Doraemon anime in English on TV

[usamimi]

In case you hadn't heard about it, Disney is planning on releasing an English version of the 2005 Doraemon this summer on Disney XD:
http://animenostalgia.tumblr.com/post/8 ... for-u-s-tv

There's going to be changes made to the series, as I highlight in some clips from the news article...there already seems to be a big ol' internet fight over them, too--everyone seems to be up in arms over it for some reason.

Me, personally, I don't really care considering it's a show targeted towards 5 year olds.

[davemerrill]

It's been really amusing to see people who have never spent two seconds thinking about Doraemon are suddenly all outraged that there will be changes made for the American version.

It is a show for 5-year olds. If this is all people have to get outraged about, their lives must be pretty sweet.

[usamimi]

It's been really amusing to see people who have never spent two seconds thinking about Doraemon are suddenly all outraged that there will be changes made for the American version.

It is a show for 5-year olds. If this is all people have to get outraged about, their lives must be pretty sweet.

That's what I was thinking, too. I mean, I get that it's kind of silly to change chopsticks into forks, but at the same time...we don't know which changes were done by Disney and which might've been mandated by by one of the 3 Japanese studios working on the project.

Plus this is nothing knew. They periodically make weird changes in Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh, Digimon, and any other children's anime they air on TV. You don't hear people bitching and moaning about that because no one other than kids really watch those on TV. (Hell, I don't even remember seeing this much outrage over the visual changes they made with the edited Naruto on TV!)

Seriously...in my mind, Doraemon is little more than a cute mascot character to most people my age, something akin to Hello Kitty. You see crap with his face on it everywhere, but does that mean people even watch the cartoons he's in? Usually no. (I even had a friend get upset that she apparently JUST bought a Doraemon wallet and now she's afraid in a few months, people will think that she bought it because it's a thing she saw on Disney channel...and I just kinda shook my head, because let's be honest--most adults aren't gonna be paying attention to what's on Disney channel.)

[llj]

There are probably some Doraemon movies or episodes that hardcore Doraemon fans consider to be masterpieces...although I'm quite sure this stuff Disney is releasing ain't them.

I still think the Western need to change foreign material to suit "our" tastes is an increasingly outdated way of corporate thinking though.

[greg]

Here are some other articles relating to this Disneyfied Doraemon:
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_new ... 1311230013
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/201 ... 2e3AWdeGHs

"Fudgy pudgy pie"? WTF? So hopter... okay. Big G? Hmm. Noby? Well, okay, I guess. But doraiyaki can be explained through simple footnotes.

I think the English langauge Ranma 1/2 manga had a similar problem with okonomiyaki. They were trying to call it "Japanese pizza" or something. All they need to do is provide simple footnotes and make it educational as well as entertaining.


In Hong Kong, Doraemon was renamed as "Bing Bong," I am told. However, everybody just called him Doraemon anyway, so the whole Bing Bong thing was abandoned after a while.

[SteveH]

I see both sides, I think.

I really think the edits and all are pretty damn reprehensible, just on the face of how...American the thinking is (and need I say it? OK. OLD PLAYBOOKS ). If the show, the I.P. is deemed "we think kids will watch this" then why change so MANY silly things?

OTOH, we old farts know that people in L.A. have been trying, oh so hard, thinking that Doraemon is EXACTLY what America wants, and now they're going to get a big fat failure right in their faces, while Disney shrugs and says "hey, we tried, not our fault".

Because Disney XD doesn't have huge penetration in American homes. It's significantly less than the 'basic cable' Disney Channel.

I guess I'm saying that all concerned, if they don't have the confidence in Doraemon being Doraemon, why bring it over? Just go ahead and make an all new cartoon with a big blue cat (robot or not) in it.

I mean, it's not 1978, is it?

[llj]

For the record, I care about Doraemon about as much as I cared about Pokemon, Digimon et al--which is to say, not much. Although Doraemon seems far less blatant about its marketing motives than those shows so I respect it a little more from a creative standpoint. In the end, I'm not going to waste my time complaining too much about changes here about a "kiddie" show, but as SteveH says, it really is another era of thinking to feel the need to change a property's "cultural" references in order to better market a show. Kids know what anime and manga are now, and most of them know where they come from. I'm sure seeing a chopstick isn't going to cost Doraemon much if any viewers. Maybe in the 1950s and 60s when the Cold War era was on, seeing chopsticks in a kid's cartoon would've been considered communist propaganda and thus far less marketable for American audiences, but Walt's dead now, we don't have to carry on his commie-fearing legacy any more.

Of course, as Usamimi says, sometimes the Japanese themselves practice self-censorship so for all we know some of these changes are what they wanted in order to "maximize" Doraemon's chances for financial success here.

[greg]

I must say that I do enjoy Doraemon, but I probably wouldn't really watch it much if it wasn't for the fact that I am a father. Each episode is the same: Nobita has some sort of problem, Doraemon has some neat gadget from the future to help him solve the problem, things go wrong (usually Gian and Suneo either ask to borrow it or downright steal it from Nobita), and they have to fix the problem. It's a surprise that the future isn't nothing but chaos with all these inventions. Still, it is a cute show and the adventures are interesting. It isn't as insipid as Pokemon (or "Chimpokomon" as my wife and I call it, referring to the old South Park episode), nor is it just blatant marketing for toys, games, etc.

As the article says, this is part of the Japanese government's "Cool Japan" initiative, in order to promote Japanese culture. I just don't see how eliminating Japanese names and cultural references serves the purpose of promoting Japanese culture. What the hell is a "fudgy pudgy pie?" It's nothing! If they call it dorayaki, wouldn't they expose English-speaking viewers to what dorayaki is, assuming that Japan is "cool" and worth knowing about, wouldn't it serve a purpose to not remove "cool" Japanese references? Who knows? Maybe people may take a trip to the nearest Asian grocery store and buy some dorayaki, and discover it's their new favorite snack! It could become a new sensation, and boost sales from Japan for this snack. Of course it is a longshot, but Japan must be thinking of its GDP primarily when the government tries to promote Japanese culture on its "coolness" factor.

The mouse-eared Kingdom of Darkness is indeed stuck in an archaic mindset with these changes. It's not the '70s anymore. It's like they're setting this up for failure like they've done with any other anime license they've put their hands on. With each Ghibli movie, they recycle some aluminum cans for money and use that money for their marketing budget, and promote the movie on maybe one or two obscure cable channels. Then the movie hits theaters and noody knows about it except for Internet savvy anime fans, and the theaters are empty. The movie is gone in a week or two, and then Disney releases a fabulous DVD soon after. Bunch of jerks. I think they're still sore about how Japanese animation killed their regular animation in the '90s. If it wasn't for Pixar...

[SteveH]

It's my understanding that all these changes are at the order of the Japanese. This is what they thought they should do in order to make the show acceptable to America.

Like I said, old playbooks.

But here's a thing. I sense the same mentality as goes into the current MOE culture. 'Cool Japan' isn't about depth, context, understanding now. It's about images without history or context.

So what if the story is so changed it make zero sense? BIG BLUE ROBOT CAT ON AMERICAN TV. It's already a success, see? Mission accomplished. The quest of 30 years is achieved.

So what if it never goes past 26 episodes? So what if only appx. 8000 households tune in? Now they can take the show to MIP-TVcon and NATPE and other trade shows and boast in GREAT BIG LETTERS "As seen on American Disney Channel!!"

That's the way it works nowadays.

[_D_]

Found this guy at the Sally Ann a couple years ago. No idea how he got this far into the hinterlands...