18560


A lot of shows nowadays are significantly censored or badly drawn for TV
release. When the home media versions come out, they are uncensored and in
some cases redrawn in certain areas.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FTcAnm.jpg) ![enter
image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mt2i6m.jpg) _Kagerou Project
TV - BluRay Comparison_

Part of this is of course the rush to release, but when the BluRays / DVDs
come out, these are some of the main selling points of the shows in order to
engage previous viewers.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sR6MQ.jpg) _Tokyo
Ghoul TV - BluRay Comparison_

Is this something unique to anime and its market? I haven't seen anything like
it in Western media


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-12T13:08:53.890
16668
2015-01-16T02:25:38.017
1530
question
anime-production merchandise censorship
Is intentionally producing a lower quality TV release unique to anime?


You are correct that it is about a rush of timing during the initial broadcast
of the series. The [_Sailor Moon Crystal_
Failures](http://sailormooncrystalfailures.tumblr.com/tagged/compbr) website
is maintaining a log of Toei's initial run screenshots with their Blu-Ray
revisions. Toei was running behind from the beginning (it originally announced
that _Sailor Moon Crystal_ would start in summer of 2013, but the release date
was pushed back twice: to early 2014, and then it finally did start "airing"
in July of 2014).

In the past, anime was made with hand-painted cels, so of course the
production companies were careful to paint each one the way they wanted it the
first time. Nowadays, most anime is made with CG, so the idea of getting
something rough out by the deadline and then going back and tweaking it later
has only quite recently emerged (another production change is that anime is
now largely not animated by Japanese animators within Japan; it is often
animated by Koreans in South Korea. Another is that anime is less profitable
within Japan than it used to be, so cutting corners more visibly in order to
cut down costs was not previously common). _Sailor Moon Crystal_ was [not
considered profitable
enough](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/9709/why-is-sailor-
moon-2014-not-airing-on-tv/13849#13849) for TV broadcast (indeed its viewer
numbers have [sharply
crashed](http://ellephedre.tumblr.com/post/107146770770/crystals-ratings-on-
niconico-japan) [a drop of 70%] from the number of viewers of the first
episode). This could be another factor in Toei's decision to decrease the
artwork quality for subsequent episodes of the initial run and thereby give
themselves more time to touch it up afterward.

I agree with you that this is not a common practice in Western media. American
cartoon viewers are very particular about the quality. My friend who is a key-
frames animator for _The Simpsons_ told me that there is one animator whose
entire job is just to animate the mouth movements, because if the mouth
movement does not perfectly match the voice actor's words, the fans generally
feel that they cannot suspend disbelief. In contrast, anime in Japanese does
not always bother to record the voice actors' voices first before animating,
since Japanese fans do not care much whether the mouth movements exactly
match. English dubs of anime can sound strange precisely because the script
translator, instead of choosing the most natural-sounding English translation
for the original sentence, often chooses what he/she thinks the American voice
actor can say that will match the animated mouth movements. The dub voice
actors then try to make their syllables match as closely as possible, even to
the point of the sentence sounding unnatural in English. The reason is that
American viewers are used to watching mouth movements like in _The Simpsons_
and Disney films which are perfectly aligned. Along these lines, if a Western
company released a cartoon that was not high-quality at first, it would be
very ill-received and ill-reviewed, the show could be abruptly cancelled, and
they wouldn't be able to make as much money.


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2015-01-16T02:25:38.017
18560
2015-01-16T02:25:38.017
2017-04-13T12:54:49.090
-1
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16668
answer