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50 Years Of Chargeman Ken: The Beginnings Of The Worst Cartoon In Existence!

Reviewed: 04/03/2015
Updated: 07/23/2017
Additional Commentary: 04/11/2024

CHARGING, GO FISH~!!

Source: Cartoon Research. "Worst Anime Ever: “Chargeman Ken” (1974)"

(2024 Gregory Weagle Says: Anime is simply a Japanese animated cartoon, so worst cartoon in existence actually fits better. This is the kind of show that is a test for all critics everywhere. If you accept critiquing it as I have, you must readapt your standards completely and most of your rage baiting is gone because you'll never find something more awful than this show. It's impossible to find a show worse than this. You might lose your fanbase due to now become a boring commentator, but at least you now understand that the modern era of shows will now require something so beyond the pale horrible on all planes (not just the content they spew) that it might have a very weak chance of contending. Most commentators making money on Youtube know this and punt on this show for various excuses, but it's mostly because it will kill their audience. Most people who watch videos like The Mysterious Mr. Enter are looking for the announcer to lose it and rage because that's the biggest part of the gig. Once they see the actual worst of the worst, the audience, then someone like John Enter will be exposed as a rage animal and quit watching because they have reached the peak and it's all downhill from there. That's why you don't see John Enter review Chargeman Ken. He needs the money. I do this for a hobby, not for a paycheque. Plus, coming back to this show is actually intriguing because now I know more about the show's creation and it's been fifty years since it's debut; and with all the episodes being officially localized from Discotek Media. Sadly, still not dubbed in English; which is for the best since having it voiced might improve the show and kill the gimmick this series was ultimately shooting for.)

It had to happen sooner or later. If you thought the previous years of Easter Sadism were awful, guess again!!

The first 10 episodes of Kick Buttowski?! Child's play!
That pro-drug war PSA cartoon special with all the 1980's cartoons acting like assholes?! No, there is something worse!
Fanboy & Chum Chum?! Cannot even hold a candle!
Ducks By Nature from Quack Pack?! Close, but no!
There is a cartoon worse than any of these.
Worse than The Cramp Twins!
Worse than Detention!
Worse than Ren & Stimpy's Adult Party Cartoon!
Even American Dad is better than this!
Even Fighting Foodums cannot touch this!

Welcome to the Rant Shack: The alpha and omega of internet memes the world over, the show that makes Rocket Robin Hood look like a Disney production, the show that has the most evil babyface in history: Chargeman Ken! CHARGING, GO FISH~! Which should have been his English dub catchphrase if this was dubbed into English, which has never been dubbed in any language outside of Japanese. (This is for the best that the show was only subtitled. An English dub would ruin it in that it would IMPROVE the show, which would reduce it's naive charm.) This is actually the third show I have done where I watched the show that wasn't dubbed into English. Kick Buttowski I have watched several times in Spanish and Raw Toonage to a certain extent and the first one that never made it into America. (I have also ranted on several Peppa Pig episodes in a different language, I just don't remember which dub I used. Oh, and Peppa Pig will be twenty years old on May 31st, 2024 and I'm working on a much larger additional commentary project for that series. Stay tuned!) This at first would be strange because this show looks so Americanized that it could have easily made it to the states ready to be dubbed. (Although it would likely suffer certain cuts to remove Japanese culture and I doubt "Terror! Mental Hospital!" would ever be dubbed since it would cause the wrong type of heat, even in the 1970's.) However; there is a good reason why it never came here: This show is godawful, even in Japan. The premise of the show is decent enough. This reminds me of Breadwinners where they had a decent premise in Buhdeuce and Sway Sway (so Chum Chum of you Nick!) delivering bread on a rocket van; only marred by the fact that feeding real ducks (their buyers) is not a good idea in real life. (Something Peppa Pig has stopped doing from Series 5 onwards, I should point out, and one of the few BS&P decisions I agree with.). It's really simple: The show takes place in a futuristic city, where science has greatly progressed. A bunch of aliens who call themselves Jurals invade the Earth to steal its resources (or kill everyone, depending on the leader's mood), and Ken Izumi must become the superhero Chargeman Ken to stop them.

That is so simple enough as a premise that even the worst of the worst cannot screw this up. Can't they? Sadly; this show was created by Knack Animation, considered the crappiest anime house in Japan at the time. (Knack Productions as it is officially called is still around today, calling themselves ICHI Corporation, although they haven't done anything since 2008. While Chargeman Ken is a huge blight on their record, they weren't the crappiest anime house at the time. Again, this is the 1970's when the animation quality declined due to cost spiraling out of control and TV not making a lot of profit to justify it, which is consistent with the United States problems at the same time period. Chargeman Ken would have looked a lot better in the modern era of sweet TV deals (see WWE), albeit with BS&P changes to reflect modern times; and after watching this show, it was for the best.) They also created Astroganger which is also awful, but unlike Chargeman Ken; it had a much bigger budget and thus wasn't the meme inducer this show is. The animation was sub-contracted by TamaPro; which TaleSpinners should be familiar with since they did finish animation for in Vowel Play. IMDB claims that Tama Pro was also involved in two other episodes; but there is no evidence from the credits nor TamaPro themselves that they did three episodes. (2017 Gregory Weagle Says: Both of you are wrong. Tama Pro did at least four episodes of TaleSpin for Walt Disney Animation Japan.). TamaPro can do good work; but this is not one of those shows. The show aired on TBS on April 1st, 1974 (Oy vay!) and after 65 episodes aired on June 28th, 1974; the show never re-aired on reruns ever again. In fact; After its initial broadcast, the show remained obscure until 2007, when it was released on DVD and uploaded to the video sharing site Nico Nico Douga. Then Chargeman Ken got a lot of exposure; but only because of how awful it is. So, how awful is this show? I'll explain each problem one by one as we go along. Trust me; it's better this way. Your jaw will drop at about half of the stuff you are about to read. Chargeman Ken even got an original soundtrack in 2010; which is hilarious considering that only six pieces of music are ever played in the entire series. (Surprisely; only one of those pieces I didn't like and if you hear me rage about it, you'll know exactly which piece of music it actually is. Music is one of the few things on this show that was actually decent.)

Yeah, welcome to hell guys! Anyhow; this is the perfect target for Easter Sadism because unlike the PSA cartoon special last year, there is lots of places where I can laugh my ass off for five minutes 20 seconds -- the average time for a Chargeman Ken episode; and this plays into how awful the show is. I don't give a crap. There are two episodes in this show that I would call the most offensive and worst episodes in the history of television (and the second one is almost all due to the finish); but otherwise, I laughed so hard at all the bullshit. It was spliting sides laughter at the producers of this show, it was so goddamn funny. This is like watching the "Sliently Night, Bloody Night" match 64 times. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. Here are the ground rules for this edition of Easter Sadism:

[1.] As with all Easter Sadism rants; there will be no tributes and in this case, it wouldn't matter much because only Ken (Setsuko Takemoto) and all the characters done by Noboru Sato are credited. (Since Discotek Media found the EDs for all the episode, I now know who voiced what in the series except for Caron Izumi and the Jurals, main character wise. Noboru Sato voiced Maou (The official localized name for the Jural leader), but no evidence of other characters.) The crew is credited and you'll notice Eiji Tanaka and Juji Mizumura who worked for Tama Pro; and might have worked on TaleSpin via TamaPro; but no evidence has been found at this time. (Eiji Tanaka is out since he passed away years before Disney signed a deal with them.)

[2.] Many of the episodes I had to screen on Youtube because there is one subber (The user name is AlphaIronChew if anyone gives an elf) who thinks he is so funny that he created parodies of the subtitles because there is no official nor unofficial English dub of this show; thus I have to resort to subtitles in English. (Which is not a problem anymore since Discotek Media officially has subtitled the series). Many times; this subber would use the F-bomb about 20 times in a five minute span regardless of who is speaking, so you know this guy is trying too hard. Apparently; all Ken does in these parodies is talk about having drugs and calling his robot sidekick friend Dogbreath. (I think it was actually Dogball; but the next point is still valid.) Now; calling him Dogbreath would have been funny if Barikan (His romance Japanese name in fansubs, since his localized Discotek Media name is Barican which works just as well.) translated to Dogbreath. It doesn't. It translates to Clipper or Clippers. (Clipper makes more sense since it's singular, although Clippers would make up for the lack of a last name.). So, his name is really Clippers in English; which would have been awesome if Barikan was in fact a robot who moonlights as a barber and keeps up Ken's hairstyle. To be fair to Alphalronchew (the user on Youtube who did these parodies); there are moments where if he actually knew what he was doing and realize that no one watches parodies to see Ken say "fuck" or talk about drugs or call Barikan "Dogbreath"; he would be uber funny. One of them is in the infamous episode where Ken's sister becomes a zombie for the aliens and tries to murder Ken with the knife while Ken is sleeping. Thankfully; I was able to find someone who did those episodes with the real translation of what Ken and company said (Ironsharp to be exact, who had a few moments where it was "better" than the official subtitles.); and he has a large number of episodes from the series. Sadly; the pilot episode wasn't there; but I found it (There were two additional translators who translated episode #1, #4 and #5.) along with the fourth episode and episode number 35 which probably has the most repulsive finish you will ever see in a children's anime series which are also considered noteworthy around the internet as memes.

