My Thoughts: How Mr. Satan Became Hercule

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Dragon Ball Z is one of my all-time favorite shows. The first time I saw it was the Ocean dub with its awesome/cringeworthy “Rock the Dragon” opening. So, for a long time, my experience with Dragon Ball was censored. But on the street I started hearing rumors: That the Japanese Dragon Ball was full of violence and cursing, and this captivated my young imagination.

Of course, of all the things you could censor in Dragon Ball Z, the name “Mr. Satan” is odd. You can at least argue that violence could be imitated and people could get hurt, but this is just a name for a gag character.

Enter religion. To many people Satan is not just a religious figure, but a reality, and exposing children to a fun gag character named “Mr. Satan” is a threat not to their bodies but to something far more serious,  their eternal life.  Religion took a name and made it unusable.

Of course, there was no group that protested against a name being appropriated from a Roman god. Why is that? Well, of course most people don’t believe in the Roman Gods and even most Christians regard them as something akin to fairy tales. We still teach or children the basics of Greek and Roman myths for cultural competency and few worry that their children will be converted to classical paganism. And that is the hypocrisy: the decision is not made on an avoidance of any religious references, just those likely to upset a large subset of the population.

Why do sectarian religious views shape localization? Is it because of quantifiable harm? Or is it because certain groups have the numbers to raise a stink? Like so much censorship, the localization of Mr. Satan was driven by a desire to avoid controversy.  A bunch of angry parents writing letters and not letting their children watch the show is bad for business and that is, for many companies, far more important than artistic integrity. That is not likely to change.

What can change however is how companies view the issue. Anime is special in that fans have, and do, raise a stink about these issues, enough to make companies realize they are likely to lose more viewers for putting out a censored version. There is now public pressure to not censor anime. Imagine if people responded to censorship the way they did about EA micro-transactions. Fan demands can translate into improved industry behavior.

In any case I am happy dragon Ball Super, with all its market potential, can air uncensored in the US.

Small victories.

-Gedaemon

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My Thoughts: the Localization of Mario Kart

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