Giant Robot Invasion! – Home of Comedy Writer Matt Willard

NOTE: Most of the screencaps in this article are VHS quality, since there aren’t any Samurai Pizza Cats DVDs to get truly high-quality images from. Please forgive their appearance!

Samurai Pizza Cats aired at five AM on UPN. I have no flippin’ idea why. Believe you me, I tried hard to catch it on TV with minimal success. I know they had to fill the timeslot, but who the hell sticks a cartoon on at five in the morning? Nobody’s gonna watch it. Why not put stuff there that people don’t want to see anyway, like The Test Pattern Show featuring Alzheimer’s and Teen Mom?

I hope other kids didn’t have to sacrifice their sleep just to watch this show. Samurai Pizza Cats deserved its viewers. While lots of children probably got exposed to them wacky Japanese anime cartoons through Pokemon, Samurai Pizza Cats opened the door a bit early for me. Like I was chosen to witness the anime phenomenon before it swamped America. Yeah, great choice. Give the burden to a miserable kid who only got to play hopscotch in grade school if he agreed to be the course.

Now, Samurai Pizza Cats is the English-dubbed version of a Japanese cartoon called Kyatto Ninden Teyandee. (Yes, it sounds just as ass-backwards as you’d expect.) Even then it was still a comedic show. But when Saban (the guys behind Power Rangers) brought Kyatto Ninden over to America, they sorta forgot the original Japanese scripts. Last time I checked, you need those to dub a show. What happened, guys? Did you just forget those scripts while you where in Japan? Figured they’d just call you when they were done looking around Akihabara?

So, without any scripts to translate, what did the writers do? Like true Americans, they made a bunch of crap up, and suddenly Samurai Pizza Cats became a VERY different adaptation. Loaded with pop culture references and wacky dialogue, Samurai Pizza Cats subverted the typical dub job with a tire iron. And that’s why we’re looking at this today. People only give a crap about Kyatto Ninden because Samurai Pizza Cats made the concept a lot more interesting. You know how Hemingway said that the first draft of anything is shit? Sorry, Kyatto Ninden – this monkey wants to fling something, and you’re not helping this jungle’s feng shui.

The show takes place in Little Tokyo, a mishmash of terrifying robot animals and terrifying Japanese culture. One robot animal, The Big Cheese, constantly tries to overthrow the emperor with an array of humongous war machines. It’s up to the Samurai Pizza Cats to stop him from succeeding. The formula stays pretty basic, but an array of quirky characters spice things up. Let’s take a look at the primary players, shall we?

Speedy Cerviche
Saying he’s the leader of the Samurai Pizza Cats is generous, considering he’s probably dumber than The Happening. (Oh, SNAP!) Still, his job is Action Hero McFightyMan, and in most cultures, that equals screen time. When not working with the other Pizza Cats in their neat pizza parlor, he fights off chumps with his katana. To finish off the big enemies, he pulls an extra sword from his scabbard and slashes with them both to fire a huge energy wave. When I was a kid, I used this move to defeat imaginary enemies. when you try it as an adult, though, customer service enemies aren’t too impressed.

Guido Anchovy
Do you have breasts? Then Guido wants to feel them. This cat is constantly looking to spread a cute girl’s eagle. (And in this show, that girl could very well BE an eagle.) While Guido doesn’t limit his creepy playboy vibe to a single woman, he’s probably most in love with a lovely ram named Lucille. Unfortunately, Speedy loves Lucille too, so the two often fight over who exactly gets to ram the ram. His main weapon is the Sunspot Umbrella. Don’t worry, there’s a blade hidden within the handle. They seriously wouldn’t expect someone to fight and win with just an umbrella. He’s fighting trained minions, not trained wives who are hiding in the closet because dinner was too cold for their spouse.

Polly Esther
A popular Japanese trope is to have the men act so stupid that a smart woman has to come in and act like a bitch to take control. Come to think of it, that also happens in America more often than I care for. Either way, Polly Esther fills the role of Angry McScreamFace here. Of course, as the token girl, she’s saddled with pink armor and a love motif in her weapons. It’s so nice to see how progressive cartoons were in the 90s. Then again, this is a decade that brought us Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, with a girl that turned into a tomato whenever she touched salt. Women, right? All they’re good for is making themselves into their own BLT!

The Big Cheese
Okay, his first name is Seymour, but let’s face it – whenever you hear that, you think of a elementary school principal with mommy issues. The Big Cheese is the Obviously Evil Prime Minister who wants to overthrow the Emperor and take control. He does this by coming up with tons of stupid plans that would never work in real life. Come on, man. Having the bad guys play the good guys in a game of baseball? Why don’t you just put the fate of Little Tokyo on four square while you’re at it? “I win the shopping district!” “Nuh uh, it has to go over the line!”

Bad Bird
The leader of the Ninja Crows, or as I like to call them, Easily Mistaken For Punching Bags. Seriously, these guys are WEAK. They’re probably bigger chumps than most minions are. Bad Bird can fight, at least, but even Speedy kicks his butt every time they rumble. Later he decides to become a good guy, dubbing himself “Good Bird”. Not bad – his name lets you know that he’s a good guy without any second guessing. We should name stuff like that in real life so you’d know what to expect. Instead of “motorcycle”, you’d call it “Risky Kill Yourself Machine”. Instead of “Miranda”, you’d call her “Out Of Your League Lass”.

