Pizza Cats Review Newsletter

[Blackcat]

I love Guido! 


KNT was a show with talking robotic animals, that was based in the idea of a sentai show (See Gachaman). One of the confusing aspects of the show was that the characters, despite being robots, where alive, they got old, died, had kids, all that junk. Another thing about KNT was that they based the special armours in the SD Gundan OVA, released in 1989, one year before KNT, toys makers forcxed the armors in the show. KNT can be considered an attempt to make fun of a sentai, however since some sentai have been really humorous, maybe it was just an animated sentai with talking animals. Another thing about the show is that features a mix of accident tradition and modern technology, a recurrent theme in a lot of other shows that came after it, like "Saber Marionete J" and most recently,"Edo Rocket". Is also one of the theme of the classical Goeomon videogames, from where KNT borrowed some things. Anther theme in KNT is the love triangle, Yattaro first focuses himself in Omitsu, but as the show progresses he gets less interested in Omitisu and more interested in Pururun. Because of the heave edit it had, that's hardly noticed in SPC.  Yattaro colours are red and white, the colours of Japan flag, that's traditional sentai leader colour (See Gachaman), unlike modern sentai that just has the hero with Red only. Sukashii colour is blue, the traditional rival/fried color.  Pururun color is pink because well, she is the girl, and because she has "The power of love".

Having woman that are stronger than men are also a recurrent theme in KNT, something that has been featured in a lot of other shows, like Saber Marionete J and most notably in Slayers, where Lina/Rina Inverse is really powerful.

And the last thing I'm going to say, is that in all those shows, no matter how strong the girls are, they are still women and like to be treated like woman. See "Samurai charm school".

[Methid Man]

What's that got to do with the thread, BC?

-- Sam the Methid Man

[KageReneko]

Heheheheheh... I just got 

[Tigriss]

Meanwhile, a new American ambassador arrives in Edoropolis, Admiral Koon Kuriimu (Koon Cream).

I must be slow, I just realized something. Say that the Japanese way with the surname first, and you have "Kuriimu Ko'on" which sounds like "Cream(ed) Corn" in Engrish.  ^^  Kinda reminds me how Ko'on-no-Kami's NY relative was named "Poppu Ko'on" ("Pop Ko'on", or "Popcorn"). So it seems KNT has plenty of puns, just like SPC.

[Violet]

Your Guide to New York Pizza Cats
It seems everyone in Edoropolis has an American counterpart in New York.  Not all of them appeared in the anime when the Japanese Pizza Cats followed the villains over, but most of them do show up in the "Yankee The Cats!" comic from the "Kyattou Ninden Teyandee Ro" doujin http://www.edoropolis.org/violet/library/teyaro/index.html
Most SPC/KNT fans already know the main New York cast.
Japanese Character                      American Counterpart
Yattarou (Speedy)                        Michael (Sundance/The Sundance Kid)
Pururun (Polly)                             Maddona (DeeDee)
Sukashii (Guido)                           Prince (Cosmo)
Otama (Francine)                          Ball (Abigail)
Omitsu (Lucille)                            Honey (Lucinda)
Koon no Kami (Big Cheese)           Poppa Koon (Chester Cheedar)
Shogun Iei Iei (Emperor Fred)         President (Ambassador of Zimbabwe)
Those all appeared in the anime, although some only for a few seconds.  The comic includes a lot of the American character who do not appear in the anime.  The studio found itself falling behind on the episode, since they had to make a lot of new animation and backgrounds, and couldn't recycle scenes like the launch or Edoropolis background paintings. So some scenes were cut, and if you watch the episode carefully, you'll see some scenes where the animation just stops and you have a still picture for a few seconds.  The staff must have been in quite a panic to get it done on time. 
Usa Hime (Princess Violet)              Rabby, the president's daughter
She was supposed to make an appearance in the anime, but was written out to save time at the last minute, so she is still sort of an official character.  She does get a role in the comic.  Instead of sending people to "the island", she has them sent to Alaska.
The rest of these only appear in the comic.
Wanko no Kami (Big Al)               Chief Jolly Murdock
Gennarisai (Jerry Atrick)               Interri Gention (Pun of "Interrogation")
Karamaru (Bad Bird)                     TakaKite
And you need crows of course.  Honestly I'm not 100% sure what's up with these guys since I've never tried to translate this, but there is a "Muteking 9" and the ninja crow counterparts appear yelling "Roller Hero", but I'm not sure if that's what they call their gang or if it's song lyrics they are preforming.  Aside from TakaKite, there are 3 other lead crows; TakaMaro, TakaSake, and a female crow, TakaMii, which are more like counterparts for the Dark Quartet (Rude Noise).

