Disco Guns
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"Disco Gun" is a term devised by online communities for an unusual editing technique used for the American broadcast of the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam SEED in which distracting neon lights are painted on firearms to make them appear to be unrealistic weapons. The first one, held by Andrew Waltfeld, appeared in episode 19 to much surprise from fans. While the series had quite heavily edited up until that point, guns normally had their sound effects toned down to sound more "futuristic". In this case, however, a troublesome situation occurred in which a gun was being pointed directly at an underaged character. Despite the fact that the character was a soldier fighting in a war situation and the gun was never actually intended to be fired at him, Williams Street was ordered to either alter the gun or cut the scene.
Based on the fact that edited guns in the series Outlaw Star looked much more plausible, some believe that the disco guns were done at the last minute and intentionally made to look ridiculous so that the edits would be obvious to viewers. Whatever the case, this became a trend as the series went on, with virtually every gun in the show being altered merely for the sake of continuity and, likely, stricter watchdog censorship from Turner's BS&P division. In one particular case, laser beams were also painted in as two characters fired at each other. However, in episode 49, Muruta Azrael's gun didn't have any edits to it for most of the episode. But near the end, after he shot Natarle Badgiruel, it was shown in its edited form for several frames. It is unknown if that was due to bad editing or if it was intentional. The same thing occurred in the following episode where Patrick Zala's gun and one of the ZAFT soldiers guns were also not shown edited until that ZAFT soldier shot Patrick Zala and that was when their guns were shown in their edited forms. The term "[this character] got DISCO'D" became a popular catchphrase.
Certain viewers attempted to defend the edit as fitting in with the futuristic setting of the show. However, this is at odds with the established Gundam SEED canon where beam weapons were still fairly new and the technology was certainly not at the stage where it could be miniaturised into a human held gun.
It should be pointed out that previous Gundam series had run with no similar edits. The guns were also unedited when the show aired on YTV in Canada.
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