You now remember the first time they tried to market Gundam to western audiences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy8b04PF_fk
I think it's really fucking strange how they kept trying to make these heavily edited or just outright entirely new shows based off of anime, just for America, all the way until the 90s, when the rest of the world had been getting just straight up normal anime dubs since the 70s. There doesn't really seem to be any real logic behind it either, like "Sure this show was big in cultures as disparate as Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and France, but America? Oh no no, we have to completely alter it to an insane degree or make a new series entirely." And then the 90s showed that America wasn't an exception at all and all of that was for nothing, and they could have saved themselves a ton of headaches by just dubbing anime.The fuck was going on back then?
>>154063128>And then the 90s showed that America wasn't an exception at all and all of that was for nothing, and they could have saved themselves a ton of headaches by just dubbing anime.I was gonna say, I don't get it either. Turns out Yanks like the Japanese cartoons as much as anyone else. Then again Korea and I believe Taiwan also got into a habit of making bootleg anime for reasons I'm sure made sense at the time. Like, it's especially confusing for Gundam, since Americans fucking love military melodrama.
>>154063128Boomer execs don't understand it so they assume stupid children must understand even less.
>>154063128My assumption is that American executives were convinced they knew exactly what children wanted. I've heard some people say it was an issue with content laws but that's bullshit, some of the most popular pre-90s anime had little to no content that would have to have been altered for an American market. Candy Candy for example was fucking huge in Europe and Latin America and had basically no offensive content, and it was even set in fucking Michigan.
>>154063277If it wasn't made in America, the mindset was that the content had to be edited to better reflect "wholesome" American values and prevent the kids from getting indoctrinated into becoming criminals or worse... communists.
>>154063344Anon that's why I used Candy Candy as an example, there's nothing about it that could be seen as offensive to American values at the time and it wasn't even the only anime like that. And again the series was literally set in America so they wouldn't have to have made any awkward "TOKYO USA" stuff.
It will never stop being funny that the wheelchair kid turns into the Guntank. Also, is the cheerleader girl just a pink GM? Because I guess you wouldn't know she was the girl one otherwise. >>154063344As has been sadly demonstrated over this last decade, we don't have any wholesome values.
>>154063384No, burger
>>154063380Just the fact that it wasn't made in America deemed it unacceptable to American society. It wasn't about content, but rather Cold War-era American pride.
>>154063380>there's nothing about it that could be seen as offensive to American valuesOne of the character dies and that has a big emotional impact on the girl protagonist. Idk if that is too much for old america but maybe.
>>154063128American boomers watched Astro Boy and Speed Racer, then completely forgot about anime until Pokémon blew up in the 90s.
>>154063177It's genuinely fucking ridiculous. EXO Squad would come out like a year and a half later. Hell, Robotech had come out a few years before.
>>154063277It was mostly hubris as others have said, although for the early-mid 90s specifically the Children's Television Act kinda fucked things up a bit, a lot of shows were abandoned or modified to fit the new requirements.
>>154063128The toy molds are already made, but the anime isn't appropriate for the age range of the audience they're targeting.
>>154063177> Like, it's especially confusing for Gundam, since Americans fucking love military melodramaYou’d think, but attempts at bringing the UC shows to the US failed hard. Maybe in the 80s it would have worked better, but you’d have to censor a lot. Theres a chance it gets a Robotech Macross saga dub ( which, despite HG being an awful company, was fairly faithful for the era), but then you had Voltron which censored any death.. and the 80s Gundam shows have a LOT of death.
>>154063177>Americans fucking love military melodramathey love WW2, American melodrama. gundam and similar are way too far out.
>>154063177If they got rid of the psychic powers it might work but that's a good 40% of UC and most other gundams. Honestly Wing was probably the right choice to be the first to bring over because the closest to newtype shit was the machine using the pilots brain as a spare cpu.
>>154067618>psychic powersI thought americans loved capeshit with super powers? >Honestly Wing was probably the right choiceThat worked because it heavily relied on edgy teen aesthetics(even though it didn't have the best writing, still above the average of what people were expecting out of action cartoons)
>>154067425Someone on /m/ a few months ago asked why Zeon are the bad guys ( yes I know it’s more complicated than that) when they’re fighting for independence, and as an American he can’t help but sympathize with that( even with the colony drop). Between things like that and in general how melancholy 0079 can be, I’m not sure how well it’d take in the 80s.
