Good Times with Weapons
Good Times with Weapons is the first episode of the 8th season of South Park; it first aired 17 March, 2004.
Plot
Template:Spoilers At the county fair the boys come across a weapons vendor. After arming themselves with several dangerous Asian weapons, they set out on an adventure where they take on the role of four ninja. In these situations, the episode's animation switches from the usual "paper cut-out style" of a South Park episode, into a stereotypical 'anime' design, displayed in letterbox format, with the boys drawn as adults. Likewise Butters is drawn as a cute little papercut-out, until he puts on his "Professor Chaos" costume, when he is then drawn anime-style.
During a stylised "anime" fight, Kenny throws a shuriken into "Professor Chaos'" eye. The style instantly changes from the fast-paced anime style back to the regular South Park animation, showing the reality of the boys' fight with the weapons as Butters runs around wailing in pain. In order to avoid punishment that would follow questions asked at a regular hospital, Butters is dressed up (badly) as a dog (using fur shaved off a real dog) and taken to an animal hospital. At the end, Butters staggers onto the stage of an auction. Cartman, in a panic, pretends he has the power of invisibility, and takes all his clothes off so he can get Butters off the stage unseen. Obviously, since he doesn't have this kind of power, he ends up showing his penis (barely, his fat belly covers all but a tiny portion of it) to the audience, and the boys' possession of ninja weapons fall by the wayside as Cartman is punished for flashing the audience.
The episode is a spoof of Japanese cartoons (anime). It was also meant to parody Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Superbowl and the censorship backlash that came after it.
The episode includes "Let's Fighting Love", a theme song that mixes Japanese and English lyrics without regard for grammar, tense or logic. This can be seen as a parody of the "Engrish" commonly found in anime, pop music and everyday life in Japan.
"Let's Fighting Love" lyrics
Lyrics (Japanese) | Lyrics (Romaji) | Literal translation | |
素晴らしいチンチンもの 金玉の毛ある |
Subarashii chinchin mono |
[I have a] wonderful penis thing |
- Template:Fnb Subtitles are not displayed on screen for these lyrics.
- Template:Fnb The kanji here is actually read as ke (body hair); what Parker sings sounds like kame, which is probably a mispronunciation of 髪 kami, which refers to the hair on one's head.
- Template:Fnb Parker sings this as sore no oto (the sound of that) instead of sono oto wa (that sound is), as written.
Trivia
- Trey Parker, who sang "Let's Fighting Love", majored in Japanese language and music; he lived in Japan for a period.
- There is some resemblence to Street Fighter. For example, Stan stands exactly like Ryu. Also, Professor Chaos' costume (in Butter's eyes, anyway) appears to resemble that of M. Bison's.
- With the exception of Kenny's attack on Butters, the boys don't actually fight with the very dangerous weapons they've purchased. They're content to pretend to fire energy bursts from them, mimicking the Hadoken from the Street Fighter series.
- Cartman will use Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to support his anti-semitism for the first time this season. He will do so again in Up the Down Steroid and The Passion of the Jew.
See also
- Chinpokomon, a parody of the anime Pokémon.
- Secrets of 'Good Times with Weapons'
During the commercial break in this particular episode when it first aired, if the viewer had the closed captioning on, one would see someone talking about anime (mentioning his favorite director) in the captions.