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aliaspseudonymNow up to episode five of Duel Masters. These things are kinda hard to find >.>
Episodes 1-4 compose the first 'arc', by which I mean 2 unrelated episodes where shobu beats a random insignifcant guy who cheats to establish that he is the bad guy, and two episodes of an actual story, 3 and 4.
Well that's not quite fair. Ep two did serve to explain the very basic rules of the card game, i.e. that you have 5 shield cards, so the goal of the game is to attack your opponent 6 times. Monsters can attack and some can block. Spell cards do weird things. It's basically a MTG clone.
Episode two also contained the gem 'he must be cheating! He draws the exact card he needs every time!' to which shobu points out he does exactly the same thing.
The show continues to be hilarious; it's basically riffing on itself. Or rather the Plastic Cow dubbers are making fun of the plot they've been handed; Burke would say this adds layers of meaning to the text (or stupid cartoon) and turns a straightforward story into a dialogue between the seriously meant japanese content and the english satirical treatment thereof.
The first arc uses a classic method for building up a mysterious villain where you have a false villian who you explain and build up as a huge badass, then have your real villain swoop in and effortlessly dispatch the fakey villain to take his place. Our 'real' bad guy has long hair with pointy antenna bangs, a black trenchcoat but no shirt, and shark teeth. The dub people make fun of him like crazy.
This bad guy uses darkness cards and people he duels never want to duel again. That makes him Eeeeevil. Shobu fights him and at first it looks like shobu's winning but then he turns it around and messes with Shobu's head to the point where he forgets the rules to the game and the bad guy simply walks away, leaving him humiliated. I was impressed that they didnt go with Shobu just losing, that'd've been predictable. Shobu has had this 'I CAN'T LOSE CAUSE THAT'D BE LETTING MY DAD DOWN' thing going on previously, so he is now freaking out and insisting that this doesn't count as a defeat.
Shobu kinda freaks out over this and starts to think of turning to the daaaark side and using darkness cards to beat the guy. The nerds dad, who looks like yugi's dad with glasses and green hair, tells him two consecutive stories about his dad, neither of which really have to do with Shobu's problem beyond 'your dad was cool'. Then, awesomely, they flashback to shobu's duel from episode one briefly. Shobu is then given advice relayed from his dad: "If you believe in yourself you'll never lose." This is stupid advice, and the dub makes a point of making fun of it.
Shobu rematches against evil-man (who seems to have forgotten about his whole 'mind games' angle.) It's a close match but shobu loses, but rather than being depressed he's eager to get back up and keep going. They managed to insert a legitimate lesson: it's ok if you don't win all the time at games, so long as you enjoy yourself. Then they glue a PSA type announcement to the end of the arc about the dangers of not wearing a shirt under your open trenchcoat XD (you'll get a sunburn!) Thus, they pull off an effective didactic message while simultaneously mocking the awkward didacticism of similar shows (like the dub of sailor moon >.>) Genius.
Tune in next time when Shobu enters a tournament and battles a indistinguishably accented monkey on stilts.
Episodes 1-4 compose the first 'arc', by which I mean 2 unrelated episodes where shobu beats a random insignifcant guy who cheats to establish that he is the bad guy, and two episodes of an actual story, 3 and 4.
Well that's not quite fair. Ep two did serve to explain the very basic rules of the card game, i.e. that you have 5 shield cards, so the goal of the game is to attack your opponent 6 times. Monsters can attack and some can block. Spell cards do weird things. It's basically a MTG clone.
Episode two also contained the gem 'he must be cheating! He draws the exact card he needs every time!' to which shobu points out he does exactly the same thing.
The show continues to be hilarious; it's basically riffing on itself. Or rather the Plastic Cow dubbers are making fun of the plot they've been handed; Burke would say this adds layers of meaning to the text (or stupid cartoon) and turns a straightforward story into a dialogue between the seriously meant japanese content and the english satirical treatment thereof.
The first arc uses a classic method for building up a mysterious villain where you have a false villian who you explain and build up as a huge badass, then have your real villain swoop in and effortlessly dispatch the fakey villain to take his place. Our 'real' bad guy has long hair with pointy antenna bangs, a black trenchcoat but no shirt, and shark teeth. The dub people make fun of him like crazy.
This bad guy uses darkness cards and people he duels never want to duel again. That makes him Eeeeevil. Shobu fights him and at first it looks like shobu's winning but then he turns it around and messes with Shobu's head to the point where he forgets the rules to the game and the bad guy simply walks away, leaving him humiliated. I was impressed that they didnt go with Shobu just losing, that'd've been predictable. Shobu has had this 'I CAN'T LOSE CAUSE THAT'D BE LETTING MY DAD DOWN' thing going on previously, so he is now freaking out and insisting that this doesn't count as a defeat.
Shobu kinda freaks out over this and starts to think of turning to the daaaark side and using darkness cards to beat the guy. The nerds dad, who looks like yugi's dad with glasses and green hair, tells him two consecutive stories about his dad, neither of which really have to do with Shobu's problem beyond 'your dad was cool'. Then, awesomely, they flashback to shobu's duel from episode one briefly. Shobu is then given advice relayed from his dad: "If you believe in yourself you'll never lose." This is stupid advice, and the dub makes a point of making fun of it.
Shobu rematches against evil-man (who seems to have forgotten about his whole 'mind games' angle.) It's a close match but shobu loses, but rather than being depressed he's eager to get back up and keep going. They managed to insert a legitimate lesson: it's ok if you don't win all the time at games, so long as you enjoy yourself. Then they glue a PSA type announcement to the end of the arc about the dangers of not wearing a shirt under your open trenchcoat XD (you'll get a sunburn!) Thus, they pull off an effective didactic message while simultaneously mocking the awkward didacticism of similar shows (like the dub of sailor moon >.>) Genius.
Tune in next time when Shobu enters a tournament and battles a indistinguishably accented monkey on stilts.
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Date: 2010-09-24 05:46 pm (UTC)(And why are "darkness" cards evil? Do they like suck out your soul or something?)
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