>>154067714Psychics are some of the most clowned on powers in cape comics because they’re not necessarily physical, and so overpowered that they need to be Nerfed a lot of the time. Plus being a newtype in Gundam is almost more a curse than a superpower. You’re not seeing psychic power to levitate shit, you’re seeing characters get conflicted over how efficient a killer it makes them and the trauma of dealing with that
>>154067831personally this aspect of being able to sympathize with the villains is the strong suit of gundam (plus giving their mooks the cooler robot designs). and yeah, it's not what was popular in the eighties.
>>154067831Its a little different considering Zeon went on the offensive and invaded earth, the original cause was just but the Zabi family escalated it into a nearly extinction level war. I always considered the UC to be almost post apocalyptic due to the sheet amount of casualties and environmental damage.
>>154067992The problem is most of that's in the background. You watch the show and they might mention casualties but it never feels like its half of humanity. Endgame had more of a post apocalypse than 0083 despite both being built on the premise that half the humans are dead. Same with the class war shit, they say Earth is for the rich and space is for the poors but you never see any one in a colony that doesn't have a middle class life while any scene on Earth is a bombed out village or a military base.
>>154063128look what they tried to do with Seiya back in the 90s but never aired.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODTQZfysM9sConsidering that even Mexico air at least once the Battletoads TV pilot dubbed even on Canal 5 but never agian, are we sure this never actually aired a few times on american TV?
>>154068267It's pretty hard to go into detail about stuff when the original series mostly followed a single ship, but even then I thought they did a pretty decent job a few times showing various political shenanigans and the sheer scale of the war. The later series did a better job since the series was already an established hit and they had more money and freedom to flesh out the setting. I've only ever watched a few of the animated shows but I'm a big fan of the world building and the sheer amount of detail that has gone into the designs and mechanics of everything. It's just really good scifi
>>154067992>invaded earthI thought there were zeon sympathizers on earth and they received help from space zeon
>>154062281>the first time they tried to market Gundam to western audiences.Specifically SD Gundam. Bandai wanted a MUSCLE for the 90s.
>>154064064What about Gigantor?
>>154068491Bandai keeps thinking they can default to SD gundam when they can't market the other shows because the actual mecha has more broad appeal than the rest of the anime which lean into politics. I would not be surprised if they try pushing SD in America more again sometime soon.
>>154069491That was always weird to me, kids have always liked big robots especially now. I kind of get that back in the 80s-90s when the toys were mostly models and they didn't want to compete with the already shrinking model hobby in the us at the time. I never understood the appeal of SD stuff so I just assume it's a cultural thing so trying to use them as a way to introduce westerners to the franchise just seems bizarre.
>>154062281I like doctor's daughter.
>>154063128Not just the US tbqh. It was even harder in the US because the US industry is bigger and richer but companies used to try localizing Japanese things as much as possible in many cases in many countries.Most Japabese video games set in Japan couldn't get released outside of Japan and now non-Japanese devs make non-Japanese video games set in Japan.
>>154063128gee is almost as if amerifats are racist or something. Crazy to even consider!
What's depressing is that the suffering Japan has endured will likely not be recorded in history.
>>154070015Part of it was because SD Gundam was selling well to kids in Japan, and didn’t need as much knowledge of the series for the toys themselves( the SD anime are full of references and in-jokes, but they weren’t looking at that) Bandai Japan also expected the older UC shows to do better than they did, with the important original show bombing in the Toonami time slot. They had no faith in the only two other modern Gundam how’s, X and Turn A, doing well because they bombed in Japan. So they used G and the SD show as a stop gap while they planned to localize Seed, which was a modernized version of classic UC Gundam in a sense. But then CN management didn’t really find a good time spot for it and stores didn’t want to buy as much product because G Gundam had a lot of unsold toys at the end.
>>154062281That is just SD Gundam with terrible dialog.
>>154070524Yes, America is the greatest country on earth. We already know that.
