TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 8

In this episode, Joe and Junior are in a mountainous area of movieland and fight Fire Leo.  If you look closely in one shot you can see what appears to be the Do-Re-Mi scene from The Sound of Music happening so that's the movie they're in.

Going back to taking some characters from the game, this episode is one of 3 in the entire series where Fire Leo takes prominence and it does a good job of showing off that he's far above the others.  Less screen time means less failures, right?

Fire Leo's English voice is also one of the not-obvious ones in the English dub, where almost everyone used an alias or was uncredited for whatever reason.  People used to think it was Crispin Freeman, but no.  It was Jonathan Lipow, who is criminally underrated because his voice as Fire Leo is way better than The Big Man's usual deep voice baritone in the first game.  If you look at the guy's IMDB page, he's in a lot of high-profile projects, but usually as background voices.  He needs more roles like this one.

That scene at the start of the video is also where most of the edits in this episode are.  Well, after some

Expo Dub: Almighty Leader: "He's in the alpine sector."

Sprocket: "Isolated, out in the open.  He should be an easy target."

Almighty Leader: "Yes.  He should be."

Sprocket: "I'll get right on it."

Almighty Leader: "Good."

This was likely because of some changes in this next scene.

In the Japanese version, when Sprocket comes down to see what Joe's doing on a projector, he's excitedly drinking milk from a goat.  Obviously that's gross and you should not do that.  Goat milk is just as legitimate a dairy product as cow milk, but pasteurization is important.  This one image on the projector screen is the reason why the scene in Jadow HQ at the beginning of this episode is so edited.

It was the shot that established that they knew where Joe is so they had to add in a line at the start to get that out of the way.  There's one other shot before that where the image is edited out of the English version before the close-up.  This also results in the dialogue changing a little.  In the Japanese version, Sprocket says something about seeing how things are going with Joe while the English version has her saying their failures are piling up.

The trio's conversation is a little shorter in the English version because it cuts out a shot from behind where Sprocket Interrupts them by clearing her throat.  That would've required more careful editing for the projection.

When Sprocket tells Fire Leo to lead by example in the Japanese version and go after Joe himself, there's a one second shot from Fire Leo's perspective looking down at everyone, with Sprocket staring at him.  I do like the shot because it visually conveys Leo being put on the spot, but it had the projection again.

When Sprocket asks Leo if he wants any of the others to come with him in the Japanese version, he roars at them and then laughs that they'll just get in his way.  His roaring is changed into an initial laugh and a reaction shot to the roar from the others is cut out of the English version.  Maybe because of Sprocket.

With the Jadow scene featuring unsanitary goat milking out of the way, the editing is light for the rest of the episode.  A notable change is that in Japanese Joe calls Fire Leo a cat, which makes Leo mad because he's a Lion, rather than a simple house cat like Joe implies.  In the English version Joe calls him a dog, which is even MORE wrong and not even an unfair assumption to make; he does look like a dog.  The English version runs with this by having Joe make remarks indicating he still thinks Fire Leo is a dog.

When Joe transforms he goes on a little introductory speech to seem cool while Junior gets changed.  The second shot for in his introduction is replaced with a re-use of the same shot as before in the English version because in the original it prominently features the hand sign front and center.

In the Japanese version, after Junior slips out of his pants, the camera pans down to show his bare butt.  Obviously that shot is not kept in English.

In both versions, after Leo gets back to HQ, he sloshes oil on his head and then lights a match to ignite it again.  In English this part is zoomed in so it can cover up the bottle labeled "oil" so as not to give kids any ideas.  You can tell that it's zoomed in because the image is less sharp.

Overall, not the most censored episode.  The conversation in Jadow's meeting room was where most of it all was.  I almost feel bad for the editor that had to put everything together in a comprehensive way while not being able to use several shots from the original, but I think they pulled it off.