Dragon Ball isn’t any stranger to censorship, particularly within the West. When the collection first premiered on Cartoon Community’s Toonami in 1998, most of the collection’ extra brutal situations of violence and bloodshed needed to be coated as much as be palatable for its youthful audience.
Although followers would possibly suppose that form of censorship is a factor of the previous, a brand new instance has already cropped up in 2026, and it is outright ridiculous.
The brand new piece of Dragon Ball censorship was first observed by X consumer Gamer Zamasu and occurred on the Australian ABC iview streaming service. The Dragon Ball followers posted a 27-second clip to X depicting a scene from Dragon Ball Tremendous the place Goku interacts with Dende and Mr. Popo. Humorously, nevertheless, Mr. Popo is strategically cropped out of the scene.
Dragon Ball’s Newest Censorship Controversy Resurrects A Traditional Debate
After posting the clip, Gamer Zamasu went on to take a position that this newest little bit of censorship was because of the controversy surrounding Mr. Popo.
Mr. Popo is likely one of the issues about Dragon Ball that has aged the worst because the collection first premiered. Because of his darkish pores and skin coloration, turban, and pink lips, there have been accusations that Mr. Popo is a racist caricature. Whereas it is questionable if that was Toriyama’s intent with the character, his similarity to equally offensive characters makes the comparability inevitable.
This, famously, led 4Kids and Saban to vary Mr. Popo’s pores and skin tone to blue as a substitute of black for airings of Dragon Ball Z Kai. An identical controversy affected Pokémon’s Jynx, inflicting Nintendo to vary the Pokémon’s pores and skin tone to a extra purplish hue.
On condition that ABC iview is supposed as a family-friendly streaming platform, it makes some sense for them to attempt to reduce round Mr. Popo, even when the end result seems clumsy.
Dragon Ball’s Mr. Popo Controversy Endures To This Day
Whereas it’s straightforward to see why some followers of Dragon Ball may be uneasy with Mr. Popo’s presence, that hasn’t stopped the character from making appearances within the modern-day.
Regardless of the character’s relevance waning since Dragon Ball’s heyday, Popo has nonetheless appeared as lately as Dragon Ball Daima.
For higher or worse, Mr. Popo is part of Dragon Ball’s legacy, and simply slicing round him would not take away the a long time of discourse surrounding the long-lasting hero.
- Launch Date
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2015 – 2018
- Community
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Fuji TV
- Administrators
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Ryota Nakamura, Masanori Sato, Kenichi Takeshita, Takao Iwai, Hideki Hiroshima, Masato Mitsuka, Kazuya Karasawa, Ayumu Ono, Takahiro Imamura, Tatsuya Nagamine, Kôjiro Kawasaki, Kouji Ogawa
- Writers
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Ryu King, Hiroshi Yamaguchi
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Masakazu Morita
Whis (voice)
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Masako Nozawa
Son Goku/Goku Black/Son Gohan/Son Goten (voices)