JSM@CDS: The Deadly Mer-Man! The Silver Thread of Miracles

Episode 4: The Deadly Mer-Man! The Silver Thread of Miracles
MONSTER OF THE WEEK: Machine BEM Mer-Man: He can: slash things with arm blades, breathe underwater, kill Spiderman (or can he?...), go BIG.

Professor Monster has designed a program called the "Spiderman Book of Fate" with precise instructions for how to kill Spiderman. When Takuya sees a notice of a Spiderman funeral in the newspaper, he becomes susupicious an Iron Cross Army plot. Meanwhile, a fish-like Machine BEM wreaks havoc. Can Spiderman beat fate? Will he be able to escape Professor Monster's plot? And most importantly, what do Takuya's bizarre dreams mean?

This is a very significant episode of the series. Though, like every episode, it stands completely on its own, it is the episode where Spiderman meets Professor Monster and Amazoness in person for the first time, and is one of the best episodes of the entire show. One thing that makes the episode great is the Machine BEM's constant involvement in the story. Many episodes give the BEMs minor roles,  often not even appearing until the last five minutes so Spiderman can get in his robot to blow it up, but this is not one of them. Mer-Man appears prominently throughout the entire episode, and is shown as a true thread to Spiderman, rather than another sacrifice to the Sword Vigor ritual. There's also a lot of drama. As I mentioned before, Spiderman meets Professor Monster and Amazoness for the first time here, and the scene is suitably foreboding, as Monster appears here at his most powerful. There's lot of tension here in the Spiderman Book of Fate plotline, as for once it is not clearly telegraphed from the beginning that he will win. In fact, he comes very close to dying, and only survives through a combination of perserverance and coincidence. In conclusion, many episodes of Supaidaaman can be skipped without impacting one's enjoyment of the series, but not episode 4. It is a shining example of the best Toei has to offer. Watch this one at all costs.
NNNNn

Zyword of the Week episode 4: Five Dubs I Will Never Watch

The dub industry rocks. I respect what they do, and everyone in the dub industry seems to love what they are doing. However, when the dub is butchered, there  may be no going back. I raise my fists to the sky and wish a plague of locusts on everyone to ever english dub an anime EVER. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but you get the picture. Here are five dubs in no particular order that made me fume.

1. Naruto
Come on guys, one...two....three..."SAAAAAAASUUUUUUUKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" Of course, Naruto was already annoying in the first place, but somehow, the good folks at Viz made the Naruto anime UNWATCHABLE. Naruto, our hero, was so annoying I actually could not root for him, which, despite the fact that he never made sense to me as protagonist in a "train-to-be-the-best" Shonen, was something I was able to do before.

2. Fullmetal Alchemist
Man, if someone were to actually read my blog, I would get so much sh*t for saying this. The dub of Hagaren is generally agreed upon as Best. Dub. Ever, and indeed, it's quite good. But I just cannot STAND the voice actor for Ed, and since he's the main character, that is a problem. Also, I do not mind the butchering of the english names in the Japanese, because right now I am learning Japanese and find this fun. However, if I were to watch this with a friend (the best way to watch anime in my opinion), I'd watch the dub. I don't hate it so much not to give it a second chance, but that is certainly not true with...

3. End of Evangelion

I don't mind the TV series dub so much, though I prefer the japanese track, but after getting the license from under ADV's nose, Manga Entertainment proceeded to create a big eff you to every Evangelion fan ever. Though some of the performances are good, great even, everything is wrong about this. Serious scenes are turned into "jokes." Words are intentionally mispronounced. The video quality is crud. Recast side characters sound totally different from the TV show's dub. The commentary track reveals the AV director's total lack of understanding of what is going on, while the normally down to earth Tallison Jaffe natters on about a book he read about the Kabbalah. I happen to be against fan subs and scanlates, but you know what? Go for it, dudes. They deserve it. Fan dub it, too.

4. Dragon Ball GT
GT itself is not a great show, seeing as not even the manga dared to keep the undead franchise rolling on THIS much, but at the end of the day, it's fun to watch and soothes my soul from the troubles of the world. This cannot be said of the dub. It is so lazy production-wise, not to mention performance-wise, that I could literally make a better one with Garage Band. Even worse is the re-dub of the theme song, that sounds like it was done in five minutes.

5. Every 4Kids Dub Ever
While I like the Pokemon theme song, which is basically every shonen ever set to music, that's about it. How dare they do what they did to the anime version of Cardcaptor Sakura, to Shaman King, to (oh god) ONE PIECE! WHY GOD WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I wish this didn't exist.