Censorship in The Drillimation Series

Like with many popular Japanese imports, The Drillimation Series has been subject to censorship when it was being localized in North America and other countries. Many of these changes include alteration of scenes, dialogue, and character appearances.

Character appearances

 * Before the English dub of Star Trigon began, Drillimation Studios California president Marc Summers had a bit of a fight with Hiroshi Takajima. Miyuki Takara was widely recognizable by her bushy hairstyle and breast size. Summers wanted Miyuki Takara removed from the anime, as he said her appearance was deemed to be inappropriate for their target audience of children. Animators from Lucasfilm had reacted poorly to her design. Takajima did not want Miyuki Takara removed from the anime, and instead told the team to change her physical appearance entirely. Her redesign had smaller breasts and less suggestive clothing. Her redesign would later appear on all Drillimation media produced in Japan starting with Lucky Star.

Episode context

 * Many episodes had their pop culture references Americanized, as Summers felt that an American audience, especially their target audience of children, would not fully understand most of its references to Japanese culture or media. Mostly, the references to Shintoism were kept, although the Shinto shamanic actions were Christianized.
 * In many episodes of Magical Girl Team Lucky Star, Konata's cousin, Yui, would often drink large amounts of beer at times. Some episodes even depict her drinking alcohol. Marc Summers, who formerly headed Drillimation Studios California from its founding in 1975 until 2003, felt this would have a bad influence on their target audience of children, so he made her drink coffee instead. In the scenes where Yui would show up drunk, she would be depicted fatigued.

Touhou Project

 * Up until the Driller Engine 3 Era, Nintendo had strict policies regarding the use of religious symbols in North America. All references to Christianity are removed from the North American and European localizations of the games. One of Yukari Yakumo's spell cards, being Bewitching Butterfly Living in the Zen Temple, depicted a left-facing swastika. The shape is actually a Manji, the Buddhist symbol for "good fortune". The spell card did not cause controversy in Japan but did from a few complaints in North America and Europe. Drillimation cleared the confusion by telling Drillimation players in GamePro about the Manji. The spell card was changed entirely in the Super Nintendo version due to similar controversies in The Legend of Zelda.

Super Smash Keyboards series

 * The series had been linked to numerous controversies over the years from the release of the first game in 1992. It was one of the first fighting games to use "fatality" moves to finish off opponents, many of these depicted a gruesome execution of the defenseless enemy character. In the North American versions of the games, many of the fatalities were depicted in a cartoony manner.
 * Super Smash Keyboards 8 gained outrage when a fanmade mod for the game allowed players to play as a nude version of Tsukasa Hiiragi, which Drillimation decided to leave out of the final game. However, a partially nude version of her covered in thick cloth strips was depicted in a Story Mode cutscene when she asked Mike Matei to trace an image of her that way, before Matei becomes busted by Tsukasa's mother, Miki. This caused a lot of anger to parents that they sent a request to the ESRB to change the game's rating from Teen to Mature, which restricted the sale to minors without adult accompaniment. To refute this claim, Drillimation released a patch update which excluded the offending mod and an alteration of Tsukasa's "half-nude" appearance. The game was still rated Teen for violence, blood, language, use of alcohol, tobacco reference, crude humor, and partial nudity.

Driller Engine Grand Prix series

 * In the second game, Driller Engine Grand Prix 2, Drillimation partnered with real-world companies to cover many of the in-game signs with their logos. In the Japanese version of the game, Drillimation partnered with Agip, Mobil 1, Goodyear, and Marlboro to place their logos on the in-game signs. The Marlboro logo was removed in the international version of the game, presumably to avoid controversy with tobacco references in a family-friendly game and was replaced with the Nascar logo.
 * In the eighth and current installment, Driller Engine Grand Prix 8, Honoka Kousaka, which is a DLC character from the Love Live! series, had one of her victory animations modified in version 1.6.0 in the Normal Edition and 1.1.0 in the Ultimate Edition. The original animation had Honoka placing her arms to resemble a Bras d'honneur, which translates to "Up your (insert word here)!" BBC found this pose to be inappropriate for a kid-friendly game, as the Driller Engine Grand Prix series is considered family-friendly.