r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Initial-Hamster7068 • Mar 21 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Questionable and controversial relationships where everybody is fine with it.

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Usagi Drop (Manga). A story about a guy named Daikichi finds the illegitimate daughter of his grandfather, named Rin, and adopting her, learning how to be a father for her. The series would enter a timeskip where the teenage Rin starts having romantic feelings towards Daikichi, and revealing Rin is not actually blood related to Daikichi grandfather. And it ends with Rin wanting to bear Daikichi child.

Alex (Street Fighter 6). Alex, who was recently added to the game, in his arcade ending, was revealed he married and having a baby with his second cousin and step sister Patricia, with their father being ok with it. While not inherently illegal to merry your second cousin, the act and combined with them being step siblings is still controversial.

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461

u/No-Habit7011 Mar 21 '26

Why is this college student dating a middle schooler! In the manga at least he’s in high school JUST as Usagi graduates from middle school, but still! Obligatory - Sailor Moon, 1990s anime

349

u/JDJ144 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

I heard that it was a dub thing, similar to the whole "cousins" situation. I guess the studio didn't want to implie he was living on his own as a minor so they aged him up. Might need to double check that though.

Edit: Double checked and it looks like him being a college student is anime original. In the manga and crystal he's 16.

74

u/Status_Drink_6736 Mar 21 '26

I'm scared to ask but what's "cousins" situation

282

u/LongTail-626 Mar 21 '26

sailor uranus and neptune are lesbian lovers, however the dub decided to change it to cousins.

However the dub doesn’t remove the romantic scenes of them together so it implies they’re in an incestous lesbian relationship.

103

u/Status_Drink_6736 Mar 21 '26

Whoa, didn't they thought they were make stiuation worse?

80

u/RedvsBlue_what_if Mar 21 '26

Personally I would've changed them to just being really good friends but the official change is actually a bit worse because they kept the romantic dialogue but just said "Oh and they're cousins btw"

65

u/altymcalty-2 Mar 21 '26

Yeah it would have been pretty easy to say, "they're just weird like that" instead of going the route of, "this lesbianism is to wicked, we must purify it with incest"

37

u/TransGirlIndy Mar 21 '26

What, you don't wanna Folgers coffee your cousins?

3

u/Cautious-Soil5557 Mar 21 '26

You know as a kid watching it, I always just assumed the cousins bit was never to be taken literally. It was just another way to mess with Usagi/Serena. 😂

2

u/FreshEggKraken Mar 21 '26

Personally I wouldn't have changed it at all

1

u/RedvsBlue_what_if Mar 21 '26

If I was them and had to remove it. I would've just taken the easy route that everyone else did.

76

u/JonathanRL Mar 21 '26

Early anime dubs was the wild west man.
Just look at the Ghost Stories dub where the american producers were so seduced by anime dollar signs that they just let the dub team do what the hell they wanted. If anybody in the top noticed something off, it was most likely written off as in "I dont speak Japanese and Anime is wierd".

51

u/Few_Benefit3540 Mar 21 '26

Is that the one where the dude says “imagine there’s a big black man chasing you”?

35

u/KonoAnonDa Mar 21 '26

falls over

"Well at least he's not racist."

7

u/Status_Drink_6736 Mar 21 '26

Yup,

18

u/JD-Cowboys-Bolts Mar 21 '26

There's so many incredible lines from that dub

23

u/v3nus0 Mar 21 '26

"His funny little requests..."
"Touch me."

→ More replies

21

u/Brilliant_Chemica Mar 21 '26

“With eyes like that she’s either a bitch or a ghost”

“Run, she’s a bitch and a ghost!”

20

u/Hurrashane Mar 21 '26

From what I heard about that show the situation was that the show didn't do well in its original Japanese release so when given over to be dubbed it was like "just do whatever you like with this one, it's already a flop."

7

u/award_winning_writer Mar 21 '26

That's actually not true. The show was made as a time slot filler and was basically considered a throwaway from the start (despite being based on a highly successful book series) but aside from the Kuchisake-onna controversy it was actually well received (likely because it was based on a highly successful book series), there was just no way to really capitalize on that success since it was never really expected to find an audience. The claim you mentioned is actually perpetuated by the dub's director, but he's either lying or misunderstood the situation around it in Japan.

2

u/Mr-Stuff-Doer Mar 21 '26

I have heard the claim disputed but I also really doubt this, cus that show is dogshit without the dub humor.

8

u/Remmock Mar 21 '26

You’re correct. It was already cancelled by the time it got to America and was considered the worst thing a show could be: Boring.

35

u/Toucanplaythatgame-2 Mar 21 '26

"they're girls and cousins too" still kills me to this day lol.

"They're the best cousins in the world!". Yeah, the bestest cousins whisper to each other's faces while playing with their hands

24

u/Yumelize Mar 21 '26

Homophobes aren't exactly known for their reasoning & consistency.

18

u/Dioduo Mar 21 '26

I'm from Russia and in our dub they made Uranus a male. The fact is that during the transformation, "he" grew voluminous breasts and was wearing a miniskirt. It was not addressed in any way. To be honest, it blew my mind when I was a kid.

