When the first episode of anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba recently aired, those who watch it on Bilibili, China’s number one anime streaming service, will see a slightly different version.
For China, demon slayer Tanjiro Kamado’s earrings have been altered from their original design. As News Gamme points out, its Rising Sun style elements might cause offence in the Mainland. The design, it seems, was changed for the subtitles with simplified Chinese characters.
With such a big market, it seems the anime’s creators wanted to bypass any possible controversy.
Update 16/02/21: In case you’re wondering, the new Demon Slayer movie — and its Australian release — retains Tanjiro’s original Rising Sun-style earrings.
Comments
17 responses to “Anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Changed Slightly As Not To Offend”
Seems a bit unnecessary. It’s not even the Rising Sun flag.
In the same way that wearing a sombrero is not cultural appropriation, but you know some people would see it that way.
It’s not a cultural appropriation issue though? It’s iconography associated with horrendous war crimes.
Yeah, but that’s not the sole association. The flag has a long history and is still in use today for both military and commercial applications. Koreans (understandably) object to seeing it, but then again, a point has been raised that they say nothing about the Chinese and North Korean flags, when hundreds of thousands of Koreans were killed during the Korean war. I think the sensitivity comes from having been subjugated. Then again, the Yuan dynasty of China invaded and subjugated Korea in the 13th Century, and you don’t see much animosity as a result. I reckon that Koreans are getting over the Japanese occupation. Give it another couple of generations maybe. Not that I’m excusing or minimising what Japan did in Korea – it was pretty horrible.
Man, one can only hope but I’ve met both young Koreans and Japanese who were raised ultraconservative and are definitely keeping alive the animosity between their nations for at least another generation. Hopefully their numbers dwindle further to the point it is no longer socially acceptable to hold such views (pretty much like confederate fanboys in America).
It isn’t, though. At least not to the extent of something like a Swastika. The Japanese military have used the Rising Sun flag from the 1880s and still use it now. It didn’t even become controversial until the 90s or so when China and especially Korean nationalist groups started complaining about people using it.
Yeah sure, that’s totally fair. But if a large group of people are likely to be offended by something, and it’s easy to change, might as well change it no?
I doubt anyone would even have noticed since this wasn’t even a rising sun flag. By making this change they’ve drawn attention to it.
Completely ridiculous. Pandering to China is the last thing anyone should be doing.
If you hate making huge amounts of money, sure.
It might shock you to discover that a huge amount of the media you consume these days panders to the Chinese market. Not always as directly as this, but it’s very common because of how big that market is.
Exactly. China already has pandas, so it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to panda to China!
😛
Oh, you!
Removing and editing content for different regions is common place and done for almost every foreign market.
Of course. Doesn’t make it right.
Uh….doesn’t make what right?
Point was it’s something content providers/creators do for many countries and regions, including our own, not sure why folks in China should get treated differently.
Because worrying about (sometimes extremely minor) cultural disparity only serves to keep people divided rather than embracing the fact that different cultures in different countries are varied and accepting this. China has a long history of dubious censorship among other things and I don’t believe pandering to their values does anything positive aside from money in the bank for corporations.
Oh please, you speak of division and yet you’re advocating for that very thing, treat the Chinese people differently because of differences in culture, history and politics.
In this case it’s not simply cultural differences, it’s a long bloody history that isn’t going to be fixed with aggressive ignorance.
Believe it or not, there’s plenty of folks in Japan who don’t pretend this never took place and many that do.
Yeah, I’m no fan of the things that the Chinese government do either, I’m just not so hypocritical as to pretend that that everything they do can’t be found in our own backyards and those of our allies, all for some throwaway faux moral superiority and so I never have to deal with the problems in my own neck of the woods.
Clearly it works though, some people froth at the mouth at the mere mention of China….one of our closest allies up until they US demanded we pander to them instead and begin the very isolation and division you apparently stand against.
We live in a time defined by propaganda and censorship, how we consume and react depends on us though.
I did a cosplay of tanjiro for halloween and had the original hanafuda earrings and I got alot of triggered comments from korean people. Should i have to not wear the earrings? I have no thoughts towards the actual rising sun stuff and the earrings arent even meant to stand for that.