Zoids-What they didn't want you to see

[Leo]

I once read online that the fourth episode of Zoids New Century underwent heavy censorship, hence the reason it didn't air the first time around.

I was curious, so I saved up, bought a Japanese DVD, and used my player to take screenshots of the edited scenes. Truth be told, there wasn't anyting I'd consider to be offensive. I was so impressed that I built my first webpage off them. You can find the images at:

www.geocities.com/tgcsilver/zoids-main.html

It's geocities, so I don't know if you need to copy and paste the webpage link as you do with remote linking to images. Geocities may also fail me, but at least it's a start. Remember, this is my first attempt ever at building a webpage, so please be gentle.

I contacted Phenotype and received his permission to post a link to my website before making this thread. I wouldn't start posting links to personal webpages before talking to him.

Hope you enjoy.

[Zeropioneer]

Rofl. Just amazing dude. The site is good, fast loading times, and well organized as well.
Here in Mexico we got CC/GF dubbed directly from the japanese version, so we got everything "uncut".
For example, in Chapter 40, I believe, Guardian Force - "Zoid Hunters", Cartoon Network didn't show around 4 minutes 30 seconds of the chapter. Let me develop this:
After being captured with the "Sleeper" Rev Raptor, when Van escapes from it , he goes up some stairs, he peeks through a window, and then he hears a guy walking(the one with funny eyes). He is carrying a few glass bottles, and is really dizzy. Van hides, then follows the guy and ends up watching the other two Hel-Digunner pilots drinking beers and whining because the weird eyed guy shook the beers, and they tasted funny(I guess they censored this part because of the alcohol thing). Then the captain of the Whale King shows up and grabs Van while aiming with his gun towards his head at point blank range. Van manages to escape, and runs down a corridor, then, he drops down some stairs and Cartoon Network's edition catches up here, he runs and then he jumps with his father's knife, sees Irvine again, blah blah... However, that wasn't all that was cut, when the captain of the whale king goes to check out the main computer, he doesn't search information about Irvine, he looks for information about "Bang Freiheit"(there is an image of the computer that shows him and the Blade Liger, and atop this, the name spelled as stated before), that's where he finds out about the whole Guardian Force thingy, and then comes the scene where Van and Irvine are in the small junkyard(if they hadn't cut out that scene, the whole junkyard deal would be much more clear). But it doesn't end just yet! They removed ANOTHER scene, you know, when the Whale King is taking-off with Fiona in it, Van manages to get there with the help of Zeke and Blade Liger, well, when the captain kicks him, Van doesn't jump back on the whale king immediatly, he uses his knife to get a hold of the small wall he landed on, then the captain grabs Fiona and gives Van a speech about how he is gonna give his head and Fiona's to Hiltz, and then they realize everything was planned by him. At this point, Fiona decides to bite the captain and now Cartoon Network's edition catches up again, with Van jumping back on the Whale King and pushing away the captain's gun...
I don't know why Cartoon Network edited those last two scenes, I could understand the one with the beers, but the other ones made the chapter's plot clearer.
I wish we had gotten Zoids New Century in Spanish, we only got that teaser at the end of chapter 67, before all of those custom kits at the end...
Would be interesting to see how much Cartoon Network edited from that one , aside of the stuff leo has already kindly pointed out ...
Oh yeah, I don't know if you guys already knew about that chapter 40 thingy, but I thought it would be interesting to post .

[Tilly]

JAPANESE DVD WANT-*hit with stick*

...sorry. But seriously, how's the sound/picture quality on the things? How hard are they to get to play?

Heeee. Bit looks like a deer in headlights...

I should get screenshots of the bit in 49 I think was cut. I don't think I've ever found out for sure if the blood *was* censored or not, though :p.

[Leo]

Tilly said:

how's the sound/picture quality on the things? How hard are they to get to play?

The quality is as good as any American DVD. They even come with line art and production galleries. You can get all of them from Amembo, but they're pretty expensive.

Playing them is a little harder. They're "Region 2" encoded, so you can't play them using a normal American DVD player. My computer's DVD player software, Cyberlinx Power DVD player, has the ability to change regional coding five times before it becomes permenantly fixed. If you can get your DVD to switch to Region 2, taking screenshots shouldn't be any trouble.

[Tilly]

I've been wondering about that...I'm probably the only one who uses the laptop's DVD player all that often, but still.

Anyone know an easy way to get rid of the 5-switch thing that doesn't involve cracked software?

[Leo]

I don't think this would work with your laptop, but one easy way around the coding issue is to have two DVD drives.

Many Gateway models now feature a DVD reader and DVD recorder, both of which can play a DVD. You can install a Region-changing player on both drives, and then use one drive for American DVDs and another for International DVDs.

By the way, I'm curious how everyone views the censoring for this episode. Does it seem reasonable, or too conservative?

[Andy F²]

It's not reasonable at all. Bit deserves what he got, and we should all be able to see it on Cartoon Network! ;D

Thanks for the pics.

[zudo]

linky no worky!

[Raven]

where did u get those pictres and since the american episodes are highly edited maybe i can get a unseeen in america fury pick

[Colodie]

I don't think the censoring is too bad. There were only two scenese removed, and they don't effect the story too much. Plus, while the reason they were removed is a bit iffy, there still is a reason.

At the very least, it's not to bad considering what happened to other shows.

[aqouli]

By American standards, it seems a bit conservative, but this is Cartoon Network, after all.

The first scene could have some people wondering why Bit and Leena are in the shower at the same time, though, but I don't see anything questionable about the second.

[Leo]

Raven said:

where did u get those pictres and since the american episodes are highly edited maybe i can get a unseeen in america fury pick

There were no unseen Fury pics to my knowledge. This was the only episode that underwent heavey editing. I think there was one other episode, (featuring the Blitz and Champ teams at the beach) where they took out an image of the Robots in bikinis and applying lotion to each other.

I got these images by purchasing a Japanese DVD and making the screenshots myself.

[DeathSaurer12]

Wait, is the american version of the DVD edited?

[LordGale]

Unfortunately. It don't even have the Japanese audio tracks, or at least it didn't say so on the box. #@$@#%#$% DUBS! ;D

[Leo]

Nor does it have the production/line art gallery. We got shortchanged.