How Hoopa: The Mischief Pokémon Was Censored Outside Japan

You may wonder if the Pokémon anime series still sees censorship or heavy localisation
changes when released in the West.
Whilst Censored Gaming and others may often report on the types of edits that companies
like 4Kids used to commonly make, such as toning down violence or suggestive content,
all of this is a very long time ago now.
4Kids stopped working on the show in 2005 and, ever since then, The Pokémon Company
International has handled the Western production of the shows.
It's rare that modern Pokémon gets the types of changes that we used to see while it was
under 4Kid's wing, and part of this can possibly be attributed to the Japanese originals rarely
straying into anything that could be seen as inappropriate.
However, changes will sometimes still be made and today we'll be taking a look at a change
that was made to the anime short "Hoopa: The Mischief Pokémon".
This short is one of the most recent special side story episodes to be released in the
West.
It was originally released on DVD in Japan along with pre-order tickets for the eighteenth
Pokémon movie, in a promotion held at Japanese convenience stores.
Since then it has also been made available on the Japanese YouTube channel and US Pokémon
website, both for only a limited time.
And it has also been broadcast on Canadian TV.
The short is only 14 minutes in length but gives back story on the characters when they
were younger and helps set the tone for Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages.
It was produced and localised by The Pokémon Company and most of the content is the same
as in Japan.
However, there was one small scene that was completely cut out of the dub due to its suggestive
nature.
The scene in question occurs when the gang accidentally break a statue and ask Hoopa
to teleport various objects through its rings to help fix it.
In the Western version, the first item that they ask Hoopa to teleport is something "fancy",
which leads to it summoning a Phanpy, seemingly mishearing the word "fancy" for "Phanpy".
Over in Japan, though, this short scene is totally different.
Hoopa doesn't mishear the gang in the Japanese version and they also ask for something completely
different.
In Japan they ask for something made from "ivory", which leads it to summon this ivory
statue, with a 'distinctive' water feature.
You can find these types of statues all over the world in real life and they are a very
popular type of decoration - despite it being a little rude in nature.
The statue is equipped to let out water as if it was peeing, which it then promptly does
all over Baraz's face.
All of this was completely removed outside of Japan.
The next part was also slightly changed in the West.
The gang say that the statue is the wrong type of ivory, which then finally leads Hoopa
to summon the elephant-like pokémon.
Ivory, of course, comes from elephant's tusks.
This causes the gang to say that the ivory can't be used, since it's still on the inside
of the pokémon.
There is no play on words or mishearing of the word "fancy" in the Japanese version.
There is no official explanation for why these changes were made but it's likely that it
was felt that the statue scene would have been either inappropriate for younger audiences
or possibly that Western TV stations would have had an issue with it.
As for changing "ivory" to the word "fancy", elephants being hunted for their tusks is
a very controversial subject and is banned in most parts of the world, due to it rapidly
leading the animals to extinction.
This is possibly the reason why the localisers decided to change the word.
As mentioned, though, these types of edits to Pokémon are pretty rare nowadays, but
they do still happen every now and again.
If you know of any other modern changes to the show that you'd like to see a video about,
then please let Censored Gaming know in the comments, as well as any other ideas for future
videos, and, until next time, thank you for watching.
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How Hoopa: The Mischief Pokémon Was Censored Outside Japan

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