[3.] Since every episode is less than 5 1/2 minutes long; that means you'll be seeing an average of sixteen episodes per rant over a four day span except for the final rant which will contain seventeen episodes. I'll be doing them in the order that the show ran because I have no sense of maturity whatsoever. (Which outside of episode number 65 is moot because the entire series can be seen in any order otherwise since it's as episodic as it gets.) I realize that it shouldn't matter which one I could do first because the whole thing is just a mess from start to finish. However; it's because I do want to point out the absurdity of this show having some form of continuity when it doesn't. You could play this as an episodic series; and you'll probably enjoy it better that way. I'm not going to bother with summaries on this show either because you'll find out how some of them are so rancid that you're jaw will drop when it's the proper time to do so. So let's rant on shall we...?

(Also of note: As of June 3rd, 2017; I have just been informed that Discotek Media is going to release Chargeman Ken on Youtube and on DVD during the summertime; and episodes #2, #6, and #9 are already up as you are reading this and more are forthcoming soon. Sadly; no English dub, but it has better subtitles and translations; and Barikan is officially Barican now. Not that it really matters; but I just want to inform everyone. So, it looks like I might have something other than The Mighty Hercules to add to the Easter Sadism list now. Since all 65 episodes are planned; that means all four rants will be cleaned up and episodes will be moved according to where they are placed in the air date line of this show. With the exception of the final rant; all shows will now have 16 episodes per rant with 17 in the final rant. That means episode #10, #11, #12, and #16 from the second rant will be moved to the first rant. And so on and so on.

Also of note: As of July 19th, 2017; all 65 episodes of Chargeman Ken are available to stream on Crunchyroll and all of them are Discotek Media translations.)

Opening Moment #1: Half of the opening is dedicated to Ken's transformation sequence which is probably the only thing that was decently animated in the show. Ken does a stretch up and then backflips against a stary outerspace green background. He then flies into the hard camera making sure that the "K" on his cheesy bodysuit (thus the very early prototype for Kick Buttowski) is shown. Then we get a full profile of Ken Izumi or as Saban dubs would have called him: Ken Izzy. (Izzy from Digimon 01 is a nickname for Izumi, which Saban surprisely kept despite almost never calling him that name.) He is wearing brown boots; a cheesy bodysuit with the giant letter K on his chest. Even Mighty Hercules was more subtle than this. (The Mighty Hercules was an older 1960's cartoon show with a lot of bad animation, but at least that show was much better put together than Chargeman Ken was. Worse, I haven't even finished reviewing the second half of that series and it's much longer than Chargeman Ken was!) He is also wearing a red ascot, and Freddy Jones needs to sit down Ken and teach him the proper techinques of wearing a good ascot. Also, I'm not talking about the heel from Magical Rayearth by the way. We have yellow lights and puke pink backgrounds here as he stretches his arms and then crosses his wrist in an X and then flourishes his arms. The opening is in silence minus the music; but in the actual transformation sequence, he screams "CHARGING, GO!" in perfect English. Not Japanese where it would have made sense; but English. (This happens all the time in Japanese animation, so it's not just a Chargeman Ken motif.) Then thunder sparks come out of his body and then get a lot of flashing effects (WARNING!), explosion backgrounds, shadow Ken, sketchy Chargeman Ken drawings in the background in various colors and schemes. Then we get a red background as the letter K changes to the letter V. This makes no sense at all because if you named Chargeman Ken, shouldn't it be CK when you do the transformation. We see Ken literally invent the WWE Spinner belt John Cena had as the belt changes from a upside down green triangle buckle to a circle green buckle and then back again to an upside down green buckle which he never wears normally.

Ken then raises his right arm in the air and looks at the hard camera while there is a red/white checkerboard whirlpool like background. What?! He is wearing a helmet and has a large thinner V on his chest. I didn't realize this until later that Chargeman Ken's transformation looks like a knockoff of Kantro from Astroganger; only with a different colored suit, although in some materials, it looks even more of a knockoff of Astroganger. Astroganger is another laughable show from Knack and that one is better because it tried to be different and had limited success. Anyhow; the remaining footage is from episodes so I'm not going to get into them. None of it is any good. In fact; the song of this is actually a million times better than anything in this show; let alone this opening. Children are singing this and it makes the professionals looks really low rent in comparison. All the footage appears to be from the very first episode in fact; so who cares?! Now that we got this out of the way, let the insanity begin!

(Just A Note: Every episode title will also contain the official translation from Discotek Media in brackets. If there is only one title present, then the Discotek Media translation of the title is the same as the subtitles or is an episode I watched which was translated by Discotek Media themselves and wasn't fansubbed.)

Episode #1 - DANGER!! The Children's Space Station: We officially begin this series underwater with a pan shot. Some of the backgrounds and foreground look all right in a few places; but this kind of quality is extremely hard to come by. We get the title card and then a shot of a red underwater base which looks like something out of Tinabula with Swiss Cheese. I want to point out something about the budget of this show. While I don't have any actual evidence on what percentage was spent, it is my belief that 50% of the budget was spent on the Chargeman Ken transformation sequence. 25% was spent on the music, and 15% was spent on keeping the main characters on model, which half of the time, they fail in amazing fashion. If you ever watched Rocket Robin Hood (Which by the way takes place in the year 3000, as the narrator claims. More on the setting of this show later.) and most notably Friar Tuck on shot continuity, it makes you realize that Teddy Ruxpin's shot continuity is merely bad and sometimes hilariously bad; this is what to expect for 75% of the characters in this show. The remaining 10% was for everything else and it shows: logic breaks, and this is the part they spent on actually animating the episode. Oh boy; wait until they try to animate explosions, that is hideously hilarious. That also includes the Rocket Robin Hood animation spot of having the background make the characters move instead of giving them an actual walk cycle. Out of that 10%; 10% of that is for sound effects. Literally 90% of the stuff that requires sound effects has no sound. I'm not joking here; they are THAT cheap. Note that there is no animation in the bubbles above the pipes; it's all one still shot. (Here's what Wikipedia (DANGER! DANGER!) claims: Chargeman Ken! was produced on a budget of 500,000 yen per episode, far lower than the average of 4—5 million yen for a 30-minute episode by 1974. (This is low budget even for a six minute cartoon, since it would be around 833,333-850,000 yen for an average 5 1/2 minute episode.) The low budget caused Knack Productions's staff to become apathetic toward the show and largely skip work on it in favor of going to the beach.)

Jump cut to inside a room with no background detail whatsoever. (Get use to this, it happens all the time in this show.) There are four maroon aliens who have one green eye and a target painted on their chest (blue/yellow/red in that order) with tentacles. They look completely goofy as they are the Juralians who are trying to enslave the Earth. We see in the middle a purple skinned alien complete with the most bigoted nose that they could come up with. He is wearing a red jewel on top of his forehead. I almost thought it looked like a hexagram, but it wasn't. His vest is purple.orange colored and he has pipes for fingers and blue spiked hairstyle. He looks like a cross between the Great Warlock from Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Rankin Bass) and the Purple Pieman from 1980's Strawberry Shortcake in terms of color. This guy's fashion sense is much worse than Ken's. I discover that his name is Maou, In romance Japanese, it often means "Satan". (Discotek Media refers to him by title; ala the Japanese version of Magus from Chrono Trigger (although he is referred by title in the English DS translation as the "Fiendlord") , as "The Demon King", although the subtitles can refer to him as the Devil King as well. I'm not changing the rant just for that; but just to give a head's up on comparisons between the subs and the official subtitled version.) I realize a lot of people smirk at that name; probably because it's similar to the cult leader in the movie Snuff. Sadly; the Z-grade cartoon Satan in this show is much stupider than the live action z-grade cult leader in Snuff. Maou gives the Jurals their orders which is basically to kidnap children from around the world. Geez; this makes some anime geeks look stupid because they keep saying that no one gets kidnapped in an anime, yet we have someone ordering his cronies to kidnap children. (Yes, someone on the internet before social media took over had this as an actual argument and to think, this argument was just proven wrong and was somewhat harmless compared to arguments today.) His eyes flash white as he is going to use them as hostages and that is that. Next, we get a staple of this show; the always jarring jump cut. I realize all animation does this; but it's really jarring here. Here we see the Juralian spaceships in the sky. They look like wacky meat grinders with a red UFO on top and again the background is moving the ship.

