North America’s Remakes of Foreign Media

North Americans Are Obviously Dense: Why Else Must We Remake Spectacular, Classic Foreign Media?

There’s something to be said about the tolerance level in North America when it comes to entertainment. Take for instance, the whole Janet Jackson “nipple incident” from the Supperbowl a few years ago. The FCC did just about everything but exile her from the country, and all this occurred while the rest of the world laughed hysterically at America’s over-reaction to simply a nipple.

This incident alone confirms the fact that topics such as nudity, violence, religion, and references to a different culture that’s not deemed “American” enough is not widely accepted in the society of the Western world. This intolerance coupled with Hollywood’s inability to come up with their own ideas has resulted in stale remakes of films already enjoying success in their respective countries. A case in point of this The Ring, a remake of the popular Japanese film Ringu; while the American version makes far more use of the big budget with special effects, these same effects make the movie laughable with inserting scenes that never took place in the original, and, as reviewer Andrew Currie puts it, “The American script doctors took great lengths to flesh out the character of Samara… In contrast, Ringu's Sadako is stumbled upon pretty late in the film… The back story of Sadako is more vague, but deliberately so, I think — at least the filmmakers didn't add an extra half-hour to the running time trying to explain it!” The overdrawn explanation of everything in The Ring cheapens the movie’s horror aspect while implying that Americans are far too stupid to get the plot unless it’s made painfully obvious. Yet, Ringu is hardly the first – or last – Japanese horror film to be mercilessly slaughtered by those widely respected American film makers. Looking deeper into horror films released over the past few years, it’s easy to see that most are remakes of Japanese films; The Ring 2, The Grudge, The Grudge 2, Dark Water, Pulse…start looking up the origin of that movie you saw last week and you’ll discover that it’s most likely a badly done remake.

While horror films are the most noticeably damaged films, they certainly aren’t the only genre to be remade horribly; last summer’s love-story Lake House was also based on a significantly better Korean movie titled Il Mare. Thrillers also suffer considerably, if the proposed remake for the controversial Battle Royale is any indication. As the New York Times report, “Devotees love it, after all, in large part because they believe it's the kind of movie Hollywood would never make.” Indeed no fan of the film could have ever imagined that New Line Cinema would sign on to remake it, as the film follows protagonist Nanahara Shuya as he tries to survive after his class of 42 students have been dumped onto a deserted island with weapons, explosive collars around their necks and the instruction that they have to kill each other off in three days. As the New York Times reports, “In post-Columbine America…audiences weren't ready to watch 14-year-olds — even cute ones in stylish school uniforms — maiming and killing one another with axes, crossbows and automatic weapons.” While producer Roy Lee (who also produced The Ring 2 and The Grudge) claims to be a huge fan of the original, is America really ready for Battle Royale? Apparently not, since after Virgina Tech, Lee reported in a press release that if the remake was actually in production when the killings occurred, “we would have been slaughtered by the press” and that the remake will be “a little more sensitive to some of the issues.” This statement has led many fans, such as Anne Vatnedalen, the creator of popular Battle Royale fan site Fight4Survival, to express worry over whether it will “be made into a typical American teenage slasher movie."
But films are far from the only media to be censored through remakes or “bad dubbing,” Japanese anime and manga are a highly successful market in Japan and many other countries that have successfully dubbed and translated programs into their particular language. Unfortunately in North America, there seems to be a concept throughout our culture that states that anything animated can only be marketed to young children. Due to this idiotic ideal, several American dubbing companies (most notably Fox’s 4Kids Entertainment) are so intent on having shows meant for young teens marketable to six year olds that they massacre key elements of plot, character development and the art itself until the work is nearly unrecognizable. Nate Young, first officer in Facebook group Stop over editing Anime and Manga in the US clearly feels strongly over this issue and makes no effort to hide his annoyance, stating that “by editing, one removes the qualities which made the anime [show] popular in the first place, and deepens the “animation is only for children" concept here in America.” Evidently, his statement holds true as a Google search of any 4Kids adapted series will produce hundreds of results that compare the “dub” to the original work. Popular Anime Sailor Moon, for instance, suffered from “dubbers” changing many character relations – such as changing two characters’ lesbian relationship by turning them into cousins and causing their relationship to look incestuous in some episodes. While 4Kids declined comment when asked for a statement regarding this controversy, in a 2006 interview with Michael Haigney – the man responsible for writing and producing the English-language versions of foreign animated series for 4Kids – he was asked why 4Kids removes simple Japanese cultural references (such as constantly referring to rice balls as doughnuts) and claimed that “many references do remain” and, when challenged over the tendency to remove anything too “risqué”, he replied by claiming that “what [Anime fans] may not realize is that Fox Broadcast Standards and Practices forbids things like smoking, firing realistic weapons and, generally, any kind of violence that would be easy for kids to imitate. That’s because the FCC has rules and regulations governing broadcast. I happen to dislike realistic violence in the context of kids’ cartoons, but the changes we make in the original shows have nothing to do with a capricious desire to “ruin” or “destroy” them, as some “purists” seem to feel.”

While the desire to protect our children’s “innocence” by not exposing them to smoking or weapons, the fact remains that the shows 4Kids viciously edit are not meant for six year old children in the first place. Shows such as Sonic X, Tokyo Mew Mew (the title was changed to Mew Mew Power for the dub) and Yu-Gi-Oh are marketed to fourteen to sixteen year olds in Japan – a demographic that can handle the concept of violence. Because such shows are marketed to an older age group, guns don’t have to be edited out and replaced with pointing fingers (as is the case in many episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh.)

At the end of the interview, Mr. Haigney begged fans to “remember that 4Kids has probably brought more anime to more viewers than any company in the world. It may not always be in the way some fans would like, but I think 4Kids has contributed greatly to the interest and availability of anime worldwide.” While the vast majority of public highly disagrees with this statement (4Kids has a tendency to seek out YouTube episodes of the original series once they acquire licensing rights and promptly remove them) the fact remains that “bad dubbing” and horrible remakes are an unavoidable evil in North American society and the best way to curb it is to scour the internet and find the original versions of these foreign masterpieces.