This essay originally appeared on the message board of a website entitled www.megatokyo.com. Used by permission of the author.

"Untitled"
by Steve "Otakuman" Broida

The first thing I'll look at is the whole mainstream thing. It seems that people really don't like the idea of anime going mainstream. There's just one problem with that as far as I can see. I don't think anime as a whole is going mainstream. If that were true, and man what fun it would be if it was, then that would mean that ALL anime would be big hits here in the U.S. But [anime series'] like Shadow Skill and others are simply not as prevalent as they once were.

In that case, then that would mean this:

ANIME IS NOT GOING MAINSTREAM, BUT SOME ANIME ARE!

This means that anime like DBZ and Pokemon are getting wide recognition, but not ALL anime is, just those. Other big names include Sailor Moon, Digimon, Gundam, and others that are right behind DBZ and Pokemon in popularity. This is what people, non-anime fans, will see when flipping channels and what not. Well, maybe not Sailor Moon till it comes back, but you know what I mean. Now some people are getting UN-interested in anime because it is becoming more mainstream. They stop watching something because too many people are watching it. Well to me, its like this:

IF A PERSON STOPS WATCHING AN ANIME OR GETS OUT OF ANIME ENTIRELY BECAUSE A CERTAIN SERIES, OR EVEN THE WHOLE MEDIUM, IS GETTING POPULAR, THEN THAT PERSON WAS NOT REALLY INTO ANIME TO BEGIN WITH!

Fan loyalty is what made anime what it is today and what will still define it for years to come. Popularity is a fad that will pass away and then anime will return to our hands once something else takes hold. IF something else can take hold. Anime fans are a SUBculture, and anime as we know it today came from that subculture. Nothing can wrest away something from a subculture. When something from a subculture becomes more mainstream, there's always going to be some downsides, and one biggie for anime is editing.

For editing, you have to really consider the way its done. First, editing really only happens on television(unless you take the television episodes and put them on video and the other exceptions). I mean, come on, its basic cable and syndicated TV so there's going to be some editing. Unlike the Sci-Fi channel which edits in ways that basic anime fans will find rather acceptable (the same way Die Hard gets put on TBS), Toonami works with Funimation to put DBZ direct on TV. This means edited fights, dialogue, and what not.

There was one thing that caught my attention though. On one of the episodes of DBZ I saw in Japanese without subs, when Chaozu blew himself up to try and kill Nappa, there's a scene where Tien goes in a state of shock as scenes of Chaozu from the past scroll by the screen. This was not shown on the US version, they simply had a spot where Tien yells, "Chaozuuuuu!" or something like that. This leads me to think that Funimation just might be doing this:

FUNIMATION IS EDITING MORE SCENES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE PLOT THAN SCENES THAT INCLUDE FIGHTING!

AND THE FIGHTING SCENES THAT FUNIMATION THINKS ARE TOO GRAPHIC ARE EDITED OUT AND REPLACED WITH ANOTHER FIGHT SCENE FROM BEFORE OR AFTER TO FILL IN TIME! THE FIGHT SCENES ARE THEREFORE OUT OF ORDER!

Granted, I can't prove this, yet, but its a theory of mine. However, there is one thing that I've noticed and that's the DVDs. The DVDs of Funimation come with the subtitle option, and after hearing many people gripe and complain, I finally got Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure.

THE SUBS ON THE DRAGON BALL DVD WERE PERFECTLY TRANSLATED WITH ALMOST NO ERROR AND WITH GOOD INTERPRETATION OF THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE!

I was surprised! When I met a friend who keeps saying the subs suck, there was pretty much only one reason he was upset. It was because they took out the eye catch for the commercial breaks. I figure the commercial break eye catch is a small sacrifice for a well-translated and complete episode of Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z on DVD. This means that while Funimation may have to deal with bad dubbing and the like for TV, they mean well and have high hopes of a successful direct-to-video future for when they get titles other than DBZ.

And that's my two cents.

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Steve Broida is a self-proclaimed otaku from Cleveland, Ohio whose contributions to the promotion of anime in the US include a successful attempt at integrating manga into his local library. Steve will be entering college at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York this fall.