Jump cut to a far shot of a large house with the flattest roof in history and the right side is looking like it is going to collapse. The top of the house has an antenna which looks like someone put the New Years Eve globe that drops at Times Square on New Year Eve to signal in the new year. Then we get a pointless shot of the city and it looks just as half-assed as the entire show. (Half-assed?! That is being extremely generous there 2015 me!) This looked like they were trying the Astro Boy look and it failed badly. (I know that smarks will think that Astro Boy was a 1980's show (and technically it is); but that Astro Boy was a remake of the 1960's show of the same name. Redoing their own work in Japan happens all the time.) This shot should have been shown before they showed the white building with the flat roof; because we head outside with a closeup shot which is so poorly staged that the camera is showing the house on the right side and showing an orange dome with a wacky chimney on the top left of the shot. We see Ken and a blond haired girl (with a ponytail and red ribbons) in a red dress wearing white sock boots. (I think I'm the only one who called them that actually. I'm guessing 2015 me thought the drawing looked like there was no volume on the boots. Figures, knowing Knack Productions.) This is Caron Izumi (Or Kyaron Izumi which would be better, but this is that kind of show...); aka Caron Izzy. As in Caron Creed by the way. Jump cut to a closeup of Ken and Caron waving at mom and dad who are watching and only Mrs. Izzy -- the one with red overalls and a green shirt; with necklace -- is waving back. Mr. Izzy is doing absolutely nothing -- the one with the blue coat, green vest and cyan blue tie; with the brown mustache -- and Mrs. Izzy tells them to have fun. (At the time of this rant, I had zero clue who the adults first names were; but now after some digging, I can confirm that Papa Izumi is Hiroshi Izumi (Hiroshi can mean "expo" or "exposure") and Mama Izumi 's name is Saori Izumi. I don't think the first names were shown nor said in the final product. Also, I found out who voiced these characters: Hiroshi is voiced by Kiyoshi Kawanishi, and Saori is voiced by Yuki Aida. Caron is still unknown at this point.)

Then we get a classic example of a low budget cartoon: There is a robotic man who has a sphere-ish tummy, red shoes, black legs, a black head which looks like a swim cap, large eyes and a turtle like face. This thing partfalls twice and not one time did we get a pratfall sound effect of any kind. Is Japan the only place on Earth where sound effects are copyrighted? (I think sound effects are now copyrighted globally, but I'm not going to waste my time researching that on a show that doesn't care anymore.) Mrs. Izzy giggles and that was animated poorly. Then we get the running sequence which the run cycle is godawful; but there was a run cycle at least. Worse; the backgrounds in this make TMS's backgrounds in Ducktales look like Disney feature. Seriously! (Even Darkwing Duck's backgrounds in the latest stages of it's run were better than this.) Then we do a pan shot of a lot of shapes and stuff; as I realize that this is the fair. Shadow figures in purple globes which is pretty creepy as this was the worst Tilt-A-Whirl ride I have ever seen. The rocket coaster ride was better animated; but still looked terrible because not only were there no sound effects, there was no ADR crowd loop. Yes; this show is so cheap that they couldn't get the voice actors to do a crowd scene. Jump cut to two kids in a glass bowl and they look like they were on drugs here. This is what happens when you don't take the effort and money to animate stuff. (Well, the budget was low even for a six minute cartoon and the creators decides to give zero fucks about it. In hindsight, it was for the best and really it didn't effect Knack all that much.) Even the ferris wheel has green transparent balls; which is even more absurd and then we have pink hover cars. I'm guessing that this is the future version of go-karts. So we jump cut to Ken, Caron and the robot whose name is Barikan, who is the most useless sidekick in the history of robot sidekicks. The only thing of note is that his name means Clippers; which as I mentioned before would have been fine if he was Ken Izumi's barber and kept up his hairstyle. That would have added one buy to this show at least; but this show is so stupid that it doesn't happen. (Barican is voiced by Fuyuki Takahashi.)

Ken of course is driving the hover car and he decides to screw with Caron and Clipper's minds, if Clipper had a brain, and Caron actually knew how to use hers. (Yes, Ken knows how to drive six years before he's allowed to. Kit Cloudkicker, be jealous! POW! OUCH! Ummmmm.... Also, the car is reversed with Ken driving on the right side, I should note.) Ken winks to the hard camera while Caron and Clipper enjoy themselves, and then pulls the lever (JESUS~!). (Botchamania has got to use this show for a lever spot, it's too obvious not to.) This causes the entire screen to go into a tailspin (BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!). Caron and Clipper get sick as then suddenly the screen is perfectly fine and the space car did nothing, so I don't know what the story was. (Clear cheap animation technique, although TaleSpin uses this cheap trick, too. This goes under: Cheap; but effective. In making Ken look like the jerk that he is. Keep in mind, this is basically a 12 year old playing a prank. You haven't seen anything yet with Ken... By the way, the spinning stopped well before Ken pushed the lever and was right side up, just making the scene look even more poorly staged than it already was.) Ken pushes the lever (JESUS~!) and Caron pounds her fists onto Ken's back and calls Ken terrible and mean. Professor Volga might have something to say about it, if he was still alive. More to come on that episode about two or three rants from now. (Speaking of horrible decisions Ken made...) Clipper agrees with Caron. I say: you are a robot Clipper. Why should you care about Ken being a mean?! I'm more concerned about you usefulness as a character than Ken's prank. This is the sort of prank you see an average pre-teen pull; so I'm not impressed. Ken laughs out loud because he is a jerk, of course. He then apologizes and it's clear that he doesn't mean it as then he panics because we see children running away at ground level. They all get zapped with yellow beams and this knocks then flat on their face; including a hilarious shot of one boy splatting on top of a girl. Then a tentacle snags them and we see the Jural alien in full profile. Another tentacle whip crashes through the glass of a bulb where two kids are and they are kidnapped.

How they kept this bloodless is no mystery to me; they have no budget to work with. (I mention this because Chargeman Ken, a show meant for children, actually allowed people to bleed, even children! Mind you, the amount of blood wouldn't pass a Crimson Mask Muta Scale needle past zero, but there is still blood present. There is a lot of nasty violence in this show and lots of death as well. Especially when you add Ken being a murderous babyface!) One kids trips and falls on his face and this voice actor realized that they have no foley available; so he provided the sound effect of a grunt to make up for it. It failed as he gets snagged. Caron is worried as Ken tells Clipper (Who one of the fan subs for this episode calls Bariquad which might be funnier than Clipper actually) to protect Caron as he opens the glass dome and we debut the now infamous CHARGING, GO FISH~! Yes folks; they did Ken's transformation with absolutely zero build nor setup. I am watching TNA Impact! I should also note that the music timing was horrible here as a few seconds of background played as the sequencing was going on. I don't know if it was the Youtube video being out of sync or what, but it was bad. Oh wait; it was the animators fault because he says "Charging,Go!" perfectly here with the cross hand motions. (Get use to it, this show's timing is beyond the pale horrible and it's going to be even worse moving forward.) Then we get the out of nowhere space ship as Ken drops into it with no build nor logic to it. WHAT THE HELL?! Then we cut to the pink space car and we get another classic miscue as Caron and Clipper are cheering on Ken, and for at least three seconds, no sound comes out of their mouths. (Believe it or not, Discotek Media actually fixed this so they had no sound for one second. Thanks, I guess.) Ken's spaceship lands for no reason whatsoever which begs the question: Why bother with the spaceship which is known as the Sky Rod?! If you are a superhero who has jet boots; why would you need a spaceship to cover only 100 meters?! (This show could have waited until the next episode to introduce the Sky Rod to at least build it up, but of course; no one at Knack cared since it was more low budget than Reggie B. Fine.)

