First off, I don’t like smoking. My dad smoked and I always hated it, it’s smelled bad and it was bad for him. I told him to quite several times but he never did. I’ve never tried it and I don’t intend to.
However, it didn’t take long for me to start scoffing at the
ridiculous censorship I saw.
For better or worse smoking is part of our culture. It’s a
bigger part of Japanese culture because more people there smoke. Cultures have
different values and if you can’t deal with that you stay away from them.
In western media only bad guys are allowed to smoke, if at
all. They are immoral so censors allow them to engage in “immoral” activities
to show their immorality. Lots of villains in anime and videogames smoke too. For
instance corrupt businessmen often enjoy cigars. But you also see “cool”
characters smoking. For example the protagonist’s older male role model often
smokes. Sometimes the protagonist even smokes. The idea of the “cool smoker”
was once an acceptable trope in the west, but at some point we decided it was
important not to associate smoking with positive traits. Japan, apparently,
didn’t get the memo.
One thing you should notice is these ideas of “immoral” or
“cool” are simply assigned to the person smoking as the artist requires. Smoking
is just a tool the artist is using to convey a certain idea or emotion.
From an artistic standpoint, smoking has a lot to offer. It
adds a stylistic flourish to otherwise boring character designs, it can fill
empty space on screen, and it can hint at stress or depression. The series I
dealt with in the script had elements of all of this. So, every time a censor
or some busybody decides to chop content from an already existing anime or
videogame, they cheapen it. They remove a visual or worse, a story element, all
to protect people from the idea of smoking. When you censor you almost always
wind up with an inferior product, because you are removing an element the
creators meant to be there.
Most of the videogames I went over only had minor edits. But
censors ripped apart some of the anime to remove objectionable content. No one
pretends that the original dub of One Piece is acceptable anymore, even if they
continue to advocate for “necessary” censorship. But even minor edits make
things worse. Look at the last stage of Fist of Rage 2; compare the background
with Mr.X smoking and without. Without that cigar animation he looks boring and
unremarkable. That cigar and a few minor animations give him so much more
character.
So why was this done? Mostly because parents do not what
their children exposed smoking. Parental advisory codes reflect this. Worse,
corporations do everything they can to get lower age ratings. Higher age ratings,
in a practical sense, mean fewer consumers.
In an ideal world would we expose children to smoking? Maybe
not, but we don’t live in an ideal world now do we? We live in the real world
where life and people are imperfect. People drink and they smoke. Sometimes
they do even worse drugs. At some point we are all exposed to it. If I had a
kid I might try to limit their exposer until they are at an age where they can
tell fantasy from reality. This is a hard thing to do, but it is the role of a
parent, not a network executive or a localizer. That’s my point: art—and anime
and videogames are art—should not be limited because it might have a negative impact on young children. If you have a
problem such content you should avoid it. It isn’t up to anyone else to protect
you or your kids from ideas you don’t like.
All that said I love many of the series I wrote about here. In
particular many Toonami series were a big part of my life growing up. And
despite the edits I am grateful they were there.
Finally, many of the people who have to make these decisions
did want to. They had to comply with regulations and network policy. Their goal
was to get anime and videogames out with as few edits as possible. I can respect
them, even if I believe those edits are unethical.
-Gedaemon
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