I just rewatched an anime from my childhood - Cardcaptors. It's one of very few anime I know in English, because back then I had no idea that it was from Japan.
That was also the time when Americanized anime were... censored quite a bit. Actually, I wouldn't have liked Cardcaptors (or maybe even Pokémon) as much if they hadn't been "made safe" for kids. But that's only because I didn't like lovey-dovey stuff as a kid. For example, Sakura with big hearts in her eyes whenever she sees Yukito (though I always knew him as Julian. I'm going to use the American Cardcaptors names, since I'm used the them, but I'll include the Japanese ones too).
The English Cardcaptors is actually kinda hokey seeing it now, but it's nostalgic. And I always loved the cards.
Actually, I only saw a handful of episodes as a kid. It wasn't until
college, I think, that I finally found all of the episodes. I haven't seen either Cardcaptors or Pokémon in Japanese. But I have
read the Cardcaptors manga, so I know what happens. It's been a while so
I'm fuzzy on some of the details. Bear with me (I definitely want to
read it again now that I've rewatched the anime).
But I'm actually really glad that they used to take out some of the creepy pervy stuff. Like men drooling over girls. Ugh, I always hate how that's so popular in anime. It encourages some truly awful behavior by making it seem funny instead of disgusting. There wasn't anything like that in Cardcaptors. But I think there may have been in Pokémon?
There's one Cardcaptors episode that doesn't make as much sense in America as it might in Japan, and that's Sakura's Grandpa. In Japan, it's safer to go into a stranger's house (I did, actually). But in America, they don't want to encourage kids with that. They made it clear that Sakura was visiting her Grandpa. In the manga, he never told her he was her Grandpa. That always seemed weird to me, even when you factor in family drama.
Anyway, aside from the pervy stuff, it's mostly hilarious to see what kind of things they changed in the English Cardcaptors. They took out every romance. Like two of Sakura's classmates were cousins instead of boyfriend/girlfriend. One of the students had a crush on a teacher (I forget how much they actually did with that in the manga, but I understand why they took that out for America). It was actually kind of a relief to me as a kid to have a show that wasn't full of romance. I had very little patience about it back then, and I'm still very picky about fictional romances.
But there's one change that makes me sad. Since they took out all of the romances, that included the same-sex couples. They did that quite a bit back then (the first English Sailor Moon, for example). Tori (Touya) and Julian (Yukito) was the main couple. As a kid, I always liked Julian because he was so nice. To the point where I felt betrayed when Yue first appeared and was acting so mean XD But it turned out that he wasn't the same person as Julian, so that was okay. And Yue ended up being nice, so that was okay too. Plus he looks really cool.
Now Julian actually reminds me of a good friend, so I felt super protective of him the last time I watched the show. Heheh. I think I like him more as a character now than I did long ago.
There was one point where Li was walking next to Julian all stiff and clearly flustered. And in the American version, they said that Li was just practicing for his new role in the drill team! Some of those "patch jobs" are so sloppy that I can't help laughing at them. There are so many times where Li or Sakura or someone look all red, and it doesn't make much sense in the American context. And plenty of conversations are switched to a different subject entirely.
Would I recommend the English Cardcaptors to anyone? Well, I'm mostly attached to it because of the nostalgia. It was one of my first couple anime. I've never seen the Japanese one, so I guess I can't recommend it. I'd probably recommend the manga though. And now they're doing a remake? Clear Card? I'll watch it eventually. I'm just always so skeptical about remakes. (Though I may be totally wrong, and it's a sequel instead of a remake?)
I still have my old set of Clow Cards. I... also bought a set of Sakura Cards a few years ago. I even tried a little bit of a fanfiction. I came up with the idea right before I read the manga. In the English version, they said that Li was a direct descendant of Clow Reed, so I wanted to explore why the cards didn't get passed down through his line. But in the manga, Li wasn't a direct descendant, so that no longer made sense. I stopped the fanfic after a couple chapters.
Regardless of all the different versions, you can tell that I've always been very attached to this series. Whether or not I recommend it, that doesn't mean you shouldn't; try it :3
(As I was looking for images to include in this post, I found this nice article that discusses some of these points)
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