Note: Just so this is clear, what this topic is NOT about social norms and what is acceptable for one target audience over another. This includes depictions of alcohol and smoking, as well as violence (and to a degree, sexual content) which is acceptable to depict in children's media in Japan, but not in a number of other countries. What this topic IS, is to discuss changing of names of characters, locations of where series takes place, removing Japanese and Eastern elements, etc.
So the topic on the Video Game section got me to thinking how we're generally very accepting of localization and changing of Japanese sounding names to more Western or English sounding names as a whole. However, something that does bother me a bit in this kind of train of thought. Why are we generally accepting of "localization", but when it comes to changing ethnicity of characters and locations in adaptions for Hollywood films, we're more keen to call them out for White Washing. But when it comes to Anime and Video Games, we just call it "Localization" and accept it.
Something that rubs me the wrong way is Pokemon was set in various Japanese-like regions in their world, being Kanto, Johto, etc., based off of real locations of Japan. Characters are all Japanese named, often, if not all, real Japanese names, practicing Japanese traditions, foods, and even money system that reflects Japan. Yet, when it came to localization, we remove a lot of elements that make Pokemon a very Japanese series, renaming many of the characters to English sounding names, and sometimes very, if I can be honest, generic American names sometimes, even cutting elements of money, toning down cultural traditions and holidays, and even localizing foods (going as far as when we get into the Advanced Generation episodes, we outright digitally edit out Japanese foods in the anime). Some of which these are present in the games localizations.
Later handlings of Pokemon don't really have this issue, due to moving away from the Japanese locations, but a lot of the earlier stuff still bothers me a bit here.
Even some of the Ghibli film localizations produced by Disney are guilty of this. Some of the Japanese folklore in Spirited Away is somewhat toned down, as well as the whole meaning to when Chihiro's name is changed and completely makes no sense in the dub. There's also the whole thing where the story of Arriety is kinda a weird reverse-white wash situation, where Ghilbi relocated the story to Japan, featuring the characters of the original story (who do retain their names curiously, despite living in Japan), but the humans have had all their names changed to English sounding names. This is also the absolute opposite of what the UK dub did, keeping a lot of, if not all, names intact and leaving the script alone for the most part.
There's obviously other examples of this happening, but I often wonder why a lot of us tolerate this more with video games and anime, than Hollywood adaptations of material from Eastern stories?
I don't know, what is your thoughts about this?
So the topic on the Video Game section got me to thinking how we're generally very accepting of localization and changing of Japanese sounding names to more Western or English sounding names as a whole. However, something that does bother me a bit in this kind of train of thought. Why are we generally accepting of "localization", but when it comes to changing ethnicity of characters and locations in adaptions for Hollywood films, we're more keen to call them out for White Washing. But when it comes to Anime and Video Games, we just call it "Localization" and accept it.
Something that rubs me the wrong way is Pokemon was set in various Japanese-like regions in their world, being Kanto, Johto, etc., based off of real locations of Japan. Characters are all Japanese named, often, if not all, real Japanese names, practicing Japanese traditions, foods, and even money system that reflects Japan. Yet, when it came to localization, we remove a lot of elements that make Pokemon a very Japanese series, renaming many of the characters to English sounding names, and sometimes very, if I can be honest, generic American names sometimes, even cutting elements of money, toning down cultural traditions and holidays, and even localizing foods (going as far as when we get into the Advanced Generation episodes, we outright digitally edit out Japanese foods in the anime). Some of which these are present in the games localizations.
Later handlings of Pokemon don't really have this issue, due to moving away from the Japanese locations, but a lot of the earlier stuff still bothers me a bit here.
Even some of the Ghibli film localizations produced by Disney are guilty of this. Some of the Japanese folklore in Spirited Away is somewhat toned down, as well as the whole meaning to when Chihiro's name is changed and completely makes no sense in the dub. There's also the whole thing where the story of Arriety is kinda a weird reverse-white wash situation, where Ghilbi relocated the story to Japan, featuring the characters of the original story (who do retain their names curiously, despite living in Japan), but the humans have had all their names changed to English sounding names. This is also the absolute opposite of what the UK dub did, keeping a lot of, if not all, names intact and leaving the script alone for the most part.
There's obviously other examples of this happening, but I often wonder why a lot of us tolerate this more with video games and anime, than Hollywood adaptations of material from Eastern stories?
I don't know, what is your thoughts about this?
