White Album Season 2 Review

Plot: Same as the first season, only with more sex and drama.

Breakdown: (Spoiler alert: Also, this is not to be confused with White Album 2)

Nihon rater, I apologize. You had perfect reason to put Touya on the same level as Makoto. He didn’t leave a pregnant girl on her own so he could bang other girls, but I can see why you’d put them on the same level.

Touya’s upped the assholery 1000 fold in this season. The first one only had him cheating on Yuki with Yayoi. He seemed to feel guilty about it, he kept pretending Yayoi was Yuki because he missed her. Okay, somewhat understandable, I suppose. Cheating’s still a major dick move, but it is slightly understandable here. Understandable, not excusable. He also kissed Misaki and proclaimed his love for her….okay that’s much less understandable. Especially if his one ‘love’ is Yuki.

In this season he continues to sleep with Yayoi until about three episodes from the end, sleeps with Haruka, makes out with Misaki (again), has sex with Misaki, almost has sex with Menou, makes out with Rina, goes out on a date with another woman (whom he later ditches from said date to go with Yayoi for no reason whatsoever. And when I say “ditch” I mean he said he needed to go to the bathroom and never intended on coming back. She was a nice pretty girl and Touya just ditches her in the middle of a date for no reason. What’s worse is that the final shot they show of her is her waiting in the restaurant saying she’ll never date again. Touya, you’re a dick. At least say something came up and you needed to leave. Don’t act like you’ll be right back and then ditch her. What’s even worse is that he strung her along first by calling her a savior goddess. Jeez.) and strings along Mana.

All without remorse and eventually even becoming blase about his relationship with Yuki – the one he still won’t friggin’ end.

This season also brings up a lot of confusing and pointless moments. Like, though I don’t mind the thought, why did Akira get hit by a car? It added nothing, he suffered no actual injuries besides a scratch on the head and he was back to work days later. I’ll tell ya why. It got you to watch the next episode because that was a cliffhanger moment. So useful!

I could’ve done with White Album if they left it as it was in season one, but no…

Characters

Touya: You can basically understand my thoughts on his character already. He turns into a super-ultra ass in this season, yet still holds his relationship with Yuki for no reason. Did you know they barely ever have screentime together? Ever.

How can you root for a couple that we hardly ever see together? We see him with the other girls a lot more than Yuki. Again, I honestly don’t understand why he never dumped her. Why pretend you guys are in love when you barely even like each other by this point?

In addition, in the scene where Akira gets hit by the car, all he’s worried about when he gets to the hospital is how he’ll handle it if Haruka’s upset with it. Nice. Some friend you are. He’s completely unlikable, boring when he’s not being an ass and I wish HE had been hit by a car at some point.

Akira: Like Touya, he’s upped the assholery quite a bit this season. He’s still an angry jackass, only now he’s a sex hound. He tries to sleep with Misaki in Touya’s father’s house (right after he came home from having a heart attack) and then gets pissed because she doesn’t want to do it, justifying it by that they’ve been dating for a month (a whole MONTH! Wow, why aren’t you married yet?) and it’s time that they did. Feh.

Also, he states that if she ever had tea with Touya, he’d dump her in a heartbeat. True love right here, folks. I mean, I wouldn’t trust Touya to be alone with my shoes, but that’s a complete lack of trust in Misaki as well. He also seems barely bothered after she broke up with him. He was even on a date with Haruka smiling a few days later…

Eiji: Eiji didn’t have that much of an impact on the first season, but he was a jerk there and he’s still one here. Also, he’s out of his damned mind. I’m dead serious. The reason he’s a jerk is that he basically treats his sister, Rina, as an object. He believes Rina has overstayed her welcome in the music world and keeps trying to replace her with his new star, Yuki, despite the fact that Rina is still a huge sensation.

The reason he’s insane is because he’s completely obsessed with this painting he saw when he was a musician. It was so amazing that he was moved to tears whenever he saw it. He was so obsessed with it that he tried to obtain the painting for years, but kept getting ‘copies.’ However, he was just under the delusion that they were all copies of the same painting, when, in reality, the paintings were all drastically different and he was just imagining that they looked exactly the same.

He has a mental breakdown, and it’s revealed that he doesn’t even remember what the painting looked like. So impacting that he doesn’t even remember what it looked like….just that it had a girl and a lily. Wow.

