I’m sure many people have a vague idea of what “anime” is. Japanese cartoons.

         But when you’re asked to explain what anime is, what do you say?

         “Pokémon?” some of you are guessing, I’m sure. Pokémon is not anime—it is only an example of anime. And a poor one, at that.

         Some of you may be giving slightly better examples. Probably many voices say “Sailor Moon”. Cowboy Bebop, or Lupin III, are mention as well, perhaps.

         But tell me, how much do you know about these anime?

         In one particular episode of Cowboy Bebop that I watched on Cartoon Network one night, Faye busts into a bedroom where there is a man in an awkward position in bed. During that scene, Faye appears to speak to the man’s pillow. The reason for this? In the unedited version, there is a second man in that bed.

         In the Flower Card episode of Cardcaptors (Card Captor Sakura in Japan), Julian wishes Sakura and Li luck. Both children blush and turn around, and Li snarls about how humiliating it is to have somebody think so little of him as to find it necessary to wish him luck. In the Japanese version of that same episode, Yukito (his Japanese name) wishes them luck, and they both blush and turn around, and they both remain silent. Because, in the Japanese version, both of them are in love with Yukito.

         Pokémon and Digimon are nothing more than bilged-out garbage here in the United States, whereas I practically worship the tidbits of the Japanese versions that I know of.

         Did you know that in the Japanese Digimon show, the opening theme song had legitimate lyrics? The opening theme for the US version isn’t even in the Japanese version, as far as I know. Did you know that in the Japanese version of Sailor Moon, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus aren’t cousins, but lovers? And that in Japan, the Dragon Ball Z character Hercule is known as “Mr. Satan”?

         Another example of the butchery performed on anime, and one more recognized I’m sure, is the names of various Pokémon. The one I prefer to make an example of (mainly because I can translate the Japanese name, whereas most of them I’m lucky to remember) is Kirei Hana—Bellossom in the English-dialogue version. “Kirei hana” translates into “beautiful flower”, an appropriate name for such an obscenely cute plant-type Pokémon. But rather than keep that name, the English-dialogue version refers to it by an equally weird-sounding name which is just a bad pun based on the creature’s bell-like shape and flower nature.

         The things done to anime to make them “appropriate” for their targeted audiences are horrific. Relationships are altered, personalities are wiped, in some cases translators even go so far as to change a character’s gender rather than have that character displayed to United States audiences as being homosexual!

         It sickens me how homophobic and overprotective people can be. If a show is unsuitable for Japanese homophobes, why should it magically be appropriate for homophobes here in America? The answer is simple—it shouldn’t. And yet for some inexplicable reason, it is. And so many scenes are shuffled or deleted due to how “interesting” or violent they are. Rurouni Kenshin, recently added to Toonami on Cartoon Network, contains many scenes involve blood-soaked floors or walls, the occasional decapitation, and an entire mini-arc early in the series is about opium. They even deleted a scene where Yahiko kicked a man in the balls.

         Frankly, I’m disgusted by what has been done to beautiful shows. And I hope that some day these shows are replaced with properly-translated versions, or taken off the air if Corporate America is unwilling to do that.