Japanese Earthbound Should Be Rated M for Mature - Region Break

so about a week ago i tested out a new series where it was the regional differences between zelda 2 and the us and japan and it went over really really well you guys seem to like it a lot so i went right back to it with one of my favorite games of all time earthbound so just like last episode we're going to break this off into six categories and the first category we're gonna go with is the boxes or packaging as you can probably already tell from this side-by-side shot they couldn't be any more different first let's start with earthbound you might notice that the box is enormous this distinction makes it one of the most collectible super nintendo boxes of all time and the reason for its size is that if you pull out the contents of the box you're gonna find a player's guide and in the center of this cardboard skeleton is the game itself now we'll get back to the player's guide in a moment but let's take a quick look at the mother 2 box now it's a little bit difficult to show off on camera but the lettering on the box protrudes from the box itself giving the lettering a sense of depth hopefully you can see that then when we look at the contents of the box you have the game manual to start with the super famicom cart and a dense card that shows off the game's controls now let's go back to that player's guide so we can do a side-by-side comparison of a couple things that i thought were really interesting between the two i'm trying not to focus too much on the player's guide because i feel like a lot of fans already know the entire contents of this thing but just to go over some of the more interesting aspects of it it came with scratch and sniff cards and it features way more clay models than the manual from other 2 but mother 2 had some really interesting stuff as well something i wasn't expecting actually as you can see by my reaction here on stream foggy land eagle land i didn't know that dude i'm learning so much tonight and yeah let's talk about this page it shows off the entire world of earthbound and it revealed something i actually never knew about earthbound i knew about eagle land of course cause it's mentioned at the start of the game but then there were two other areas here that i had no idea about for example foggy land and chomo it also features all the regional differences in the naming of all the individual areas of the game a couple that i won't be featuring later in the episode is rama instead of dalam and dokodoko desert instead of dusty dunes desert and there are two huge differences in the clay models one of which i want to say for a little bit later but one that's appropriate for now is that the clay model for ness was changed in the us version the japanese clay model was used as a base for how nest would look in super smash brothers in the future whereas the us version was probably changed to make the character look a little more mature so that western players could connect with the main character a little better now like i said we're going to revisit what's in the player's guide and manual later but let's go back to the boxes so in the us we titled it earthbound whereas in japan it was the sequel mother 2. but there's also a teeny tiny bit of text next to it that you might not even noticed and that's the game's subtitle and in full it reads out as mother 2 gig no gaikesho which when translated could be interpreted a couple different ways but that's the perfect segue into our next topic which is translation differences see at the startup of earthbound you get this war of the world looking image and is titled as earthbound the war against gigas and whereas in the us version this message pops up nowhere else in the japanese version players instead were greeted with the full title of the game and conveniently enough written out in english which is mother to gig strikes back followed by the title screen that essentially says the same thing and of course let's talk about the differences here as well over in japan it's called the mother series and this is the second game in the series and the series tends to have a theme of red in the background however earthbound has a purple background and does not feature the planet earthens logo and funny enough there's actually even more to talk about here but we're just going to save that for a different category in this episode so stay tuned now the meat and potatoes of this category isn't visually stimulating but there's a couple of really big differences in how the game is translated that completely changes the context of certain characters or phrases and no i don't speak japanese i do want to say real quick that i did use a reference for this topic alone one thing clyde mandolin and his website the legends of localization and it turns out that he's also published a region break like book for earthbound which i have now ordered and it's on its way and i'll leave a link to that in the description down below but anyways let's get to it buzz buzz the b right the star of the game well a b he is not in the u.s version he's described as having the depiction of a bee which is a far more common insect in the united states however in the japanese version he states his appearance as a rhino beetle which large beetles are far more popularized and adored in japan now here's something you can actually look at in this category normally the sign here would say berglin park over in tucson but in japan it's nosuto park which isn't too dissimilar from what it ended up being in the us version when translated it just basically says burglar park and then this was a pretty fun discovery on my own end all over in the us an item is used by jeff called the bottle rocket and has three tiers in total there's the bottle rocket the big bottle rocket and then the multi-bottle rocket but over in japan it's called a pencil rocket not a bottle rocket and its three tiers are pencil rocket five pencil rockets and then 20 pencil rockets this explains why the rockets look the way that they do with jeff's assist trophy in super smash brothers and then one key location gets a total name change that i feel changes how you perceive this area entirely in the u.s this area with all these dinosaurs and prehistoric aspects to it is called the lost underworld however in japan it's called the continent in the depths of the earth and then there's this part in the game in the us version where you find a carrot key and put it into the rabbit statues now these rabbits are still statues in japan but the item used to make them disappear is not a key and instead it's just referred to as rabbit's favorite carrot the photographer and earthbound that has that famous phrase say fuzzy pickles doesn't say fuzzy pickles at all in mother 2. surprisingly the food item in japan is cheese sandwich and then when you beat the game if you go to the cafe in 4 side you can find pokey's dad well in the us version pokey's dad says don't tell my wife and annette that i've been spending my time here well in the japanese version pokey's dad says keeping an absolute secret from my wife and annette that i've been boozing it up here which