My country sucks...

[himiko]

Soooo....

I am struggling to make coherent thoughts now. But all of my incoherent ones are not good.

This is about our pending exit from the EU by the way. My country, its economy and the workers' rights therein are now at the mercy of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and their ilk. I genuinely cannot decide whether I am more terrified for the future, or just blindingly furious. Who was foolish enough to genuinely believe that those bastards would pour the EU money into the NHS, or deprived areas, etc? It can all go to hell.

And as for Farage claiming that "no bullets were fired" - sure Nigel, other than the 3 that were fired into Jo Cox MP by a man motivated by "freedom for Britain" and "putting Britain first". I mean, I know it must be so easy to forget. She died a whole week ago, after all.

Actually, scratch my earlier uncertainty- blinding fury it is.

Sorry. Just needed to vent again.

[Arwen17]

I was rather surprised they actually managed to get enough YES votes. I knew it would be a close vote, these types of referendums always are... But places like Quebec have had referendums to leave Canada etc and the NO vote barely passes, but it still passes.

I'm wondering what this will mean for the EU in general. I think that Greece seriously considered leaving because of their financial trouble, but chose to stay in the EU. Does that mean they'll leave now? There was all this fuss that if even one country decides to leave, it will encourage everyone else to leave. I know the UK isn't as deeply interwoven into the EU as the other countries since they still use the pound and not the euro. But I do wonder if this will cause a domino effect for everyone eventually leaving the EU.

I'm not an expert on politics, but this leaving the EU was done because the UK wanted to make sure they could close their borders against the refugees, yes? Couldn't they have done that without leaving the EU? Britain managed to get away with using the pound sterling and still remain part of the EU lol. I don't see why they couldn't have pushed for more immigration control regardless of what the EU thinks about it.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my own country. It feels like the USA has gone mad. The "flee to Canada" is a constant running joke here. I think this is the first time the USA has TWO candidates for president that no one really likes. Both Trump and Hillary are hugely disliked. I may not vote at all because I don't like either of them, and that's a sentiment many people share. I'm waiting for the debates to see if it helps me choose a side. I actually wanted to vote Republican this time around, but then Trump became their candidate....
Normally I vote Democrat, and as a person I still really like Obama, but I think we need to move away from the "welfare state" a bit. Welfare and health insurance has become too costly and gotten out of control. We literally can't afford it. And I too believe that the influx of illegal immigrants (not talking about legal ones) has gotten out of control where Mexico is concerned, as well as the trade deals with slave labor nations like China. We can't compete and find jobs in our own country if all of the businesses move their operations overseas to slave labor markets. So I agree with the general direction Trump wants to move the country compared to Hillary, who will only continue to move it in the Obama-direction. But I don't personally like Trump. But my brother certainly worships him. I think it's because my brother has been struggling to find a job since graduating because of the state of the economy, so like many unemployed young men he is very, very angry with the state of things. I'm always able to find work since I'm in technology, but it's hard to keep a job for very long because they work you to death, then get rid of you. AKA have to compete with slave labor markets, have to run the companies extremely lean. Case in point, I've been unemployed for the past 4 weeks, but I'm hoping to have another job here really soon. I've got several interviews coming up.

Ultimately I see both Trump and Hillary as evil, dishonest dictators. But who's the lesser evil as far as the country's economy is concerned? I have no idea.
Obama is a genuine man with integrity. So even if you don't agree with his policies, you don't really view him as "evil" like you do with Trump and Hillary.

[himiko]

The refugee crisis is part of it, yes, but the calls to leave the EU have been going on long before it started.

- Partly it is to do with more general immigration and borders - the EU has free movement of people, so if you're a citizen of an EU nation you can freely travel to, and live in any of the other nations. We do have quite a high number of EU migrants settling in the UK, particularly from Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe - the people that complain about this seem to ignore the >1 million Brits living abroad in the rest of the EU, but oh well. There has been a lot of scaremongering going on with the idea that Turkey is going to join the EU soon (I'm not sure how realistic that is, certainly they don't currently meet all the criteria for membership that they would need before doing so) and then people in Turkey will have free access to the UK. Of course, that ties into the even deeper racism that percolates around the UK - not only are these people not British, but they are also predominantly Muslim and non-white.

