Americanized Versions Of Japanese Shows Are Too Soft

While I'm open to having Japanese shows localized here and there because the Japanese companies want to hit the international market but... I couldn't still express my disgust at the Americanized version more often than not. 

Here's a clip of Golion vs. Lion Voltron. Okay, Golion may have not been popular in Japan and Lion Voltron got popular in American but I can't help but facedesk at this scene. It's an obvious planetary destruction. How can everyone be evacuated already when it's an obvious war? War has casualties! Editing all the bloody scenes can be done, I don't care if they localized it but the problem is it defies logic too much. They could have kept the death in the plot even if the deaths aren't shown on-screen.

Or who could forget how Shirogane and Sven both had their fates in Golion vs. Voltron. It's obvious Sven was too injured. Hagar inflicted a mortal blow. In Golion, Honerva did such a damaging attack. If he was just out there to heal then why didn't he return a few episodes later? It's because Shirogane died in Golion. They could have kept Sven's death even if they cut out all the brutality involved, right? 

Here's something I remembered reading while I was about to enter College from Breadth of Site where I first learned about some old school Super Sentai: 

I can hear you muttering, "Well, yeah, there is the giant killer teddy-bear, but how does this differ from Power Rangers, really?" Anyone who follows both sets can tell you. And so can I. This is a Power Rangers quote from the 2000 edition, Lightspeed Rescue: "The city suffered minimal damage and no one was hurt!" That pretty much sums it up. Then there was the time a hero fought a villain, and under his commander's orders was forced to put out a fire in a parking garage, rather than get a family out of danger, so a little boy was injured. He was very angry with his commander, until he discovered that near the fire were gas tanks. And imagining the garage exploding with fireballs, he thinks: "If I hadn't put out the fire, more people might have been hurt!" Hurt. For crying out loud, if the garage had gone up in flames, people would have died! Sorry, off on a tangent, here.

It's stupid to water down the plot and waste the potential of the cast. For one, how can the city suffer minimal damage in the case of a monster attack? Why do they even have to really edit out "die" or not even mention someone could have died in the fire? Is it all about soccer moms who think children will be "traumatized" which is just stupid. Just because there's an absence of stuff like blood and alcohol (which was greatly reduced in post-Timeranger Super Sentai seasons) doesn't mean we shouldn't bring up the topic that someone could have died. It's always a valid topic to bring up even if most deaths happen off-screen.

I wonder if soccer moms are still too focused on the whole tragedy of Optimus Prime's death. As much as I didn't like it but he died with honor. Hotrod was someone I could relate to. Casualties happen in war! The Transformers movie wasn't all too afraid to feature the death of the Autobot leader in the most glorious way. I know Optimus Prime's a beloved character, it felt like it jumped the shark but killing him off was probably meant to teach children a valuable lesson. I guess too many parents complained to the point that when one localizes a Japanese show for the American audience - death is always cut out for that reason.

When Takara finally bought the rights to make their own alternate continuity of the Generation-1 Transformers (which the original cartoon ended in the Rebirth arc which got ignored in the Japanese-only Headmasters) - they did some things again. We saw the revived Optimus Prime sacrifice himself to save Cybertron. Ultra Magnus died in battle. It was really back to adding some of those plots that make soccer moms scared to death.

With this in mind, I really hate it when things get too soft. Life isn't a bed of roses and again roses have thorns. You have to think about life isn't all how American TV shows portray them to be. I guess it has to do with the growth of American anti-intellectualism huh?