Old anime from a different culture in a modern era

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Powerful tool as a secondary language education - Anime

Kids (or any humans maybe) learn to communicate because of an immediate need, I think. And such an immediate need is always English as long as English is the most used communication. There's absolutely no need for Japanese in the world our kids live in, so as parents we're trying to create such a need for our children. Long story short, among many other things, we do not mind showing anime/アニメ to them with time limit. We recently started showing Dragon Ball (wikipedia.org), which is one of the most successful manga/anime in the world and happens to be originated in Japanese. My wife found an online streaming service that all the episodes from the very beginning. The original cartoon started being published when I was 9, many many kids around me got into it, but I somehow didn't. So I thought maybe it's finally the time to catch up with.

Hiccup in old, international content

We immediately noticed, unfortunately, that there are so many obscene expressions in the early episodes kids have watched so far. While I kind of understand that this was ok in Japan in 1980's as I grew up there and then, it's 2020's now, and we're in the US. The very concerns my wife and I raised raised varied, but we unanimously agreed it is not appropriate to continue, at least without more thoughts. Why it's so popular and widely accepted over 40+ countries including the United States? There may (or may not) be reasonable explanations. Also our kids live our times, not 1990's or even since 2010's the society and the people's view must have evolved.

People in the US Csurprisingly forgiving

This page (quora.com), where people post responses to a question (asked in 2015), poses some views. To list up (in my own words) some of them after the initial skim, some views are:

  •  Dragon Ball wasn't meant to be for kids.
  •  Story and actions attract and occupy kids mind, and dirty scenes go over their minds.
  •  Cultural difference: Japanese are more accepting "light" sexual jokes than Americans.

I don't know if any of these are true.  Even if these represent some truths, I'm not ready to just embrace the show as it is and resume showing to our kids.  I was hoping to find articles that offer more formally analyzed views, but haven't run into any yet.

Quick TV time after all the night routine is a reward kids often get after a long day.

Between 2 cultural backgrounds

Another aspect of this, which is much more open-ended and we feel like learning our own way every day, is this; We're talking about the "secondary culture" (TM by me...I don't know if such a term even exists) for our children. I.e. Our kids will adopt to English/American culture before anything else, while they are regularly exposed to Japanese culture as a side. There's no sense of superiority, e.g. there's no sense of "which is better / more appropriate" between American and Japanese culture. However, there IS a sense of "it is right in one culture, whereas it is not in the other". For example, owning a gun as self-defense is widely accepted in the US (I don't necessarily agree with that idea btw) while it is definitely not in Japan. It's merely cultural difference. But our children at the age of 7 and younger don't easily get that.

That matters upon stuff like Dragon Ball. Some say Japanese are much more tolerant about sexual jokes while they strictly oppose against brutality, and they say American are the opposite. Personally there's at least some truth in that claim. Problem for us is that our kids go back and forth between these 2 cultures frequently almost on a daily basis. I'm worried that kids carry around ideas that are ok in one culture but not in the other, like the obscurity in Dragon Ball.

Takeaway

Anyways, though my research this time is only half-way through, we have to move forward. I think we will not show Dragon Ball to our kids. 

UPDATE 2022/10/03: Seems like imdb.com lists up educational certifications. According to the page for Dragon Ball (imdb.com), it is PG-14 in the US and even in Japan it is PG-12. So I should really have not been given an access when I was 9.

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