For older news: No Editing Zone News Archives

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Saturday, September 15th, 2001

NEW EDITING REPORT! With thanks to information posted in various places, I have added an editing report for Mobile Suit Gundam. In addition to missing opening and endings being deferent than the originals, an entire episode has been skipped for the North American release and the video of the episodes have been edited to 'modernize' the animation using various effects. Read the editing report HERE or find it in the 'Full List' link.

Needless to say, I recommend people not buy the Mobile Suit Gundam releases for the original TV series. If you want to show your support for uncut Gundam, but the uncut releases of 8th MS team and 080 and 083. High sales of those in comparison to the edited MSG TV discs/tapes will send a message to Bandai/Sunrise.

Edited for TV/dub only: I've put up edited for TV/dub only information notices in the editing report lists for Yu-gi-oh and Power Stone.

For those interested, there is a petition to convince 4Kids Entertainment to release an uncut version of Yu-gi-go in North America located here: http://www.petitiononline.com/CiscoR/petition.html

Saint Tail Dub Changes Update: The first two volumes of Tokyo Pop's Mysterious Thief Saint Tail have a dub that is censored to remove most references to God in the dialog. Fortunately, Kenneth Lee (the new producer for the Saint Tail release) has indicated that as of volume 3 the dub will return the proper dialog and be uncensored. Volume 2 and up also restore the missing opening and endings between episodes that were omitted on volume 1. I have updated the editing report to reflect this.

Monday, September 10th, 2001

Sakura Diaries Update: From the Anime on DVD fourm:

"Sakura Diaries Collectors Edition Street Date"
The Sakura Diaries Collectors Edition is a two disc set containing all 12 episodes of Sakura Diaries. This version of the show is sometimes refered to as the "LD" version among otaku and contains different footage than was release previously in individual volumes. This edition is subtitled only and has an SRP of $44.98. Streets on 12/04/01.
-----
David Williams
A.D.Vision, Inc.

The long wanted LD version of Sakura Diaries is less than three months away! David Williams of ADV has confirmed that the title screens will be in Japanese and that a new subtitle script (hopefully more accurate than the ones on the four disc release of the edited/made for TV version they released previously) was done for this new special 2 disc release.

My thanks to ADV for doing the right thing for this title.

Sunday, September 9th, 2001

Macross TV Update: Robert Woodhead of Animeigo has confirmed that an initial list of names was presented to Harmony Gold and several changes made at their request/insistence. I hope to have a list of the names to be used on the Macross DVDs sometime this week and will post them when I receive them.

Editorial:

I know these sort of things happen all the time with Japanese licensors, but for a U.S. company completely unrelated to the original production of a show to request/require these kind of changes to names (to avoid "confusion" with a heavily edited American version of that original production, no less) is distasteful to me. I am very disappointed with the parties involved in these needless changes.

Thursday, September 6th, 2001

Macross TV Update: Some information posted by Egan Loo (who is reportedly working with Animeigo on the Macross TV DVDs) on the Animeigo mailing lists indicates that the names may not have been changed as drastically as some reports have indicated. I'm still waiting to hear directly from Robert or Shin of Animeigo and will post futher information when/if I receive it.

Macross TV Edited? According to reports from Animeigo's mailing list, the Anime on DVD forums, and apparently mentioned by Shin at Otakon, Animeigo is being required by Harmony Gold to change names of characters in their sub script for Macross TV so they don't match any names used in Robotech (for those characters/things that actually used the original names from Macross). Apparently Harmony Gold doesn't want any "confusion" with Robotech. No complete list has been given, but so far it appears that "Microns" will be spelt"Miclones" and "Roy Fokker" will be "Roy Focker". Considering they've been advertising this set as 'unedited', this is not welcome news.

Editorial:

Over two years of waiting for this set only to find out about this as the set nears completion. It's quite a let down. I haven't had any worries about the subtitles or translation because of Animeigo's long held reputation for doing good work in this department. For them to throw away that reputation and agree to these name changes disappoints me greatly and makes me wonder if I can sit through 39 episodes of altered names. Considering they changed then name of the enemy, that change will be used throughout the show.

For Harmony Gold to even suggest this is beyond pathetic. Macross was the ORIGINAL show and deserves to use the proper names and spellings more than Robotech does. It just shows that they have no respect for the original shows that Robotech was made from, not that this is that much of a surprise to anyone. If they're so set on treating Robotech as a separate entity, I'm surprised they let ADV include all the information on their DVDs concerning how Carl Macek edited Robotech from the original three stories. I'm also surprised they let ADV use the name 'Macross Saga' for the first third of their Robotech DVD release. Doesn't that create just as much "confusion" as using the same names in the original Macross TV and Robotech?

I'm not terribly surprised that Harmony Gold would try to do something so stupid, but I *AM* surprised that Animeigo would agree to it.