Weird Censorship/Demographic And Why?

[Nivardy]

So, I was hanging out a mate's house when we decided to Netflix binge "Inuyasha".

I got a lovely flashback of when how sneaky I felt as a kid watching it late at night on "Adult Swim".
Like most kids pretending to be "grown ups", I felt excited and a tad guilty.

Watching it again now, it feels like that show WAS originally marketed towards kids.

Sure there was blood, violence, nudity, and cursing, but it wasn't super inappropriate or dirty. It had an innocent aura to it. The lessons that it taught were appropriate for middle schoolers and maybe even younger, and it had a goofy mystical adventure feel, rather than a violent bloody fright fest.

Why do you suppose some shows teeter on that fence of adulthood and child-like antics?

Should there be a different rating system?

Have you ever seen a show like that?

[Shanny8]

A lot of anime does this. They put in elements like that, but they never totally go there. That's what I do like about some of the shows, coz it's real easy to have a lot of the characters to be full-on pervs, but they put in effort to make the characters more than just that.

I think Cartoon Network/AdultSwim/Toonami are doing fine with how they are rating these shows and their airtime.

I have all of Inuyasha on DVD.

[indagold]

Most anime feels like it was written by a 10 year old trapped in the body of an adult but with a ton of sexual hang ups.

That's all my explanation for it honestly.

[heterodont]

I feel like tv in other countries have different rating standards than those of the US. US age rating system is really weird and fickle, for example PG-13 movies can only use the word 'fuck' once if it wants to stay PG-13. Not to mention that the US rating system is hardly ever accurate to the content portrayed.

So by bringing shows overseas they can often times get marked with a different rating than the one they originally had and may come off as more 'adult' than the actual content portrays.

[Kura]

Times have changed since then as Anime has become more normalized. So they don't get crazy over ratings like they used to. Though you still occasionally run into anime that gets butchered because they bring it over and want to aim it at a younger than intended audience than it was originally intended for. Or.. I duno... I guess they think American children are dumber?

I did find it a little weird though when I was a kid there was a show called Escaflowne (and I watched this show with my dad in Japanese before hand because he liked to borrow anime from his friend for us to watch so I know that it was censored) they aired a really butchered and censored on the American channel we got (fox / fox kids) but on the Canadian channel wasn't as heavily butchered (I think it was teletoon that it aired on?) So it could have been a country thing too.

Inuyasha I think was more of an after school series for me if I remember right? (I didn't actually watch it, wasn't a fan) Gundam Wing was the 3am airing. DBZ was something like... 6am when that first started coming over? (But DragonBall was after school hours, perverted jokes are more acceptable for children over violence over here) I can't remember, I wasn't the type of kid that thought 'anime = THE BEST BECAUSE IT WAS ANIME' and my cable was getting cut all the time because my family usually could not afford it so there was a lot that I didn't bother with.

[XzynderVexymous]

I think it's the audience that is the target. For example, my story is extremely dark, but I make it Non-NSFW because I want to parents to approve. Just like your show. At least that's my take on it I never saw Inuyasha.

[lunaartemisasama]

What? But I watched Dragon Ball when I was in kinder O_o, in national TV, in the afternoon... they even aired Ramma 1/2 but conservative groups where like... WTF??? I never really understood the big deal.

I suppose some countries are more strict than others.

[UzukiCheverie]

I mean, the manga for Inuyasha was much darker and dirtier (as were most manga for the old school anime shows like Inuyasha, Dragon Ball Z, etc.). You also have to remember that when Japanese anime episodes are aired over here, they go under a lot of editing and re-dubbing to make it more "America friendly", which can be anything from changing the script to cutting out scenes to blacking out gory stuff to literally removing the guns out of people's hands so they're just pointing their fingers at people.

Thaaanks 4Kids. Kinda ironic how they thought America of all places couldn't handle guns.

So you can't judge it purely on the dubbed versions you watched as a kid and again as an adult. I'm sure you'd catch a few new things if you watched the original, uncut, Japanese versions of these shows - some of these things would indeed be rather shocking.

The Japanese do have a very innocent take on nudity and sexuality though. Primarily in Dragon Ball Z, you see Goku's man parts a lot when he's still just a child, but it's done in a way that isn't inappropriate because hey, he's a monkey kid from another planet and who needs clothes? Gets a little weird when he goes smacking Bulma's lady parts wondering where her penis is lol but they're written in a very "Boy meets world" type way, and the execution is just as innocent as the intentions.

Of course, when it comes to gore, they go all out.

Yeeaaaah.

[Shanny8]

I remember at one time they had Dragonball Z coming on during the weekdays on Cartoon Network when they had Toonami playing on the weekdays between 3 and 7 pm(back in 2002-2003).

[Kura]

Interestingly enough Japan's stance on censorship has since changed from Dragonballs release in the 80's. For the Dragonball Kai series in Japan they cut/change several scenes that had nudity or strong violence.

[Nivardy]

Yeah, I was thinking quite a lot about Dragonball.

The same kind of innocent nudity would cause such a controversy here in the states.

Then again, The U.S is the only country I know of with child beauty pageants...

BUT no-
Finger guns.