The Jural alien legs make the legs in Sailor Moon Stars look beefy in comparison. Look at the thinnest of those legs there dude. There is no way these alien can walk on their own. We have eight aliens against one babyface as Ken jumps out of the spaceship and calls them out. (Credit where it is due, they did give the scene about fifteen seconds to breathe before starting the fight.) Jural alien calls him an impudent boy and fires a laser beam from it's target chest which is really cool at least. Ken dodges the shots and then does a barrel roll on the ground. At least that was the spot he tried; but the animators screwed up so badly that he did the barrel roll while being at least two feet in the air. That is an amazing lack of coordination by the continuity coordinators. (To make matters worse, not only did they reuse the shot, they resued it during the opening sequence; just to make the creators look like absolute low rent geeks!) Katherine Victor could do a much better job than this. (Still stand by that claim!) He still manages to shoot the Jural alien in the chest and it is vaporized instantly while being at least two feet in the air. He kills three more aliens with his laster gun -- called the Alpha Gun -- with ease making the alien group look like a bunch of jobbers in less than three minutes, which means even Chuckles the Silly Piggy wasn't buried nearly as hard as these aliens. If it wasn't for the fact that this show is so godawful in every possible way, there would be no incentive to watch after this spot. (It's never good when you get buried deep within the Earth in less time than the main villain in Dave The Barbarian. At least Dave The Barbarian improved in spite of sabotaging itself in every turn. Chargeman Ken has zero hope for recovery. Maou fares a bit better; although at least with the aliens, it was Ken being overpowered compared to the Juralians. Maou's burials are much more problematic as you'll see later.) Ken notices the wacky meat grinder spaceship and a Juralian alien is taunting him on top of it as Ken panics. So much so that he almost gets whipped by one of the aliens and backflips back into his spaceship. He then flies up; remembering to MURDER the Juralian alien who was trying to whip him in the process and flies towards the Jural alien ship. (It's no joke; Ken is literally killing them as if he's in a first person arena shooter. Except that one where the Juralian alien gets bumped.)

The orange eyed Jural alien proclaims that he'll show him to fear them which of course is going to fail in hideously hilarious fashion. The alien fires the PINK BEAM OF DEATH at Ken as Ken is horrified; but still dodges the shots with ease. One of the beams hits a giant steel rod and it goes timber and crashes to the ground off-screen. There is shaking and there is bumping; but absolutely no sound effects. Caron is worried; but Clipper thinks Ken is strong. Geez; you think? This is basically a squash match for Mr. Ken Izzy! Ken swears in semi dub anime style (Fan subber used "crap" here (Discotek didn't have Ken use a swear at all.).) and proclaims that he will never be defeated by the likes of them. (Discotek has it as basically saying he is going to kill the Juralian without saying kill at all.) He then proceeds to fly the space ship around the Jural spaceship as the alien is admitting that he is not bad, which is a red letter lie that would haunt viewers of this show for the rest of their lives. (Discotek Media relocalizes this to calling Ken an annoying child, which is meaner than the fan subber!) Of course the color stylist screws up the eye as it's back to green again for no reason. One of the fan subs used "shit" as the swear here, which is out of place since this is a children's cartoon. (Discotek media used the word "damn" here.) Legends of Localization is your friend, Subber! (Indeed. Discotek Media gets it as well as kids cannot say "damn" (although Ken can say "hell") and the heels can mildly swear. (2024 Gregory Weagle Says: I take it back! One episode had one of the characters say bastard! Completely not needed.)) We get more flying and this takes a long ass whomping time to setup Ken to shoot a laser beam from his ship and it hits the Jural alien ship. We head inside with the Juralian alien looking at the controls, he screams as yellow dust engulfs the screen and then we come to the part that is a staple of Knack Animation: THE EXPLOSION PAINTING OF DEATH! What does this entail?! Well; Knack is so awful in animating that in order to "animate" an explosion taking place, they show a painting of an explosion and move the camera backwards and forwards to simulate movement. It is so hideously hilarious that it gives this show the Urban Wrestling Federation charm in that it's so fun to mock, but as television, it really, really sucks!

That said: I read on the comments that someone claimed that the children were inside the spaceship and since we never saw the children rescued, Ken killed them basically. Listen; Ken Izumi is going to do a lot of unheroic and cruel acts in this show. This was NOT one of them because we never saw the Juralian aliens put the children in the spaceships. Sure; they grabbed the kids, but we never saw the aliens put the kids on the spaceships. Once Ken got involved; we never saw the kids until the ending sequences and it was the same kids who got kidnapped earlier in the episode because they used the same footage over again. They are perfectly fine. Don't worry; you'll really hate Ken Izzy soon enough. Caron and Clipper cheer for victory as I realize that the video is in fact out of sync now. Even worse; we cut to the ground and the spaceship drops to the ground and crashes; and this explosion was in fact animated. In fact; the ship was pretty much intact until it crashed onto the ground. What a horrible logic break that was?! Caron and Ken wave to each other and the animators hate Caron so much that she is shown as a still shot of her waving while Ken in the spaceship is waving and that is animated. We see repeat footage of the glass sphere rides and then jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper in the pink hover car, and we all know where this is going now. Caron is glad that the children are safe (Yes; none of them were killed and made the viewers look like geeks.) as Ken proclaims that they can now play without fear. Ken goes to the lever and he is going to prank Caron again; so Caron beats on his back in a pre-emptive strike. Okay; that was funny because Clipper hides in his tummy and then Caron and Ken stop selling and laugh. Ken drives the hover car away over the skies and judging by the visual, it appears that he stole the space car. He commited Grand Theft Space Car; so there is your unheroic act of the episode to end this at 5:21. This was a ** 3/4 on the trackwreck scale with all the miscues, absent sound effects, the alien heel group getting buried in less than three minutes and Ken stealing a pink car for Caron who looks like Barbie growing up. Yup; this is going to be a long series, but it's so bad that it'll be a fun time either way, unlike Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue at least. -* 1/2 (-30%). (The ED is basically footage of them literally stealing the pink car with no animation whatsoever, including the first shot where they tease showing remorse and literally the next pose is them showing no remorse whatsoever. HAHA! And then they do the remorse/no remorse bit again before leaving the scene! And the marching band music made it so classically awful. That deserves an extra 1/4* on the trainwreck scale, but it appears in all episodes, so it's not special sadly.)

Episode #2 - Safe By A Hair!: (The original name for this episode was simply "Close Call!", so Discotek Media's localization was basically a joke about old shows having debris on them like hairs since television shows were originally on film.) Episode opened with a shot of the city with Mount Fuji in the background (I should point out that if this was dubbed into English in the 1980's; the name would be changed. Not today though...) as a speeding bullet passes from left to right. Scene change to a yellow spotted purple dome like town in the background on top of the mountain as there is a rocket launcher like launcher in the foreground. The rocket looks like a giant ramming device with red gemstones on it. Jump cut to a close up shot of it; then a jump cut of a Jural pulling levers (JESUS~!) as we fire the ramming device into the air as we get various jump cuts of the rocket flying away and a shot of Satan looking on with an evil look on his face. Then we see it somehow go straight up into the air for no reason as it flashes and explodes and the explosion is ANIMATED. Why didn't they simply use this in every episode?! (Because it's a low budget cartoon combined with the creators giving no fucks at all.) There was no camera shaking to simulate movement; it was an animated explosion in every way. Also of note; the explosion creates an awkward cross green cloud that engulfs the area with green stew like fog. Jump cut to the Jurals in awe as Satan giggles and it begins to rain. Satan laughs, calls the experiment a great success, proclaims that they will fire the rockets all at once and destroy the light on the Earth's surface. Also, with the light gone, even Chargeman Ken would be helpless as an infant. By the way; I watched episode #5 which had a similar occurance, it's obvious that this is a very hilarious fail on Satan's part! This will not stop Chargeman Ken at all! You suck, Maou! Get used to this folks; his plans get even more stupid and roundabout later on. (A few things: (1.) Chargeman Ken's gimmick is that light gives him power and (2.) If the creators gave a damn, this episode would have been a good start on the angle. My former self is correct, but he watched this show out of order because episode #5 was fansubbed before Discotek Media got to subtitling the episodes officially. If you watch this in order, the gimmick was okay. It's just that they killed the gimmick three episodes later and made everyone creating this show look dumb.)

