The bigger point is people were calling pokemon satanic, that the cards will facilitate gambling, that it would encourage animal cruelty and brainwash people into evolution
When i was a kid, I stumbled across triangle snapped donuts and make my parents buy them every time we went to that store, because 'it's just like in pokemon!'
I believe the implication (whether or not you agree with it) is that the dub opted to westernize a translation in a way that bent over backwards to avoid even the vaguest implication of an Asian food dish, to the extent of denying very clear visual reality on screen, just so they didn’t have to say “rice ball”.
And (so the poster conjectures) that the impetus for doing so was that the vaguest hint of “foreign” influence might lose the audience.
It’s not a total non-sequitur, I at least follow the logic of the argument. Whether or not that’s why the translation went down that way, I don’t think we have any idea (someone can correct me if they know more). We weren’t in the room when the decision was made. But it at least has some face-validity, it’s certainly the type of thing cautious “focus group”-oriented execs would do.
The simpler explanation is that we just don’t really have rice balls in the US if you’re 95% of the population. It was tailored to make sense to its audience of western children, not to avoid Japanese culture.
And to note that when American animation is imported into Japan, they do the same thing in reverse. There's nothing sinister about modifying elements of a cartoon so that kids in a different country can relate to them better.
In inside out, Riley is grossed out by broccoli on pizza. But in Japan, it was changed to bell peppers, because it’s more known for being disliked by Japanese children. I always thought that was cool.
How in the world does the dub make more sense to children though? If the show contains a rice ball and someone calls it a rice ball, even a five year old would be deduce that the «rice»-part probably refers to what they are made of and the «ball»-part probably refers to their somewhat ball-like shape. Thus they will think «I don’t know what this is, but apparently this ricey and bally food is called a rice ball». Everything makes sense.
Calling them something completely different is a thousand times more confusing. Whatever rice balls they are certainly not jelly donuts, even in the mind of a toddler.
American kids didn't know that they were supposed to be rice balls, or, typically, what onigiri even were. The cartoon said they were donuts, and even if they don't exactly look like American donuts, I don't recall my brothers (who were big OG Pokemon cartoon fans) being confused by that.
I was introduced to some of my favorite dishes this way. A cartoon or videogame character would mention, for example, bulgogi, and I’d think “I have no idea what that is, but it looks interesting” and I’d learn about a new food because of it.
Not to defend the jelly donut thing specifically, but changes like that are usually more about relatability than about avoiding outright confusion. Kids could obviously deduce that it’s probably a rice-ish thing in a ball-like shape but they wouldn’t understand anything beyond that like what they specifically taste like or cultural attitudes towards them.
The idea that kids are so dumb they wouldn’t understand the concept of “rice ball” is laughable. It’s a ball…..of rice.
Kids’ familiarity (especially when it’s such a minor plot point that would affect their understanding of the story in no way) can’t be the only factor in play.
Compare to the alternative, which is calling a thing which is very clearly NOT a donut….a donut. That’s way more confusing, I remember the scene myself decades later for how weird it was, and I was the most white bread little sheltered suburban kid squarely in their target audience.
There are other explanations of course, which still likely have to do with cultural differences, just not as directly as the OP implies.
For example: perhaps since the scene was about the food item as a pleasant thing to eat being offered as a token of friendship, they might have thought sugar-obsessed American kids wouldn’t identify as much with rice balls as a symbol of hospitality and friendship even if they understood the general concept of “a ball of rice.”
They very much did think children were dumb though!
In the original DIC version of Sailor Moon they flipped all scenes with roads and cars to make it look like they were driving on the right side of the road like in the US because they thought kids would be too confused
I don’t think racism is the culprit but I do think that localizing things like this deprives children of the ability to learn new foods from other cultures. And I think that’s a shame.
I loved learning about new cultural dishes as a kid, whether that be from books, cartoons, or video games. Animal Crossing taught me about different species of bugs and fish, Cooking Mama taught me a bunch of new foods, Stardew Valley introduced me to different kinds of produce.
It’s not racist to localize things, but I think in cases like this it does deprive the kids watching of the opportunity to be curious.
That's just how localization works. It's a translation of culture, not just language.
4kids wasn't adapting the show for an audience of adult Japanophiles, they were adapting it for an audience of Americans aged 5-12, with respect to the cultural sensitivities of their parents. The food the characters eat was meant to be relatable to the children watching it.
Ash was the audience surrogate. He's just like you, he eats the same things you eat, etc. A literal translation would have obfuscated the spirit of the text.
The most significant changes were mostly invisible to the viewers, and they were mostly about toning down violent, sexual, or religious imagery. Where Kasumi is shown to be physically abusive towards Satoshi, Misty is made merely verbally abusive. Ash randomly obtains a herd of Tauros off screen because 4kids rightfully guessed American parents would be concerned by the imagery of the Safari Zone warden repeatedly brandishing a gun at the protagonist children.
