Plot: Akasaka is acting oddly and is incredibly preoccupied with designing a special birthday cake for someone. When Ichigo runs into a woman named Rei, a butterfly researcher, who has an upcoming birthday, she finds out that Rei is actually Akasaka’s old girlfriend.
He makes a cake to honor her birthday every year since they’ve broken up, and neither has completely gotten over the other. It’s up to Ichigo and the girls to convince Akasaka and Rei to at least put the past behind them, but their plans get messed up when the new aliens in town, Pai and Taruto, decide to make Rei their next target.
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Instead of showing the scene with Taruto and Pai effectively taking over Kisshu’s mission, they just replay the scene from the last episode, but add a couple more lines to it. Also, Taruto originally doesn’t mention anything about Kisshu’s crush on Ichigo.
They remove a shot of Akasaka drawing.
Also, they use that opportunity to give Corina a dub-exclusive bitchy line! Hooray!
Name Change: Rei Nishida is changed to Chrys.
Ew, Pai’s dub voice is….ew. Who voices him?…Hm, credited as Pete Zarustica, but his real name is Oliver Wyman. Shame on you Mr. Wyman! Well, okay, not really shame on you, sorry. Shame on the casting director!
The original doesn’t allude to Zakuro getting the order wrong. She’s just indifferent and cold about delivering it.
Pudding originally suggests that maybe Akasaka is making a cake for a birthday party, but the girls, for some reason, say that’s childish. Pudding gets mad at the insinuation that she’s a child and denies it, and the girls ask which part of her isn’t a child. In the dub, Kiki suggests that the cake is for a secret girlfriend, to which the girls reply that the notion is silly. Kiki gets angry and says she never makes up stories, but Bridget says she does all the time.
Zakuro says that talking about other people’s business behind their back is childish. Renee says that talking about other peoples lives won’t get them a life. Nice.
Also, Mint just says ‘Onee-sama’ in response while Corina says “She’s so cool.” Yes, it’s so cool to tell people that they have no lives.
Zoey: “Boo-hoo day three with no Mark.”
….This is technically what Ichigo said barring the ‘boo-hoo’…..she literally says ‘boo-hoo’ and I’m just…confused. Who says ‘boo-hoo’ when they’re legitimately upset? I’ve only ever heard that said mockingly. Also, we never learn why Aoyama’s not at these meeting places when he says he will be, and he never even appears in this episode. Aoyama’s usually pretty good at being on time, especially when Ichigo’s involved, so this semi-side-plot is a little odd.
I also find this to be one of those episodes of convenience. What a coinky-dink that on the day that Akasaka’s so bummed about his ex’s birthday coming up that Ichigo just happens to literally bump into her twice in two days.
Ichigo says that it’s convenient that Rei’s office was close by. Zoey says she was thinking of jumping into river anyway. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because she hasn’t seen Mark in so long?
All the text is removed from the book bindings on Rei’s shelf. Someday we’ll rid all books of text! That will teach those books for promoting the evil act of READING.
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Dubbed: 
Late, late, late edit 5/11/22: I legitimately missed this until just now, but they also added a “y” to the calendar to say “July” instead of “Jul” which is crazy unnecessary. If you were going to do that, 4Kids, why not also un-abbreviate all of the days of the week too?
Ichigo says the butterflies in her collection are really beautiful. Zoey says ‘so much for butterflies being free, eh?’……What the? Why would she say that? She’s basically saying ‘Yeah, hehe, you hypocrite for loving butterflies, especially for flying free then killing them and putting them in glass boxes for study.’
Ichigo says that Rei’s very kind for feeling bad about encasing the butterflies even if it’s for study, and Rei says she’s the second person to have said that. Zoey says that the line I mentioned before was a joke (Well, that was a really dumb and bordering on insulting joke, Zoey) and then Chrys says she must’ve left her sense of humor back in her cocoon. (It seems to be a running thing that Chrys is terrible in social situations and doesn’t get jokes etc.)
And then….4Kids actually puts in a rimshot. Seriously….They put in…a rimshot….I mean, it was probably to highlight the bad joke, but Zoey’s joke was worse than hers, and even if it was meant to highlight that, it was still a dumb addition.
This is in both versions, but do people seriously circle their own birthdays on the calendar? Is it really that easy to forget?
Text on the signs during the first flashback is removed.
They remove a zoom-out of Rei’s face after the flashback.
Mint originally made Ichigo work late as punishment for being late for work. (Makes sense, but I wish Mint hadn’t doled out the punishment…Like she’s one to lecture on work matters.) In the dub, Zoey’s forced to work late merely because everyone else has other stuff to do.
Shirogane says that Ichigo loves spying. Elliot says ‘you girls’ love spying. So close, but sexist cigar, 4Kids.
