36 Years Later, Dragon Ball’s Wildest Censorship Seriously Just Hit Streaming

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Dragon Ball is no stranger to censorship, especially in the West. When the series first premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami in 1998, many of the series' more brutal instances of violence and bloodshed had to be covered up to be palatable for its younger target audience.

Though fans might think that kind of censorship is a thing of the past, a new example has already cropped up in 2026, and it's outright ridiculous.

The new piece of Dragon Ball censorship was first noticed by X user Gamer Zamasu and took place on the Australian ABC iview streaming service. The Dragon Ball fans posted a 27-second clip to X depicting a scene from Dragon Ball Super where Goku interacts with Dende and Mr. Popo. Humorously, however, Mr. Popo is strategically cropped out of the scene.

Dragon Ball's Latest Censorship Controversy Resurrects A Classic Debate

After posting the clip, Gamer Zamasu went on to speculate that this latest bit of censorship was due to the controversy surrounding Mr. Popo.

Mr. Popo is one of the things about Dragon Ball that has aged the worst since the series first premiered. Due to his dark skin color, turban, and red lips, there have been accusations that Mr. Popo is a racist caricature. While it's questionable if that was Toriyama's intent with the character, his similarity to similarly offensive characters makes the comparison inevitable.

This, famously, led 4Kids and Saban to change Mr. Popo's skin tone to blue instead of black for airings of Dragon Ball Z Kai. A similar controversy affected Pokémon's Jynx, causing Nintendo to change the Pokémon's skin tone to a more purplish hue.

Given that ABC iview is meant as a family-friendly streaming platform, it makes some sense for them to try and cut around Mr. Popo, even if the result appears clumsy.

Dragon Ball's Mr. Popo Controversy Endures To This Day

While it is easy to see why some fans of Dragon Ball might be uneasy with Mr. Popo's presence, that hasn't stopped the character from making appearances in the modern day.

Despite the character's relevance waning since Dragon Ball's heyday, Popo has still appeared as recently as Dragon Ball Daima.

For better or worse, Mr. Popo is a part of Dragon Ball's legacy, and just cutting around him doesn't remove the decades of discourse surrounding the iconic hero.

Release Date 2015 - 2018

Network Fuji TV

Directors Ryota Nakamura, Masanori Sato, Kenichi Takeshita, Takao Iwai, Hideki Hiroshima, Masato Mitsuka, Kazuya Karasawa, Ayumu Ono, Takahiro Imamura, Tatsuya Nagamine, Kôjiro Kawasaki, Kouji Ogawa

Writers Ryu King, Hiroshi Yamaguchi