SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: The Complete Series
© DiC
88 Miles Per Hour!!
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Thursday, June 21, 2007
Anime fans have a lot to say about censorship. Namely, it sucks. Everyone mouths off when their favourite anime or manga is massacred when it comes to America. I'm hardly innocent; I complain about censorship all the time in this column, outside this column, to my friends, to my neighbours and to my cats. They're surprisingly good at pretending they care.
Vocal as I am, God forbid I take the beaten path and complain about an anime's sliced content. No, my ire lies elsewhere: Altered pacing. Dialogue and run-time are easily at the top of translated anime content's Most Raped list, but it seems as if few fans get up in arms about the matter.
It's not to say it doesn't make me irritable when Sanji, the chain-smoking cook from One Piece is suddenly converted to a chronic lollipop-sucker, or that I don't wonder what the heck is up with Roger Smith suddenly Casting in the Name of "Good" (Ye Not Guilty). But I can understand the decisions behind such changes. Politicians long ago declared that it's best not to let people decide for themselves whether they want to bust their lungs or not, so allowing characters to smoke on children's cartoons is verboten (hell, the sin-riddled silver screen is fighting for its right to keep its beloved nicotine-addicted bad-asses). Misplaced religious references tend to give studios headaches, so The Big O remains secular.
On the upside, anime translation and localization is a lot more hands-off these days in terms of content censorship. It's not uncommon for studios to work backwards and re-release previously butchered anime. Cartoon Network even let Roger Smith eventually find God again. The long-running Dragon Ball Z series is an excellent study for anyone who's interested in a living "timeline" of America's changing attitudes towards anime. Heavily edited at first, later Dragon Ball Z sagas remained largely intact … except for that instance where Krillin exploded, I guess.
So content censorship is getting better. Altered pacing, unfortunately, is becoming more commonplace, at least in children's anime. Shows are preceded by a hyper introduction that usually doesn't top thirty seconds (Japanese intros average a minute, or even a minute-thirty). Pilot episodes are often cobbled together by mushing up the first few episodes of a series. Is there an instance where the anime's characters are silently contemplating a smoking crater in the ground? Can't have that! America must have invasive, pointless jabbering inserted where there was once silence.
We hear a lot about Attention Deficit Disorder these days, and a rising number of kids are being diagnosed. Are these changes happening to cartoons and anime because they're tailored to appeal to a generation with zero attention span? … Or are they making the matter worse by not even allowing kids to digest information for themselves?
I'm not claiming to be a psychiatrist or anything (I can try and write you a cool prescription, just don't expect miracles), but studying children's cartoons today tells you a lot about what's going on with this generation of TV viewers.
Interestingly, we also live in an era of remakes. Kids growing up in 2000 watched or have watched remakes of our old 80's favourites. Comparing the old cartoon / anime intros to the new ones reveals some interesting changes.
He-Man -- Whether intentional or not, this is a perfect example of what the Guys In Charge believe about kids' attention spans. The original cartoon begins with Prince Adam introducing himself and his pet tiger, Cringer. Adam talks a little about Eternia and Skeletor. There's some footage of his friends doing stuff, and the show begins.
The new cartoon begins the same way, with the opening narration delivered by a younger, less homoerotic Prince Adam. But as soon as Adam finishes introducing himself, something explodes off-screen, a tangle of cast members jumps into action to a backdrop of rock music and nobody stays still for longer than a second. Nice tribute on the part of the animators, but I think my heart broke.
Sonic the Hedgehog -- This is a little tricky to classify because I'm not necessarily referencing a remake. However, most of us remember the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon that was based on the long-running Archie comic. It's still very affectionately referred to as "SatAM" by fans.
Now, Sonic is fast. He's supposed to be. The introduction for SatAM Sonic had a theme song touting the hedgehog as the fastest thing alive … the fastest thing alive … the fastest thing alive!!!! The song was accompanied in an appropriate manner by footage of Sonic running around and rescuing his friends from Doctor Robotnik's bad guys. The introduction itself, while fast-paced, was its own little story.
Compare it to Fox Kids' recent Sonic X anime. The hyper-spastic "theme song" says it all: "Faster faster gotta go faster faster faster faster faster!" I'm not making that up. One friend of mine said Sonic X's theme song makes her want to go to the bathroom.
Is there a little narrative story? No, just a montage of Sonic going … really fast. Running aimlessly to random places. Imagine that. Show this to some kid with two bowls of Lucky Charms sloshing inside him and you'll own the rights to a renewable source of energy.
Astro Boy -- Many of us grew up with the animated adventures of Osamu Tezuka's famous robot boy hero. In the 60's (and 80's), he was introduced via an admittedly cheesy but lovable fight song and footage of him flying around his beloved city. A remake of the series was recently attempted. Did a variation of the theme song make it in? No, but we do have OMG ELECTRIC GUITARS!!! and quick-flashing footage of Astro doing … robot stuff.
I will say the new intro is pretty cool. It's fast, but not over the top. I enjoyed the new series a lot.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- Old Intro: Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines.
New Intro: I guess the brothers still have their roles, but the singer won't stop screaming or slow down long enough for me to decipher exactly what those roles are. Lots of extreme skateboarding and video games, it seems.
Incidentally, I might be crucified for saying so, but TMNT's remake settled down to become a pretty good show. It had a running storyline, which I appreciate very much. I think it's a good means of getting a kid to sit down and follow a story. Sure, reading a book would be preferable, but hey.
Unfortunately, the cartoon was recently yanked in favour of some candy-coloured crap where the Turtles time-traveled to a busy alien future. Oh, and they hang out with a red-haired kid. Siiiigh…
I love how TV producers are always complaining about having to appease the viewers "shrinking attention span"/"Attention Deficit Dissorder" when I'm convinced THEY play a big part in the creation of the problem in the first place. 5% of the pubic probably have the real A.D.D the rest of us just have the symptoms (difficulty focusing). Hundreds of people are flashing images and sounds at us trying to get our attention daily! so NATURALLY we have difficulty focusing, it'd be like trying to concentrate in a room full of screaming kids except that instead of telling the screaming kids (ithe tv series/movie producers, advertisers) to quiet down and re-think their approach, we live in a bizarro world where the doctors say "nonono since you can't focus when they're screaming at you, YOU must have A.D.D so we'll prescribe you medication".
I wonder if your newer = louder, faster and less coherent only applies to animation? I can think of one example in the live action world off the top of my head, the Colbert Report's theme music vs The Daily Show's.
But I think Colbert might have done that consciously for exactly that reason. Look at me, I'm louder, faster, less coherent than my predecessor Stewart! heh.
Good article Oxford.