Help with characters!

[Astro Forever]

Originally posted by jeffbert@Oct 28 2005, 11:30 PM
Did it cut Tobio's death in the hospital bed (I am assuming it would)?

Yes. They even cut this little part:



I wonder why. :huh: The only episode in which they didn't cut anything was the circus, and that was because part of it was shown in the first episode! Boynton doesn't even go on the boat with Astro, he sends him on his own while he's at the hospital, making him promise he won't try to find him in the next month. So that made the first episode a lot shorter, which is why they had to add part of the circus episode to it. Our second episode started with Astro working on the "white lion". BTW, Elefun and Cathy say in this episode that Boynton died because of his injuries. We don't see them breaking the news to Tobio/Astro though.

On the other hand, a slight edit was made as an attempt to explain Astro's red eyes in the first episode. As Boynton asks Miss Honda for help, he says Tobio's problem might have been caused by a short circuit, and right at this moment we get a little flashback of Astro getting electrocuted on the wires.

It's kind of funny that they tried to give an answer to some questions the viewers might have, while on the other hand they caused an awful lot of inconsistencies themselves with all the cuts!

Oh and while I'm at it, let me say that Astro's French 1980 voice is by far my favorite of all those I've heard, with Astro's 2003 French voice in second. He sounds a little more like a boy in these in my opinion. I've never heard his English Canadian voice.

[Astro Forever]

Originally posted by LemonFrosted+Oct 29 2005, 03:50 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (LemonFrosted @ Oct 29 2005, 03:50 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Watching Astro get built every day (syndication rules) was part of the awesome. The English Canadian voice was pretty typical "cartoon boy," though as I think of it it was un-typical in that it wasn't over-stylized and grating (unlike his classmates who's voices I found unbearable even at the age of 8.)[/b]

Sorry, but what does "syndication" mean? Thanks for the description of the voices.

<!--QuoteBegin--LemonFrosted@Oct 29 2005, 04:10 AM
It's worth noting that the additions to the end of the show wasn't at all uncommon at the time. Sailor Moon episodes airing to this day on YTV carry a similar "what did we learn today?" segment leftover from when they were first dubbed way back by Funimation. They were added because segment lengths were clipped to match English dialogue (as an alternative to Speed Racer's solution) which affected overall run-time. Akimba, Bushbaby, Astroboy, The Little Prince, Sailor Moon, and other imported cartoons all had similar segments added to the end. In the overall scheme of Canadian internal education it was a brilliant tactic.[/quote]
It was? I can't remember these games, at least not in the cartoons I've watched (I haven't watched any of the cartoons you cited). Hmmmm... Now I'm starting to wonder if those cuts were the results of the English channel and if the French channel just took the masters from them... which then would have been exported in France.

I also want to say something about overall edits and omissions: the source of much of Anime, Astro Boy being architypal, is the echoing social effect of Japan being hit with two atomic bombs. Anime and manga became ways of trying to cope with that identity, the outrage, confusion, and other things that go along with it. The inceptions of so great an episode of tragic violence into the native history of Japan has manifested itself in these mediums where types of violence and tragic situations (Astro being whipped by the circus master, Tobio dying in a car accident) become common expressions of an incommunicable, and largely unconscious, hurt; thus it is not considered improper for young children. North America has nothing, really, of the sort (9/11 not being large enough to cripple a culture, only incite rage) so these scenes lose their context and appear to be excessive/gratuitous/inappropriate for children, at least to a censor board more concerned with media imitation (a subject that is murky, still, today and will likely remain so until time dies) and afraid of promoting exploitive behavior (racism being our crippling psychosis).

Interesting, I never really gave this much thought. But then children in the US, Australia and other parts of the world got a very little censored version and apparently, people here haven't been traumatized. I've also seen very tragic cartoons, with characters dealing with all kinds of deaths and emotional challenges, so I just can't understand why Astro got mutilated like that. :huh: