Hell hath no fury like a fanbase scorned.

Above: what I picture
every time I hear the title.

This is an outrage and we will not stand for it. The line must be drawn he-yah. I will not rest until those responsible correct this-huh? What am I talking about? Oh...yeah, probably should explain. So Neon Genesis Evangelion is streaming on Netflix and-right. Further explanation. It's an anime series with a preposterous title about teens who pilot giant robots and battle equally giant mysterious aliens in the year 2015. Which was the future when the show came out in 1995, but is now the past.

Anyway, the important thing is that this is a fondly-remembered anime series that is after years of only being available on DVDs, and before that VHS, finally on streaming and available to the masses. Masses like me who have been curious about what the big deal is, but not so curious as to shell out the forty bucks or whatever to buy it. So I've been watching it and it's good. I like it. Or at least I did until I found out about this.

No, not that the premise of teens piloting giant mechs to save the Earth
from alien invasion is the plot of like half of all anime. Although it is.

"Wait, no it doesn't."

                         -Anyone who saw

                          the show in 1995

Yeah, you didn't click on the link. I'll sum up. Netflix re-dubbed the show with a new voice cast and re-translated some of the lines to remove things like the word 'fuck.' Which, ok, lame. But another change that was made was to alter some lines that established a same-sex romantic interest on the part of one of the characters. In the original translation and I guess, in Japanese, a character called Kowaru, tells Shinji, the protagonist, that he loves him. Like, directly says 'I love you.' But the re-translation now has Kowaru saying 'I like you.' Which is different. Completely different. Well, mostly different.

You see it's kind of the same word in Japanese, but fans maintain that the scene had been previously read as a confession of romantic love and not Kowaru being bro-y. So what gives?

The daunting complexities and nuances of the Japanese language?

Oh, I get it. Sort of like how they
should edit out all the giant robot fights
and let us infer how awesome they'd be.

According to translator Dan Kanemitsu, in his twitter-based defense, he made the change in order to leave the relationship up to the viewers interpretation. Um...ok. Here:

"It is one thing for characters to confess their love. It is quite another thing for the audience to infer affection and leave them guessing...Leaving room for interpretation make (sic) things interesting."

-Dan Kanemitsu, convincing

exactly no one about anything

Yes. It is quite another thing. That's the problem. Hey, does his response remind anyone else of when older people complain about how there's too much sex on TV and in movies? And how much better it was when they just faded to black and left it up to your imagination?

Above: A scene from Game of Thrones offered as
evidence that no, clearly no one thinks it was better when
sex on TV was left to the audience's imagination.

And what, watch Hulu
like some kind of savage?

So Netflix, in 2019, during pride month saw fit to not only alter, but de-gay a cult favorite. Cool guys. And look, like I said, I've never seen Evangelion before now, and if I didn't know this change was made, I wouldn't have noticed. But it feels weird and gross now and I don't want to support this-huh? No, I'm not boycotting Netflix. Let's be realistic here. What I am going to do is stop at seventeen minutes into episode 12 and not hit resume until Netflix re-re-subtitles this scene.

Yup. I'm taking a stand. A subtle, inconsequential stand. And of course they'll fix it, eventually. Not because they have a moral compass mind you, but because we live in an age of internet petitions and twitter screeds and it's usually just easer to give us nerds what we want rather than try and stand up to fan outrage.

"Thank you for calling Netflix, how 
may we acquiesce to your demands?"

-Netflix's customer service operators