To protect children and adolescents from violence and pornography, many countries have enacted laws that censor animes. However, besides the country in question, the localization team also has the opportunity to make cuts and changes to the original material. We present to you five changes in Naruto that caused more confusion than they helped.
What examples are shown here? Naruto is one of the animes that has been cut the most on RTLZWEI. The German TV version of Naruto has caused more confusion among many editors at the MeinMMO editorial team than it has helped, as well as among many fans. The version that aired in the afternoon on RTLZWEI had numerous cuts and changes that sometimes altered the overall context.
MeinMMO has selected some examples for you where the changes in the anime were not understandable to us. Therefore, we have not listed examples in which blood, bare skin, or sexual practices were censored, as they are meant to protect minors.
Zabusa threatens with a sword handle
Zabusa is an opponent that Naruto encounters right at the beginning of the anime. To tone down the weapon violence, RTLZWEI decided to cut some animations featuring Zabusa’s gigantic sword. So far, so good.
However, in some shots, we still see Zabusa’s sword – or at least what is left of it. He threatens another character with the handle of his sword, from which the blade has been removed.
You can see the sword stub in the following YT video by Mr X:
The scene didn’t seem very threatening to me in my childhood, and I wondered why the character should be afraid of a sword stub.
A random lip touch or romantic kiss?
In episode 3 of Naruto, there is a kiss between Naruto and Sasuke. It is merely an accident, as one of the students pushes the kneeling Naruto from behind. This causes him to fall forward and land with his lips on Sasuke’s mouth.
In Germany, nothing of this was shown – the watching girls wondered about something, but we never found out why. We don’t really see what was so bad about a kiss mishap between Naruto and Sasuke that it had to be cut.
The kiss is not romantic or erotic in nature, but rather a funny accident. Viewers of the RTLZWEI version never found out what the group of girls in the Ninja Academy was so astonished about.
Continue on the next page.
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