- Another issue - probably the biggest deciding factor, if polls of voters are to be believed - is this nebulous idea of national identity and sovereignity (that's probably an atrocious spelling attempt, but there we go). The idea that "too many" of our laws are made in the EU (I mean, most of those are related to things you're allowed to put in products, which we'd have to abide by in the future anyway if we're selling our goods TO the EU, but OK), and that we should take all control back. There's complaints about the EU being undemocratic, because we don't directly elect it's leaders, and we're quite happy to have an unelected House of Lords, because that's a BRITISH unelected governing body, so that's OK, I guess.

- EU funding is part of this, too - we pay money to the EU, some of it we get back in a "tax rebate", some of it we get back in the form of grants for arts projects (there's a reason a lot of the entertainment world was not behind this move), or farming, or for deprived areas (Cornwall gets big EU grants, for example - after shooting themselves in the foot by voting leave, they've been asking to government to cover these grants, as the Leave campaign "promised" they wouldn't lose out for leaving the EU). A lot of people seemed to forget that we get some of the money back, and assumed that by not sending it to the EU, we will be able to spend all of it on the NHS (National Health Service). And Education. And deprived areas. All at once. Somehow.

- There are some people (we don't know how many) who assumed that Leave would not win, and saw it as a protest vote against "the system" that they felt wasn't listening to them. In other words, they wanted to shake the government up, but not actually leave. Unlucky.

- Some on the Left-wing side are unhappy with aspects of the EU, and unhappy with the current government, and hoped that taking us out of the EU would be enough to destablise the current government and cause a general election. Which it looks like it will, but since the leader of our left wing party is currently battling his own party to stay in power...

Basically, I can see a lot of reasons why people were dissatisfied, I don't think any of the reasons actually hold up to close examination, and we've heard nothing from the Leave camp of any concrete plans for the future now that their grand dream has come to pass.

As to what happens with the rest of the EU - I imagine that depends on each nation. Certainly there are calls from some countries (and in particular, far right parties in those countries) to hold referendums of their own, whether any actually do I guess we'll see. Currently it's looking like the UK might shed countries before the EU does. Scotland voted to Remain, and the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that a new independence referendum for Scotland is looking like a distinct possibility (I believe plans are already being put in place to take the case for it to the UK government) - I honestly don't see them staying with us if it comes down to a vote this time. There's even mutterings about reunification of Ireland and Northern Ireland, though I don't know how realistic that is, and I imagine it could get a good deal messier if that gets put on the table.

As an outsider, I find the prospect of Trump as President actually rather terrifying. A man who wants to build a wall between himself and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it? Who thinks most of them are criminals and rapists, who wants to deport all immigrants and then possibly let them back in? Who thinks Muslims should be registered and carry a card around identifying them as such, and thinks they should be temporarily barred from entering the US? Who attracts support from Neo Nazis and white supremacists and misogynists and refuses to denounce any of them? He's running on openly racist, discriminatory and confrontational policies and he's gaining support. It's the very image of convincing people that some "other" is to blame for their woes, and I'm sure it's a great message for people who are struggling to be told "Oh, it's not your fault, it's the awful OTHER group that are to blame for your problems", but on a realistic level, is this racist multi-millionaire who was given a small startup loan *cough* of a million dollars and has managed to bankrupt himself in the past really going to "help the common people" and "Make America great again"? Perhaps he's eased off a little now he's actually the presumptive nominee, but his earlier rhetoric is certainly worrying.

I don't know much about US welfare programs, TBH. I've always got the impression that UK and US politics are quite different on these matters. From what I've been told you have lower minimum wage, paid holidays etc. than we do. And healthcare... no offense, but you guys make people pay at point of delivery. For their health care. I mean, the whole premise of "Breaking Bad" is that if someone doesn't have health insurance, or if they don't have health insurance that covers their specific illness, they basically have a choice between dying or losing their house, going bankrupt etc. in some cases. Perhaps that's played up for dramatic purposes, I don't know. For me, having grown up with a National Health Service, where anyone in the UK can just go to and get treated if they get sick or hurt, that's just shocking. And I'm sure there are some policies of ours that seem really weird to you, too. Honestly at the moment I'm really worried about the negative impact that the falling economy and an unchecked Tory government will have on our workplace policies and welfare programs and health services in the long term, rather than the opposite. I guess we'll see.

Best of luck with your interviews, I will keep my fingers crossed for you! And hopefully whoever you end up with as President won't prove quite as politically unlikeable as they seem now.

Pardon all the lengthy political ranting by the way. I'm trying to stop thinking about politics and Brexit and all this nonsense for a bit. Maybe I should watch Merlin instead XD

[Arwen17]

- There are some people (we don't know how many) who assumed that Leave would not win, and saw it as a protest vote against "the system" that they felt wasn't listening to them. In other words, they wanted to shake the government up, but not actually leave. Unlucky.
This exactly. Some people feel like voting for Trump, not because they like him, but because they are so unhappy with the system that they feel isn't listening anymore and Trump represents a massive shakeup. A massive revolt against the current establishment of power because there's so much economic trouble.

In summary, what you wrote there is how I felt about Brexit too just based on the articles I had been reading for/against the issue. I could seriously understand why people weren't happy, but didn't see leaving the EU as the best solution to fixing everything. However, I have since then read some more articles that say since this "divorce" with the EU might take awhile, some still think laws might not get passed to make it actually happen, even if the people did vote for it....
On one hand, I'm like "f-u! the voters should get what they voted for!" But on the other hand, I'm like "Well, at least this whole thing is being approached with some caution by the politicians even tho the people voted YES..."

Yeah, I've been reading about Scotland and Ireland too. I guess Scotland would continue to use the pound sterling even if they separate? Lol as a tourist, my largest concern is the simplest one -> how many blasted times do I have to mess around with changing currencies?
Interesting the Irish finally found they could unite over politics against England, considering up til now the north wanted to be with the UK because of religion.

What Trump says vs what he'll actually do could be very different. He loves attention so he says a lot of outrageous things to get that attention. But he's also a chronic liar, so I don't know what he actually intends to do. That's why I think a lot of people want to vote for him because he's a mystery box and symbolizes a vote against the current unhappy state of affairs. They don't know if he'll ultimately be good, bad, or in-between, but he represents a massive shakeup vs Hillary and the same tired old song.
Also, the media is very, very liberal and even the Republicans don't like him. So he doesn't have many people singing his praises and it can make him look even worse than he is.
Trump:
1. says a lot of terrible crap just to get attention. who knows if he actually means it. he changes his story every five seconds.
2. says a lot of true stuff, but the way he words it is terrible! Because he's so terrible about wording stuff in a politically-correct way, some people don't realize it's a valid argument/concern because they're immediately turned off by the way he says it. Obama = eloquence, great at speaking. Trump = total opposite kind of speaker, way too blunt and never explaining himself in non-rude manner.
3. I think Trump doesn't want to alienate anyone so he can get as many votes as possible. So I don't know which groups he actually agrees with, and which he's simply remaining "non-committal" so that they will vote for him since he doesn't strongly denounce them.
4. Even though I extremely dislike Trump, I really do believe the media and entire establishment is against him. So between the media's bias against him and his blunt, politically-incorrect statements, it's hard to get a clear picture of him. Even John Oliver only ever attacks Trump. He never attacks Hillary over anything. Hillary is not a saint. There should be stuff about both of them, but all of it is aimed at Trump only.

Here's an example:
Trump complains the judge is not impartial by starting out the conversation with "He's Mexican. I'm building a wall."
The very first sentence he utters "He's mexican" immediately outrages a lot of people, including myself, because it sounds so racist. However, if you dig into the issue deeper. It turns out the judge is a member of a very pro-mexican club called the La Raza "The Race". So there is a potential that the judge was biased against him. If you are a judge, you must be impartial. If there is even a possibility of the judge not being impartial, then Trump's statement is legit. But since he words it in such a terrible way, "he's mexican" rather than saying something like "Well the judge is a member of a very pro-mexican group that would be very against my wall-building policy.", most people immediately stop listening. Obama would know how to word something to get people to listen to his concerns. But Trump is too blunt and terrible with words, so people immediately stop listening and the media immediately jumps all over his statement... Rather than showing his issue might have actually been legitimate.
www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/06/trumps-questioning-federal-judge-not-racist/


So that's why I'm waiting for the debates. Hillary can drag up all of Trump's past issues and Trump can have a go at her. Hopefully, the truth of who's the lesser evil will come out. If they're both too slimy for me to stand, I won't vote at all.


Part of the reason why USA healthcare is so expensive is because the health insurance people are crooks and charge all kinds of mysterious fees and do all kinds of crap to raise prices. The other thing I blame is obesity. The vast majority of illnesses and chronic autoimmune diseases in this country are directly related to poor diet, and no one will vote for a law telling them what they can/cannot eat, so we're screwed. (I've been vegan for the past 3 years and dropped a ton of weight for the first time in my life. Thank you, Japan!)
I've been in Canada, UK, and Japan. All have healthcare systems that definitely work. But in the USA, with the obesity crisis and the crooks in the health industry, nation-wide healthcare may not be possible. I 100% support healthcare if its possible to make it work as well as the other countries who have it. But currently no one can afford obamacare if they don't have a job. My mother pays the penalty every year from her retirement funds because it is so much cheaper than buying health insurance. People in her generation constantly complain about how health insurance costs are leeching away at their retirement funds rapidly, or they just plain can't afford it at all and pay the penalty instead.

Any American thinks a nation-wide health insurance system is a great thing, but the problem is we don't know how to make it affordable for our system and cultural obesity setup. I think the idea is if healthcare costs are so expensive, maybe you'll get your act together and start eating healthy. But it never happens. People just live with the healthcare debt for the rest of their lives, or use relatives to pay for it. In the meantime, people with actual unavoidable issues, like being hit by a car or something, do get to be in debt or die because the system can't help them.

We have a massive disability welfare problem, which many people are abusing. Some of my family friends are on disability for the most ridiculous reasons. Some pretend they have a "bad back" problem so they don't have to work and others really do have issues, but it's all caused by obesity or smoking etc. They're all sick because of bad lifestyle habits, and the system encourages them to maintain those habits with free government handouts. If they ever decide to get well and stop their bad habits, then the "punishment" is that they'd have to go back to work rather than living off the system.

But just like the "you can't tell me what to eat" laws will never pass, the "you're sick because of your own stupid choices" is also a law that would never be passable. And even if you could pass it, people can just lie about what causes their issues. No one is going to be honest about their smoking or eating habits if they think it will make their insurance more expensive.



I'm a bleeding heart and all for compassionate welfare policies to help the less fortunate. Except when we get to the point that many people who shouldn't be on the system start abusing it. Then eventually you literally cannot afford the welfare programs anymore and society collapses. Same with refugees and illegal immigrants. You may understand their plight and really want to help them, but the question is "can you afford to help them without destroying the economy?" There will always be "leeches" in any society. I've worked alongside plenty of people who constantly tried to get out of doing any work, while ur working your butt off. It's a difference in integrity. But what happens when you have more leeches than workers? The workers can no longer afford to keep all the leeches, and the economy collapses. Or you also have your workers' pay level undermined by cheaper markets in other countries.


Yep, all anyone can do is wait and see what happens. I think we're gonna be screwed either way at this point.

Are you a sailor moon fan? Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3 will finish on Monday! That's what I will be watching.

[himiko]

It's possible that you're right about Trump. But - and I mean this in the nicest way possible - if the only people willing to put forth a "balanced" viewpoint are a far right proto-fascist rag like Breitbart - a "news" organisation that is in no way unbiased itself, given that it has thrown its weight behind Donald Trump consistently over the past few months, including when one of their own reporters was allegedly assaulted by his campaign manager - I will remain skeptical that he is just a guy who speaks too bluntly, and not an actual racist. At absolute best, he is taking advantage of, and stirring up racial sentiment for his own political gain. Let's say that he doesn't really mean what he says, that after he gets into power he puts aside all of his more questionable policies. Do we assume that his supporters will do the same? That the Breitbarts and the Daily Stormers, the misogynists and the white supremacists, feeling themselves to be validated by a Trump victory, will put aside their own hatred so easily? Because right now in the UK, there's a hell of a lot of reports of racism - against EU citizens who are being told to go home, against people who aren't white being told that they "aren't really British", people marching around shouting "Make Britain white again" - and this is 3 days after the referendum. Before the referendum even took place, a woman was murdered for being a "traitor". And frankly, I can only see it getting worse. Racists feel like they have been validated and can now act openly, EU nationals feel like they are unwelcome. Many feel like they have been ignored by their politicians, and many on both sides of this debate feel like they have been lied to. The young (who voted overwhelmingly to Remain) feel like their futures have been destroyed by the elderly (who voted overwhelmingly to Leave). Whichever way this ends up going, there are going to be riots, there are going to be protests, there may well be more blood. I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about the future of my country, and I don't believe this should ever have come down to a Referendum.

"Oh, well, most experts agree that this would shaft our economy, our arts and our scientific research going forward, but Muriel and I have an instinctive dislike of foreigners and no amount of cold hard facts are going to change that!" is not necessarily a firm basis for the future of the country I'm stuck living in for now.

You may find the below article of interest regarding Trump's comments about Curiel - I wasn't familiar with the comments or the group myself, but this made for interesting reading after Trump's comments and Breitbart's "article". Perhaps this website is considered biased too, I'm not sure?

PolitiFact

I'm not sure about Scotland - I would have thought if they DO get independence, and their application as an independent Scotland to join the EU DOES go through, they will probably have to adopt the Euro as their currency. TBH, who knows what the state of the sterling will even be by that point? As for Ireland, I'm not sure if that will come to anything. Whilst the nation supported Remain overall, as you say, many in Northern Ireland support remaining with the UK over reunification because of religion and politics - I'm not sure that the EU Referendum will be enough to overturn that. But in Scotland, where support for the UK only just edged it at their last independence referendum, and where part of the reason for that was worrying that they would lose out on EU membership by leaving the UK, I don't see them as staying in the UK if they are given another chance to leave.

It will undoubtedly take time for the withdrawal to happen. It's a 2 year process once formal notification is presented to the EU, and formal notification has NOT been presented yet. The referendum is advisory, not legally binding, but as far as I know the government have previously indicated they would abide by the result. David Cameron has said that it will be up to his successor to invoke Article 50 and start the formal process of withdrawal. Some believe that Boris Johnson, Michael Gove etc. didn't actually want to leave the EU and didn't actually think it would happen, and were just using it to boost their political careers. Now that they're confronted with actually having to put a new legal framework into place, the dropping value of the pound, hesitance from foreign investors, the loss of EU grants, the potential dismantling of the UK and all the rest, it's starting to look like a less than pleasant prospect. I don't actually think this will get overturned, I just don't think anyone's going to come out of it very well.

I haven't actually watched Sailor Moon before, it's one of the many anime on my "To Watch" list - at the moment I'm trying to finish off Azumanga Daioh (if you haven't watched it, I would recommend it as an adorable, whimsical slice of life anime) but life (and my Netflix queue) keeps getting in the way XD It's weird, usually I'm really into my fantasy and Sci Fi, but when it comes to anime I tend to gravitate towards either gory horror, psychological thriller or super fluffy slice of life XD I'm trying to finih Breaking Bad at the moment, planning to try "How to Get Away with Murder" after that, I've heard a lot of good things...

