Yu-Gi-Oh! and 4Kids

I'm sure a few people in the class who know me/know what I've written about in the past will find this no surprise, but I think something that's really important in the discussion that is somewhat glossed over in the reading is the role of distributors/licensors like 4Kids play in determining the content and quality of kids entertainment (Seiter references 4Kids, who brought Pokemon into the US). This discussion spans a few of our classes - but particularly in fan made media and children's media.

To be fair, this is not entirely written for this class - it's a paper I wrote for another class that I edited to fit into this post. But I think it's interesting and a side of children's media that is pretty important.

So, in 2006, two years after the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, a YouTube user known as LittleKuriboh (LK) uploaded a parodic version of the first episode called “Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series – Episode 1.” In it, he takes the first episode of the series, adds more ellipses to the narrative, and re-records the dialogue to bring out different reactions to the same scenarios.

A large part of LK’s critique of 4Kids comes through the presentation of edited/censored moments. The best example of this is based off of a portion of episode 8 in the original series, where two goons try to kidnap Kaiba. In the scene, they point their fingers at him for a long time, threatening him about what will happen if he does not come quietly. In the abridged version, one of the goons says, “Don’t move a muscle or we’ll shoot you with our invisible guns,” referencing the editing done by 4Kids, as in the original version, both the goons are pointing pistols, not fingers, at Kaiba. The different versions are visible within the video below:



By referencing this alteration through the idea of invisible guns, the censorship performed by 4Kids is clearly highlighted, and the parody points out the break of narrative logic that accompanies the change – there is no dramatic tension caused by a pointer finger, and there certainly seems to be no reason Kaiba would go with them peacefully. The same technique is used at other censored moments, such as the alteration of a Marik’s character motivation from wanting to kill Yugi because he thinks Yugi murdered his father to generically wanting to take over the world. While these moments may be understandably edited to make the show more “kid friendly,” many other edits simply erase character motivation. Joey, for example, is turned into a general sidekick who just wants to help Yugi, rather than another duelist who has his own dreams of becoming a good enough duelist to earn the right to face Yugi. Either way, the argument stemming from LK’s critique is that the way these alterations took place removes any narrative tension and changes unique characters into generic caricatures, turning what was a quality show into something that seems to be comprised of moments of potential mockery.[4] He makes this criticism especially clear through Pegasus’ explanation of his card, Toon World, saying, “Toon World allows me to turn your monsters into cheap imitations – kind of like what 4Kids did to this show.”

By attacking the decisions of the distributor, LK implies an opposition that exists between the fans and the distributor. As Jenkins puts it, “The history of media fandom is at least in part the history of a series of organized efforts to influence programming decisions” (Textual Poachers 28). While his analysis relates to producers of a text and organized efforts, the idea is still the same: almost every fandom is involved in a struggle with those who hold copyright control about the way a text is presented. And this relationship, he notes, “is not always a happy or comfortable one and is often charged with mutual suspicion, if not open conflict (32). Such is certainly the case with Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series, where LK openly criticizes the way 4Kids has translated the text, going so far as to present 4Kids as the evil empire.



At the same time, there are a few key differences between a fan/distributor and fan/producer relationship. The common defense that “fan efforts to protect favorite aspects of fictional texts infringe upon the producer’s creative freedom” (Jenkins 30), for example, does not apply. Instead, this claim is reversed: LK is claiming that 4Kids infringed on what the producer created. Further, unlike fans who are trying to protect certain aspects, LK is not arguing about how production should be carried out – rather, he is arguing that the material as it was originally published should have been kept intact. Indeed, unlike for producers who are still creating material or trying to prevent new material from becoming canonical, 4Kids already had the show – they had to make a proactive decision to change it from what the producer wanted. It seems, then, that 4Kids’ translation (both in the linguistic and adaptive sense) decisions were in an attempt to get the widest possible audience through strict adherence to the standard of “kid friendly content” that is implied by the company’s name. This does, however, seem to ultimately be part of LK’s critique of 4Kids’ translation – to make the show meet 4Kids’ standards, they simply removed the content they objected to without paying close attention to how it affected the plot’s coherency or the characters’ complexity.

There's a lot more to this paper, but this is the most germane section (edited for this class, of course).