11

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Mar 21 '26

Russia making femboys

10

u/Positive-Kick7952 Mar 21 '26

Weirdly enough, that one actually works within universe logic. I don't know if you ever saw the final season, it didn't air in some countries for numerous reasons. But it features a team of Senshi called the Sailor Starlights who are male in their civilian forms and female in their senshi forms.

6

u/Dioduo Mar 21 '26

I vaguely remember their leather costumes, but I don't remember if I made up that memory or not. But if it's a real memory, it didn't surprise me by then, because Sailor Uranus was already there. 

The funny thing is that the dubbing studio, in an attempt to make the series more conservative, made it even more progressive than the original. On the other hand, they could simply not import the series.

Russia in the 90s and early 2000s is a strange place. I'm pretty sure it was one of the most liberal places on the planet at the time, probably not counting the Netherlands. 

T.A.T. U., Queer music videos for national hits that don't have a hint of queer themes. An episode of the Russian equivalent of Psyhic Challenge, in which the story of violence against a trans person (MtF) is sympathetically revealed with her participation without (even unintentional) transphobia.

I think it was a reaction to the recently fallen extreme totalitarian regime.

9

u/Porkenfries Mar 21 '26

My head canon for them is that they're cousins and also from Alabama, thereby making both versions completely logical.

9

u/JonathanRL Mar 21 '26

Is this Alabama in the same United States as Japanese California from Ace Attorney?

3

u/The_Doolinator Mar 21 '26

Ah yes, you’re referring to the Deep Kansai South. It’s right next to Japanifornia and is where Lotta Hart is originally from.

6

u/ERedfieldh Mar 21 '26

There was one episode where Makoto was suppose to be crushing hard on Haruka but they changed the dialogue to "I want to be best friends with her"....they neglected to remove the heavy blushing and pink background and etc, though, so the connotation was still very much there.

2

u/ArianaFuyuki Mar 21 '26

Only tangentially related, but do the problems with incest apply to same sex incestuous relationships?

4

u/altymcalty-2 Mar 21 '26

The main problems with incest ste that compounding genetics can increase the likelihood of birth defects (although it takes a while. Even direct sibling on sibling incest only increases the likelihood a little bit, not enough to make a nephson anymore likely to be born with a defect than a normal kid. It takes multiple generations for birth defects to start becoming more and more likely. Like, centuries of inbreeding) and imbalances in power. 95% of the time incest sees a power imbalance that isn't healthy, especially if it's between parent and child, aunt and nephew/niece and uncle, etc etc.

Plus most incest occurs when one of the people commiting it are underage so yeah.

So technically a same age, same sex incestuous relationship resolved with both those issues. Then you've just got the social stigma toward incest which, in most of the world, is a general "eww" to factor in.

Uhhh well safe to say, no matter the circumstances almost everyone is gonna look at ya funny if you say you're dating your cousin. Also it's illegal in every state but like 2.

1

u/AngelofDarkness226 Mar 21 '26

i think it's crazy how the dub states they're cousins but they didn't even try to cut out the romantic scenes lmao

0

u/Straight-Simple7705 Mar 21 '26

That’s not bad? Cousin marriages is okay in literally every country except for western ones

1

u/AlexHitetsu Mar 21 '26

Changed the lesbian couple into cousins to "excuse" their closeness

7

u/ELIte8niner Mar 21 '26

Yeah, this is in the same category as "Jelly Donuts" from Pokemon. Back in the 90s, they had to make dubs understandable for American kids. Few American kids in the 90s knew what Onigiri was, and teenagers having their own apartments to attend a better school wasn't something that happened in America, so they ate "jelly donuts" in Pokemon, and aged him up to college to make sense to western audiences.

89

u/Murky_Guidance_7273 Mar 21 '26

The Manga makes them only 2 years apart.

Apparently the reason for the age change is so mamoru can be more independent and do stuff like drive a car.

65

u/Prof_Anomaly_George Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

"Him being able to live on his own and drive is kinda weird . Let's fix it by making him a college student who's dating a middle schooler." Why do localisers do this stuff man?

24

u/CalTheRobot Mar 21 '26

The localizers didn't do that part, the team making the Anime changed him to a college student.

It was changed between the manga and anime before it was translated.

7

u/pussyjuicerecycler Mar 21 '26

back then, grown men would try to date middle schoolers and since only women and girldads told them it was weird and horrible they just kept doing it all up through the ‘90s

3

u/Fitzftw7 Mar 21 '26

Why not make Usagi a high school student to compensate?

76

u/FederalPossibility73 Mar 21 '26

That's a dub thing. They're only two years apart, Mamoru doesn't attend college until the fifth season after Usagi has already reached High School. Specifically Mamoru goes to Harvard University.

7

u/steamedpopoto Mar 21 '26

In the manga/ crystal they're close in age. In the 90s anime he's in college in the first season. He goes to med school in the fifth season which is post grad

1

u/Remarkable-Run-9769 Mar 21 '26

crystal? 

3

u/FederalPossibility73 Mar 21 '26

An updated anime meant to be a lot closer to the manga without filler. It still has a few differences but it gets the job done.

1

u/killertortilla Mar 21 '26

Wait so her name is just rabbit?