Top 10 Most Censored 4Kids Anime Moments
Top 10 Most Censored 4Kids Anime Moments
Top 10 Most Censored Sonic X Moments
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Most Censored 4Kids Anime Moments. For this list, we’ll be looking at all the scenes 4kids either cut or watered down in the anime they licensed. Which censored moment surprises you the most? Let us know in the comments below!
#10: Shadow Realm
“Yu-Gi-Oh!” Franchise (2000-) “Yu-Gi-Oh” is certainly one of the more darker franchises that 4Kids Entertainment licensed, so it comes at no surprise that it was filled with a lot of violent deaths. To combat this, 4Kids made up the “Shadow Realm”, a terrible place where a character would be sent to rather than dying. For the sequel series, they would use the term “Sent to the Stars” for whenever a duelist would lose a death game, which makes even less sense. Whereas in “Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s” they would just remove the death entirely. A good example of this would be when they removed Sayer being eaten alive.
#9: Brock’s Jelly Donuts
“Pokémon” (1997-) As a show that originates from Japan, it’s certainly no surprise that it would feature food that originates from the country. One of the most frequently featured dishes was Onigiri, japanese rice balls with a delicious filling, the perfect meal for our adventurers to eat on the go. For some odd 4Kids was absolutely not having this, and instead had Brock call them “Jelly filled donuts” despite looking nothing like them. Even if some of us at the time as kids had no idea what an Onigiri was, we definitely knew that it wasn't a donut! Later down the line 4Kids would edit out the Onigiri entirely, replacing it with a large sandwich that Ash would awkwardly hold.
#8: Renée's Whip
“Mew Mew Power” (2005) 4Kids was no stranger to removing religious imagery from their shows, a good example of this was the crosses next to the tombstones in Shaman King. They, however, probably went a bit too far when they decided to modify Renée's Whip. In the original, the weapon has a golden cross guard across it. 4Kids decided that this looked way too much like a cross so they would remove it alongside editing the overall attack sequence. The weapon would be renamed the purple dagger, which sounds a lot more violent than a whip!
#7: Lenny the Limey
“Shaman King” (2001-02) 4Kids did a lot of westernizing to their characters, but this one takes the cake. One of the most popular characters in the series, Tao Ren is a powerful Shaman hailing from Guizhou, China. For the English dub, for some reason or another Ren was renamed to Len and had a British accent. This also applied to his sister as well and made absolutely no sense whatsoever considering the traditional chinese attire they were both wearing. 4Kids would also do the same sort of thing to Ryu, changing the japanese delinquent’s name to “Rio” complete with a hispanic accent.
#6: Forehead Markings
“Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy” (2002-04) Throughout their licenced series, 4Kids were big fans of digitally removing any signs or symbols and one of their biggest removals were the forehead markings in “Ultimate Muscle”. 4Kids were absolutely scared to death of parents complaining that their kids were drawing on their foreheads, so they removed the marks from characters such as Meat. When 4Kids commissioned a new series from Toei Animation, they requested that these markings not be present to save them time. So when these episodes aired in Japan it caused much confusion amongst the fanbase, with even the Kinnikuman creator Yudetamago poking fun at it.
#5: Shadow’s Beatdown
“Sonic X” (2003-05) Our beloved Anti-hero Shadow is obviously going to do some questionable things every now and then, but 4Kids wasn’t having it when it came to this dramatic scene. Here, human protagonist Chris Thordyke begs Shadow to help Sonic protect the world, which Shadow declines due to his sad past involving Maria. However when Chris doesn’t back down, Shadow decides to get physical and proceeds to beat him up. 4Kids would heavily modify this scene, cutting away whenever Chris would get striked. This ruins the whole scene entirely and makes us wonder what on earth is happening to Chris.
#4: Yubel
“Yu-Gi-Oh! GX” (2004-08) As the main antagonist of the Dimension World arc, Yubel is an incredibly important character in “Yu-Gi-Oh! GX”, who has a deep connection with the main hero Jaden Yuki, and eventually turns over a new leaf. Yubel’s appearance takes on both masculine and feminine traits, something you wouldn’t see as much if you watched the english dub as 4Kids covered them up to make it less obvious. When Yubel first appears in GX, they would occasionally use a masculine voice from time to time. 4Kids omitted this entirely however, with Yubel solely using a feminine voice throughout the series.
#3: Sanji's Lollipop
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“One Piece” (1999-) Due to how notorious they were at the time, when news broke out that 4Kids had licensed “One Piece” the first thing on everyone's minds was how they were going to handle the Straw Hat pirate’s chef. In the original, you’d be hard pressed to find a scene of Sanji without his signature cigarette. Obviously 4Kids was never going to keep this in, so they decided to edit every frame of him smoking, and replace it with a good old fashioned lollipop. One Piece was perhaps the most censored series 4Kids had control of, but this edit is the most notorious of them all.
#2: James’ Bikini
“Pokémon” (1997-) Fans of this series will know that Team Rocket has a large wardrobe of disguises to use against those pesky twerps, but according to 4Kids, James’ outfit in this episode was far too much for them to handle. In this episode, James wears a bikini along with inflatable breasts for a swimsuit contest. He even then goes on to tease Misty about it! Instead of trying to work around this, 4Kids opted to skip the episode entirely. Strangely enough, the episode did air once a few years later during a rerun, with all of this content removed.
#1: Finger Guns
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“Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters” (2000-04) This one is quite possibly the most infamous censor in all of anime! The original “Yu-Gi-Oh!” series was not afraid to show firearms, because as we all know childrens card games are serious business! 4Kids would remove any instances of this, but for this scene involving Kaiba, things just looked absolutely ridiculous. They would digitally remove the guns from the two henchmen after Kaiba, resulting in them threatening him with just their pointing fingers. Another big scene ruined by this censor would be when Bandit Keith threatened Pegasus after his loss, once again utilizing the dreaded finger gun.
