From left to right: Polly Esther, Speedy Cerviche and Guido Anchovy
"A fully functioning, cybernetic, technologically advanced team of superheroes... and nobody's got a flashlight?"
— Polly Esther
The English dub of
Kyatto Ninden Teyandee licensed by Saban, who didn't manage to get transcripts of the original dialog (or just horribly translated scripts, according to the writer). As such, the writers had to make up stories and dialog out of whole cloth. It seems to have worked fairly well, all things considered. The show is better known around the world as "Samurai Pizza Cats" more than the original source.
The Cats are the owners/employees of a pizza parlor, who defend their city and the royal family (pushy, spoiled Princess Violet [
Usa-Hime], and her demented father, Emperor Fred [
Shogun Tokugawa Iei-Iei]) from the machinations of the villainous rodent, the Big Cheese (
Koon-no-Kami). Between the giant robots, the ninja crows and the, um, peculiarities of their emperor, this is both harder than it sounds and easier than it ought to be.
While the plots can be a bit formulaic, most of the show's appeal comes from the humor and the lame puns (some main characters being Speedy Cerviche [
Yatarro], Guido Anchovy [
Sukashii], Polly Esther [
Pururun] and "Big" Al Dente [
Wanko-no-Kami]), and an astounding number of running gags.
The show is notable for being perhaps the only heavily edited, rewritten and hacked-up anime dub which fans actually prefer to the original. Whereas the original show is merely a cute kids' action cartoon, the english Pizza Cats is chock full of sly references, shameless puns, rapid-fire sardonic humor, and a total refusal to so much as acknowledge the fourth wall. As a matter of fact, even the original creators reportedly prefer the English version, saying it's what they should have made in the first place.
Despite what you may have heard, it is not a lame
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip off, but a decent cartoon that can stand on its own merits. (It was, however, licensed as part of a
TMNT Follow The Leader movement.)
This series provides examples of:
- Achilles In His Tent (The Episode: No Talent Guido)
- Ambiguously Gay: The Big Cheese
- The Alcatraz: Prisoner Island Which happens to be a tropical paradise resort.
- Americanitis (Averted: The show doesn't make much effort to hide its Japanese roots)
- Animal Superheroes
- Animated Actors
- Ass Kicking Pose
- Baseball Episode : The Cats end up winning on Speedy's Homerun, sort of, as he cut the ball in half with his swing, and only half of the ball landed in fair territory, thus earning 1/2 a run for it.
- Beach Episode: Where the heroes find the truth behind Prisoner Island.
- Big Apple Sauce: When they go to visit their American Counterparts.
- Big Bad (The Big Cheese)
- Bitch In Sheeps Clothing (Polly)
- Casual Danger Dialog (This happens a lot)
- Christmas Episode
- The City - Little Tokyo [Edoropolis]
- Clark Kenting (Bad Bird can't see that his main enemies work at a pizza place even though they wear the same helmets.)
- Cloud Cuckoolander (Emperor Fred)
- Comet Of Doom : Big Cheese's final plan.
- Commissioner Gordon ("Big" Al Dente)
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming (the final episode)
- Cultural Translation (Kyatto Ninden Teyandee was packed with jokes and puns that Japanese viewers got. Those were replaced with American jokes and puns)
- Curse Cut Short (In the Fan Club Oath: "So hail to thee, o Pizza Cat/Please ring your little bell/Although you may be pen and ink/We know you'll fight like—" "PIZZA CATS!")
- Cut And Paste Translation - Uniquely justified in that when this show was licenced to the US, they either forgot to give them the transcripts or gave them Blind Idiot Translation scripts, thereby forcing Saban to invent a whole new story. And in many ways, it is better than the original.
- Deadpan Snarker - Mother Mutt and son.
- Defeat Means Friendship
- Dirty Old Man: Daisensei (Guru Lou) in the original Japanese version, especially towards Pururun.
- EarWorm - The English and Japanese songs will do this to you.
- The Dragon - Bad Bird could easily be considered as Big Cheese's dragon, as his fighting skills rival, and sometimes surpass those of Speedy(and occasionally the whole team). In fact, in the final episode, Bad Bird shows himself to truly be Speedy's superior in combat. He is also the final obstacle before Speedy can destroy the machine pulling the comet towards Little Tokyo. If that's not a dragon, I don't know what is.
- Ensemble Darkhorse - Guido
- Everythings Better With Princesses - subverted, Princess Vi is a spoiled brat and the real power in Little Tokyo.
