@Miraglyth said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

@Gamers-are-so-oppressed said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

Why was this censored? Did they ever give a reason???

This isn't a PSO2 situation where it's just one or two separated occurrences in isolation, but it's fair there is a similarity in terms of not knowing who first asked for it to happen. So, a couple minutes of google gets me this from wikipedia.

Inappropriate content stuff was apparently driven by TV networks:

At the 2019 Fan Expo Canada, Eric Stuart, who did the voice of Brock in the 4Kids dub of Pokémon, and the voice of Seto Kaiba in the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and who was also part of the production side, mentioned why 4Kids' dubs had this censorship. He explained that American culture has different sensitivity to certain content compared to Japanese culture, and networks on Saturday mornings had standards that would forbid certain inappropriate content like firearms, sexual references, religious references, display or mention of death, alcohol, cigarettes, and other content that is considered offensive to American audiences. As the censorship is dictated by the networks and not the production company itself, 4Kids would submit the scripts and footage of their dubs to the networks their dubs air on, and then the executives of those networks would review them. Then after they reviewed it, they would tell 4Kids to cut out certain scenes and edit inappropriate content to something particular like change a cigarette to a lollipop or change a stone that looks like a cross to something non-religious in order for their dubs to pass the network's standards.

Meanwhile the removal of Japanese references was apparently driven by the Japanese creators seeking to be more internationally marketable:

At the 2016 Metrocon, Eric Stuart also explained the "Americanization" in 4Kids' dubs. He stated that those edits were actually international edits. When companies like 4Kids purchase the licensing to Japanese anime, the anime not only was redubbed into English but also redubbed into multiple languages because companies like 4Kids were used to distribute the anime to other countries by using their own dubs and licensing them to other countries to have their dubs be used to distribute the anime. The Japanese food products being changed and Japanese references being removed were requested by those Japanese anime companies because they wanted their anime to be distributed worldwide and wanted international audiences to relate to their products much easier. So while the Japanese anime companies remove the Japanese text on signs, 4Kids removed the scenes involving Japanese references and changed the names of the Japanese food products like rice balls to something more international like donuts while only occasionally changing the animation to the foods since making animation changes causes rise in production costs and they already have to make plenty of animation changes in their dubs.

So there we go. Different reasons and different parties for different forms of content changing / censorship. That was more educational than I expected, and should highlight that of the numerous parties involved with global PSO2 we just don't know who demanded the changes to our game.

Thank you! Lot of interesting facts in there, I hope everyone takes time to read over it.

@Miraglyth Thanks for that! Pretty interesting read.

@RainGnyu Not to be that guy, but the word you were looking for is immorality, not immortality, (perhaps autocorrect is to blame here) as that deals in eternal life. That said, not a fan of people that argue to defend censorship with morals, when the argument itself, is about the immorality of removing stuff promised in a game. If all of the content as it was in Japan, were not making the transition into the NA translated, later Global release of the game, then that is what should have been stated early on.

It's also been proven, time and again, through history, that censorship is rarely about ethics, or morals, and usually instead about control. If you aren't familiar with the world's history, I suggest you read up, and you should definitely pay close attention any time someone implements censorship on something, and the real reasoning behind it.

@Miraglyth 4kids was literally for kids, and when I was younger, I watched that stuff. It's what initially got me into anime. However as I got older, I found out about how those shows had been censored, so I went and found the original, as even as a kid, I never liked the idea of censorship, after it had been explained to me, by reading history textbooks in school.

I found that while making something relatable, had worked for the kids version of the show, it wasn't the original target audience, and that those who were teens at the time, like my elder brother, had felt patronized, and were alienated, and never touched 4kids after finding out. So while it works in the short run, alterations to content, never work in the long run. That's my experience with it at any rate. The viewer feels lied to, and cheated out of the full scope of the original art behind the show, and also feel like someone is treating them like a kid, that can't handle adult themes, or even some realistic themes for that matter. (Like smoking)

It's why 4kids eventually died, as viewership dropped off, and the network airing it, (I believe it was the conservative owned FOX network) gave it less and less funding as a result, so the understaffed team eventually had to shut it down. It's understood that censorship, among other faults within the company, were why it had such a drastic fall off.

Edit: I just went and double checked what I remember from 08, and apparently it was picked up by the CW for a short time and renamed twice, before it eventually finished it's slow death in 2014. Something I didn't know.

@Anarchy-Marine said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

@Miraglyth 4kids was literally for kids, and when I was younger, I watched that stuff. It's what initially got me into anime. However as I got older, I found out about how those shows had been censored, so I went and found the original, as even as a kid, I never liked the idea of censorship, after it had been explained to me, by reading history textbooks in school.

I found that while making something relatable, had worked for the kids version of the show, it wasn't the original target audience, and that those who were teens at the time, like my elder brother, had felt patronized, and were alienated, and never touched 4kids after finding out. So while it works in the short run, alterations to content, never work in the long run. That's my experience with it at any rate. The viewer feels lied to, and cheated out of the full scope of the original art behind the show, and also feel like someone is treating them like a kid, that can't handle adult themes, or even some realistic themes for that matter. (Like smoking)

It's why 4kids eventually died, as viewership dropped off, and the network airing it, (I believe it was the conservative owned FOX network) gave it less and less funding as a result, so the understaffed team eventually had to shut it down. It's understood that censorship, among other faults within the company, were why it had such a drastic fall off.

Edit: I just went and double checked what I remember from 08, and apparently it was picked up by the CW for a short time and renamed twice, before it eventually finished it's slow death in 2014. Something I didn't know.

Looking over the wiki for 4Kids I'm not sure how you got that censorship was the thing that killed it but I could be missing something so if you have a link I'd love to read over it. We know regardless of the censorship, PSO2 seems to be doing well financially at this time. Will it continue to do so? We can't be certain but I'm almost positive it would not be censorship killing it off when the game has so many other more important glaring issues.

@Gamers-are-so-oppressed https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/FourKidsEntertainment

There were other factors but it did contribute to their overall downfall.

But Wikipedia as a source is unreliable and can be written by me even so I cannot trust such a source heck if I wanted to now I could go change that article. Just saying that it is written by many people and some can be liars.

@YagyuChan said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

But Wikipedia as a source is unreliable and can be written by me even so I cannot trust such a source heck if I wanted to now I could go change that article. Just saying that it is written by many people and some can be liars.

This is true, the sources at the bottom are what I'm most concerned with as I trust those more than a random paragraph on a forum.

@RainGnyu height restriction? Why is that so important? I'm genuinely curious.

I suppose other people have their reasons, but for me it's because I'm shorter than my character.

What is a, horny weeb? I am kinda new to Japanese games.....what is a weeb and why are they horny?

@ConsularCar3125 A weeb is a slang term, often insulting but can be used jokingly, that means someone who is obsessed with Japan, generally the pop culture. Anti-censorship people are rather often accused of being pedophiles, as some people interpret our want for the removal of censorship to be pedophiliac in nature.

@Anarchy-Marine said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

@RainGnyu Not to be that guy, but the word you were looking for is immorality, not immortality, (perhaps autocorrect is to blame here) as that deals in eternal life. That said, not a fan of people that argue to defend censorship with morals, when the argument itself, is about the immorality of removing stuff promised in a game. If all of the content as it was in Japan, were not making the transition into the NA translated, later Global release of the game, then that is what should have been stated early on.

It's also been proven, time and again, through history, that censorship is rarely about ethics, or morals, and usually instead about control. If you aren't familiar with the world's history, I suggest you read up, and you should definitely pay close attention any time someone implements censorship on something, and the real reasoning behind it.

Thank you!

So...censorship is about control?

I am only Fifteen, but whenever I go out swimming at the beach, I always get these old guys looking at me weird....even though I wear a modest one piece.

Is that what some of these posters want? To look at girls my age weird like that?

@Pookie said in If they lift the censorship and height restriction I will quit the game!:

So...censorship is about control?

I am only Fifteen, but whenever I go out swimming at the beach, I always get these old guys looking at me weird....even though I wear a modest one piece.

Is that what some of these posters want? To look at girls my age weird like that?

No that isnt what posters want. Nice bait though