we're getting a little ahead of ourselves there is definitely a reason why he says that in this building now it's interesting that he says my wife because that's going to carry us over into our next topic which is controversy but before that i just have a quick message one that's pretty important because mentioning it in the past has basically saved the channel at this point and we are so close to having the views back to what they used to be before this whole situation so i'll just mention it one more time back in august for some reason youtube flipped some weird switch on my channel and it caused the viewership on this channel to become a third of what it used to be overnight it took about six months to realize that before august 90 of the views were coming from non-subscribers and now it keeps balancing it out to 50 50. it's still unbelievably rare that you get suggested a video from my channel right now and by subscribing it increases your chances of being shown a video on the homepage or the sidebar by about a 1 in 14 chance thank you for allowing me to mention this one last time and let's move on so what was that controversial moment that we were talking about well in earthbound if you visit pokey's house there's a strange man inside of it and he refers to pokey's mom as a miz instead of a mrs implying that she's divorced however in mother 2 pokey's father refers to her as his wife still just like he does in the u.s version but this stranger in the house refers to her as mrs which of course you're allowed to connect your own dots but a lot of people including myself seem to think that this indicates infidelity and that changing misses to miz tries to imply that she's divorced in the u.s version now all right now hopefully i haven't been boring you up to this point because this is where the episode starts to get really good now why would pokey's father be boozing it up in a cafe well because in the japanese version it's not a cafe in fact on the outside of the building it reads as a bar in mother 2 whereas in earthbound it's referred to as a cafe and there's a lot of references to alcohol in the japanese version of mother 2 as well and we're not even done with poki's father the localizers from mother 2 decided to change a sound effect when pokey and picky get punished by their father in this scene in the us version they go upstairs and you hear a spank noise which isn't quite as brutal as the sound effect used in mother 2. go ahead and take a listen and yeah i think it's safe to say that pokey didn't really have a great childhood and so now moving on from that we're going to talk about the happy happy cultists at a certain point in the game in earthbound you stumble upon a town that has been overrun by a cult and this cult is obsessed with the color blue now a lot of the cult mentality is not lost in earthbound and that's great i love that however they seem to think that in the japanese version they pushed the imagery of the happy happiest a little too far i don't think i need to explain why they had to make this change but in mother 2 the cultists had two hs on their forehead and the hood was simply a hood whereas in earthbound they added a poof ball on the end to i think maybe try to give the implication of a night cap they also removed the h's from the forehead in fact these changes are applied to the player's guide as well though the h's are hilariously whited out instead and they left the white mark in were these changes enough to avoid any implications i don't think so but at least they tried and relative to what i just shared with you the town of threed was originally threek and mother too and it seems to be widely accepted that the reason why it was changed from three to three is that the localizers didn't want anybody to read the name out as 3k all right so now i'm about to show you what is featured in the thumbnail and i do feel like i should give you a little bit of a warning if you do want to skip it there is a time stamp right here if you really feel sensitive about it but i should state that the simplicity of the art is about the same as like a troll doll or mr krabs [Music] so as long as you have a mental maturity about it and you understand that it's basically safe for work you should be okay and uh with that said look i was pretty shocked too so why don't we take a look at it uh-huh hey look i tried my best to warn you okay but alright why is he like this well the area that you're in at this part of the game is all within ness's mind and within japanese games and anime it is incredibly common for characters that are represented in a metaphysical world to shed anything that would be added to them in the physical world it also just needs to be stated that japanese culture is a lot more open-minded about this subject than americans the way that the localizers dealt with this subject is they just gave nests pajamas back the same that he used at the beginning of the game now before we move out of magic can't let's move on to the next category culture now this isn't necessarily any changes made to correct anything or cover up a controversy but rather to make some adjustments to get the same idea across while culturally making sense to americans and allow me to immediately contradict myself by showing you this absurd change in magic can't you have an atm machine but it's not called an atm machine instead it's a thing of eyes however in japan it says cd which stands for cash dispenser now cash dispenser is a phrase that can be used in the us but it's not as common as an atm and you will find the abbreviation for cd in the saturn valley as well but it doesn't end there there's a separate room inside the hotels to collect cash from and there's a sign above the door in japan it reads card but in the us it's atm now in earthbound there are two statues there is a pencil statue and then there is an eraser statue and the fun little gimmick with this is that you have to get an invention called the pencil eraser or the eraser eraser but in japan it's way different instead of the pencil statue it's an octopus statue now a pencil statue is already absurd but an octopus statue is a little too absurd for an american audience whereas the octopus is a little more common in japanese culture it matches the tone of everyday life a little bit better and then the next statue really caught me off guard but one day oh that's new what is that thing after being informed by my chat and doing some research on my own this thing is called the kokeshi statue now what is a kokeshi apparently one of the oldest style of toys in japan are these wooden dolls and the japanese would carve them into characters this is something that they still do to this day and due to the long-standing history and relevancy that exists in japan to this very moment a kokeshi statue isn't any more bizarre than an eraser statue here in the us the reason why it is a kokeshi statue is because the word eraser in japanese is keshi and so the idea was to have a little bit of word play to match this as best as we could in the u.s localizers just made a giant eraser that needs to be erased it's not quite the same but it shares a