Nicky Larson: how the allusions to sex were hidden in the VF


Nicky Larson, cult anime broadcast at the time of Club Dorothée and available on ADN and MyTF1, gave us a VF not stung by beetles. But what was this mania for talking about vegetarian restaurants?

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In the early 90s, the animated series Nicky Larson landed in France under the impetus of Club Dorothée. The success is almost immediate!

In the space of a few months, the private detective created by Tsukasa Hojo has become a real social phenomenon. This character, as a fine sleuth as he is an inveterate sex obsessive, rocked the youth of an entire generation.

However, the distribution of the anime has had some difficulties due to its sometimes very raw character, especially with regard to the allusions to sex.

CENSORSHIP SOUNDS AND FEAR NOBODY

In France, Nicky Larson has experienced many blows of the chisel in order to sweeten words or situations that are sometimes scabrous or ribald.

For example, dialogues and scenes of nudity have been censored, the blood purely and simply removed. Sequences with Laura disguising herself as a man also suffered the same fate.

At the time, TF1 preferred to use censorship to protect young audiences from violent or sexual images.

Unfortunately, the cuts were made in a wobbly way and some translations remained deliberately approximate, sometimes making it difficult to understand certain episodes.

WHY VEGETARIAN RESTAURANTS?

For example, Nicky Larson often gave appointments to future clients in Love Hotels. Typically Japanese, these places are for couples. You can book a room by the hour or for one night.

These places offer two advantages for customers: intimacy vis-à-vis the social environment and the realization of certain fantasies requiring decorations and a specific atmosphere.

In order to erase as much as possible the sexual allusions inherent in these sequences, the French version of the anime has decided to replace the Love Hotels with vegetarian restaurants. This of course had no coherence in the course of the story and the fans have always been intrigued by this choice, to say the least comical.

Thus, to avoid disturbing a young audience, the slightly gritty situations were deliberately made comic in order to erase as much as possible the obscene side. The same method was applied to the villains.

NICKY LARSON’S FUNNIEST VOBS

The French voices of the bad guys had to take a silly tone to accentuate the comic potential, toning down the intrinsic violence of certain characters.

In the video above, a criminal can be heard ordering his henchman to “do boo” to a cop. The VF thus bypasses words like “kill” or “liquidate”, which are much more explicit and violent.

To discover the episodes in the original uncensored version, go to the ADN or MyTF1 platforms.



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