Not only did Right Stuf have to substitute the second opening theme (originally used in episodes 52-102 of the anime) in place of the first, but they had to bleep out all of Mamo's lines from the Japanese language track on the DVD, and I think they even had to bleep out Mamo's NAME when Sana spoke it!
And when the show was brought over to North America, absolutely NONE of that could be used due to licensing issues. Not only was that song originally used as the opening theme for episodes 1-51 of the show, but Tokio's lead singer Mamo made a cameo appearance in episode 1 as himself, exchanging a few lines of dialogue with the series' main character Sana. by The Right Stuf, there were major licensing problems associated with the first opening theme, "19 O'Clock News" by the band Tokio. I'm not able to comment as to whether or not this is the reason we've removed Japanese voice tracks from some of our past titles, but I can give a relatively well-known example from the world of anime: Kodocha. It's not at all uncommon for a Japanese voice-actor to record his/her voice for a game under the stipulation that it ONLY be used within the country of Japan, making it ILLEGAL to use those lines anywhere else in the world. and some of those contracts, ESPECIALLY in Japan, can be pretty draconian when you get down to the fine print. Sadly, everyone who's ever spoken a line of dialogue or sung a phrase of music in a video game signed a contract of some sort. Technical limitations and storage space aren't the only factors, either - there's also that dreaded specter known as LICENSING.
NO publisher is going to remove the original voice track if there exists an option to keep it - there'd be no reason to, after all! But I speak from personal experience when I tell you that there are many, many times where publishers aren't given any choice in the matter whatsoever. You have to understand that most of the time (pretty much 99% of the time at this point, really), when the original Japanese voice-acting is removed from a game during localization, it's done out of necessity, NOT by choice.
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