So @wereah and I have begun to watch Heaven’s Official Blessing together. The topic came up when we were discussing examples of Asian characters in a cartoon or animated form. Specifically Chinese because drawing Chinese characters have kind of always been Were-Ah’s white whale, with Cael and his father being the latest characters Were-Ah is determined to draw.
For those not aware, in the past several years there has been a rise in Chinese animation studios telling stories for a Chinese audience. We’ve seen a few of these hit movie theaters, with a 3D animation style heavily inspired by the likes of Pixar. However, there have also been animation studios heavily inspired by Japanese animation and recently have been picked up by streaming services.
And… the thing I was not expecting when we got into this, was finding out that apparently doing edits to animated shows to make them more ‘understandable’ or ‘acceptable’ for a western audience was still a thing.
For those who are not as old as I am (and fuck am I old), it was not uncommon in the late 90s and early 2000s to make edits to anime during the dubbing process to make it more understandable or more acceptable for a western audience. Part of it was censoring because the anime translated used to be for TV, and was often meant for an older demographic than what it was marketed to, due to misunderstandings on who cartoons were for. However, another part of it was a distrust of the audience not understanding that this was translated from another culture, and as a result certain cultural references or tropes were cut or re-edited with western sensibilities in mind.
When we first started watching Heaven’s Official Blessing, we actually started on the Funimation website because the two first episodes were for free. Due to a cliffhanger however, Were-Ah searched for where else the series might be posted so neither of us had to get a Funimation subscription.
It turned out, it was on Netflix (which Were-Ah had), and that it was cut differently than what was on the Funimation website. And when I talk about being “cut differently” I mean where the episodes start and end. We had left off on the Funimation website on episode 3, but upon watching it, it looked part of episode 2. When we looked at the run time for each episode it didn’t look like Netflix shortened any of the episodes. This could only mean one thing.
The version that Funimation had, which was a dubbed show, had removed bits and pieces from the original show.
So we ended up watching the first two episodes again, which was in the original Mandarin language with subtitles. Which I really recommend, not because I’m snobby about dub versions, but because it can be easy to miss references verbally, even if the dub was true to the translation.
It was fascinating to watch, because what had happened was that the pacing of the story was quickened by removing bits and pieces that would have drawn the storytelling out. Some of these were very small bits of animation, like a shot of koi swimming in a pond or the pouring of tea. Others were weirdly important to the story, like when the main character Xie Lian was explaining the story behind a ghost he and his group were cutting. During his explanation, it cut to a storybook style paper cut scene as he explained what had happened, which we didn’t see before.
Were-Ah commented on how the Netflix version made it more serious and had also noted how the Funimation version seems to be a bit more comedic in tone as Xie Lian seemed like a hot mess. Whereas in the Netflix version it was pretty clear this was man playing the fool. That being said, there were also a lot of context clues that were missing in the dubbed version.
Some of it was certainly the result of trying to fit the voiceover with the mouth movements, but some of it was also just not bothering to put it in, or changing it to change the context. It was a fascinating watch, and I stayed up longer than I should have last night, but it was fun.
I’m just a bit disappointed that doing edit cuts like that is still a thing in 2024.