>>154064064Mind you, they grew up with LOCALIZED dubbed anime. Mach GoGoGo (aka Speed Racer) had 100 episodes, & only 50 of those episodes where heavily edit & censored in the English dub. Atom (aka Astroboy) was also heavily edit & censored. I doubt most boomers have even seen those animes uncensored.
>>154063128Standards & Practices departments for the major networks had all kinds of restrictions that probably made a lot of anime untenable without copious editing. The post-TV era we live in now makes it easy to forget just how many strange rules were implemented due to pressure from parent lobbying groups onward from the 60s.
>>154063380There was still quite a bit of anime imported in the 80's, but most of it ended up in syndication or cable where censorship was more lax. Plus there was just a ton of anime made in general. A major media market like America is always going to make a lot of programs for itself and it's harder to find space for foreign ones. You might as well ask why Japan didn't localize more American shows. It just wasn't really needed at the time, most of it was bought over as quick filler.
>>154063128It took awhile for Americans to really accept Anime since kids would look at it and think "this is for little babies"(its why they gave Nintendo different art work on the boxes)
>>154070911So, SD Gundam.
It's amazing that you guys think the generation that couldn't handle Optimus Prime dying would be able to handle Gundam, where main characters die every couple episodesSorry for the stupid facebook image, but it's convenient
>>154073137
To be honest, Gundam being gay as fuck probably didn't help.
I wish Transformers got a show like Gundam Build.
>>154074818Why did the gayest Gundam become the most popular in America then?
>>154075287Because>they were girls>they were cute
>>154071573>since kids would look at it and think "this is for little babies"Quite the opposite. A lot of it was too mature for the western audiences.
>>154071118>major networks had all kinds of restrictions that probably made a lot of anime untenable without copious editingUncensored anime didn't become mainstream until the 90s & even then, very few channels were willing to air the anime uncut & uncensored. You're only ways of getting uncensored anime were either at Suncoast or the local video store or pirating. Uncensored anime didn't become the norm until the 2010s when they stopped doing redubs & rescores.
>>154068401They did their own Saint Seiya show? Or at least tried anyway. I guess they realized it must have had some value considering it was pretty big but the executives back then just had to have it completely redone. Also fuck, that watermark is cancerous. There any non-watermark versions out there?
>>154068491It was always weird to me that G Gundam wasn't the first choice.
>>154074874It would need another anime adaptation like Armada but with toys to make it work.
>>154063128You're forgetting about the writers' strike in the late 80s which motivated studios to seek more direct adaptations instead of having to make entirely new content with union talents
I remember that minus the name, which is usually fixed after a pilot when it's bad, and the villains' motives being less retarded, another kind of thing that is usually fixed then, that show would have been better than the 3 others it was up against, let alone the piece of shit that got picked over it.
>>154068401The colors and shading look so damn flat.
>>154077281>Also fuck, that watermark is cancerous. There any non-watermark versions out there?Nope, you gotta understand chud, that poor little girl breadtuber needed her E-validation and fuckloads of clickbait views before the SAAR CEO cut everyone's views to a 6th for everybody, please.....
>>154071442>All butchered Saban dubs>they all replaced the music because Saban was a dickbag who hated the japanese scores>He didnt even composed the american scores, he actually had other people do those soundtracks but always took the credit.Fuck Saban
>>154071118Really, its because of fucking boomers.>>154071014boomers like Tom Ruegger did not understood those shows because those edited dubs, hence the Freakazoid jabs at astro!
>>154077469Oh btw, the fucking bitch only uploaded the Seiya Cartoon and Live action pilots in badly compressed 240p that she did herself as a fuck you to ''le chuds'', totally she cares about preservation guys!
>>154068993Same era
>>154063177Thise Korean bootleg mecha anime are all on Tubi here in Canada right now
>>154062281given that robotech and voltron was decently popular in the USwould it really have been so hard to just bang out a US-centric version of 0079?>amuro rey renamed to arthur ray>sayla mass renamed selina mass>kai shidan renamed to Kelly "K" sheldon, and he speaks in cracker jive with random whaddup and yo
>>154077638>given that robotech and voltronBoth heavily edited.