I’m surprised they actually put in the correct term for a scientist that studies butterflies; Lepidopterist. Hell, I didn’t even know that.
They remove a short scene with Rei in her office.
Likewise, they repeat a couple of speaking scenes from before the commercial to lengthen the conversation. What I don’t get is, both the original and the dub have the commercial in the same place, so it’s not like this change was needed for cohesion. They just wanted to screw with things for the sake of screwing with things like usual.
They change the ‘Rei’ on the cake to ‘Chrys’ I have to give props here, because Akasaka/Wesley is writing the word out for us, so they not only had to remove and replace the word but they had to re-animate the frosting. Not bad. Wouldn’t have been needed to begin with if they didn’t feel the need to change names, but not bad.
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Dubbed:
There’s a short shot of Akasaka holding the frosting and looking at the cake after he writes Rei’s name. This is shifted to before he writes her name.
They remove the English words ‘Pizza’ and ‘Pasta’ from the sign, but because of the fuzzy flashback-ness, they just blur them out instead of getting a clean removal. Seriously, they’re two foods people eat in America all the time written out in English, and it looks awful this way.
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Dubbed: 
More words that I can’t even see are removed behind Akasaka as they’re talking at the table.
A further shot of Akasaka between flashbacks was removed.
It was recycled footage, but all the same.
Text on the signs at the subway station are removed.
They insert a shot of Akasaka after the flashback at the subway. I guess to break up the flashbacks?
Text on a…calendar? In Akasaka’s apartment is removed.
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Dubbed: 
For some reason, Chrys seems to insinuate that Wesley completely forgot her birthday even though it looks like he did prepare a bunch of stuff for her birthday. In the original, I believe she just says that she couldn’t bring herself to go there and that they should just focus on their own specific studies. Either that, or she waited at his apartment and he never showed. Also, Chrys is slightly bitchy about the breakup message whereas Rei wasn’t.
They remove Akasaka knocking over the cake. This is probably because they thought the flashback was running too long and was getting too sappy…..either that or they thought the ruined cake counted as gore.
They repeat more talking shots to extend this scene for some reason.
Also, Ichigo doesn’t say that Rei being so into her work was sad. There’s nothing sad about how passionate she is for her work. It’s just sad because she’s still tied to her past with Akasaka and she’s lonely. I believe the whole thing about kinda making her socially inept in the dub was furthering this, but I don’t know why they felt the need to muscle that in.
Oh boy, transform time. That can only mean one thing….in my face…
Wait….they didn’t….do the….motto…..in the dub…..when they did….in the original?…….Are we sure it’s not MY birthday? I’m so happy right now….Oh and yeah, here’s the final pose complete that was cut for some reason. Probably because they reused the same pose they made for it.
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Dubbed: 
By the way, the pose 4Kids used made me notice something; Zakuro is the only one without a musical instrument as a weapon. Ichigo has a bell, Lettuce has castanets, Mint has a harp and Pudding has a tambourine. What is Zakuro’s meant to be? It’s a cross (in the original anyway) but is it anything else? A microphone? A flute?
Late, late, late edit 5/11/22: It has been brought to my attention that Zakuro’s weapon is indeed a flute.
Why does Tarb keep bringing up Dren’s crush on Zoey? He doesn’t do so ever in the original so far, and I thought they wanted to avoid highlighting that part of the story.
Name Change (Sorta): The Chimera Animal for today is a butterfly monster simply called Butterfly. In the dub, it’s called Toxic Beauty. Hey, give 4Kids some credit, they at least tried to make a legit name.
The toxin being used by Butterfly contains phosphorus, which has been altered by the alien to make it over 100 times more powerful. In the dub, they say the toxin is billions of times more powerful than anything that naturally exists on earth. Uh, guys, that would mean they’d die a hundred times over just in the time it took to say that sentence, right?
Attack Name Change: Pai’s Fuu Rai Sen (Windy thunder fan) is changed to Aerial Tempest.
Zakuro says that Rei decided to move on instead of stay in one state with Akasaka. Renee still believes that they could still end up together someday, just not now.
And yeah the actually mature message of this episode is changed. No matter how much you may love someone, sometimes it just can’t work and it’s best to move on instead of trying to force it to work, which may end up making both parties miserable. In the dub, this is changed to ‘Well, yeah, they can’t find a way for them to be together now, but they can and likely will still get back together and live happily ever after.’
Well, that was an…okay episode. I mean, we hardly ever divulge into Akasaka’s backstory, and I really believe this is the first and only instance of that outside of seeing him doing research for the Mew project with Shirogane’s dad, but it’s still just okay. It was kinda boring in my opinion, but it ended nicely and in a way that was actually mature and non-fairy-tale-ish (less so in the dub, but still).
Next up, Masha tries his hand at being a hero.
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The Anime Madhouse 