Yuki: Yuki’s even more of a doormat in this season. She actually finds out that Touya has been cheating on her and lying to her along with a bunch of other people, yet she still doesn’t dump him or even confront him about it.

Yuki wants the best of both worlds by trying to maintain her relationship with Touya and staying as a pop idol, but she makes little to no effort to see him or make time for him. The most conversations they have is by phone tag – just leaving messages for each other on the answering machine.

It’s obvious that she cares more about her career than him, yet she still won’t let him go. I questioned many times whether or not Yuki actually loved Touya at all during this season. Their relationship has the emotional depth of a sippy cup. Why are they the main couple?

Oh and, get this, she won’t make an iota of effort to see Touya because she doesn’t want to hinder her career, but she says she’ll quit her career because Rina said she was leaving the record label. LOGIC.

Also, when she finds out that Touya’s a lying ass, she bites into her hand so hard that she creates a puddle of blood on the ground….Ya know what? Maybe they deserve each other…

Rina: Rina was the one character who I still pretty much liked in the end. However, she does make out with Touya. She owns up to it with Yuki immediately, though. And she still shows that she’s a strong character and a good friend.

Misaki: Misaki turned horrible in this season. She makes out with Touya, later sleeps with him (granted, he was grieving, but still.) takes a job from an old boyfriend who apparently got her pregnant and wouldn’t support the baby. Then he became a huge dick to her and tried to stab her later.

By the way, I have no clue what happened to the baby, if there was one. She willingly creates a trashy article for him as well. It’s a side plot that seems unfinished and sloppy. She’s also not being fair to Akira by being with him. It’s obvious she went with him because he loved her and she couldn’t have Touya. She dumps him, which is more than I can say for Yuki, but geez.

Haruka: Haruka also lost her likability in this season. Not terribly much, but she ends up practically throwing her(naked)self at Touya and then sleeps with him. Also, we have no clue what happened to her brother, nor why she stopped playing tennis because of it. In addition, I really got sick of her monotone personality….

Yayoi: Still a whore. Next.

Menou: Not much comes out of the new character of Menou. We find out that she’s Mana’s older sister that their mother uses as a singing icon, she was Touya’s first savior goddess and…she’s pretty…what’s the word….sleazy? I don’t know.

Mana: Mana’s still a brat in this season, but she never kisses or makes out/sleeps with Touya. Her affection, what she chooses to show of it, remains stilted and one-sided. However, she does have a complete and utter flip out mid-season. Destroys her entire room for very little reason.

Misc. Issues

There’s no couple that you really want to root for…in this romance anime. There are three main guys in this series, Touya, Akira and Eiji. I’ve already explained why they’re either assholes or jerks plus insanity. Most of the girls also become very unlikable.

If you root for any pairing, you will definitely find a reason to not want them together. At the beginning, I wanted Touya to go with Haruka, but seeing what an ass he was to her this whole series, I believe he didn’t deserve her and she didn’t deserve to be with an ass. Later on, I rooted for Rina and Touya, but again I liked her too much to encourage her to go with Touya. So I figured, screw it, let him go with Yayoi. They’re perfect for each other. Both heartless sex fiends.

If anything, the best pairing in this series is Rina and Yuki. They have a really great relationship where both would gladly sacrifice everything for the happiness of the other and they get along really well. I usually don’t purposely make yaoi/yuri pairings in shows unless the characters themselves are solidified as being gay/bisexual/pansexual, but tell me this relationship wouldn’t work. You can’t.

In a show that is based off of a dating sim, especially when you go the extra mile to try and explore every avenue, you have to have at least one pairing that you can root for. Even if it’s not the main pairing.

School Days even had me rooting for Kotonoha and Makoto to some extent, even if he was major assholedickjackass who didn’t deserve her and likely would’ve kept up his cheating ways—okay I’m starting to regret this one now. Rumbling Hearts had me rooting for Haruka at least. I rooted for no one in the end of this. I hope he ended up alone and so did Yuki….

Let me try to explain the actual ending. Touya flashes back to when he really first met Yuki. Apparently he saved Haruka and Yuki from bullies by pissing his pants, putting it on his hands and chasing the bullies away by showing them his hands.

“If only a boy with piss on his hands wasn’t here” Wow writing staff, did you write that as a serious line? Like, really?

Afterward, Yuki is prompted by Touya’s father to encourage him or whatever so she gives him a medal made out of a piece of wood. He throws it into the woods. His father yells at him to retrieve it, but he never does. The emotional trauma from that string of events (that’s actually how they describe it) made him seal off his memories………..Does anyone need to fertilize about 300 gardens? Because that is a massive pile of bullshit.

Also, the reason he never found it was because Haruka took it and hid it. Don’t ask. I don’t care and they barely explain why.

The end is a big mystery. Rina and Yuki sing together on stage and apparently become a duo act now being handled by Frankie. Someone (either Rina or Yuki) writes a goodbye note to Touya on the mirror of the dressing room. Yuki leaves Touya a note that doesn’t say anything. Then Touya waves to someone as we fade out for the last time and hear all the girls (and guys, because…..I dunno) say Touya’s name. Basically, though the writers seem to want to point to one couple the entire series and this episode, the ending is left ambiguous to please any fan of any other pairing. Or please none of them. Take your pick.

Art and Animation: Same quality level of the last season.

Voice Acting: Same.

Music: Didn’t like the music as much in this season. The final song was fairly nice, though.

Bottom Line: If you, for any reason, liked the first season, leave it at that. This season will make you hate almost everyone. In addition, if you do root for any pairing, there’s no real satisfying ending to any pairing. Even his relationship with Yuki amounts to little to nothing. I guarantee that you won’t find happiness over the horizon.

If you do like it, stop at the end of season one. Still no happiness over the horizon, but it’ll likely save you from hating practically every character and pairing.

Additional Information and Notes: White Album season two was produced by Seven Arcs. The second season was directed by Taizō Yoshida. It was written by Hiroaki Sato.

Episodes: 13

Year: 2009

Recommended Audience: More sexual situations and fanservice shots than the last season. Also more mature themes. 15+?

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White Album Season 1 Review

Plot: Touya Fujii has been dating Yuki Morikawa since they were in high school. However, when Yuki wants to pursue her dream of becoming a singer, she puts her relationship with Touya on hold because she can’t balance her career and dating him. This leads Touya through a tough time trying to continue at least keeping in contact with Yuki, but failing numerous times. Luckily, he has plenty of ‘goddesses’ to keep him company and help him through his troubles one way or another.

Breakdown: (Spoiler warning) I haven’t had such a love/hate relationship with an anime since Fushigi Yugi.

Let me get the ‘goddess’ thing out of the way. Touya basically lists one woman a day as his ‘goddess of the day.’ The criteria for this is being female and seeing him on a day. Yuki is supposed to be special because she was his ‘everyday.’ This doesn’t matter. At all. But the show keeps pointing it out, so there ya go.

One of the reasons I was so interested in this show was that I read on Nihon Anime Reviews that Touya was seen as being more despicable than Makoto of School Days. Not as hated, but more despicable. That’s a pretty bold statement seeing as how Makoto was complete garbage.

I haven’t seen season two as of this initial writing, but from what I gather of season one….he’s not as bad as Makoto by a long shot. Makoto was a heartless sex fiend who cheated on about five different girls, one claiming she was pregnant, without any remorse or caring whatsoever. The only time he ever showed an iota of caring is when he got caught doing something bad and even then it wasn’t much.

Touya….is an ass. I won’t deny that. He’s an ass to Hakura for no reason even though she is nothing but nice to him, he admits his love for Misaki even though he knows his best friend likes her and he’s supposedly in love with Yuki, he makes out with and sleeps with Yayoi, Yuki’s manager, as a replacement for Yuki (even though Yayoi’s one of the main things keeping them apart) and he’s incredibly difficult to like as a main character.

However, unlike Makoto, he actually shows remorse for cheating.

….Sometimes.

He doesn’t use the girls he knows for sex beyond Yayoi. In fact, he only kisses one other girl besides Yayoi and Yuki for the entire show. And, being partially fair, Touya actually has somewhat of a reason to cheat (even though I think cheating is horrible no matter what reason, and I find it damn near impossible to forgive, personally, at least Touya had a reason beyond Makoto’s ‘I WANT SEX!’ reason.)

The anime pulls you into so many directions that it’s exhausting at times. Why? Because this anime is based off of a visual novel. More to the point – a dating sim. He has six, count ’em, six different girls to choose from. However, unlike a lot of visual novel based anime (Like Rumbling Hearts or even School Days) this anime wants to travel down every romance path possible. It wants you to root for way too many pairings. Focus on Yuki, Rina or Haruka, some mixture of those. We didn’t need Yayoi, Mana or Misaki’s relationships with him muddling it up.

In addition, their relationship is so flimsy that they should’ve just fully broken up with she became a singer. If you still want her to remain as a romantic interest, make them miss each other. Try to get back together. Keeping them together only highlights what an ass Touya is and what an idiot Yuki is. None of this would’ve happened otherwise, and I was never really rooting for him and Yuki to begin with.

Characters

Touya: He’s in love with Yuki, but is willing to cheat on her and declare his love to other women. He never seems to try very hard to see her or do stuff with her etc. He’s also a doormat. Besides Haruka, he does what everyone tells him to do with little fight.

Speaking of Haruka, I’d really like a reason as to why he’s so cold to her. She does tons of things for him, and he barely acknowledges her existence, which is odd, considering they’re supposed to be childhood friends.

Yuki: Yuki’s not terribly likable either. Her personality is fine, but she chose her career over her boyfriend, which would be fine if she actually fully chose one over the other. Things don’t always work out, and they could’ve had a very civil break. But she still tried to string him along without really trying that hard to be with him.

Lots of singers and actresses can still live their lives and have relationships. What makes Yuki so special that she can’t date Touya anymore?

Akira: He’s the token ‘best friend’ but he’s almost as annoying as Touya. He’s always angry, hardly ever smiles and his only real character point is that he likes Misaki for no given reason whatsoever.

I love this scene where he and Misaki spot Touya in a library. Touya’s just staring out the window, he sees Akira and Misaki together so he quickly waves and goes back to staring. Akira says with a snarl “What does HE want?” I think he wants to look out the window and mind his own damn business, Akira.

Even after he gets together with Misaki, he’s an angry whelp. He’s constantly making unprovoked comments about being jealous of Touya, and it’s obvious, even when he’s with Misaki, that he’s being treated as runner-up.

Rina: Rina is Yuki’s mentor and best friend. She is also a pop idol who has taken Yuki under her wing to help her career. I really liked Rina, especially towards the end, but before the actual end.

She finds out Touya’s cheating on Yuki, so she does the logical thing and asks if she can date him too….Right. I will never understand that logic. Rina doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be in it for the sex, so why try to build a relationship with a guy who nonchalantly admitted he was boinking his girlfriend’s manager behind her back? However, she is likable, and I liked watching most of her scenes.

Haruka: Haruka is Touya’s childhood friend and is treated like crap by him. According to a line of dialogue in episode one, she had some sort of accident in tennis and we never hear of it again. Haruka is extremely quiet and softspoken, but she enjoys biking and going for walks. She frequently asks Touya to go with her, but Touya almost never goes with her. Haruka obviously likes Touya, but claims she just likes him as brother. Oh and as a final “screw you, Haruka” before the second season, Akira runs over her bike…

Misaki: Misaki is good friend of Touya because they relate to each other with books and poetry. There’s not much else to say about her besides she’s in love with Touya, but knows she can never be with him because he ‘loves’ Yuki. She knows Akira loves her, but ignores his feelings. Misaki’s likable but boring.

Yayoi: Yuki’s manager, Yayoi has an amazing character design. Seriously the colors, the design, the eyes, they’re all great. The art’s great in this show, but her character design is very well-made. I guess that’s to ensure that she’s a good seductress.

Yayoi’s a whore, essentially. She does everything in her power to keep Touya away from Yuki and vice versa because she doesn’t want anything distracting Yuki from her singing. She knows this hurts Touya, so she jumps him every chance she gets to be a replacement for Yuki. It should be noted that he does fight this at first, but not much and not for long. She hardly ever cracks a smile and she’s not likable at all.

Mana: Mana is a girl Touya happened upon at a train station, then came to be her tutor. Mana just started following Touya, even though she seemingly hated him from first sight. She started screaming “MOLESTER! PERVERT!” just because he bumped into her. She does this twice and each time she’s by a security guard or cop and each time she has her mouth covered by Touya who promptly drags her away….Good job, cops. You hear and see that and don’t move a muscle. Nice.

Mana’s annoying. She’s a brat who also has a thing for Touya. She’s also on a crusade to find who ‘Yuki’ really is because she believes he’s simply under the delusion that he’s dating Yuki and knows Rina. Every girl he sees her with she accuses of being Yuki. It stopped being cute the first time she did it.

Art and Animation: The art and animation are really great. Nothing spectacular, but still high quality.

Voice Acting: Japanese – The voices are very well done, and none of them got on my nerves or seemed flat.

Music: Being rooted in a lot of pop idol culture, there’s obviously a focus on music in this series. The music is okay, I guess. The vocal songs in the series are forgettable except “White Album” itself. The opening and ending are bland, but fairly memorable. The background music is bland and forgettable.

Bottom Line: Focusing on just season one, it’s a confusing mess at it’s worst, keeps your attention at best. By the end of the series, you’ll feel like you went through a blender. I had no clue who I was supposed to be rooting for, and to make things worse, the season ends on a cliffhanger. There was hardly a happy moment throughout the entire show, and, when there was, it was almost always followed up by a dark cloud.

If you like a lot of possible pairings, this is a decent anime to go to. The technical quality is good, but don’t expect great things from this.

Additional Information and Notes: White Album season one was produced by Seven Arcs. The first season was directed by Akira Yoshimura, who also did episode directorial work on Witch Hunter Robin, Gundam 00, Rurouni Kenshin (TV) and Zegapain. It was written by Hiroaki Sato who also wrote the screenplay for….Fushigi Yugi: Eikoden….That…explains…a lot.

Episodes: 13

Year: 2009

Recommended Audience: There’s sexual situations, but no nudity. That’s about it for questionable material. However, considering the tone of this show, I’d recommend 14+

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Cardcaptor Sakura Episode 3 Sub/Dub Comparison

Whoa, there. Chill out, Watery!

Card(s) of the Day:

Watery/Water: Watery is one of the four most powerful Clow cards – the element cards. Watery has a great advantage in being able to disperse and keep form. Unlike the kind Windy card, Watery is very troublesome and ornery. Watery’s weakness is ice.

Plot: A school trip to the aquarium turns disastrous when a Clow card nearly drowns a trainer and a penguin. Sakura and Kero deduct that it is the doing of the elemental card, Watery. Sakura has to figure out how to capture a card that takes the form of water with the few cards she has in her possession.

Meanwhile, in the original anyway, Yukito takes Sakura out on a ‘date’ to the aquarium as a thank you for making him and Toya hotcakes. Their day at the aquarium doesn’t last long as Watery rears its head yet again and nearly drowns her and Yukito.

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After one of the girls says the penguin show is starting, Tomoyo calls Sakura who zooms right by them and calls them to the show. Her friends comment on how fast she is. After that, Sakura and her friends go up the escalator to the penguin show and the title card appears. All of this is edited out of the dub.

Title Change: Sakura’s Heart-Racing First Date is changed to Allies.

They edit out quite a bit of Sakura banging on the glass calling out for the penguin and Tomoyo trying to pull her away.

They cut out a scene where Kero states she’d never drown because she doesn’t have much beyond athletic abilities. Sakura yells at him and then taunts that she won’t make him hot cakes anymore.

They edit out where Toya points to where he wrote “Work!” on the whiteboard and Sakura looking at it.

This one’s a LONG edit. After Sakura yells at Toya for eating her hotcakes, she waves her arms around at him yelling that she bought those hotcakes with her allowance. Then she stops as she hears Yukito’s voice from the hall. He enters, greets Sakura and tells her that she’s a great cook. She blushes and says she doesn’t think so and Toya agrees.

She stomps on Toya’s foot in retaliation. Sakura shyly asks Yukito if he wants some hotcakes, and he asks if it’s okay. She says yes and that she’ll bring them up to her brother’s room in a bit. Yukito thanks her and she blushes as lilies appear on the screen.

After a break, she walks up to Toya’s room with the hotcakes, but can’t knock on the door since she has the plate in her hands. Yukito realizes she’s there and opens the door for her.

Sakura asks how Yukito knew she was there and he says it was a hunch. She blushes some more and then she goes to her room.

