Censorship in anime

[HeartbreakerByZep]

I know FUNi eased up on the actual editing, but the voice quality, and especailly content quality (dialouge and mood) were absolutely dreadful. Even though the editing was less, the FUNi version is folds worse than the unbeleivably censored and messed with Saban version. I guess this is off topic though, since that's not what the thread's about, but oh well.

[Evangelion Unit 01]

This is a site I found that has a petition against anime censorship check it out if you want

http://www.petitiononline.com/censorsp/petition.html

[Rorschach]

What Rorschach mentioned about the Shrek films was 100% correct - i remember sitting there watching the first one and thinking "Oh that is so not for kids..." a sentiment that was only strengthened by the amount of adult humour in the second one.

Well actually, the first film was more or less for kids, although it certainly catered to the older audience. (When Shrek yells "Stop singing!" at Donkey, for example, he's speaking for all those parents in the audience who've found the singing critters in Disney films rather tiresome.) For all of the anti-Disney jokes, the plotline is still fairly conventional for a Disney movie. (Heart-wrenching misdirection almost leads to Miss Right not marrying Mister Right; she ends up marrying Mister Right after everything gets straightened out; she lives happily ever after.)

The second movie was very obviously more for adults, although it contained nothing too terribly traumatic for children to see. When Shrek and Fiona are trying to shoo Donkey out of the house at the beginning, for example, it's obvious to all of us over the age of understanding just why they want to be alone. I also have yet to see a Disney character demonstrate the troubles of making a marriage work after the "happily ever after" part. (Of course, that might just be because I never saw any of the lower-budget and reputedly lousy sequels Disney made to its films.)

A further contrast: the magic in the first film was metaphorical "storybook" magic of the kind we get in any fairy tale sanitized for the children. In the second film, however, some of the magic is quite realistic: like real occultists, the villain uses her magic to manipulate people and things. I read some complaints from Christians about this, but I'm glad to say one of the Christian reviewers saw that this portrayal was actually a good thing. All the same, portraying what's wrong with real magic is very much a theme for older viewers.

In any case, it remains that Dreamworks, at least, is beginning to grasp that it can create animated stories for adults. The second Shrek film was a definite shift in gears from the first. I just hope the people in charge continue to keep the story quality up from film to film; the experimental movie Heavy Metal was a bomb not because it was animated, but because it was such a rotten movie. If movie companies don't learn how to restrain the sex and violence to its proper context in animated stories, American animation for adults could suffer another serious setback of this sort.