Localising Food: Pokemon's Rice Balls

There is a reason why the term 'localisation' exists in addition to the word 'translation.' Translating involves convey a text's meaning in another language. On the other hand, localising is deeper translation process that includes changing cultural references to make the content more relatable and understandable to a target audience. This leads to localisation work often being the target for criticism among diehard fans of a particular piece of work. They argue that any content edits bastardise the source material in straying from the original creator's intentions. I discussed this matter in greater depth in a previous post. In short, I usually have few qualms with content being changed for cultural reasons, so long as there is a good and identifiable reason behind it. The majority of a product's audience will be unfamiliar with the source material, and primarily seeking an enjoyable experience. The audience are be none the wiser if the localisation process has led to content changes. Moreover, I doubt they would even care if they did find this out. However, for those interested in localisation, such as myself, it is fascinating to research these subtle edits. One aspect that has recently peaked my interest is the issue of food being localised, which often pops up given how different cultures have different diets.

This post is going to focus on some interesting examples from the American localisation of the Japanese anime, Pokemon.

I might cause outcry in writing this, but I think the Pokemon anime received a pretty good localisation. In a previous post, I wrote about a vegetable in Inside Out, an American film, being changed as part of the localisation process for the Japanese market. The Pokemon anime contains the reverse situation of a Japanese food being localised for an American audience. Localisation, rather than straight translation, is required because of the numerous possible answers to the question, what is a common snack food? The answer to this question is likely greatly influenced by the nationality of the person you are asking. There is no one snack food common across the world. In South Africa, a person may answer, "biltong." In Iceland, a person may answer, "chocolate licorice." I don't actually know if those two examples are completely accurate, but I do know that in Japan there is an easy answer. Rice balls! However, I doubt many American kids are aware of what a rice ball is (aside from the image conjured by the word itself) and would likely blanch at receiving fish-filled rice wrapped in seaweed as a snack.

4Kids was the company tasked with bringing the Pokemon anime to the West. It makes sense that in scenes involving rice balls, they changed it to a food more relatable to a Western audience. The video below features three of these scenes. Take a look!

Certain pockets of the internet strongly criticised 4Kids for making these changes, to the extent that it apparently has its own meme, "What if 4Kids Got X." However, I do not agree with these people. In the first and third scene, a rice ball is swapped for a sandwich. I think this is good localisation work. In the West, a sandwich holds a similar role to rice balls in Japan. Admittedly, replacing a rice ball with a cracker was slightly off-kilter, as Westerners don't feed on crackers in the same way Japanese people supplement their diet with rice balls. Nonetheless, it is better than leaving it as a rice ball, a food item unbeknownst to most young American children, the show's target audience. In fact, I like this use of a single cracker because it further emphasis the image of Team Rocket being down to their very last supplies, which makes the scene even funnier when it disappears! The audience would be none the wiser that the localisers slightly edited the feeling of the scene, so as long as they improved it, I cannot make any criticisms.

It's worth noting that for the above three scenes, 4Kids needed to reanimate the show to swap out the rice balls for sandwiches and crackers alike. This likely demanded time and money. Perhaps this is why 4Kids occasionally thought they could get away with skipping this part of the localisation process. They were mistaken. The English version of the anime sometimes shows the characters eating traditional triangular rice balls from the Japanese anime, but in dialogue the characters refer to the food items as jelly doughnuts. See the video below for reference:

I suppose the brief glimpse of Misty's umeboshi rice ball (pictured below) does look a bit like a jelly doughnut. However, I imagine the longer shot of Brock raised questions among the Western viewers of why the "doughnuts" are triangular in shape, and what the dark part (the seaweed) is supposed to be. Moreover, though we all aware of the generally poor state of the American diet, I don't think a doughnut is necessarily the food Americans normally eat in the depicted situation of the characters taking a snack break during a long walk. A sandwich, as seen in the previous video, would have been far more fitting. If financial or time constraints prevented 4Kids from changing the animation, I think they should have called it out as a rice ball. If necessary, they could have added a bit of dialogue explaining it. For example, "Hey guys, I got these from a Japanese restaurant! They're balls of rice wrapped in seaweed!" Instead, 4Kids cheekily opted for the jelly doughnut route. It's jarring. It's bad localisation work. Videos mocking this localisation choice now have hundreds of thousands on YouTube now, so I hope this error is at least a lesson for future anime localisers! Either change the animation, or acknowledge what you have and work with it!

A good localisation makes the product smoother to understand for the target audience. The worst thing it can do is create a jarring effect. In my post about Inside Out, I showed why the people in charge of the film's foreign release deserved a lot of credit for identifying the discrepancy between broccoli's popularity (or therefore lack of it among Japanese and American children. I believe 4Kids is similarly deserving of praise for the times it did modify the rice balls in the Pokemon anime, but they weren't always thorough enough. Nevertheless, it made for an interesting localisation example to write about!

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Thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts on this topic, or know of any interesting examples of food localisation, please share it in a comment below!