This ENTIRE thing is cut out of the dub. Why? I guess because it’s more of Sakura’s crush they have to edit out because god knows kids never have crushes on older kids.

Remember that episode of Hey Arnold! where Arnold had a crush on his teacher and he thought she invited him to her house for a date? And he actually went to her house, they had a sorta date and Gerald was giving him advice on how to woo her? Why was something like that fine for Nickelodeon but a benign crush a little girl has on an older guy is simply unacceptable for Nelvana?

I’m not done, by the way.

Immediately after that, Sakura enters her room. She blushes and falls to the floor by her door with a big grin. Then she grabs Kero and starts happily dancing around and falls.

She holds Kero in her hands as she continues to gush about Yukito, but Kero snaps her out of it by saying she doesn’t want anymore penguins to get hurt. She sits up with line eyes and says she doesn’t want that. Kero then flies out of her lap.

Again, this entire scene needed to be edited out because there’d be no reason for her to gush if they edited out Yuki to begin with. What the hell did they do this episode to make it long enough for a TV airing? There has to be at least 5 minutes gone because of this.

A bit of the conversation is gone after Kero flies to the slipper. Kero asks if she saw anything in the water, she says no, and he claims it’s the Watery card. She says it won’t be a problem, she’ll just turn it back into a card, but he says it won’t be that simple because Watery isn’t a solid shape. It can disperse and become incredibly difficult to capture. That’s when the Clow symbol appears.

In the dub, Kero just mentions that penguins and trainers are good swimmers and that shouldn’t have happened. Then Sakura says it was probably the Water card, like she automatically knows the card already.

In the original, Kero says the cards she has now are no match for Watery. She has one element card so far, Windy, but its kind nature will be debilitating in battle. In the dub…..the dub, screw it, the dub conversation makes no sense.

Basically he says she has to use the three cards she has to beat it (No way. I thought she’d have to use cards she didn’t have!) She asks why, and he says it’s because those were the first ones she caught and those are her strongest allies. No, those are the ONLY cards she’s caught, and of course they’re her strongest allies by default because of that fact.

So I figured out how Nelvana made up for that lost time. They made a clip show for no reason. Yup, apparently we need to rehash things already at episode three. They make us sit through the full scenes of Windy, Shadow and Fly’s captures…the full scenes. Instead of just saying a little girl has a crush, they’d make you waste five minutes of your life rewatching something you’ve already seen!

After Sakura takes her hands out of the fountain, Tomoyo grabs her hands, smiles at her and gives her some inspirational words. After that, they have a conversation outside the school. This is all edited out.

They edit out Sakura saying goodbye to Tomoyo.

As Sakura’s rollerblading, she goes out of control and almost hits Yukito. She blushes and apologizes as he asks if she’s alright. He says the hotcakes were good and that Toya told him that Sakura hit Toya with her baton yesterday. Sakura stews at her brother for telling him that. Yukito offers to take Sakura to the aquarium as a thank you. She then dances around on her rollerblades and happily goes home.

As you can guess, this entire thing is edited out of the dub. I guess I should also mention that a big focal point of this episode is the ‘date’ as you can tell from the original Japanese title.

As Sakura enters her room, she gushes and falls down at her door again like she did before. Edited out.

In the original, when Sakura calls Tomoyo, it’s to gush about her date with Yukito, but Tomoyo doesn’t answer, she gets her answering machine. In the dub, Madison picks up and they discuss that Sakura has a plan for the Water card and that she’s going to the aquarium.

After Sakura calls Tomoyo, we cut to Yukito waiting at the park for Sakura and Sakura arriving. They bow and leave for their ‘date.’ They walk along, and Sakura asks if she had the wrong time for their meeting. Yukito says no, she’s actually 15 minutes early. He got there extra early to make sure she didn’t have to wait. Entirely edited out of the dub. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Yukito’s not in this episode at all.

I have to wonder what the point is in going to the aquarium during the day in the dub. Was she going to try and catch that thing with all those people around?

Crap, I was wrong. I guess he’s too integral to edit out completely. However, they say that Yukito was there on his own and it was a chance meeting. He says he’ll buy her some ice cream, though.

Yukito and Sakura look at the giant tank of fish, and she says she wasn’t able to see that one when she came on her field trip because of the penguin incident. Yukito mentions that must mean she also wasn’t able to see the tearoom below them.

