, especially for its time. They hired a trans woman by the name of Maddie Blaustein as a regular in the 90s until her untimely death in 2008, way before trans exploded as a concept in the 2010s. This is in addition to having many openly gay voice actors on staff, including the then-unknown Andrew Rannells, who would later be the star of the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon. I believe a lot of the staff members were also Jewish, on account of living in New York & all.
GamerGate is a…pretty complicated event to explain. In essence, a game developer discovered that his ex-girlfriend (Zoe Quinn) was cheating on him with “progressive” game journalists who were inserting their partisan views into gaming articles & games development, in exchange for favours that would advance their careers. The companies denied these allegations & accused supporters of said developer of being right-wing bigots, resulting in hostility between gamers who wanted apolitical content & creators who wanted to advance their progressive agendas. A better summary of the situation can be found in this video.
The character in question is implied to be a tanned Japanese woman, as her civilian name is “Rumi Usagiyama.”
Really, the insanity of the North American dubbing industry could be a post topic in & of itself. It’s just as insane as Young Adult (YA) Twitter.