Satan laughs as we jump cut to a shot of dozens of rain cloud making rockets on rocket launchers. After that thrilling pan shot with no animation whatsoever, we head to Ken's residence and into the dining room as Clipper (A note: Discotek Media officially called him Barican; but I don't care, Clipper is a better name for the fact that the name translates to hair clippers.) is giddy over the feast of fruits on the table; which include a birthday cake with candles and drinks. I put nothing past this show to not destroy the cake. Caron is humming a tune while putting roses in a vase and Ken is putting up decorations because it's Caron's birthday. Wait; if this is Caron's birthday, why is she helping? Did they originally plan to have this as Mrs. Izumi's birthday and they simply changed it because the voice talent didn't show up or something?! I don't believe she ever showed up in this episode. (It's even dumber because Mama Izzy's birthday actually makes more sense since Caron is helping with Ken with the deocrations. Someone should have noticed it and changed it; but this is Knack Productions and I put nothing past them. Mrs. Izumi didn't show up in the entire episode by the way.) The party's tonight and already Clipper is trying to sneak in a taste of cake, which Caron tells him to go away. Then Caron rubs some icing off the cake and tastes it like a hypocrite. Somehow; the icing is so bitter that she spits it out. So, the birthday cake is a fake? Is this some Japanese custom that I am not aware of? (I think the spot was suppose to be Caron was suppose to spit it out when Ken blows her off for being rude (which is projection, but that's not the story here); but the timing was way off. Yawn.) Seriously; I would like to know as Ken blows her off for being rude. After the first episode; Ken should speak for himself. Ken comes down and admits that the food is tasty. Considering Caron's reaction to the cake; I don't buy that for one second. (Leads me to believe that it is actually a timing issue and Caron was called out on her hypocrisy by a bigger hypocrite.) I see the wine glass with punch is totally gone now as they decide to have the birthday party early; or at least practice for it. Because we have time to kill in a five and a half minute episode; so why not? (I am watching Peppa Pig! Tales? Mainline? Doesn't matter.)

By the way; Discotek Media's translation is "Master Ken" whenever Clipper says "Kenbo". Ironsharp had it as "Kenny". This is one of the few times I would have left it untranslated, since Kenbo is hilarious when said in English. Clipper jumps up and down and lands on his ass like a stupid idiot. Ken and Caron laugh and the animation is horrible, but I repeat myself. Ken wants Caron to light the match as Caron sells Ken as her big brother. This is standard in entertainment in Japan as Clipper brings in a book of matches and is rubbing his ass and in tears. Wimp! (Surprisely, we never get to see Caron light the candles, nor strike the match. Considering that Toon Disney cut out almost all the match striking in TaleSpin, and even Peppa Pig (a pre-school show mind you) allowed Mr. Rabbit strike a match and light a cannon, I am surprised considering how much Chargeman Ken gets away with on a regular basis.) We get a whiplash jump cut of the three at the table singing the most hilarious "Happy Birthday" song in English. They sounds like four year olds trying English for the first time as this gets cut off by the laugh of a Jural. Bastard! (Hey, give them credit! This actually had it's charm and they are suppose to be kids in storyline, so it worked perfectly.) Ken and company head to the window and see the Jural on top of the building. The Jural proclaims that they have business with them and dares him to find them on Mount Fuji as Ken is confused by this and looks like he's sicker than me on my worst day. The artwork is hideously hilarious here.The Jural bails as Caron is scared as Ken curses the Jurals because they have finally come after him. Geez; I wonder why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you killed at least a half dozen of them in the first episode of this show?! Why would you be surprised by this?! Ken is about to leave; but Caron wants to come along. Ken tells her not to worry because he is going to kill them for real and be done with it once and for all. Ken is so blood thirsty today! (Spoiler Alert: He doesn't kill them all on this day!) Clipper approves of all this violence, which shows that if Clipper could, he would be a serial killer on par with Ken. Caron runs after Ken as Clipper is giddy and drops down on his face again with no sound effects present, again; outside of Clipper grunting. He runs off to no sound effects as we jump cut to a shot of the city.

Ken is now driving the Sky Rod and yes; he hasn't transformed yet. To say that this show cannot think their stories through is the understatement of any cartoon era. Jump cuts of the Skyrod flying over the bullet train, then a shot of Mount Fuji and then suddenly; the Skyrod disappears for no reason. The babyfaces are on top of Mount Fuji and it's covered with ice and snow. After seeing episode #5; this means Ken has to pretend that he cannot handle the Jurals in these conditions; even though he seriously can. (Considering that they are no selling the cold mountain conditions right now, despite wearing gear that is more for spring; it just makes the Jurals look even worse in hindsight.) Clippers notices the snow and ice as Ken calls this weird. (What a bunch of morons?! Most summits of tall mountains often have snow on them due to elevation making it much colder than normal. It's science! This shouldn't surprise them. Ken and company clearly have never been mountain climbers once.) Cue Satan's laugh and Satan himself shows up with two Jurals flanking him. He is wearing blue wings, purple boots, purple trunks, an orange bodysuit and has red trim; making him look like a fashion police of law death sentence just waiting to happen. I can just hear Broken Matt Hardy saying "Ken Izzy; I knew you'd come!" in this entire sequence. He presents his rockets of rainy doom as they are fired and they all explode into green awkward crosses and engulf the area in green fog. Ken is shocked and appalled by this with no animation whatsoever. Satan laughs as Ken demands answers to this outrage. Dozens of Jurals hop in as this is so not believable because we are suppose to buy that green fog makes Ken helpless. This fails badly. Ken is saying darn it over and over again as we get the spooky ghost drum music again. Satan then holds out his arm and tells them to stop as he giggling because Ken is helpless. I would believe Donald Trump before I would believe this Satan fellow. He's a much worst judge of character and logic than Donald Trump is. Yes; I stand by that claim! (After all that has happened in the last ten years or so, it's time to walk back this claim. Maou is merely a stupid, evil heel who doesn't exist and nothing more. Donald Trump is real and the worst kind of a god-wannabe.)

Jurals bounce in as the babyfaces bail stage left; but Caron trips and falls flat on her face with no sound effects, nor a grunt whatsoever. The book of matches fall out as Ken goes over and asks why she brought the matches over. Caron is lighting matches, a move which Toon Disney cuts out when ADULTS do this and she's a child. (Thanks Knack for gaslighting me in the previous scene with the matches.) Jurals continue to bounce in as the matches are lighting up; but keep going out. Ken tells her to calm down as Caron wonders what to do now as we get the same repeated shot of the Jurals bouncing in. Here's how Caron keeps the matches lit: Clipper goes into his hamster ball and points to the hole in his neck. Caron lights the match inside the hamster ball and it stays lit as Ken has literally the fire in his eyes. CHARGING, GO FISH~! It's so stupid when you consider what happens three episodes later; so whatever. I guess you could argue that any light source would do, but this is still stupid. Why not just do the transformation BEFORE going to Mount Fuji and thus lop off the logic break from the Skyrod?! Caron is giddy as Clipper is smoking on his head as Ken thanks them for making him look less stupid, I guess. Ken then jumps over the Jurals in slow motion and invokes the Vizum Belt on them, (per Discotek Media's translation) blinding them with light; then Ken does the midair roll from episode number and fires his Alpha Gun and kills a Jural. Lots of manga shots and killing, yee-haw as the children sing the opening theme song for my pleasure. (I believe Chargeman Ken's kill count is up to eight now.) Pan up shot of Clipper and Caron jumping up and down and boy; the animation sucks here as Ken lifts his glass mask. Then we get a gapping logic break as the fog comes back in between shots and Satan threatens to return to kill Ken and flies away in the wacky meatgrinder spaceship. Ken basically tells him to bring it on because he loves to kill Jurals and drink their blood; or something. Ken claims that he'll do it fair and square and it is such a lie, even Donald Trump wouldn't believe it. Ken offers to bring Caron home for her birthday party as we end the episode at 5:20 with a shot of the Skyrod flying back home. They needed three jump cut shots to make this work. Anyhow; this gets *** on the trainwreck scale for the awful plot, animated explosion, the not believable notion that Ken is helpless at any point in this series and Satan being stupid like always. -** (-40%).

Episode #3 - The Fluttering Butterfly Swarm (Officially Translated Title: The Butterfly Swarm Flutters!): Episode opened with a shot of a man with black hair and glasses wearing a white coat showing off an easel containing pictures of two decently drawn butterflies. It pains me to see the budget wasted on something that is a throwaway spot. The professor talks about the butterflies for a while as the one on the left is a native Peruvian butterfly (the one with pink edged wings) which fifty years ago went extinct and is known as Sandara Palace Agrias. Even in anime; there has to be an eductional spot in at least one episode. (Discotek Media refered to it as the Peruvian A. sandarapalus butterfly, which is not quite the same as what Ironsharp had when it was fansubbed.) He claims that the brilliant wings seduces the hearts of man. Jump cut to sky shot of the professor explaining stuff to a panel of scientists, all of them look generic as hell; which should be no shock to anyone considering that 50% of the budget of this show went to creating Ken's transformation sequence alone. Basically; the professor proclaims that these butterflies are speed demons among other butterflies. The next butterfly on the right (the one with green edged wings; pink inner body) and tries to convince us that it resembles the butterfly on the left, which it doesn't at all. Next; he asks to observe the mandible, which would have been fine if he had told the group to observe the mandible of the previous butterfly for comparison since they were shooting for the fact that the butterflies resemble each other. (I should note that the mandible in the Discotek Media version was called a "mouth that resembles a hawk's beak". Why? Why not?!) Jump cut to a closeup of the black pinchers which have turned green along with the body inbetween the eyes; as the professor claims that this is expected of something that consumes human cells. In other words; this butterfly is a man-eater. Now granted; there are butterflies who do eat flesh (A hackberry butterfly for instance); so it's not as absurd as it sounds. Then the left butterfly image is completely gone as we zoom out to a far shot of the theater as we hilariously see that the panel of scientists are now teleported to the opposite side of the table.