The Battle for Edoropolis Emporium
Edoropolis was being invaded!  Not by ninja crow robots, but by spam-bots.  These "bots" are programs used by spammers to set up accounts and post spam on message boards, like ours at Edoropolis Emporium.  Fortunately, most of these spam-bot are too dumb to figure out how to actually post, although they do occasionally manage now and then until a moderator deletes them.  However, that didn't stop them from trying, and by January, Edoropolis Emporium had over 800 member accounts.  About 400 of these were spam-bots!  (Note: The number of members shown at the top of the EE main page is not correct.  It currently shows we have around 1000 members when we actually have around 375.  Before the clean up it showed over 1,800 members.  Thanks to Tigriss for noticing this.) Rather than just deleting these fake accounts as had been done in the past, I also took the time to check their IPs against those of known spammers, and ban those IPs to keep them from setting up more accounts.  This has slowed the spam-bots down to a level that we can control, but there are always new ones who keep trying, so the battle never really ends.

Magical Girl Pururun
See Pururun in her "Sailor Moon" type magical girl comic.  Translated from the Japanese "Hash Hash" doujin, this comic is now available in English.  Keep in mind that like most Japanese comics, you need to read the panels and word balloons from right to left.
http://www.edoropolis.org/violet/library/hashhash/index.html

This Month's Pic
This "Lovely Mipple" picture is by KamakuraAmy from the Japanese art site, Pixiv.
-Violet

[felineki]

I think "Muteking" was the title of another Tatsunoko show, so there might be some sort of references or inside jokes going on related to that show.

Anyway, yes, there is definitely quite a bit of evidence that the staff was struggling with the New York episode. One thing that I personally found interesting was that the SPC adaptation staff worked around some of these unfinished scenes to make them not quite as jarring. Changing dialogue order so as to not have a motionless on-screen character speaking and such. I wonder if Rabby ever had an official model sheet drawn. The few fan arts I've seen of her seem to have the same design.

[B.J.]

The story was a nice mixture of KNT with Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew. Amazing that the term "b*tch" was used in the story. I think I've seen it used in plenty of anime besides the two mentioned anime.

[Violet]

The story was a nice mixture of KNT with Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew. Amazing that the term "b*tch" was used in the story. I think I've seen it used in plenty of anime besides the two mentioned anime.

That wasn't the actual word.  They really called her "obasan", which is a way to address an older woman, but they way it was said would have the same effect as the way it's translated, so it makes more sense in English that way.

[Mechadon]

So, who's that little robot dude with the neon "Dicso" sign on Page 6??? He's awesome.

Love the crows with the army berets.

[Violet]

So, who's that little robot dude with the neon "Dicso" sign on Page 6??? He's awesome.

The DJ, who might be the American counterpart of the professor.

[Mechadon]

The DJ, who might be the American counterpart of the professor.

Wow. I never would have guessed that.

[Blackcat]

What's that got to do with the thread, BC?

-- Sam the Methid Man

Nothing!, is just my way to say that my Gatos samurai site is gone...

[Tigriss]

Just an FYI for the rest of you, "TakaKite" was actually named "TakaKichi".

[Violet]

Correction to Last Month's Newsletter
Probably due to the small print on the scan I was trying to read, I said the NY counterpart of Karamaru (Bad Bird) name was "TakaKite".  But I messed up and read the last Japanese character as "te" when it was actually "chi".  So his name is really "TakaKichi".  Tigriss spotted this error in the copy I sent to her to proof read, but I had already sent the newsletter off before she was able to reply.
 
Friends or Rivals?
It's generally assumed Polly and Lucille are friends, but are they really?  Polly always seems to be upset when Lucille is getting all the attention.  But, yes, they are friends.  When Lucille is in trouble, Polly is guenuienly concerned.  When Lucille is offered a chance at stardom, she insist Polly is included too.  Polly is what modern anime fans call Tsundere, which is a kind of "hot and cold" personality where a character will act uncaring or hostile towards another, but inside they really care for the person.  (Tsundere can apply to both female and male characters.)
 
A Brief History of SPC Fandom
As long as there have been Pizza Cats, there have been Pizza Cats Fans.  When KNT first aired on Japanese television, the internet was still a novelty.  Interaction between fans was rare and usually happened in the real world rather than online.  Japanese fans produced the first home made "doujin" comics and model kits soon after the show started.  The Samurai Pizza Cats hit Europe and Canada before the USA, so the first SPC web pages were from Europe and Canada and were already online long before SPC aired in the USA.  The Pizza Cats' appearance on American television in the late 1990s drastically increased the number of SPC fans.  By now the internet was more common, and SPC fans from all over the world started to communicate on IRC and AOL.  Hanging out in an IRC chat room was one way to meet fellow SPC fans.  The other way was to make your own SPC web page to let other SPC fans find you.  At one point there were over 100 SPC fan pages.  Some attempts were made at setting up mailing lists, newsgroups, and messages boards for fans with some never really getting anywhere, and others operating successfully for a few years.  This newsletter is in fact a surviving relic from those days.  Then SPC went off the air in the USA, and although it was on for a little while afterward in a few other countries, soon the days of SPC on TV were over.  At this time the fickle fans moved on to follow the next trend, but the true fans never gave up.  After struggling along with a few remaining web pages and several attempts at message boards, high speed internet became more common, allowing a SPC revival as it became easier to watch and share episodes online.  The Edoropolis Emporium grew into the central gathering place for SPC fans and remains so today.
 