- Evil Chancellor - The Big Cheese.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin
- Follow The Leader - Accidental one at that. The approach they used for the new scripts worked so well it went to influence later shows (released for the US market) like Shin Chan, Lupin III, and MXC.
- Funny Animal
- Fur Bikini. Polly and Lucile wore white fuzzy bikinis in an episode. Yet they are already furries. Double whammy Fetish Fuel.
- Gag Dub (by the actual licensee, not by fans)
- Getting Crap Past The Censors - Lots of examples, but the one that'll always haunt this troper is the American Pizza Cats doing their pre-fight intro, and The Vamp-y one calling the villains "bad boys" and saying she'll punish them with her whip in a husky voice.
- After she does in fact, punish a group of ninja crows with her whip, the now beaten and wounded crows all look at her with fear, begging her to stop. However, one of them has hearts for eyes. Phew.
- Getting Crap Past The Radar - Several jokes in the show tend to fly over the kids' heads. Example: The rabbit pellet joke by Guido.
- Goshdang It To Heck - The last line of the Samurai Pizza Cats Oath.
- Heel Face Turn - Bad Bird
- Ho Yay - So obvious and deliberate with the Big Cheese and his assistant Jerry, it was practically a Transparent Closet and another case of both Getting Crap Past The Censors and Getting Crap Past The Radar.
- Humongous Mecha - The Great Catatonic
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming - Several episode titles will have "cat" in them.
- Idol Singer - The Pointless Sisters (aka Lovely Mipple)
- In The Name Of The Moon
- I Will Wait For You - Carla to Bad Bird
- Jerk With A Heart Of Gold - Bad Bird. Guido to a lesser extent.
- Lampshade Hanging
- Lemony Narrator - This narrator lampshades and talks to the main characters a lot.
- Macross Missile Massacre (Lucille, would-be love interest of Speedy and Guido, would shoot missiles from her head whenever she got emotionally overexcited)
- Missing Episode (Two, actually. To be fair, though, the episodes in question are Clip Shows.)
- Missing Mom - Princess Vi's mom's reason for not being in the show much is that she's traveling the world to see new cultures. Mainly cultures with good shopping.
- Monster Of The Week (Often a giant robot)
- Mook
- Nakama (spoofed)
- Ninja
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
- No Fourth Wall (The Cats and the narrator talk to each other, often hanging lampshades on plot points or budget saving animation tricks.)
- Paper Thin Disguise
- Parasol Of Pain (Guido's Samurai Sunspot Umbrella)
- Politeness Judo
- The Psycho Rangers - The Rude Noise.
- The Power Of Friendship - The way the Cats were finally able to defeat the upgraded Bad Bird. And how Speedy and Bad Bird were able to defeat the incoming comet.
- Punny Name - Quite a lot of the cast.
- Redubbing
- Quirky Mini Boss Squad - The Rude Noise again.
- Rhymes On A Dime - Francine [Otama], when she launches the Cats from a gun.
- The Rival
- Royal Brats - Unfortunately, for the characters of this show, Princess Vi's the real power in the royal family.
- Royally Screwed Up - The royal family has few screws loose. Except for King Fred. He probably doesn't have a single screw tight.
- Sentai
- Schizo Tech - Little Tokyo has a curious mix of robots, high tech armor, and Shogun era Japan.
- Sixth Ranger (The Rescue Team)
- Spell My Name With An S (Speedy Cerviche vs. fanon Speedy Service)
- Spoof Aesop ("Whoever said 'Violence never solved anything'... wasn't a Pizza Cat!")
- Superlative Dubbing - The English dub by necessity, and the Spanish one based on the English transcripts.
- They Fight Crime
- Those Two Guys: Mother Mutt and Junior
- Three Amigos - Speed Cerviche, Polly Ester, and Guido Anchovy
- Time Travel
- Expository Title Theme Tune: "Sa-mur-I Piz-za Cats!" "As soon as we can find the scripts we might begin the show!"
- To The Bat Pole (The top of the pizza parlor is actually a giant revolver, and the ovens are used to load the cats into it.)
- Training Montage
- Tsundere: Polly. In one episode she attacks Speedy for surviving what looked like a fatal attack and invalidating all their emotional distress.
- Two Timer Date ("Speedy's Double-Time Trick")
- Verbal Tic: In the original Japanese version, Yattaro (Speedy) says "Teyandee!" a lot, which becomes his Catch Phrase.
- Villainous Crossdresser (The Big Cheese)
- Who Writes This Crap
- With Friends Like These
- Woolseyism (In spades.)
- You Can Say That Again
