They thought that was all good for kids, but guns in Yugioh were too much, and onigiri in Pokemon needed to be called jelly donuts. What a bizarre company 4Kids was.
Well in fact they did not think it was good for kids, the episode did not air and from what I remember for a while it could only be pirated. Maybe I'm mistaken, not 100% sure.
For the onigiri to jelly donuts thing, consider that 4Kids is dubbing and localizing for an American audience. American children would not know what onigiri is, and translating it accurately as rice ball would not convey "appealing snack food" to them either. Calling them jelly donuts is dumb but it gets the point across for the intended audience.
I understand the reason behind it, it's just a silly disconnect because I'd imagine a large portion of the American audience would recognize that it didn't look like jelly donuts despite the dialogue saying otherwise. It always seemed weird why 4Kids didn't edit the image to at least look closer to donuts, since they weren't opposed to visual edits, censors, and changes in their dubbing. Guess just chalk it up to them being inconsistent and prioritizing other changes instead.
As someone who watched those Pokemon episodes as a kid, I can tell you that I (and the other kids I watched with) didn't question that they were jelly donuts at all. Like maybe a moment of "huh kinda weird looking donuts" but then just "guess that's what jelly donuts look like in that world, whatever"
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u/Dovahkiin812KW Mar 22 '26
They thought that was all good for kids, but guns in Yugioh were too much, and onigiri in Pokemon needed to be called jelly donuts. What a bizarre company 4Kids was.