Dec 29, 2023 (cracked.com) - The Simpsons is one of the most beloved animated properties worldwide, with 36 dubs and translations of the longest-running American animated series airing internationally.
As a top American cultural exports, the humor of The Simpsons has been transcending language barriers ever since its beloved Latin American Spanish dub launched in Mexico back in 1990, just a year after the show premiered in American America. Within a couple short years, The Simpsons was an international, multilingual hit on six continents, and, with so many countries tuning in to see America’s first animated family every week, you’d think that nothing would make The Simpsons more popular in each respective nation than an episode wherein the Simpsons visit said country. In Japan, you’d be very, very wrong.
In the Season 10 episode “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo,” the Simpson family takes a last-minute discounted vacation to the Land of the Rising Sun that quickly goes awry due to the antics of Homer and Bart at a sumo wrestling match, during which Homer tosses Japanese then-Emperor Akihito into a trunk full of used loincloths. That act of incidental aggression landed the father and son in jail and “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo” on Japanese television’s permanent ban list. ...continue reading
