Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast From the Past!

[LeotheLateBloomer]

A Samurai Pizza Cats new video game got announced with the original voice cats! Not many of you may have heard of it but it's a cult classic.

[ZariusTwo]

They have more fur than any Turtle ever had!

Saban's rival to the OT TMNT at the time, and it shows in the intro lyrics!

Loved watching this show on the Saturday Morning Motormouth when I was a kid

The dub for this show was notoriously made up on the fly, it was an 'abridged' series long before Team Four Star made such a thing popular with their Dragonball dubs.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

They have more fur than any Turtle ever had!

Saban's rival to the OT TMNT at the time, and it shows in the intro lyrics!

Loved watching this show on the Saturday Morning Motormouth when I was a kid

The dub for this show was notoriously made up on the fly, it was an 'abridged' series long before Team Four Star made such a thing popular with their Dragonball dubs.

There was a Saturday morning block called "Saturday Morning Motormouth"?

So I hear different stories regarding why the dub was given a rewrite. 1) Saban was given the tapes but no scripts. 2) They lost the original scripts 3) They were given the scripts but discovered that the dialogue was full of too many Japanese cultural and linguistic references that would largely fly over the audiences' heads, at the time.

The writing and humor of the show is genius though. What excites me the most is that they were able to get the nearly all of the voice cast back which I imagine was a huge hassle since they weren't seemingly doing much today. Moreover, they still sound like they did in the 90s, although Speedy's voice did show a bit of age (almost to where he sounds a bit modern Spongebob-like). But it looks so amazing! This is the most excited I've ever been for a video game in a long time. And the fact that this is real made me pinch myself numerous times.

[sdp]

yeah I think there's a lot of false information out there. I think the thing that makes the most sense is that they just had bad translators and they wanted to americanize it which lead to the weird dub.
The whole lost scripts thing seems to be more of a cover up. The indications were probably "try to americanize it" and the people they hired were likely new to translating, which would make sense since it's Saban after all.

Is it also true that the Japanese original is not that good and the dub does indeed make the show better or is that just nostalgia?

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by sdp

yeah I think there's a lot of false information out there. I think the thing that makes the most sense is that they just had bad translators and they wanted to americanize it which lead to the weird dub.
The whole lost scripts thing seems to be more of a cover up. The indications were probably "try to americanize it" and the people they hired were likely new to translating, which would make sense since it's Saban after all.

Is it also true that the Japanese original is not that good and the dub does indeed make the show better or is that just nostalgia?

Purely nostalgia. Although there's currently no good translations for the original Japanese version, whatever's on YouTube is likely accurate enough. Some often say the dub is better than the original without having watched it. The original consisted of fourth-wall breaking, characters making complaints about wanting more appearances, the narrator giving out too much info about a character and that said character retorts back at him (one episode had the princess sending him to Prison Island and you can see the actor's face, which was cut for the dub). You could say the version of Japan became Ganbare Goemon type humor whereas the dub was more Animaniacs type humor. I also think the original had a better soundtrack.

[neatoman]

Speaking of games, maybe one of these characters should have replaced Hakushon Daimao in the international version of Tatsunoko vs Capcom instead of Tekkaman Blade? I get that Hakushon Daimao was removed due to license reasons and these cats might have had similar problems but still, I wish they had been a little more creative.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Speaking of games, maybe one of these characters should have replaced Hakushon Daimao in the international version of Tatsunoko vs Capcom instead of Tekkaman Blade? I get that Hakushon Daimao was removed due to license reasons and these cats might have had similar problems but still, I wish they had been a little more creative.

Before all this, there were rumors that since Saban (through Fox Family, whom I don't know when they acquired the company) was sold to Disney that they had the rights to the dub for a while which I can't confirm this. But recently they made a playable appearance in a beat em up game Jitsu Sqaud where you can play as Speedy/Yattaro with the other two being summoned support characters.

[Coola Yagami]

eh... looks like some sort of RPG-ish one player game where you switch between the characters.

Kind of a missed opportunity to have a 3-player beat-em-up game.

[sdp]

We have dozens of beat em ups from old 80s/90s franchises that have flooded the market, TMNT, Karate Kid, Toxic Crusaders, Streets of Rage, Power Rangers, double dragon, river city rampage, and I'm sure I'm missing many others. It being something that's not a beat em up is actually more interesting.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

There was a Saturday morning block called "Saturday Morning Motormouth"?

The UK had a mix of Saturday morning blocks in the early hours, and then a three four or so magazine show that would still air cartoons alongside live-action skits, interviews with guests etc, and performances from pop artists

Motormouth was one such show, and they were the ones that aired Pizza Cats in Britain. They also had a life-size version of Mouse Trap.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

The UK had a mix of Saturday morning blocks in the early hours, and then a three four or so magazine show that would still air cartoons alongside live-action skits, interviews with guests etc, and performances from pop artists

Motormouth was one such show, and they were the ones that aired Pizza Cats in Britain. They also had a life-size version of Mouse Trap.

That's interesting! It sounds like one of the coolest feelings for a Saturday Morning lineup if you were a kid. The US for some reason got this show like 5 years later but I remember loving it. It was my first anime. It's super surreal they were able to contact those original VAs. Sucks we'll have to wait til 2026 but I'm sure it will be well worth it!