GOOD GRIEF.
MINI-TEE ELL DEE ARR WARNING
Let's say a company, let's call them 'FUNimation'. FUNimation wants to bring this really, really, REEEAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLYYY huge children's cartoon from Japan to America so that FUNimation and the company who made it, let's call that company 'Toei' can both profit. Unfortunately, this cartoon, let's call it, 'Dragonball Z' has content that is a bit too adult for young children in the Western World. But if they tried to market it to adults, it would fail because it's not meant for adults and marketing something for children to adults doesn't give you the best success rate. So FUNimation can either waste their money in localizing and then get sued by Toei or they can change some minor details so that Dragonball Z can become a big hit. Toei, at first, isn't too happy with the changes, but they understand the old phrase 'different strokes for different blokes' so they allow FUNimation to broadcast their version of Dragonball Z. They remove all the adult things so that kids have easy access to it and Dragonball Z is an enormous super-hit. It allows FUNimation to do more anime importing and now they have a bit of an empire. All because they understood that what might be okay for kids in one country might not be okay for kids in others. Eventually FUNimation releases Dragonball Z in a more uncut manner and all is right with the world.
Eventually, other companies start doing this because they want to make money off of it. Another company, let's call them 'Saban' imports a show, let's call it Sailor Moon and it too is a hit. And a third company, let's call them '4kids Entertainment' imports two more shows, let's call them 'Pokemon' and 'Yu-Gi-Oh!' and by the time they're hits, the Western world is lit on fire with Animation and soon teenagers all over are watching Japanimation but more adult things. Sure the three shows had their fair bit of censorship, but without that, they wouldn't have come and they wouldn't have been hits.