Though, in reality, I suspect I will mostly end up playing Fallout 4 until my eyes fall out...

[Arwen17]

yep, because Trump is such an uncertain mystery box, that's why I so badly wish that any other Republican had become the nominee. I feel like I'm being forced into voting for Democrat, rather than by choice. Or forced to not vote at all.

I haven't heard reports of any riots regarding race here and there's nothing happening in my particular area. But it doesn't mean it won't happen or isn't happening somewhere else.
My area has a lot of Trump supporters (which is surprising because we're usually the one democrat city in a state of Republicans), but so far nothing bad has happened.

I think the British may be even more pro-white than the USA because the USA has been such a melting pot for so long?
Some parts of the country might be extremely pro-white, but the country is so vast, it's impossible for most areas to be pro-white.


I think politifact is usually pretty good, but they of course have been accused of bias in the past. In politics or religion, it's probably impossible to be truly unbiased since it's a world-view. It's how you view the world in its entirety.

Hmmm, that'll be interesting. England surrounded by countries that use the Euro.


I'm trying to rush through my horribly long anime watch list before I find a job again and have no free time again. XD
myanimelist.net/animelist/Arwen17?status=6


Sailor Moon Crystal is the reboot of Sailor Moon. However, Viz is also currently redubbing the original Sailor Moon. Seasons 1-2 of the redubbed original are already out. I recommend the redub. The original dubbing was really, really bad because they edited the living crap out of it because it was done in the 90's. In the 90s, they wanted to protect children's innocence and had terrible voice actors.
Sailor Moon Crystal isn't quite as good as the original series, although it is more faithful to the manga. Crystal Season 1 started out well, but I was really bored thru Season 2. Season 3 is epic! They finally fixed their problems and remembered what made the original great.
Only Crystal Season 1 is dubbed atm.

[himiko]

I can understand that - it seems to have been a year of "Oh, it's fine, this will never happen/ they will never end up as the nominee... Well... that happened..." all round!

There are certainly some very racist elements in British society, but how they manifest themselves tend to vary. Parties like Britain First and the British National Party, that are openly racist in their policies and worldview, might attract attention on social media, but they tend to perform extraordinarily poorly whenever they put themselves up for elections (just as an example, in the recent elections for Mayor of London, the leader of Britain First and a member of the BNP both ran for the position, and between them they got less than 2% of the overall vote - amusingly, though not for them, the winning candidate was Sadiq Khan, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent). A party like UKIP, however, which covers up its racism with concerns about border control, and immigration generally, tend to do very well, though not quite as well as the two main parties. Concerns about "Eastern Europeans coming over taking our jobs/ benefits" has become almost acceptable, and because Eastern Europeans are overwhlemingly white, this is excused as not being bigoted, merely being concerned. There are always isolated incidents of racism and general bigotry (particularly aimed at Muslims, but not limited to them), but these seem to be getting more pronounced and threatening - people are reporting being told and overhearing statements like "We've voted you out", "Pack your bags", "You'll be out next". I don't think racism was the only reason Leave won the vote, it may not even be the main reason, and I imagine many Leave voters are as horrified at these comments as I am, but it does seem like this vote has emboldened them and given them support and legitimacy.

As for the UK vs. the US - I'd say there's maybe an impression over here that the US is a more racist country, but of course, we only hear the news of things going wrong (Ferguson, black people being disproportionately arrested and shot, Donald Trump's comments), which is probably going to skew our perspective, plus as you say, the US is a vast country so I imagine the situation is very different in some states to others. And we in the UK may well go on to prove ourselves a much more overtly racist nation than even we realised... Certainly we have a much higher white population, proportionally speaking, than the US. Interestingly, cities, which tend to be the most mixed, racially speaking, tended more towards the Remain vote.