Toya then walks around the tearoom and spots them. They wave and go to the tearoom to order snowcones. Sakura mentions that he’s been moved from the penguin area. Toya responds by saying they’re moving the penguins and draining the tank to investigate the incident. Yukito mentions that Toya must be happy now because he’s no longer getting penguin food from a cold freezer, and Toya responds by saying it’s basically the same thing working in the tearoom because it’s mostly snowcones. They then order.

In the dub, they stupidly zoom by the scene of the giant tank where we can clearly see Yukito and Sakura on the staircase, but the dialogue says they’re in the tearoom ordering ice cream from Tori with no mention of why he’s down there.

They paint away Sakura’s blush as Yuki’s talking to her. They also edit out her grabbing his jacket and gushing as she thanks him.

As Sakura’s on the phone with Tomoyo, they cut out a reaction shot where Sakura has line eyes and gives an ‘Okay’ sign.

Due to editing out Sakura’s crush, the ending is very awkward. In the original, she gushes over Yukito being the reason why she knew to freeze Watery. There are two closeups of her face when she does this, and Kero mentions that she’s frozen now.

In the dub….she makes a gushing pose and says it’s because she has great friends. Kero waves his hand in front of her face, but says nothing. Then they just say they want ice cream. It…kind of makes it look like Sakura’s enamored with Tomoyo and Kero…

By the way, am I the only one who thought the secret to Watery was painfully obvious? When Kero first said that Watery was so powerful because it’s not a solid form, anyone with a brain would think “Wait, water can be a solid. Ice!”

Next episode, the debut of the Wood card. Sakura has to stay home and do chores instead of going out and having fun, but she’ll have plenty of excitement when the Wood card nearly destroys her house.

….Previous Episode

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Pokemon Episode 4 Analysis – Challenge of the Samurai

Go ahead, giggle. Get it out of your system. You know you want to.

CotD(s): Samurai: Not given any other handle besides ‘Samurai,’ Samurai is a boy who dresses in traditional samurai gear and lives in Viridian Forest. He is the first ever CotD (Character of the Day), with nothing else really notable about him beyond that.

Reappears?: No.

Pokemon: Pinsir and Metapod.

Evolutions: Ash’s Metapod -> Butterfree

Plot: Misty and Ash are still traveling through Viridian Forest when they spot a Weedle. Ash prepares to capture it when he’s approached by an odd kid dressed in samurai clothes named, oddly enough, Samurai. Well, if your parents name you that, I guess you’re damned to dressing like that. He’s searching for a Trainer from Pallet Town, Ash identifies himself as such, and Samurai challenges him to a battle. The Weedle gets away while he’s talking to Samurai, and, in his frustration of losing his catch, Ash fires up for his first non-Team Rocket Pokemon battle against another trainer.

Ash starts with Pidgeotto, who is tired from battling Weedle, while Samurai starts with the fearsome Pinsir. The tired Pidgeotto is unable to defeat Pinsir, however, and is recalled.

Ash tries his new Metapod instead and manages to beat Pinsir with Harden.

Samurai calls out a Metapod as well, and Ash and Samurai get locked into a stalemate of constant Hardens.

After a long while stuck in ‘battle,’ the group hears a swarm of Beedrill approaching. Samurai recalls his Metapod and calls off the match. Ash tries to do the same, but Metapod is taken away by a Beedrill before he’s able to recall it.

He’s forced to run away and sees that Metapod is being taken in as a Kakuna among a hive of sleeping Kakuna. Ash is unable to free his Metapod before the Kakuna evolve into Beedrill and attack them yet again.

They take refuge at Samurai’s cabin, and Samurai chews Ash out for being an incompetent Pokemon Trainer – much less skilled than the other three Trainers from Pallet that Samurai battled. He also berates Ash for ‘abandoning’ Metapod.

The next morning, Ash heads out to retrieve Metapod only to be ambushed by Team Rocket. They wake the sleeping Beedrill, and Ash uses them as a distraction to take Metapod and run. Metapod is upset with Ash, but he voices his guilt over his mistake and Metapod saves him from a Beedrill, causing him to evolve into Butterfree.

With Ash’s new Butterfree by his side, he commands it to use Sleep Powder to knock out all of the Beedrill and Team Rocket, allowing them to finally leave Viridian Forest and head to Ash’s first Gym match in Pewter City.

