Samurai Pizza Cats
The link
The YouTube links are fan uploads; as far as I know, there are no official ones.
What it is
“Samurai
Pizza Cats” is a mid-nineties children’s cartoon adapted from the Japanese
“Kyatto Ninden Teyandee”. It’s best known for its complete irreverence to
things like plot and character development, its dense pop culture references and its obliteration of the fourth wall.
It’s very,
very nineties, and probably best described as an anime version of Animaniacs,
with the same 'slapstick meets meta-humor' appeal.
What it means to me
The single
most brilliant thing about Samurai Pizza Cats is something you can't know from watching the show itself: when the series was going to be dubbed for American
release, the dubbing team had very, very little to work with. Stories
vary: there either were no translations for the Japanese audio, or the audio
reels themselves had gone missing. Either way, only the visuals were available.
The
translators responded by making the whole
thing up.
It’s
hilarious to rewatch the show with this informaion in the back of your mind. You can
play along as the translation team tries to make sense of everything that happens
on the screen, and ties it into what they’ve
made up before. And it’s not like the show makes it easy: there are pizza
delivering cats in armor who perform heroic deeds after being shot out of a
giant revolver, a princess with an anti-aircraft battery in her hair, and an
evil fox advisor with private army of ninja crows.
And with
all that wacky in the visuals, the dubbing team still managed to double down. To name some highlights, there are episodes
where:
- …everyone fights for a MacGuffin in a box, which is never shown. This MacGuffin is promptly named the “nuclear potato”.
- …the narrator quits halfway through, as he claims to be underpaid.
- …the regular plot of fighting the villain comes second, as the main characters are mainly bickering about whose uncle has written the script for the episode.
So-called ‘fan-dubs’
of TV series, anime and/or news commentary are quite popular these days, especially
on YouTube. “Samurai Pizza Cats” is essentially the first fandub … that was
aired on national television across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
For me, “Samurai
Pizza Cats” stands as a testament that restrictions really do breed creativity.
If you’re open minded enough you can always accomplish something with the tools
you’re given, and occasionally that somethng will be unlike anything else. The Japanese creators have actually come out to say they prefer the English version.
It also stands
as a testament that I will always enjoy
fourth wall breaking in comedies.
Leonard
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