>>154077654it wouldnt be that hard to edit 0079 to be TV-Y>everyone who rams their ship survives but is too injured to stay on the white base>just remove kycillia getting her head blown off and skip to the ship exploding>remove the blood from amuro getting stabbed and add a line about how he has to patch his suit to keep the air from leaking out>kycillia just tells ghiren to be arrested for his crime, edit two soldiers to hold on to ghirens body
>>154077638It just occurred to me that Amuro is Canadian, so they'd absolutely censor that in 80s America.
Speaking of adaptions and music. I'm looking for an OST. It was used for both Lensman and Robotech 2: The Sentinels. Does anyone know where to find it or what it was called? Also, weren't there two different Lensman movies with two plots?
>>154077480Fair, but never forget that before Saban, there was Sandy Frank to mangle and butcher any and all Japanese media. He's the source of all our pain.
>>154078626>>154077672I'm glad the 1988 WGA strike made studios stop hiring your ilk
>>154078803>two different Lensman movies with two plots?An anime movie and anime series
>>154063277I watched subbed 0079 VHSes because I had a cousin who was a huge weeb. Nothing in it went completely over my head as a little kid except for the historical context of the conflict, so it was just another case of American executives being retarded and out of touch as usual.>>154067831>as an American he can’t help but sympathize with that( even with the colony drop)Because the full context usually isn't provided well enough. Zeon's original stated cause has some merit, but what they did in an attempt to accomplish that invalidated the fuck out of it. If it's framed it that Zeon had a lot more in common with Imperial Japan since the way the war broke out was basically their Operation Z, that would probably make the more "patriotic" types review the situation more critically, especially since the Federation is basically the United States/The West. It was clear even by Zeta that while the Federation were not the "good guys", they were only seen as such because Zeon was somehow even worse.>>154068481There was no Earth group big enough to qualify. Resentment for the government never really culminated into actual resistance for the most part, turns out a lot of sympathy goes away when people from space drop a space colony on the planet.
>>154077317Doozybots was pitched before G existed. For the 2000’s, Bandai was dead set on bringing traditional Gundam here. Wing was just meant to be a way to launch the actual UC shows, since that’s the core of the series in Japan. G is VERY anime/wuxia in a way I don’t think would’ve flown in the early 90s, the US release benefited from Dragon Ball making martial arts anime popular.
>>154063128Power Rangers is probably the single most bizarre one, not only was it a heavily edited version of Zyuranger that straight up includes 50-75% new footage, but they somehow never learned that nobody really cares this over-editing crap and happily take the shows as are, and so they kept going for over 30 years. I'm pretty damn sure the reason they doing that for so long after everyone else figured it out, is because the Sentai shows are live-action and have no white people, meaning they felt they had to go out of their way to shoehorn them in.Anyway, when it comes to anime, I think there might be a bit of "arrogance" amongst American TV/movie producers. So much media already comes from the US that many Americans, bizarrely enough, seem to think of "foreign films" as a genre. So they more or less seem to think that the American way of making media is the "correct" way and importing media is just done for the purpose of saving money, any foreign idea and perspectives does not interest them and they don't think it would interest anyone else.
>>154079293> Nothing in it went completely over my head as a little kid except for the historical context of the conflict, so it was just another case of American executives being retarded and out of touch as usualUltimately that’s just anecdotal considering that when they actually bought 0079 over, it performed poorly and stalled their plans
>>154080190>Power Rangers is probably the single most bizarre one, not only was it a heavily edited version of Zyuranger that straight up includes 50-75% new footage, but they somehow never learned that nobody really cares this over-editing crap and happily take the shows as are, and so they kept going for over 30 years.I think historical contex is lost on people.Dubbed Japanese content was actually used a lot in the 60's-70's as kid's programming.You had stuff like the Ultraman dub, which is surprisingly faithful for the 70's, the Gamera and Godzilla late Showa era dubs being weekend staples, even CBS airing some dubbed Japanese kid's movies. Then you had Nick using dubbed anime for early content.By the 90's a lot of this was considered old hat and execs wanted new content for Saturday morning shows. A lot of people who were kids in the 50's-80's derided dubbed JP stuff as cheap and shoddy programming. So trying to get networks to bite on that content in the 90's was a longshot. One of the things that ended up changing the tide with live action subbed imports was early Netflix streaming buying up a bunch of JP/Korean shows for their catalogs. This ended up becoming fairly popular and encouraged them to lean into it.
