Tokyopop's DVDs are altered for the American market due to their censorship laws, as you might well notice if you watch the fansubs I have of the first stage, then watch the DVDs, all the translations are different (IE, they have swearing in them... Wonder why that went? :P)
Altered due to U.S. censorship laws? What do
you know about laws? There's not a whole lot that can get something completely banned from being shown in the U.S. thanks to our first constitutional amendment. If the mountainloads of hentai DVDs that get brought States-side can make it, there's nothing in Initial D that presents a problem.
I myself have some HK bootlegs of the first two stages that I got before the series was licensed. I also have as many of the Tokyopop DVDs as were released before I moved to Japan. Frankly, those bootlegs were junk. They were good ENOUGH at the time, since that's all that I had available, but their translations were terrible. I won't even mention their other faults, since those aren't the issue here. You may well be talking about a different set of fansubs, okay. But guess what? If you take something, and give it to five different translators,
you will get five different translations. Translating languages is not a cut-and-paste operation, especially when you're working with English and Japanese. Cursing? Are you completely unaware of the old "habit" fansubs had where they had tons of unnecessary swearing in them? That's due to overly-direct, wannabe-edgy translations rather than the intent actually being there. How often a translator chooses to include swear words or not does not indicate how "true" a translation is. The only problem I can recall having with the Tokyopop DVDs' translations is that I thought they were a bit dodgy during Natsuki's conversation with her "papa". They didn't stretch things so badly that I would call it censoring, but they could have done better. That scene alone is not enough to condemn everything else they've released.
I know this isn't related to anime as such, but there are other shows that America cuts to pieces so that they remove all the stuff they don't want you to have, yet when you get the "real" stuff via fansubs or buying the DVD's from Japan... You can notice a lot of the differences.
"All the stuff they don't want you to have"... now this is great. So there's some secret inner council somewhere, right? And they're conspiring on a daily basis to hold back all of the cool stuff so you can't get it? That is
priceless. I'd rather not take up more space than I have already, but feel free to mention some specific things and I'll explain to you (fruitlessly, no doubt) how it's most likely a business restriction/policy rather than that they're just out to get you.
Us aussies are... Well, more tolerant of that sort of stuff, we get all these uncensorted anime's coming out now, with the ones that come via America (Ninja Scroll, for example), being cut (I know, I watched the fansub then the actual DVD, and noticed it quite obviously)
Now, I was sure you were full of crap anyway, but I spent a bit of time searching for any mention of censorship in the Ninja Scroll DVD. None. You know, basing your argument off of blatant lies isn't the best way to sway someone's opinions.
hellbent has a point about the "quality" and content though :P
Like I've said many times in the past, commercial DVDs always offer better quality. Better source material means it looks prettier, paid professional translators and editors ensure flow and accuracy of dialogue is superior to fansubs (not necessarily by a large gap, as I'd like to think we're not incompetent here :P), and they also usually have a bunch of extras that you DON'T get with fansubs. The only in which I think fansubs still beat commercial productions hands-down is typesetting and styling. And even THAT is no longer 100%, as releases like Rightstuf's KareKano DVDs show that such typesetting IS possible from their side... just very rare, unfortunately.
Don't let your fanboyism get in the way of rational thinking. While all your little friends may think you're the Champion of Justice, you just sound like a moron to the rest of us.
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