In the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom, a common debate is what names you use for which character, and one of the most hotly debated names is Marik or Malik. I mention this, because this post isn’t about that debate, but is exclusively concerned with a problem with the use of Marik in the dub.
Duel Monsters was released by 4Kids Licensing between September 2001 and June 2006. This mean approximately 45 episodes would have been released a year, or in layman’s terms, a season per year. Furthermore, the recordings for Season Two, which included the start of the Battle City arc would have begun after ratings data had been obtained for some of Season One (or Duelist Kingdom).
I bring this up because the naming decisions surrounding the Ishtar Siblings would have been made following the events of September 11th 2001.
For those of you who are unaware, on September 11th 2001, two planes were piloted into the World Trade Center in New York City. This attack was linked to Islamic Extremists and triggered not only the War on Terror, but also a significant increase in islamophobia and racism towards those of middle-eastern descent.
This is relevant because the names Malik, Isis and Rishid are all Middle-Eastern, with Malik and Rishid being Arabic, whereas the names Marik, Ishizu and Odion are Czech-Polish, Japanese and Nigerian respectively. These are very quaint names to give characters with canonically Egyptian nationality - sort of like naming a Japanese character Bob, it could happen, but it’s an unusual creative decision.
More specifically, the timing horrifically implicates it as a racist decision.
Now, 4Kids Licensing already had a history of changing Japanese words - and names - to westernized versions. This is problematic as well, due to white washing, however it’s somewhat different to what happened with the Ishtar Siblings, since their names are not ‘normalized’ as white, but kept foreign. Just- -not Middle-Eastern foreign.
Whilst both the changes to the Japanese names, and Middle-Eastern names are problematic, I find the latter more troubling, because it is erasure of a specific group, rather than general and unspecified erasure.
It remains improbable that islamophobia would have uniquely influenced the changes for the Ishtar names. However, I find it equally improbable it did not play a role. Although this is all conjecture (and please if you have any further details on release dates or recording dates, I’d kill to look at them), I think this matter bears talking about as a fandom, and something we should consider when using the name Marik, Ishizu, or Odion.
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