saxifrage00

If Disney had just used “tanuki” in the English subtitles and dubbing it would have made the movie make so much more sense...

Right, because it could well be quite normal for some other variety of small furry animal to be able to turn their gonads into parachutes.

Did she also try to tell you that digital anal rape of peers and elders alike is a healthy childhood passtime?

No no, it was my own conclusion that it would have made more sense. Given a signifier that is alien, the mind is less likely to make assumptions that will lead to significant cognitive dissonance.

Actually, that's a common problem among foriegners who teach English there. Watch your ass in those Japanese classrooms. The young ones are buggers.

Were they shouting '______san no CHIN CHIN!!' while they were doing it?

I wish I was joking.

Yes, "kancho", I understand -- I know you're not joking... I wasn't making it up! It's true that it was the most absurd thing I could think of at the time, but it's a spine-tingling slice o' real life in Japan from what I've heard!

See, just before the elder raccoon thing said "These carpets you're sitting on are really my shape-shifting testicles", I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be just hilarious if those carpets they're sitting on turned out to be his shape-shifting testicles?" because it was the most absurd thing I could think of, and I have a great love of absurdity.

Japanese culture seems to be where all of my most bizarre and fantastical imaginings come true.

And now with thoughts of monsters bearing phallic tentatcles, perhaps I'll retire for the evening...

Oh god this one is so so cute

I think if I ever see this movie I'm going to pretend they were always meant to be raccoons - that's way scarier

OMG so cute, I want one.

Keep in mind that they are the source of the tanuki's legendary testicular endowment. Apparently they're comically large. They may only be cute from the front. ;-)

Can they turn them into 20'x20' tatami mats? No? Parachutes? Prodigiously sized billy clubs? No?

Then I'm OK with it. ;-)

Good point. :-)

I'll take a female, then ;)

Yeah, but they spelled it Tanooki. Spelled differently, so people think of a different concept most of the time.

I know... now I'll never look at that the same way again. I can absolve raccoons, now, but portly Italian plumbers from Brooklyn are forever changed...

Welcome to the world of ADR direction - choosing whether or not to translate something like that is sometimes a major decision in writing the script. Most anime fans would rather see it untranslated, but this is Disney (in theory) and so they have to make decisions based on Joe Average.

It's an unfortunate decision in this case, because it really doesn't make this film more accessible to Joe Average. I understand the call, but I think their policy just failed this time. I think that if these creatures had been called something unusual then people's sense of disbelief would be more prepared. As it is, the reaction I've seen so far is "awww, they're cute raccoo—WHAT THE FUCK?"

It does make for a fascinating piece of culture-shock, though. In my mind it's already a classic in a perverse way.

Yeah. The ADR director had to know that was coming - it's not like they're not reading the scripts. The images are too different - they could accept a tanuki has having testicular fortitude, but a raccoon doesn't evoke that kind of image. Admittedly, if I were just to see that part, I'd go, "Aww what a cute... are those what I think they are?"