Censorship in Maple Town English Dub

[mwest1980]

Hello, fellow fans.  Work on the Maple Town Compendium has been going very slow.  I have fallen behind schedule and am trying to work up more episode commentaries.

One of the things I do is to watch the English dub of the episode (which I won't have access to as I get farther into the series) and then compare it to the Spanish dub which is intact like the Japanese version.  Quite a number of episodes have scenes cut out from the North American English dub.  While some are superfluous and were probably cut for time, some had scenes that probably would not have been allowed on American or Canadian television due to network standards & practices.

One particular example is from the fourth episode; a scene cut from the English dub but remaining in the Spanish dub/original Japanese episode is Mikey Mole getting slapped in the face by his father.




This scene shocked me a bit when I first saw it.

While I don't condone physically striking children as punishment, it is still annoying that censorship occurs with many anime series broadcast on US television because of the age-old concerns of "the children will be corrupted".  

Thoughts on cut scenes from the English dub?

[asdf12345]

That's interesting, I wasn't that aware of any cut scenes from the English dub, I wonder what else got censored?

[mwest1980]

Funny you mention that.  Scenes with Wilde Wolf using his pistol were cut from the English dub

Anyway, a few examples from my blog:











Of course, nowadays it's worse. At the start of the 2000s, many US television stations and studios adopted a strict policy of "no pointing guns at people's heads". This is serious business; I've met writers and storyboard artists who were fired from studios just for suggesting it!

[Philip]

I always wanted to learn more about this. From what I've seen of the English dub, there are a lot of cuts, some probably for content and some for time (to fit the US broadcasting schedule and make room for the Mrs. Maple segment). However I've also noticed Saban will sometimes insert scenes from other episodes which weren't there in the Japanese version, or rearrange and repeat footage. Seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

There are some episodes I'd especially like to see in English, because I know they have content that wouldn't be accepted in US childrens media, so I'd love to see how they handle it.

[Pattybrat0]

theres a scene in episode 30 of maple town where bobby spanks his younger brothers and its not in the dub of the episode. found the episode, but the spanking happens off screen.