If you watch anime today, it's probably uncensored. Fans will certainly complain if the anime they watch is even slightly different than how it was presented in its original format. People will argue about translation even if they can't understand the original Japanese. Distributors and localization crews actually care about how faithful the product is to the original.

This couldn't be farther from how anime was treated back in the early days of American fandom. As recently as the mid-2000s, anime was censored to an absurd degree. Some changes, like removing the episode of Pokémon where James puts on inflatable breasts, make some sense. Others? Not so much.

RELATED: My Life As A Villainess Is A Fresh And Wholesome New Isekai Series

Pokémon

 Pokémon was subjected to a great deal of censorship over the years. Some of this makes sense, even if it is extreme. Some episodes were omitted or heavily edited to avoid controversy. Obviously, the infamous seizure episode where Porygon and Pikachu's combined attacks create super-flashing colors on-screen was never aired internationally... or ever reaired in Japan. Episodes like "Tentacool and Tentacruel" and "The Tower of Terror" weren't aired for years after 9/11 due to sensitive subject matter.

Less logical, however, was how anything remotely Japanese was removed or altered to be more "American" in nature -- especially Japanese food. Brock calling rice balls "jelly-filled donuts" is only the most memetic example. 4Kids went out of its way to eradicate any mention of rice balls altogether, pasting obnoxious sandwiches over the rice balls that look genuinely out of place. They aren't even color corrected!

Yu-Gi-Oh!

4Kids infamously omitted any mention of death or realistic violence from Yu-Gi-Oh! Guns were erased and replaced with finger guns. "Being sent to the Shadow Realm" became a substitute for characters dying. Realistic weapons were replaced with silly, fantasy alternatives. Some of these "alternatives" particularly strained belief.

This worst is during the Battle City Tournament. In one game, Yugi is bound to a machine where a razor-disk is set on track to cut his legs off if he loses. This is turned into a "Shadow Realm" disc that will send you to the "Shadow Realm" if it eats into your legs. In a later match, Yugi and Kaiba are bound to a glass roof that will blow up, sending them falling down a skyscraper to a Shadow Realm portal if they lose (or, as seen in the original, splatter them on the pavement).

Sailor Moon

Sailor-Moon-Super-Sailor-Uranus-Neptune-Sailor-Stars

Sailor Moon, much like Pokémon, was subject to a great deal of censorship involving the removal of distinctly Japanese iconography as well as anything sexual. This included blurring Sailor Moon's body during transformation, as well as the more objectionable changes in regards to the censorship of LGBTQA themes.

While everyone remembers Sailor Uranus and Neptune becoming "cousins," people also forget how Zoicite and Fish-Eye were both turned into women to make their same-sex relationships more heterosexual. The entirety of Sailor Moon: Sailor Stars, the fifth and final season, never aired on television because there would simply be too much to censor. Strangely, though, very little animation was altered when censoring LGBTQA scenes. This meant that flower petals and romantic music played while Haruka and Michiru walked arm-in-arm and Zoicite's design was never made feminine.

RELATED: Moriking Is Basically Pokémon for Those in Love with Bug Types

One Piece

Every decision made with the 4Kids release of One Piece is baffling and bewildering. All references to tobacco, alcohol, and violence were removed or altered to be child-friendly. Sanji, a chain-smoker, was turned into a lollipop addict. Alcohol was turned to juice. Visible violence was censored by removing blood. 39 episodes were cut entirely, many of them not even containing much in the way of objectionable content.

The funniest of all these changes was the way 4Kids replaced guns, turning them into squirt guns or pellet guns. Much like how Pokémon turned rice-balls into sandwiches, the new illustrations look out-of-place and garish. And much like how Pokémon turned rice-balls into sandwiches, the new illustrations look out-of-place and garish.

Cardcaptor Sakura

One of the most widely loved anime franchises in Japan, Cardcaptor Sakura, was deemed a high-risk property when brought to American televisions. Despite the success of Sailor Moon and The Powerpuff Girls, executives didn't think people would want to watch a show centered around girls. They changed the series so that the protagonist of Cardcaptor Sakura wasn't Sakura, but rather Syaorin, who isn't even introduced until a few episodes into the original.

This meant changing the title from Cardcaptor Sakura to just Cardcaptors, scrambling which episodes they aired on television (only 38 of the 70 episodes aired on western TV) and removing most romantic details to make it less girly.And as with Sailor Moon, all same-sex romances were eliminated.

RELATED: Crunchyroll Unleashes First God of High School Trailer

Escaflowne

The Visions of Escaflowne suffered a similar fate to Cardcaptor Sakura. The highly beloved anime was brought to American TV heavily re-edited to appeal more to young boys rather than girls. In theory, this would be easy, considering Escaflowne is already an action-heavy fantasy epic. However, this meant that the entire first episode was omitted because it focused too much on the main character Hitomi. The Fox censors removed most of the action scenes for being too brutal, and it was ultimately canceled after episode 10.

Dragon Ball Z

group image of the z fighters imposed on a background with vegeta

The early years of Dragon Ball Z were filled with bewildering censorship choices. Granted, while the Kids! WB rebroadcast of Dragon Ball Z Kai contained things like turning Mr. Popo blue, the 1997 broadcasts of Dragon Ball Z were filled with bewildering censorship choices. All mentions of death were removed. Considering the characters die all the time, this decision led to a few problems. Instead of being killed, people would be sent "to another dimension." The worst of this came during the 1997 broadcasts of the Saiyan Saga, where Tien gets his arm snapped off by Nappa. Tien states that his arm can grow back which does not make sense as he is human. Thankfully, the later Funimation and Toonami broadcasts, while cutting extreme violence, were more faithful.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

It's often forgotten that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind had a release back in the 80s. This is in part because it was so horrendously censored and re-edited that it barely resembled its original. The film, repackaged as Warriors of the Wind, was released by New World Pictures, which tried to "improve" the film for American audiences.

New World Pictures cut out nearly 24 minutes of the two-hour film, removing world-building, character interaction, and all the quiet elements of the film, as well as rewriting and rearranging scenes. Director Hayao Miyazaki was incredibly disappointed by this. When Harvey Weinstein infamously suggested doing the same thing to Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki sent him a samurai sword with the words "No Cuts" engraved on the blade. We couldn't agree more with Miyazaki on this one.

KEEP READING: Does Hayao Miyazaki Actually Hate Anime?