With these and other characters, combined with all the pop culture references, you get a pretty goofy show. You already know you’re in for a ride when the theme song implies the Cats are better than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pretty ballsy, especially since TMNT still gets new cartoons and the most the Pizza Cats get is an article on a pretentious comedy blog.

Really, I’d be more concerned with all of the moronic plans The Big Cheese tries out. Giant robots are nice, mind you, but then there’s the genius baseball scheme I mentioned above. My favorite is when he decides to stop the Pizza Cats from ever meeting by going back in time with a Paul McCartney robot.

You think I’m making this up, don’t you?

Of course, when a series approaches the final episode, most villians just go “screw it” and try a final, risky gambit to win it all. The Big Cheese naturally screws this up by redirecting a giant meteor to fly towards Little Tokyo. By the way, did I mention The Big Cheese was a GIANT TIT? Who the hell thinks dropping a meteor on the place WHERE THEY LIVE smacks of tactical brilliance? What else does it say to do in that chapter of The Art of War, set your men on fire and launch them with catapaults? What do they call that, the “Human Torch Gambit”?

Naturally, it’s up to Speedy and the reformed Bad Bird to take their giant cat robot into space and destroy the meteor. The situation is dramatic enough for Polly to realize that she’s actually loved Speedy all along. Ah, another classic Japanese cartoon trope – the girl only screams at you and beats the crap out of you because she loves you. It’s definitely not because she’s 100% grade A BONKERS, that would just be stupid.

But the supposed strength of this show is the dialogue. And after all this time, does it hold up? My inner comedy-writing prude says “no”. I realize this show was written for a younger audience, but since most of the humor relies on wackiness and references, it doesn’t do a lot for me anymore. I think a much stronger parody could’ve been made if the writers gave everyone more solid personalities and let the jokes arise from that. Then again, without the original scripts for cross-reference, I admit this would’ve been a lot harder. You make do with what you’ve got.

Still, Samurai Pizza Cats is worth watching, at least for educational purposes. Remember, this was a show that turned all the conventions on its ears and created something more memorable than the original product. You anime fans should check it out, and normal cartoon junkies should watch a few episodes to get an idea of how Samurai Pizza Cats established its own kind of niche. Who knows – you might learn something. Preferably, it’s a lesson about dumping meteors onto places that actually deserve it. I’ve always thought PETA headquarters could use a makeover. “Body by The Finger of God.”

This week we’re taking a look at Family Guy: The Freakin’ Sweet Collection. I received this DVD one year as a birthday present. Yeah, it’s not much, but since my birthday is so close to Christmas, my family usually saves all the big presents for then. I’ve gotten used to it. Except when they bought me a dog for my birthday and decided to hide it with all the other presents in the attic.

These days, though, I’ve stopped watching Family Guy because it’s gotten terrible. It may have been saved from cancellation, but the team behind that rescue mission forgot to throw quality a life preserver. This DVD came out before it came back, though, and it does have a decent episode or two. But now the question is this: do these episodes still hold up from when I originally watched the show? We’ll see if they’re cut from the right cloth, and not just the stuff they used for Lady Gaga’s fire bra. Read More

There used to be a grocery store called Delchamps where I used to live. Before it suffered that midlife crisis called bankruptcy, it offered rentals of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo games. I rented games often – since I couldn’t build a permanent game library, renting different titles gave me enough variety to keep my Sega Genesis interesting. That’s good, because I got bored easily back then. The kids on my street only wanted to play games like baseball and tag. Never anything I wanted to play, like Escape From Auschwitz.

Renting games was risky business, though. A poison-tipped adventure. This was before the widespread use of the Internet. These days you’d pop on Google and look for game reviews before you plunked down cash. But in the 90s? All you had was game magazines and word of mouth, so I never knew what to expect. Would this game be awesome? Would it be terrible? Or it would be MORE terrible, like the Cold War if making nukes earned extra lives? Read More

A few years back I quit drinking soda, in a feat of endurance I’ve had trouble duplicating since. Now, once you get used to drinking water, it becomes a lot more delicious than you’d expect. But variety is the spice of me, and every now and then I desire a drink with some seasoning, if you know what I mean. Something that fits my current mood, like Snapple mixed with chili salt for bronchitis.

Enter Vitamin Water, a handy line of flavored water that gives me a burst of flavor without the calories of Comrade Coca-Cola. Well…they used to, at least. A few years back they offered Vitamin Water with only 25 calories per bottle. But the American people wanted more flavor and ran back to support Pepsi, Duke of Getting Fat. Unsurprising. Why do you think McCheese, a guy with a burger for a head, became the mayor of McDonaldLand? There’s a reason his campaign team scheduled the voting around lunch. Read More

This week we’re taking a look at The Now Habit, a book by Neil Fiore on how to stop procrastination. I’ll admit that I used to have a problem with that. I used to put off so many things, and I the only reason I did that was to finish all the OTHER stuff I put off. I mean, my father threw a tantrum ten years ago and it took me that long to get all the soy sauce out of my hair. Read More