I've noticed a recent trend in anime, in that more shows are getting played on public stations like The Fox Box and KidsWB. This is good, right? Well, unfortunately, the problem is that shows that play on these channels suffer one serious side affect: That being played here usually means they will not recieve an uncut release on VHS or DVD. Okay, many fans have pointed out why this is bad from an ethical standpoint, considering that there should be no excuse for this kind of BS in this day and age. What most people fail to realize is that it's bad from a business standpoint too. Just look at sales of the first Yu-Gi-Oh DVD on Amazon.com: It's Sales Rank is below 8000 last I checked. On Amazon.com, that's pretty damn low, and there's a reason it is.

Think, 4Kids: Why would someone buy a DVD that contains the cut and edited dub episodes when they could just as easily tape those episodes off of TV? It doesn't at all help that the DVDs take forever to come out (they just put the Yugi vs. Pegasus duel on DVD when it's already shown on TV like a bazillion times). Look, there's a reason movie DVDs sell well even though we could "see them on TV." That reason is that they usually include something to give us incentive to buy the DVD! And what "incentive" do we have to buy your Yu-Gi-Oh discs? Character profiles which are probably generic and inaccurate (better ones could be found on the internet), probably a dueling lesson, and then some bonus songs from a flop soundtrack which you've been trying to sell for a whole year (someone obviously has no business sense).

So why do companies do sh-- like this? Well, the problem is simple: They think that only kids will want to buy these DVDs, ignoring the ever-growing anime fan market. This ideology, too, bites itself in the butt, because kids won't want to buy these DVDs anyway, because again they could just watch the show on TV for free. The only people who want to buy Yu-Gi-Oh DVDs are parents or anime fans (well, maybe not even them, considering how bad a rep Yu-Gi-Oh's gotten in the US)... and the anime fans will be turned off by the lack of a Japanese subtitled version, for they're so used to their discs being dual-language that they'll consider these DVDs to be an incomplete package (and worthless at the $15 asking price). Here's an interesting fact: FUNimation, who handles the actual DVD releases, actually does want to put out an uncut version, but 4Kids won't let 'em. This brings me to another problem. When a company has a popular product, they want to give it an acceptable reputation. As many of you know, in the original Japanese, Yu-Gi-Oh contained occult references, violence, and sexual situations that just would not have been kosher with most parents (it also contained a better and more consistent plot and a much better voice cast and soundtrack, but that's for another time). Thus by blocking the official release of an uncut version, they maintain Yu-Gi-Oh's reputation as a friendly children's series.

Could you imagine what would happen if the world knew Yu-Gi-Oh was actually about a kid with MPD who uses dark powers to take revenge on criminals and bullies? Whoa boy... [As an aside, my friends get a laugh out of the fact that Harry Potter is often accused of having Satanic undertones, yet Yu-Gi-Oh, which actually does have Satanic undertones even in the dub, doesn't even bother most parents]. Unfortunately, companies like 4Kids are narrow-minded and act like they're run by children. When a product doesn't sell, they never once think that it's their business policies that might be the problem--they believe it's due to a lack of interest in the product, piracy, or any other sort of scapegoat, being too full of themselves to think they might be doing something wrong. But when it comes down to it, of the many things that factor into the low sales of Yu-Gi-Oh on DVD, this I think is the one that hurts the most. [The other is the price--I'm not going to pay $15 for a one-language disc that only contains three episodes. Hell, that's exactly what the VHS tapes (or again, tapes made off of TV) offer, and usually at half the price! If you want me to pay $15 (or in some places, $20) for a DVD, it better as hell have a Japanese uncut option].

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.