This Month's Pic
Yattarou by Sumiren on Pixiv
 
Have an idea for an article for the Pizza Cats Review?  Don't be shy!  Write it and send it to me.  Don't worry if your writing skills aren't the best, I'm the editor and I can fix all those little mistakes for you.
-Violet

[felineki]

I remember reading a comment on Pixiv in which someone called Pururun "tsundere". Too bad SPC got so little airtime in the US. It really is great that internet technology has allowed us to share episodes and other materials, as well as hold discussions. It really helps keep the fanbase active.

[Violet]

Bad News for SPC Cold
After about 6 months of silence, during which many fans assumed she was busy working on the "SPC Cold" comic, artist Tay-To has reappeared and announced that she will not be doing the comic.  Artists have told me that drawing a comic is a lot more work than drawing single pictures, and apparently Tay-To realized this too late.  This is a big set back for the comic, now without an artist.  Will it be the end?  Unless an SPC fan artist with enough free time to work on a comic shows up to fill in, then it's likely that the longest running English SPC comic will meet the same fate as most of the others; Left unfinished in the middle of the story.

And Now, Good News
Tsuneko has completed encoding high quality versions of all SPC episodes and is ready to release them.  Finding hosting and uploading these takes some time, and there are also a lot of people still trying to get the older episodes and who need to catch up with those before they are ready for new releases.  But the big task is done, it's all just a matter of uploading and downloading now.  The high quality episodes are made by carefully matching audio from English episodes (which is often in poor quality and needs a lot of cleaning up) with video from the French DVD release.  Until English DVDs are released, it's really the best English speaking SPC fans can hope for.  Watch Edoropolis Emporium for announcements regarding new releases.

Visit the First and Oldest SPC Page
Dating from the mid 1990s, this web page was the first and oldest surviving Pizza Cats web page.  When it was set up, everyone was using slow dial up interent connections, and its light graphics files only took a minute or two to load.  This Dutch and English page was set up before SPC even aired in the USA, and I think before it aired in Canada.  When I say it's the first, I'm not excluding Japanese web pages (the internet was still so new when KNT aired in Japan that at the time what little web activity there was were all text BBS's).  In a way, it's nice that it hasn't been updated since 1996 (and even those updates were just to fix some things, not to add or change the content or design) as it gives us a look at what those early days were like.  Have a look:
http://www.two4u.com/pizzacats/index.html
SPC has both benefited and been held back by its time of airing.  A few years earlier, and it would have missed having an internet following, but if it had aired a few years later, people would have been recording it straight to digital instead of VHS tapes, there would have been a larger internet following, and probably DVDs and more products around.

This Month's Pic
Yattaorou by Tokyo artist "mtkn"

-Violet

[Romero Anchovy]

I was hoping someone would continue with SPC: Cold, I kinda wanted to read whats next...

[Mechadon]

Give my regards to the artist who drew up this month's pic. That is... wow. I like the ear turned to the side.

*sigh* Every month I'm reminded how blessed we all are to have Violet around. Most of the regulars just fool around, and I feel that the current attitude on the forum is my own doing. I feel like all I've done is muddy up something that used to be so pure, and so much ...better. I can't help but imagine that Violet must feel something she loves has been hijacked.  What ever the reason is that keeps you coming back with updates, I'm thankful for it, thankful for you.

If all you do isn't for the likes of me, I understand; all I've ever done is cause trouble.  

[Violet]

*sigh* Every month I'm reminded how blessed we all are to have Violet around. Most of the regulars just fool around, and I feel that the current attitude on the forum is my own doing. I feel like all I've done is muddy up something that used to be so pure, and so much ...better. I can't help but imagine that Violet must feel something she loves has been hijacked.  What ever the reason is that keeps you coming back with updates, I'm thankful for it, thankful for you.

If all you do isn't for the likes of me, I understand; all I've ever done is cause trouble.  

It's very hard for me to keep going sometimes.  I have a lot of other things to do in my life, I don't have a lot of time for writing or working on my web page or other projects that I want to work on.  This month I had the flu which is why this issue is later than normal.  But Pizza Cats is something I'm passionate about, not something I'm willing to just give up on.
There may be people here who care more about how fancy their sig is than about SPC, and spend more time in the "Longest Thread" than in "General SPC Discussion", and I don't care if those people stay or go.  I didn't create EE, its not mine.  If it was, those people would be gone already.  But there's still plenty here who are here for the right reasons and that's who I do this stuff for.

[CRBWildcat]

The newsletter's a reminder to me of what I used to be obsessed with; and more often than not, I've seen stuff in there that I either didn't know or had heard about in the distant past but had since forgotten. Since I don't have anywhere near the time I used to have, I can't really contribute anything worthwhile, whether to the forums or otherwise. I can use all the reminders I can get.

Thanks for the newsletters, Vi, and I hope you will be able to continue it as long as you are able.