One Truth Prevails… Nobody Thinks Much of Americans

My favorite anime is “Case Closed”, about brilliant 17-year-old detective Jimmy Kudo who got poisoned and transformed into his 7-year-old self under the pseudonym Conan Edogawa, and is living with his girlfriend Rachel and her detective father Richard (coughElectraComplexcough) though they don’t know who he really is, and when Richard is trying solve a case, which he never can because he’s a dumbass, Conan knocks him out with a tranquilizer dart and uses his bowtie gadget to mimic his voice and solve the case for him. It’s basically several hundred episodes of that, with everybody acting like Richard is so brilliant even though never noticing he’s unconscious and that his lips aren’t moving and that he never remembers solving anything. Haha.

Anyway, since the show is of course originally made in Japan, and only about a quarter of the total episodes have even been reversioned into English so far, I figured some things besides language must have changed. Names like Jimmy and Rachel and Richard sounded a bit English.

Yeah, looked it up, just as I figured. In the original Japanese version, Jimmy is Shinichi, Rachel is Ran, and Richard is Kogoro, as well as a lot of other differences in other characters’ names. The only one that’s the same is Conan Edogawa, but that’s because in the second episode he made it up on the spot from Arthur Conan Doyle and Ranpo Edogawa after glancing at some books on a nearby shelf.

Further, even a lot of the place names have been anglicized. Poorly. Hell, in one episode, they’re dealing with a baseball team in a place called Shoreview. Except the team’s uniforms say “Syukou” or something, in our Roman letters. I also found out the main characters live in Tokyo, though such is never mentioned on the English version of the show, except in one episode when they go to the airport, the sign there clearly says “Narita”. Jimmy’s rival teen detective Harley is said to be from the “west coast” and at one point they joined him in his hometown of “Alberta”. It’s actually Osaka.

Alright, this is all just silly. Is this just another example of other countries thinking Americans are really, really stupid and must have things majorly dumbed down for us lest our puny little minds explode? Just like the crap with the first Harry Potter book being called The Sorcerer’s Stone for us and the Philosopher’s Stone for everyone else. Then again, the responsible companies, specifically Funimation for Case Closed and Scholastic for Harry Potter, are American companies (or Funimation might be Canadian, not sure). So we not only have the rest of the world thinking everyone in these fifty states is a drooling imbecile, but we even see ourselves that way. Which, if anything, proves the stereotype right. 🙄

I mean, for Case Closed, why did they change the names of characters and places? I mean, we know they’re in Japan, what with all the signs being in Japanese and them driving on the left side of the road. And any time a TV appears with a weather map on it, the map is very clearly Japan! And the obvious Japanese customs, such as the little bow upon meeting someone. So why the European names if these are Japanese people and places?

I mean, Inuyasha doesn’t do this. All the characters and places still have their Japanese names. No English-speaker’s brain exploded because of that. In the case of Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward and Alphonse aren’t supposed to be Japanese anyway so that one makes sense.

I could be wrong, and that the name changes in Case Closed were for some other reason entirely. Hell, in Japan, the name of the show is Detective Conan, but that title is different here because of copyright issues. But other than that, such changes for the benefit of the fragile puny inferior American brain aren’t exactly unheard of, so when something is differently, and done so poorly and for no apparent reason, someone thinks you’re a dumbass. And, honestly, I’m really sick of the rest of the world thinking all Americans are dumbasses, as well as the “smart” Americans thinking they’re so smart by agreeing with this assertion. We’re no stupider than any other country, and we’re definitely smarter than MANY. But, no, the fashionable thing to do, regardless of anything, is to still overlook the flagrant continual stupidity of other countries and still believe the American is the dumbass. :irked: