Ask John: Should Anime Have its Music Changed for International Release?

Question:
You have often expressed your preference that anime released in the Region 1 market be unaltered. When Zeta Gundam was released, some of the music was changed due to licensing issues; this also happened to Kodocha and now Gunbuster. Do you approve of releasing a show with its OST altered?

Answer:
My personal opinion is that anime is a commercial art, but an art none the less. Therefore art should be distributed and appreciated the way its creative artists intend for it to be consumed. I assume that if a work was released with a particular musical score, it was intended to have that musical score, so viewers watching the work with alterations to the soundtrack are not experiencing the art that the original artists wanted viewers to experience. However, half of the commercial art equation is “commercial.” So despite my distaste for alterations made to artwork, I rationally have to respect the fact that alterations are sometimes made.

In fact, I’ve been personally involved in precisely such an alteration. After AN Entertainment licensed and had begun working on the English language translation of the Haré+Guu television series, the Japanese licensor surprised us with the order that we could not use the original Japanese ending theme in the American release due to some sort of copyright dispute in Japan. AN Entertainment is adamantly opposed to making unnecessary alterations to Japanese animation, but in this case the decision was out of our hands. Similar situations occurred with the American releases of Speed Grapher, Kodomo no Omocha, and Mobile Suit Z Gundam: select pieces of the soundtracks used in the Japanese release were unavailable for use in the American releases. In these cases, the alterations are regrettable, but the domestic licensors aren’t at fault because the alterations were imposed on them.

The controversy over a piece of replaced background music in the Gunbuster OVA series’ official domestic DVD release is a slightly different situation from the aforementioned. In the case of Gunbuster, the original music is not being replaced due to a conflict of interests. Bandai Visual is apparently pre-emptively replacing a piece of music that could potentially cause a copyright conflict. A montage sequence early in the OVA series parodies the film Chariots of Fire and parodies the Chariots of Fire theme music. In order to avoid potential charges of plagiarism, the offending music is being removed and replaced in the American Gunbuster DVD release. On one hand, according to Bandai Visual, the alterations has been made with the full approval of the original anime creators (although “approval” doesn’t necessarily mean preference). On the other hand, the alteration seems unnecessary considering that it’s obviously an intentional parody, and similarity for parody purposes is a First Amendment protected form of free speech. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, a domestic Gunbuster DVD release with a small alteration to the background music in one scene is highly preferable to not having a domestic DVD release at all. I’m loathe to call any type of editing minor or trivial, but this alteration to Gunbuster seems to be virtually as minor as an alteration can be. It certainly won’t dissuade me from purchasing the DVD set.

I have to excuse music changes when they’re ordered by the original Japanese licensors. And whether or not I approve, I have to recognize that music is sometimes changed in order to make a commodity more valuable and accessible to a particular market. As a private consumer, I’m under no obligation to purchase products that I’m not interested in or don’t want. In an ideal world, I think, Japanese animation could be released universally without any changes to its audio or visual tracks. This isn’t a perfect world, though, and anime is sometimes released with changes imposed on its audio track. Like it or not, that’s a matter of fact that American consumers have very little influence over, so the question of like or dislike is largely irrelevant. I, like all American consumers, have to decide which anime series I’m willing to tolerate having audio edits in, and which series I won’t.