I could be wrong about Scotland of course, but that would be my guess. It would make it a pain going to visit Edinburgh. I confess, after the results came out one of my first thoughts was "Maybe I can move to Scotland before they split off from us!"

I tend to be quite wary of dubs, I've come across some really bad ones so I tend to stick to the subtitled versions, but I may have a try at the dubbed version if it's a good one Yeah, I had heard that there was a f/f pairing in the original Sailor Moon that was edited in the dub to make them close friends/ cousins, I imagine there was other stuff taken out as well.

[Arwen17]

I guess you'll just have to flee to Scotland while I flee to Canada haha. I'd rather flee to Japan, but that takes more paperwork.


oh good, you like subs!! A lot of Americans won't touch a show if they have to read subtitles.
Subs are usually what I watch first even if I try out the dubs later. Dubs really have gotten better in recent years. There's a couple shows that I actually prefer the dub over the sub. Usually because the dialogue is very technical or funny in a complicated, euphemism kind of way and therefore easier to follow when they're speaking it rather than reading subs.

Yes, Neptune and Uranus were cousins in the original dub. As a child, I had no knowledge of same-sex couples when I was watching Sailor Moon, but I knew something weird was going on because Uranus was always dressed as a boy... I just couldn't figure out why, and why no one in the show ever mentioned it. The redubbed original will be uncut and faithful to the japanese dialogue.
Season 3 of Crystal has an absolutely gorgeous ending song dedicated to just Neptune-Uranus. couldn't find a subbed version on youtube, but the lyric translations are awesome: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PIfPZSorwA

Zoisite was voiced by a woman in the original dub because there were love scenes with another man called Kunzite. But in the redub Zoisite is finally voiced by a man. Zoisite looks like a girl, so it wasn't hard for them to change his gender to hide the relationship in plain sight. But they couldn't do that for Uranus-Neptune since Uranus is clearly female in that short sailor skirt lol. If she had stayed in civilian clothes all the time, then they definitely would have turned her into a male for the story because she looks like a male civilian.
I'm not really mad at the old dub because it's a part of my childhood memories and the voice-acting is so cheezy you just breakdown in laughter.

They also removed a bunch of faint boob or butt lines etc during transformation sequences. *roll eyes* They removed all japanese character writing and signage, and made a lot of silly dialogue changes to make it more "educational" for kids. I think there was a bunch of legislation during the period that passed that said TV stations had to broadcast more "educational" material for children, so they had this preachy and ridiculous "Sailor Says" segment they added to every episode.

[Arwen17]

I now have another reason to hate Brexit. Brexit has caused the Japanese Yen to soar in value compared to the US dollar. I just paid for one of my preordered anime figures and was shocked the yen price was equal in value to the dollar amount. Normally, and for the past year especially, the yen has been extremely weak against the dollar, which has made buying things from Japan awesome, because of the substantial discount. The Japanese don't like it either. Their economy desperately relies on exports for profit and if a strong yen makes exports more expensive.... then all of the foreigners like me don't buy Japanese products as often. Come back, weak yen! You were so beautiful!

[maellowyn]

Oh dears what a ride these last year and half have been. Madness everywhere - that's for sure. It doesn't seem to have gotten better since this topic here was started.
All these conservative hardliners are to no benefit for our modern societies.
But politicians, bankers, industrial magnates and lobbyists once more have been the cause for increasing poverty and unsatisfaction among the normal "small" people which leads to great divides and hatred. I guess as long as groups of few but wealthy people don't stop to exploit other people this societies may fall apart only further.
A pity that I have to witness Brexit, Trumpism and more wars in near east or even Turkey becoming a dictatorship now.
But I guess every generation carries its crosses like our grandparents had theirs. Humankind seems to me generally destructive in its nature...

So in the end it is not just your country that sucks but modern civilization right now when you're at the wrong receiving end of society.