The Toonami rendition of Sword Art Online Alicization‘s 10th episode aired, and even though the company issued multiple trigger-warning prerequisites before the airing, they censored everything out of it that would even remotely be considered “offensive”.
Sankaku Complex snipped the tiny clip from the Toonami airing, and it was only two and a half minutes long, but all of the salacious elements were completely removed. You can see what the scene looked like with the video clip below.
As you can see, all of the moments where the two men ripped open the girls’ shirts, licked their legs and bare stomachs, and smacked them around, have been cut out.
Moreover, the scene is edited so that it’s even more censored than the Crunchyroll airing from back in December of 2018. You can view the comparison between the original Japanese airing and the censored version that aired on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Funimation, courtesy of TZEENO.
Episodio 10 de Sword Art Online: Alicization:
Comparación entre la versión de Crunchyroll (que a su vez fue robada por muchas otras paginas) y la japonesa que fue emitida en televisión (raw). pic.twitter.com/o3hCKxQBp5— ⛩️ TZEENO ⛩️ (@TZEENO) December 8, 2018
The actors were all over social media talking about how triggering the episode was, along with Toonami fan sites, which were posting warnings ahead of the airing.
More #SwordArtOnline: Alicization is next on Toonami.
WARNING, the following episode contains scenes of violence and sexual assault, and is intended for only mature audiences.
Viewer discretion is advised pic.twitter.com/PY8qeHHEWr
— Toonami Squad (@ToonamiSquad) April 7, 2019
Hi everyone! Tonight’s episodes of #SwordArtOnline will be very heavy content wise.. so please use discretion. These episodes are also very important to Eugeo and his character development. I hope you will still join us tonight. Only on #Toonami
— Brandon Winckler (@BWincklerVA) April 6, 2019
The episode still managed to capture a TV-MA rating for sex and violence, even though all of the actual acts even hinting at sex were completely removed from the episode.
As pointed out by Sankaku Complex, the episode was more edited down and censored than what aired last year on Western streams. Even users on Twitter pointed out that all the talk of trigger warnings and viewer discretion notices were over-played.
Wooooow people are still talking about SAO- A episode 10 on toonami last night.
You people chill out…they edited the shit out of it.And there was nothing to see but the horrible blacked out version of it pic.twitter.com/jcH7Kh8x6X— Shiki The Devil 🎨🖕 (@redwall666) April 7, 2019
Even with the scene cut down to practically nothing, there were actually people on Twitter asking if the voice actresses were okay. I kid you not. Twitter user Pommetto captured a screenshot of the exchange between Deneen Melody and Vincent Garcia.
SAO is dogshit
but jesus christ I want to smack these idiots, both the dubber and her beta male pic.twitter.com/yqLtn0aJy3
— 九ゼロ二PRO Producer/CEO (@pommetto) April 7, 2019
Funnily enough, according to one user, even with the episode butchered in the way that it was, plenty of people still tuned in to see what all the ranting and fuss was about.
Slightly more people 18-49 tuned in for SAO Alicization episode 10 than episode 9. Curiosity, depravity or masochism? Some combination of the three perhaps? It was the 11th highest cable premiere with 18-49. 4th with both adults 18-34 and males 12-34. pic.twitter.com/WTxDgEixuu
— SuperElite BusDriver (@Sketch1984) April 9, 2019
As most people know by now, the original author of Sword Art Online, Reki Kawahara, already confirmed that there will no longer be anymore rape scenes in the series, and that he would be moving away from such content after he met with SJWs in the West during a trip to a convention in the United States. He claimed that he would be adopting a more “politically correct” viewpoint on some matters regarding the depiction of female characters.
We’ll see if he sticks to that and if his works from here on will be more tame in order to appease the perpetually offended.
(Thanks for the news tip FightCensorship and ThyBonesConsumed)
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