Students are muttering among themselves as we jump cut to a slender man with brown hair wearing a blue shirt with darker blue circles on it asking Mr. Izumi about what happened in graver detail. Wait; what does Mr. Izzy have to do with this? We jump cut to Mr. and Mrs. Izzy as Mr. Izzy has the Gruffi pose on full blast, like he couldn't care less about the poor student's question. (Judging by the notepad, I wouldn't be surprised if the "student" is actually a member of the press.) We zoom in as Mr. Izzy explains that he and his family finally had their first Sunday together in a long ass whomping time and decided to go to the park for a picnic on that day. (Mama Izumi's face looks really sharp in a bad way I might add.) Ironsharp claims he said "plantation" which sounds so dated; that I'm certain Mr. Izzy meant park. (Discotek Media called it a farm, which is a lot less dated, but the show takes place in 2074 according to the storyline, so it's still pretty dated.) Yes; this show is going to try to do a media-res episode. Why they needed to jump cut to another shot of his face is still a mystery to me as he closes his eyes (Oh; that's why they switched camera angles.) and we HIT THE FLASHBACK~! Which the scene change was decently done. Shot of tree and pan down to a grassy ground with the camera shot from behind a wooden fence. Jump cut to Ken and Clipper doing...ummm...something with brown spheres which look like gumballs. They have fun as we pan over to Mrs. Izzy and Mr. Izzy exchanging notes about getting away from the city and going to the suburbs; which at least sounds better than plantation. (Discotek Media's translation of Mama Izzy's dialogue is that she's relieved to get away from the pollution of the city for a change. What kind of pollution is the question since if it's noise, she is going to be so disappointed.) Caron does absolutely nothing but look cute. Mr. Izzy's expression looks like he is mad at something as we jump cut to a close up of Caron commenting on Mrs. Izzy's higher spirits than usual. Was she depressed in episode #2 or something? (She wasn't in episode #2 and geez; considering that it was supposed to be Caron's birthday, what a jerk for her to not appear on her daughter's birthday. Nor Papa Izzy for that matter.)

Mr. Izzy than basically is happy after looking mad in the previous shot as he jokes that Ken and Caron are a burden to her. Yeah; I'm guessing that this is Mrs. Izzy's debut on this show in a speaking role although she did appear briefly in episode #1. Ken then blames Caron for driving her up a wall because he would never do something like that. What a heel this Ken is?! Trust me; this behavior is nothing we haven't seen before nor after. Remember the first episode of Dave The Barbarian? Caron of course tries to act all like she was insulted, and the animation failed her in hilarious fashion. (Ironically, Discotek Media's localization is less a joke and more of a pondering about the importance of Mrs. Izzy of this family and the Ken/Caron stuff makes them sound a lot nicer. I think Ironsharp's version is better because Chargeman Ken is better when it's at it's worst. Discotek's localization is an improvement and it kills the gimmick this show is shooting for.) Jump cut to the grass and a shot of two bunny rabbits. Jump cut to Barikan (aka Clipper) looking startled. Clipper chase after the rabbits as we jump cut to Ken and Caron looking on and Ken calls Clipper a slowpoke. I have seen Slowpoke in Pokemon; and Clipper looks nothing like Slowpoke; both physically, personally, nor speed wise. Clipper is much faster than Slowpoke as Caron tells someone to give up. I think it was Clipper; but it might have been Ken for insulting him. It's impossible to tell when she doesn't address anyone by name. (Discotek Media again improved a segment it really shouldn't have: Ken called Clippers a "blockhead" which makes almost good sense, although "roundhead" would have been a better insult and Caron clearly told Clipper to leave the bunnies alone. Localization is often a good thing; but this show is better when it's not localized properly.) Jump cut to a far shot of trees and a swarm of orange colored butterflies. Then we get Mr. Izzy's narration as Clipper returned with a purple haired man dressed in back as Clipper is carrying him like a caveman as flashback Mr. Izzy demands to know where he found him, and Clipper claims that it was over there, I think pointing to the east.

We jump cut to Ken pushing some grass and his face is so hilariously bad as we see a bunch of dead people on the ground with butterflies on them. There is no way to take this seriously as a threat because none of the denizens have any wounds to indicate actual horror or them being frozen with fear. This is not a BS&P decision either because later on, we do see character bleed from time to time. This was simply budget constraints or general apathy; which I'm leaning towards the later in this case. We return to reality (Yeah right?!) as Mr. Izzy proclaims that there was nothing they could do. Remember that for later. The slender male student understands the similiaries here as the fatter brown haired dude dressed in purple with a green laced tie asks if the butterflies are still in Japan. The professor claims that he thinks that they might be out there somewhere; but is unsure of the details even though Mr. Izzy has already provided a clue that they were on the "plantation"/park where they had a picnic; which would be a good place to start. The students at their desks mumble to each other and the animation is so hilarious that it feels like a video game in 1974. Jump cut to a Jural alien against a sky background looking at a butterfly as it flies right in front of the hard camera. More butterflies come in and land on the alien as the Jural calls him his pretties. (The Discotek Media version was called his "lovelies" and I'm not sure if this was an improvement.) For the love of god; can someone do an English dub of this show. I don't care if it's a fan dub or not; this is a great target for parody here. (Bad idea! An English dub would automatically make this show an improvement because English dubbers ruin everything. It's perfect logical sense so says the anime purists!) The alien proclaims that the earthlings are making a fuss over them and that they are the butterflies who went extinct fifty years ago. The alien also points out that they have been infusing butterflies with their power fifty years ago thus implying that they were on this planet at least fifty years ago. (Discotek went further: Juralian alien claims that they saved the spieces fifty years ago. Why not?! Everyone knows that the Juralians are the real babyfaces and that murderous babyface known as Ken is a heel on par with a wannabe God.)

How come they never took over the planet since Chargeman Ken wasn't alive nor old enough to be Chargeman Ken until recently?! These heels suck! (Keep in mind, their technology is suppose to be more advanced by at least 500 years, according to the storyline later on...) Basically; the aliens have made them into flesh eating butterflies who consume human cells to do their bidding in ruining the Earth. Considering all the damage humans have done over the years; how can these butterflies drive the Earth to ruin? Unless their defintion of ruin is the rebirth of the planet itself? Damn; this show makes no sense. (The creators cannot decide who is supposed to be the babyface and who is suppose to be the heel and it really shows when the audience cannot figure it out.) We get all sorts of jump cuts of the butterflies on the alien and no one cares. Jump cut to shot of city; and then a jump cut to a ground to sky shot as three Juralian ships fly over with only two fully seen. Jump cut to a shot of one of the ships with a pipe on the bottom (with two ships in the background)and then a glass tube drops from the hole in the bottom. Why? They look like transparent giant ass short straws. Butterflies fly out of them. Jump cut to inside the Juralian spaceship as two Jurals are sitting in front of the computer watching the butterflies on screen with Satan watching on. At least the butterflies are animated well this time. Satan tells them to eat human cells and apparently; this gives them secret powers to multiply up to thrice amount of times. (I think Satan meant the butteflies grow three times their size and become bigger threats because that would make more sense and make the butterfly genocide Ken performs seem less vile.) I should note that Satan has a finger which looks like a sink pipe. (Discotek Media had Maou say "doubled or tripled in size") Jump cut to denizens running away in Wang Film-equse shadows as the butterfly swarm engulfs them citizens of this city; and then they all drop dead with screams. Oh please; I am so not buying this crap. The blond haired woman seemly threw herself towards the ground on that shot as we jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper watching outside the window. Caron calls this all terrible as we get another shot of denizens running partially in shadow this time. (By the way, Caron's arms are drawn so poorly that she looks like he literally broke her arms and got replaced the wrong way.)

