Banned episodes discussion

[FinnishPokéFan92]

I decided to make a thread for people to discuss about the banned episodes of Pokémon, which I've always personally found interesting.

Feel free to discuss anything related to banned Pokémon anime episodes here: uncommonly known trivia bits, whether you agree or disagree with the reason why they were banned, whether you think the banning could/should be undone, and so forth.

 

[Dahara]

I know this is getting into some thorny territory right off the bat, but the whole "Satoshi in blackface" ban strikes me as a company way overacting to a nonissue due to being scared of media backlash which likely never would have happened.

Blackface is a real historical phenomena and I can actually see why people thought Jynx qualified, not totally understanding Japanese culture and what it signified. Changing her skin tone made sense to avoid misunderstandings. But this was way different. Satoshi has no exaggerated features just some mud slapped on his face and not even his whole face. It unintentionally sends a bad message too, that any use of camouflage to look like an animal is similar in nature to a form of racist imagery against human beings, when they have no equivalence in reality.

 

[Panky..]

I know this is getting into some thorny territory right off the bat, but the whole "Satoshi in blackface" ban strikes me as a company way overacting to a nonissue due to being scared of media backlash which likely never would have happened.

Blackface is a real historical phenomena and I can actually see why people thought Jynx qualified, not totally understanding Japanese culture and what it signified. Changing her skin tone made sense to avoid misunderstandings. But this was way different. Satoshi has no exaggerated features just some mud slapped on his face and not even his whole face. It unintentionally sends a bad message too, that any use of camouflage to look like an animal is similar in nature to a form of racist imagery against human beings, when they have no equivalence in reality.

On top of that, they could have just resolved the issue by restoring Ash's normal face instead of the mud covered one and released the episode normally. But no... they had to go the long way and ban the entire thing because some people might be offended.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I don't think that the episode was banned just because Ash's face was painted black. I think it was because he was dressing up as a Passimian, a primate based Pokemon, while also having a black face painted on him. African Americans have been associated with apes and gorillas in racist imagery before, so if Ash was dressing up as another Pokemon with a black face, it might not have been an issue. I don't think that a lot of people would see it as being racist. Regardless of whatever Jynx is supposed to be based on, its original design did invoke some racist imagery. But considering that the whole issue with Jynx is easily one of the more well known controversies in the franchise, they probably didn't want to take a chance. People online were upset or annoyed about the decision, but they probably would have preferred that over parents or the general public getting upset instead.

They could have painted over his face to avoid the issue completely, but that would have required them to spend more time and money on one episode. If the episode was important, they probably would have done it, but since it was just a filler episode, they probably didn't see much of a reason to do it.

 

[Daenerys]

I think people underestimate how difficult it would've been to edit Ash's face; chances are that just like in the Lenora situation, it would've been up to the actual Japanese animators to edit his face frame by frame and by the time that the episode was meant to air overseas, it was probably too late for them to go back and make the necessary edits.

As for why they even bothered editing Lenora so that she wouldn't be an offensive mammy archetype, I figure that since she was a Gym leader and therefore important to the plot of BW, the Japanese animation team had no choice but to remove her apron. But the Passimian episode was a filler that most people seemed to find pointless anyways judging by the episode discussion threads prior to the international episode ban, so I can see why it was skipped rather than edited. We really didn't miss much by having that episode be banned tbh.