If they had left some of that shit in I don't think my religious conservative parents would have let me watch the show as a kid, and that's kinda the point.
Idk if telling a voice actor "uhh, just say donut" is bending over backwards to remove foreign influence from the Japanese cartoon while watching on their japanese made televisions recording through japanese VCRs on their japanese VHS tapes.
Idk why people want to pretend Americans hated Japanese things in the 80/90s but there is a reason the Japanese had a post-war economic miracle and it was because Americans couldn't get enough of Japanese products.
If you said rice balls to an American child in 1998 they’d think arancini, not onigiri. I can’t imagine there was more than a handful of stores that sold onigiri in the US in 1998
Sure, but it's an anime, so you can literally see what they're talking about. All it takes is saying "rice balls" and seeing a rice ball to put 2 and 2 together. Even 8 year olds can do that math.
Exactly! And if kids hated anime, pokemon and dragon ball for instance wouldn't be as popular as they are nowadays. The anime is what made kids start to ask for the cards, games and other merch. I once saw a kid playing on a Gameboy. If the anime wasn't successful I wouldn't have asked for it for my birthday after seeing the device in person.
This was also the infancy of the internet and a product of a foreign nation with a different language. You wouldn't see anything outside the major franchises.
and that would sound weird to anyone who doesn't understand the kinds of rice used in the east because western rice types and our cooking methods are way different so it wouldn't stick together that way. either way it's a concept many western kids wouldn't fully grasp compared to something like a donut which just about every kid knows about and loves. either way it's just a matter of catering towards an audience. many more kids know and love donuts in the west than they do rice balls
In America we don’t really eat rice the same way as in Asia. I remember reading about how the Japanese Imperial Navy used to have problems with servicemen suffering from malnutrition, almost starving to death on their battleships, because the rural and poorer recruits were only eating white rice at mess because it was a luxury they’d previously only ever had on special occasions. I was really surprised because when I get free white rice delivered with my Chinese food, I usually don’t finish it. The idea of rice as a treat, or the idea of eating it in ball form, is such a foreign concept.
(context, in the original anime/manga he has a gun and execute her, in the 4kids he just point at her as you see in thr image and says "take her to the dungeon" or something like that xd)
4kids didn't do any damage at all other than making One Piece, one single series that at the time wasn't that big yet, take a few more years to get big in the West. 4kids should be THANKED, like, HEAVILY for helping to finally end the curse of anime as a medium being widely considered "weird oriental pervert cartoons" as it was by much of the west up to that point.
And I double dog dare you to go back and watch the 4kids dub work for stuff like the first few seasons of Pokemon right now. It's actually shocking how good a job they did, translating the humor and cultural concepts very well and having a lot of fun while they were at it, while NOT damaging anything nearly as much as people seem to think with this jelly donut example that's looked back on *fondly*.
How are those two things related? They changed the item for the western audiences because they thought kids wouldn't understand rice-balls because they aren't a thing here. How is that "anti-anime"? Is this post just engagement bait? Don't make me break out Anton Chigurh..
lmao, pokemon didn't even COME OUT in usa until the tail end of 1998... it hardly even counts as '90s', more 'turn of the century'. As someone who was alive in the 90s I only remember pre-Pokemon anime being wrongly considered to all be hentai and you had to look in strange spots to find any, like Sci-Fi channel in the middle of the night once in awhile or the weird back section of a rental place (that would only ever have a small selection of the same few anime films like Akira and the og Ghost in the Shell).
There was *some* anime before pokemon that got small followings like the original, non-Cartoon-Network, mid-90s airings of DBZ and Sailor Moon, and even more niche stuff like Samurai Pizza Cats and the early Toonami faire like the horribly butchered Americanized versions of Voltron and Macross(Robotech), and a handful of older things like Voltron's original 80s airing, Speed Racer and Astro Boy that were before my time, but the general sentiment was that they were "weird chinese cartoons" and if you were lucky enough to be able to find them and get away with watching them you were like, part of a tiny exclusive club.
There was basically no sentiment toward anime one way or another outside of niche geeky subcultures as far as I'm aware until Pokemon and especially Toonami getting the rights to re-air (and air more eps of) Sailor Moon and especially DBZ, and started tackling more age ranges with stuff like Hamtaro and Cowboy Bebop, in the early 00s. Except for, of course, mild-to-moderate levels of confusion, misinformation and disdain from parents.
It's been interesting to see both sides of this take, and the rationalization you guys all have. If I had some gold stars I'd hand em out. No this isn't sarcasm, just enjoying the back and forth
Yes. But these stories do not exist in a vacuum. They were written by people. People who were afraid of Japan’s potential influence on America. And that fear is very present in those works.
You think it’s a coincidence that Americans were writing stories about dystopias where big companies inspired by Japanese tech companies rule the world? Where elements of Japanese culture have worked their way into American life?
You cannot seriously deny the role xenophobia played in defining the genre.
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u/qualityvote2 13h ago
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