Wanted: Pilots for Goddesses

You know what sucks about when some animes come to America, censorship. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good show, bad show, long or short, or even a movie, most of them suffer from censorship. It could be something simple like a word or name change, to make it seem more Western, or something big, such as a complete name change, so that a network won’t get angry letters from some parents group. So here today let’s talk about a show with a little bit of every kind of censorship. Here is The Candidate for Goddess, better known as Pilot Candidate here in the West.

This show takes place in a far distance future. The year is 5030, and Zion is the only planet left that can sustain human life, thanks to continued attacks from an alien life form know as Victim that has already wiped out four planetary systems since 4084. In order to protect Zion and space colonies, humans have developed mechas called “Ingrids” or “Goddesses”, due to their female human like appearance.

The show’s main character is Zero Enna. He is a young teen that just joined the Goddess Operation Adcamedy (G.O.A), so he can become a Goddess pilot. There are a few requirements for someone to even be considered for G.O.A. for example, they must be in good health, between 14-16 of age, EO blood type, and one major thing, that you will have to watch the show to find out.

Normally this would be the time that I tell you how good the show is, and stuff like that, but this time I will like to talk about how this show was censored. This show aired on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup back in 2002, in the US. Even on Adult Swim, they still faced censorship, most obvious is the name change. It went from being called The Candidate For Goddess, to Pilot Candidate. More censorship occurred with the removal of nudity (OK fine), religious references (OK, odd though since they still referred to the mechas as Goddess), violence (wait, what), and tobacco use (the fuck). Adult Swim everyone, where you can have an animated comedy series sing a song called “Prom Night Dumpster Baby”, but they can’t have a character on an anime smoke a cigarette.

Even with all of these crazy censoring, this is still a good show. I don’t know about any streaming services that are currently carrying this show, so your best bet might be to find the complete box set that was released back in 2016. If anyone knows anywhere else we could find and experience this show, please let us know in the comments below. Until next time Painkillers.

Captain Pain Approves this post!!!