Ken proclaims that he must do something and here he goes. Ken apparently jumped out of the window because the next shot shows him doing a goofy flying pose with a sky background. Lots of wind sound effects and it's time for CHARGING, GO FISH~!! We see more butteflies and then a jump cut to Satan watching outside proclaiming that Ken will be bitten to death. (Discotek media actually has Maou ordering the butteflies to gnaw him to death, not proclaiming that they will bite him to death.) Ummm; there is one problem with this Satan: He has no exposed skin and the helmet protects whatever skin is left to see. He's going to be fine. We get more butterflies flying around and then a jump cut to Ken raising his arms in the air as if to say that he gives up; but is saying for the Juralians to get him right now. Then he starts shooting lasers from his belt buckle which is basically shooting from his dick. (The Vizum Belt, everyone...) Then he shoots more butterflies dead with the Alpha Gun (as pointed out by Ironsharp) which does produce sound effects. Butterflies get hit and they all drop dead on the bridge. (Which by the way, 90% of the butterflies would have missed it even if they didn't move. Bad sequence by the animators, there.) That is the whole fight everyone. Now granted; they did sort of play into the fact that Chargeman Ken's suit did protect him from the butterflies. However, if you recall; Mr. Izzy claimed that there was nothing they could do. Even though Ken Izzy could have transformed right there and shot the butterflies dead, in order to gain a sample of a butterfly to the scientist. (And it would still be fine moral wise because the butterflies are not humans, so it doesn't count towards the kill count.) That would have made sense with the beginning of the episode; but of course these writers are morons. (By the way, this is a special day because this is the first episode in Chargeman Ken, where Ken went one five and a half minute episode without killing Juralian aliens nor humans. Yes, he killed a lot of butterflies, but they don't count towards the kill count because almost all humans kill insects, even butterflies.)

Ken looks up into the sky as Satan proclaims that he will pay for this as his ship rises into the sky despite being IN the sky the whole time. DUMB! Go to the closeup of Ken proclaiming that it doesn't matter about Satan getting his revenge, he would not lose to the likes of him while doing his trademark mean pose with the twirling gun. Which by the way is poorly staged because the camera is zoomed in way too close, so you cannot see half of what Ken is doing in that pose. (Surprisely, the Discotek Media version actually fixed this and you can see almost all of it! Stop doing that Discotek Media! Chargeman Ken being this bad is what gives this show it's charm! Stop trying to improve it!) We go to the shot of the dead butteflies as Caron and Clipper enter the scene with Ken as Caron feels bad for the butterflies. Ken turns to the hard camera on the jump cut closeup and basically gulps and looks sleeply which ends the episode at 5:21. No rating on the trainwreck scale as this was simply a badly animated episode with an okay storyline with several logic breaks and the usual BS. 1/4* (5%). The parody sub from AlphaIronChew for this was basically a mockery of the Axe spray called "Fucking Kanji"; and wasn't all that funny by the way. (I watched it in full and the whole punchline to the whole deal is that the butterflies turned everyone into flaming homosexuals and Ken basically killed them. Really disgusting, homophobic bigotry and even LESS funny than 2014 Me thought it was. You wonder why I mostly don't like these parody subs? It's because of all the punching down and splash damage it caused. Listen, this show does a great job in punching down and splash damage without fansubbers trying to interject their own bigotry into it. Fuck you, all!)

Episode #4 - The Mysterious, Handsome Stranger (Officially Translated Title: The Mysterious, Handsome Boy): Now this episode is somewhat famous; but mostly for one certain character who was by far the best character of this show. We begin this one with a cheesy banner and green and red flags. As we pan down; the fan subber (Ymirfrostgiant by the way.) points out that the sign reads "American Football School Wide Tournament"; which is basically the type of thing I played in junior high school and did not like. (Discotek Media's localization is: "Intramural American Football Game", which is another improvement the show didn't need. Also, the music used here is from the ending credits of this show.) I'll say this much: This is a perfect example of being able to transplant a series from Japan to American and no one would notice that it was made in Japan unless somehow they were dumb enough to show the credits or the dubbers fail to edit the Japanese out (But that's only because the show is for Japanese audiences anyway.). On another note; there are anime series that feature American rules football, mostly notable is Eyeshield 21 in which Yukio Okazaki worked on as a freelancer. (I only mention this because Yukio Okazaki was one of the episode animation directors for Walt Disney Animation Japan, for TaleSpin.) Ultra goofy music play as we jump cut to the blue team wearing helmets with a blue diamond on the front going to center. Strangely; there are exactly four or five people doing ADR looping here. (Hey, at least there was crowd noise here.) Jump cut to the yellow/red team as Ken is wearing the #1 jersery. He should be wearing the #13 jersery at this point; but whatever. (Because Chargeman Ken is cursed, you see.) We cut to Barican and Caron cheering on as Clipper is cheering Ken and Caron is cheering on someone named Hoshi who I assume is on the blue team because Clipper is gravely offended by this. (Hoshi is believed to be voiced by the same guy who voiced Maou by the way.) I discover on the closeup shot that Hoshi is the #7 guy on the blue team and the yellow team numbers are #1-#4 in reverse order. (Even funnier, it's basically the same color scheme as Ken Izumi's outfit. They made no effort to make the color scheme look different.) That made me laugh for no reason at all.

Caron is cheering for Hoshi while Clipper is cheering for Ken. (Despite Hoshi being completely glassy eyed and no selling the response. I sense a red flag!) We go to center and we hike the football. Amazingly enough; Knack Animation does know how American style football works for the most part. (Compare that with TaleSpin and the animator trying to animate a billards game properly and ponder that Knack had a better sense of the game more than a show from 1990 with the best animation in DTVA up to that point.) Hoshi takes the ball and he rushes through the middle and of course everyone misses him with no impact sound effects whatsoever, because only 1% of the budget is on audio. (Someone is using a sliding scale on this measurement methinks.) Jump cut to Ken's face looking like he has back pain, complete with sky background to make sure we know that Ken is moving. Ken manages to tackle him down in a last ditch saving tackle; which is perfectly acceptable, and then everyone else dogpiles on them for no reason at all. That is unsportsmanlike conduct on everyone except Hoshi and Ken; so the violation off-sets and we replay the down. Not that this matters because Hoshi didn't score on the play anyway. Caron is crying about this grave injustice as Clipper is cheering for death it seems. Begs the question: Is Caron crying about Hoshi getting hurt; or getting screwed out of yards gained?! Or maybe the lack of sound effects in this show?! Caron is blaming Ken for burying Hoshi, even though it was Ken who tackled Hoshi down in a perfectly legal tackle. It was EVERYONE ELSE on the team that did the horrible act. (Including Hoshi's own team!) Caron seriously has sibling issues; which shouldn't surprise me given episode #1. Clipper tells her that this is how American style football is played. Then she stops selling and cheers for Hoshi again. (Yup, Star is fine.) Hoshi translates to "Star" or "hotel" by the way; which the later is funnier. Then a football is thrown in the air. I presume that they hiked the ball here; although I couldn't tell either way.Star leaps a good twenty feet in the air and grabs the football much to the dismay of Ken. Ken's mouth is so agape, I swear that he has finally realized how much his show sucks. By the way; the crowd sounds like three people and there were about twenty people for this game.

Hoshi grabs the football and rushes towards the end zone as everyone misses him again with no sound effects. More cringing Ken closeups with the background moving, Ken lunges, completely misses Star this time falling on his face and gulps in order to make his own sound effect. (When I mean cringe, it's Ken cringing, not the show making me cringe. Although there are times that will happen.) Star then does hand blocks on the rest of the team and dives into the end zone like Paper Mario jumping into bed for the touchdown. Caron is so impressed by this that she calls him dreamy and does the worst clapping I have ever seen as her hands barely made contact with each other. Clipper is pissed as we jump cut to the scoreboard as the camera of course screws this up as we only see two quarters clearly; and barely see a third quarter and the final score. Jump cut to Ken cringing as he tells us that Star scored every point in the game and Ken's team is down 18-0. Star's line would be three touchdowns. No extra points sadly; so the blue team's kicking game is horrible here. (Are you sure? I would think Star's line would be two TD's and two safeties with him kicking two good extra points. But still; a good line nevertheless.) We see the blue team cheering on Star who has taken his helmet off and has generic brown hair; so Caron is wrong about him being dreamy. Even human Steve Jackson from Fish Hooks was more dreamy than this. (Discotek Media: Caron says Hoshi is wonderful and Barican said darn it. Also, the football players behind Hoshi were cheering and that was choppy.) Then we get the clock scene changer of doom which does a black slug and then reserves field. (Another example of the bad timing this show has. The clock scene changer was done in The Wuzzles and even modern cartoons to much better timing I should note.) Scene change to inside a classroom as Ken is propped on a desk moping about his team getting their heads handed to them by one football player who needs to see Steve Jackson real soon. Closeup of Ken being a sore loser and swearing in DUBBED ANIME STYLE (Jeez, darn it!); and then a blue sleeve arm taps him on the shoulder. Ken turns around to see Star asking Ken for a favor as he is wearing a pink shirt with a blue sweater on top. (So, he raided Molly and Kit Cloudkicker's wardrobe and fused it like a Wuzzle. Bastard!)

