Starting off on episode 1 is the introduction. Silvia is kidnapped after Captain Blue is defeated by the evil leader of Jadow, Joe gets his V-watch and gets in some superhero action.
We get our first instance of expo dub when Joe is pointing in the direction of the movie he wants to show Silvia. As I stated in the introduction, the panning shot in the Japanese version is silent.
Expo dub: "See down there where all the peeps are, on the left?"
The movie Silvia is looking at is labeled The Miracle in Japanese, but in English the text is changed to "Now Showing."
Copyright on something maybe? Or maybe it has something to do with the image on the poster looking like angels and they couldn't get too close to religious symbolism.
A brief moment of Joe showing he bought the tickets and Silvia looking angry is cut.
According to Viewtiful Joe's #1 fan Maireadralph, there's some kind of specific DVD release that keeps this less than 20 seconds of time in. Thank god. I was losing sleep over whether Joe bought the tickets.
Silvia tackling Joe into his seat is cut, then a few second later a close-up of Joe's face obscured by Silvia kissing him is too. For kid's broadcast television it's a little surprising how much they did keep in.
When Joe first enters movieland, several shots of what are obviously various movies are quickly shown, including a western, a mob shootout, the Titanic, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx. The English dub only shows the Titanic part. I can only guess it was cut for time and because of the use of guns in the mob shootout bit.
The scene where the trio of Jadow's main enforcers introduce themselves is absolutely packed with added dialogue in the English dub. In the Japanese version they enter in silence while their names appear in text to inform the audience who they are. That text isn't present in the English version, so they instead have banter about Jadow having a voice recognition system where they have to state their names before they came come in. It establishes a lot of their character in their first scene. It's also a demonstration of how much the English dub was able to make the script better.
This technically overlaps into the part I wouldn't keep pointing out about Sprocket, but Sprocket introduces the almighty leader in a terse, stern way in the English version while in the Japanese version she introduces him with more fanfare and a bow. Since it was a close-up shot where she adjusts her zipper, they couldn't do it that way.
Joker's name is changed to Jokester in the English version. Obviously this is because of the Batman villain of the same name, but like that Batman villain, he's supposed to be named after the playing card, though since he doesn't have his slot machine motif like in the game I guess that's not immediately obvious and Kids WB WAS Batman's big network for a long time.
Something else that will be a recurring thing in the English version is hit flashes. This was something even Batman: The Animated Series did. Hell, Batman had hit flashes in the same program that had blood! When someone is hit particularly hard in the English version, the screen gets overexposed for a split second to obscure the hit. In most shows that do this, the flash is a white screen at the moment of impact, but you can still see it in this one. I think it adds emphasis more than censorship.
It doesn't happen every time though. It's interesting what is considered acceptable violence and imitable violence to broadcast standards & practices. In the 4Kids dub of One Piece, Luffy hitting guys when using his powers was generally fine (as long as there was no blood) because the powers made it fantasy violence, but then they censored him punching people when not using them. I remember in the CW4kids airing of Dragon Ball Z Kai they were also more lax with violence when it took to the skies, presumably because kids can't imitate flying. It's an interesting subject.
In the Japanese version, just like the game, Captain Blue tells Joe to transform by saying "henshin.". In English he says Joe needs to say "henshin a go-go", I guess because it isn't clear why he added "a go-go" to it. It's not street slang or anything Joe said up to that point in either version.
To clear something up, the Japanese version doesn't say that Captain Blue died, even if characters through the series act like he did. In the original game and Japanese version. Captain Blue was defeated and no longer able to fight so he must go away and leave the heroism to a new hero. In a 4Kids dub, characters disappearing or "going away" is often used in place of dying, but in this anime that's a direct translation.
Hit flashes are added to Joe beating up the Biankies, but not to him leg sweeping Joker because that didn't hit too hard.
That is everything for the first episode. Overall very few edits. It only looks like more because I have so much to say about the subject of broadcast regulations. Next time we'll have a look at the second episode, where Joe starts using his VFX powers.
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