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– Ash’s mouth doesn’t move during the ‘Maybe it’s a’ part of the line ‘Maybe it’s a Cowterpie’ which makes sense given that the original line there was only one word, ‘Ushi’ (meaning cow) to make a pun on the fact that she was originally yelling ‘Mushi’ (meaning bug. Also, kudos to Dogasu’s Pokemon comparison for this additional information.)

– Why are there bar codes on the Pokedex screen when Ash’s checks Weedle’s data? That’s never happened before.

– Dexter: “Weedle – The stinger on this Pokemon’s head guarantees that any attacker will ‘get the point’ right where it hurts.” Dexter really was a cheeky little machine back in the day.

– Ash: “Oh yeah I almost forgot, you have to weaken a Pokemon before you can capture it!” Ah now see here. A rare example of Ash learning. Scientists will document this event and study it carefully since these instances are so rare.

– Also, I love how Ash is looking into the camera when he says this. Like he’s trying to teach US something he couldn’t learn with only one lesson.

– It still amazes me how amped up he gets for catching Pokemon here. Enjoy it while it lasts.

– More bar codes with Pinsir, what is going on?

– What the hell? 4Kids left in the fantasy shot of Metapod literally getting crushed in half by Pinsir? Times really have changed.

– Ash: “Maximum hardness, Metapod!” Must….resist….joke.

– Both of them are really too stupid to see that a Harden vs. Harden battle is a never ending stalemate? And Samurai has the nerve to call Ash a novice. Why doesn’t Ash make Metapod use Tackle? Shouldn’t it still know that from being Caterpie?

– More bar codes with Beedrill.

– Metapod’s voice, at least in the ‘Who’s That Pokemon’ segment is horrendous. It’s like someone’s holding their nose and saying ‘Metapod.’

– Again, barcodes with Kakuna’s entry. Hm.

– How does a ten year old own a cabin? Moreso why does he own this cabin if he’s on a Pokemon journey?

– Samurai: “I do take it back because not even a novice would abandon his own Pokemon as you did!” If this is in regards to when it got captured, there’s nothing Ash could’ve done there. He tried to recall it and it was taken too far away.

If this is in regards to when he saw Metapod moments ago, then, yes he totally should’ve gotten stung by hundreds of Beedrill (and maybe died?) to save a Pokemon that wasn’t in immediate danger, if anything was being protected by the Beedrill, instead of regrouping and developing a plan. He actually seemed like he was going to rush over and grab Metapod before Misty grabbed him and covered his mouth.

Not his fault the Kakuna decided to evolve at that time. I’m usually all for pointing out Ash’s dumb mistakes, but this one’s unwarranted because there’s absolutely nothing he could’ve done.

– Another mention of all three of the first Trainers from Pallet on their journeys. And from what Samurai said they’re all awesome at battling and training, not just Gary. Dammit, I really just want to see what they look like. A silhouette. Anything?

– Hehe, they left Satoshi’s name tag on the sleeping bag. Makes it seem like Ash stole his sleeping bag from someone named Satoshi.

– Even if the Weedle hadn’t eaten the tank, what makes Team Rocket think a paper tank would’ve protected them from Beedrill stingers? Let me point out that they were easily breaking through the wood in Samurai’s log cabin a while ago.

– Yay, Butterfree’s debut! Caterpie’s dream came true!

– I kinda think the ending was dumb. Samurai really backtracks and says he’s the real novice just by Ash commanding his Butterfree to use Sleep Powder on the Beedrill? That’s not really impressive. I just think it was a bit of a cop out since they probably didn’t have enough runtime to continue their battle.

– Ah with the first CotD comes the first time Ash promises to see them again and never ever doing it. Good times.

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All in all, this episode was…eh. Samurai’s not a very compelling or interesting CotD, and his VA is so awkward (Sorry Jimmy Zoppi/Carter Cathcart). The Metapod vs. Metapod match is obviously the most memorable and funny part of this episode, with the rest being kinda weak. I still stand by my belief that Ash had no real choice but to ‘abandon’ Metapod, so the conflict here just doesn’t work to me. But who cares? Butterfree!

Next episode, Ash arrives in Pewter City to get his first badge from the Gym Leader, Brock.

Previous Episode….

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