As some of you know, I'm a sucker for anything and everything related to pop culture, or as it's more commonly known, "usless crap". During my formative years, which due to a mental defect, are still continuing to this day, I watched countless amounts of TV and movies, both of which still permeate into my vernacular and conscious thought. It's now at the point where everything I say is probably from some show or film, much to everyone's annoyance.
My absolute favourite pop culture poisons are anything from the fantastic decade of nostalgic decadence, 1985-1995, the latter year being when I entered high school, and therefore could not openly profess that I still had "Return of the Jedi" bed sheets (it was well known that in high school, even having bedsheets was a sign of pussydom. Not having a bed was the height of cool). In that decade, we youngsters were subjected to marvels of such great wonder, that we grew up to be normal, productive members of society, with the occasional feeling of shame and embarrasment for having witnessed such marvels.
One such marvel originated not in North America, but the wacky fetish factory known as Japan, where kitschy obsession has no bounds, and is most often bounded itself. Samurai Pizza Cats aired 54 glorious times in Japan, and was eventually passed over the Pacific, along with many other Japanese creations in the Seizure Induction Pact of 1990. SPC first aired in 1991, and combined many favourite things of that era's youth. Ask any grade 6 student to name things they like, and they'll no doubt reply "Animals, pizza, robots, and not getting hit by daddy". The show was a 75% hit!
What resonated with most young mouthbreathers was the frantic animation style, non-sensical dialogue, wide arrange of colours not yet seen in the Americas (blue wasn't used until 1993), but most of all was the hilarious, mind-boggling intro sequence:
The lyrics spoke of whimsical dreams, requited love and the ability to be stronger than dirt. 3 or 4 kids in America, and two in Canada, one being me (I met the other guy at a convention in 1999!) truly believed that the show would be the answer to all the world's problems. As it turned out, it was the answer to nothing except two questions: "How can I waste a half-hour of my time each day?" and "What should I stop watching if I want to impress girls?"
Samurai Pizza Cats earns its place in the pantheon of great, never-watched animated programs of my youth. And to it I say, "Thanks for making me such a fucking weirdo".
No comments:
Post a Comment