similar spirit and then in japan they have very strange onomatopoeias ones that we don't use here in the us and so when poki is knocking on the door at the start of the game there's a little speech bubble that says dun dun dun localizers worrying that maybe the player would interpret this as the character saying dawn out loud they changed it to an exclamation point and then there's another change to a name for a town in the game ska raba originally a mother 2 was known as skarabi and my best guess here was that this name was changed to sound a little more egyptian to american audiences and then there's the parts of the game where you're supposed to put in your real life name in earthbound you put in your real life name back in summers and then when you get to the tender village it just asks you to confirm if the name was correct again mother 2 is very different when you're in summers the game asks its japanese speaking audience to put their name in english and then when you reach the tender village the game tries to translate that english name into japanese characters which you can then modulate if you really need to then this plays itself later on into the game where when you face off against gigas the game uses the japanese real life name and then after the credits are over in the game it then uses the english version that you put in at summers now we already talked about a correction in this category but let's move on to the next category which is solely dedicated to corrections these are changes that would likely be in the japanese version if they had the foresight to make it this way in the first place the first one i want to show you is the hint man in the japanese version every single booth has a five dollar bill on it indicating what the price should be but then when you go to talk to the hint man there's various different prices throughout the game this was changed in the us version to just not have any specific amount on the sign at all and then there's the title screen skip surprisingly in the japanese version at any point you can mash the start button and it'll take you straight to the file select screen whereas in the us version mashing the start button will bring you to the title screen first and then you can go to the file select screen which pretty much allows every single boot up the game to feel a little more personable back and forth side the department store in japan says department across the building which is not something anybody says to fix this in the us version they just made a short handle for the word department and replace the rest of the characters with store instead when you win a battle in the game in the japanese version it says you win however slightly better grammar would be u1 which is what it was changed to in the u.s and then this last one it's hard to say if this is really a correction i just decided to put this in here because it's a little bit of a conversation over in winter's dr andonut's lab says labo on the front in mother 2. now your first instinct would be oh that's just straight up a typo but no the term labo is really popular in japan but since labo is not in the dictionary you may or may not think okay sure it's popular in japan but it's still bad english well okay fine but what if i told you this was not a short handle for an english word labo is a proper short handle of the word which also means laboratory but just in french this could technically be the only french word in mother 2 and japan is totally fine with that anyways let's move on to my favorite category saving the best for last not the smart youtuber thing to do but whatever copyright now there's a good group of examples here where the japanese developers of mother 2 really push the line of other people's copyright and so the localization team seems to have been tasked with being overtly cautious about it making as many changes as possible these trucks over here say come but the logo is a little too similar to coca-cola and so in the u.s it's changed to a white silhouette of a man the monotoly building in four side is going to absolutely flip you on your head as to how it should be properly pronounced when you look at it in japanese does that word look familiar just replace the t with a p and it says monopoly so truthfully you should be pronouncing this building as monotoly however like i said in the u.s to divert attention away from the similarities they replace the y with an i and right down the street in the japanese version there is the tapalo theater which is too similar to the new york theater the apollo so in earthbound they called it tapola and then there's the red cross believe it or not that red cross is not public domain the red cross organization has full rights to it and they are not shy about taking people to court who use that image so in the u.s they had to remove it entirely which must have been a ton of work because it's on every hospital and every nurse and every map that you have in mother too and then there's the runaway five one of the highlight characters of the entire game their influence from the blues brothers is still very apparent in the us version i know that i certainly made that comparison before but it turns out in japan it's way more derivative than you would have thought all the members of this group instead of wearing vibrant colors instead wore black all black and the name tanzura brothers translates to runaway brothers obviously the big change there was to get rid of the word brothers because then you have that strong connection to blues brothers now even if this wasn't an issue the localizer still wouldn't be able to run away from this issue which is that they had to translate tonsura to run away and therefore the marquis in front of buildings as well as on the side of the bus need to be swapped out from tanzura to run away and we'll leave it on this note because it's pretty fitting when you beat mother 2 it says to be continued at the very end whereas the localizers for earthbound i guess are just a bunch of prophets telling us americans the end question mark honestly it's pretty scary how well that matches up to the current state of mother 3 here in the us anyways thanks so much for watching if you want to be part of the creative process for future episodes consider catching one of my streams on twitch the community over there is still very small and very awesome and it would be awesome to hang out with you also the release of the first episode seems to have inspired a youtuber to come out of a five-year retirement to finally continue his series that is very similar to this one he has a couple of episodes that have already been out for about five years his name is josh call and i'm gonna leave a link to his channel down below as well and i wish him the best with his return lastly yes pal regions will be featured on this show it's weird how many people thought otherwise and also were very upset by it and the next video i plan to produce is going to be a boundary break episode

Channel: Shesez

Views: 540,487

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Id: X5_MkH0mf5w

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021