Jump cut to the road as Star and Ken are riding on a motorcycle on the street. Star is wearing brown pants as Ken asks where they are going and Star proclaims that he wants to go to a secret hiding place so Ken can transform into Chargeman Ken because he has admirers. Anyone with an IQ of seven and over would figure out that this has to be a setup. (Yeah, Discotek Media clearly states that Hoshi is really the only admirer and just wants to see Ken transform. Remember in episode #2 that Ken has already transformed in front of the Jurals. So, this actually makes sense in storyline.) We head to a construction site which has not been abandoned yet; although no one is around today. Complete with barb wire fencing! They get off the blue motorcycle as Star wants to see Ken do his transformation sequence but Ken goldbricks on that deal because if anyone finds out, he would be in trouble. (Discotek Media has Ken saying that he never transforms in front of his friends. That promise will be broken soon enough. The fan subbers version is funnier and more into the chaos than the localized version. ) How would you be in trouble? What would be the consequences of blowing your cover? Even though Caron, Clipper and Mr. Izzy have already seen you transform in this series already. (At this point no less, minus Papa Izumi, that's still to come.) This is not a big secret; you are just being a jerk because you lost to him in a friendly game of tackle football. Just transform for him once; expose him as a Jural and get it over with. (Because like Wildwing and Freddy Jones, it's always one entity, except it's also like Wildwing in that this is all true because that is how Chargeman Ken is booked like Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series books Dragonus.) Star is praying for him to do it and swears on a stack of bibles that he won't say a word. (I'm not off base when I talk about the bible because he does swear and does the prayer pose!) Ken decides to accept, does his X sign, then leaps high in the air and comes down. That's it. This is where I got the idea for CHARGING, GO FISH~ from by the way. Like Baloo refusing to reveal where Kit was to Don Karnage in Plunder and Lightning Part III.

Star has the Gruffi pose on and blows him off for that false start because he's not stupid. Ken proclaims that you cannot use the CHARGING, GO FISH~ just because. Again; what will happen if he abuses the transformation sequence? Seriously; did something happen in episode #2 where he abused his power so that he cannot take this thing lightly now which would make sense?! (Nope! Nothing like that happened and Ken was supposed to be hapless in that episode.) Granted; Ken saying that he cannot be careless in using it is a perfectly fine babyface promo on it's own, but at least show actual consequences so that it doesn't sound like Ken is being an insecure jerk for losing a game to Star. Because this is what Ken sounds like in this promo. Star pleads for him to do it once and only once because it wouldn't hurt. Ken apologizes and proclaims that he is leaving. Ken turns around and tries to leave and then Star calls him "Chargeman Ken" in a much older voice and orders Ken to stop. Ken stops, turns around and Star looks evil. Here's the obvious problem with this: If Ken had transformed from the start as requested; Star would have exposed himself as a Jural anyway. Ken merely prolonged the episode and made himself look like a whiner in the process. (Again, Ken could have broken the rule and no one would have cared because Hoshi is a Jural in a human disguise looking for a fight.) Star's transformation into a Jural is so laughably bad that it was the best thing about this. His eye flashes in three colors; and the animators forget to flip Ken on the closeup looking horrifed so that he is looking to the west instead of the opposite side like it is here. Star Jural proclaims that he has him trapped so then Ken proclaims that he'll show him the transformation anyway and it's CHARGING, GO FISH~! Yes; for real this time. Star Jural gets on his motorcycle and starts to ram Ken; but Ken dodges as the children sing the Chargeman Ken song; which as always is the best thing about this show. At least this show has a decent soundtrack. Ken does the Astro Boy leap up as Hoshi Jural rams the motorcycle into a steel beam and SJ sweats like Oscar in Fish Hooks. His motorcycle shoot out the PINK COTTON CANDY BEAM OF DEATH from the headlights of the motorcycle. That was cool; and of course Ken dodges it easily, basically killing off Star Jural's finisher. He shoots a hole in the metal pipe as Ken is on a more cheesy steel beam and dodges again.

Ken then invokes the ASTROGANGER JUMP KICK OF DEATH (complete with anime background) and kicks him in the chest; which the animation make it look like he stomped on him with the sole of the boot with no animation whatsoever. Star Jural backflips some more in probably the best animation of the series -- thus assuring that this will not be a negative star episode at least -- and then jumps onto a chain containing steel beams and cuts the chain and freefalls complete with anime background. This was pretty dramatic even with Knack Animation; only for Ken to completely deflate it by simply bringing out his Alpha Gun and shooting Star Jural in the chest causing him to be vaporized along with the chain and the steel beams. Star Jural does make up for it with the funniest death scream you will ever hear. I need a drop of this scream. (Ken also went almost transparent for a few seconds as well.) Ken wipes his forehead on the upper pan shot; proclaiming that this was close. Yeah; Star actually put up a fight and had cool moves, but still got buried in less than a minute. (Hey, it's a six minute episode that actually had decent pacing for a change. This is the peak of decency on this show and you will not see it again until much later.) Zoom into his face and that is that. So we head to Ken's residence with good music and then in the living room as Caron is crying her eyes out as she, Ken and Clipper are sitting on the sofa. Ken explains to her that Star had transferred to a different school; which is a blantant lie because there was no indication that Star was anything but a disguised Jural. It was made clear at the beginning when Star leaped twenty feet in the air to grab the football before going into the end zone for a touchdown. What an liar Ken is?! It's one thing to kill Star because Star did act like a monster heel at the end, but a lie is still a lie Ken. You should be ashamed of calling yourself a babyface. (To be honest, Ken admitting that he killed Hoshi because he was a Jural probably would have been worse in hindsight.) Clipper tells Caron that he is still here for her and Caron is gravely offended by this as she calls Clipper stupid and hates him. (Discotek removed the stupid part by the way.) Yes folks; Caron is angry about Clipper merely saying that he still supports her, yet doesn't blow off her brother lying about Star Jural transferring to a new school when Ken killed Star because he was a Juralian alien in disguise.

Caron apparently threw the worst punch to Clipper's face that I have ever seen; as there was no zip to that punch. That said; at least the punch made contact and we saw the punch which is a massive improvement from Ducks By Nature. Cut to Ken laughing and kicking his legs like a jerk as Clipper somehow lost his head; but got it back again as Caron stops being angry and giggles. Caron begins laughing and kicking her feet as she is wearing green slippers for no reason. (I mention this because she was wearing her sock boots in one shot earlier in the scene and now the scene has her boots off and she's only wearing green slippers in a massive logic break.) Ken laughs with her as we slowly zoom out of the window towards the far shot of the residence and that ends the episode at 5:21. Seriously; this episode ran short so they had to pad the running time with a slow zoom out shot that took forever. STUPID! (Had they used half of that time into the fight, this might have gotten a legit thumbs in the middle episode.) This gets no rating on the trainwreck scale and is the best episode of the series, at ** (40%). (Nah, there is one or two episodes better than this, but it's in an amazing load of negative star episodes including the only episode that I gave a legit MINUS FIVE STARS~ in the history of my ranting career. And I'm not watching that one ever again.) But all of that is on Hoshi. Hoshi was in fact a good character and they actually gave him time to be a good foil for Ken in spite of the stupid finish. Otherwise; the animation was horrible, sound was horrible, music was good as always, Hoshi was awesome, the storyline was fine. It felt like a Mighty Hercules episode where the story was good and some of the characters were good; but the animation was horrible. Trust me; we are going downhill towards the earth's core now in terms of quality from here on out...

Episode #5: Terror! The Mummy Comes By Carriage!: (This is actually one of the few if any episodes where Discotek Media and Ironsharp's translation of the title of the episode was a perfect one to one!) Episode opened with a sky shot of a long ass plane and then cut to the windows as various kids are looking out. They looked lame for the most part as they point out something amazing. The lack of production values perchance?! Probably not. At least their mouths are moving as apparently a jump cut of the left wing of the plane was amusing to them. Then we cut to inside the plane as a woman in a blue dress with blue boots is addressing the passengers as she claims that they will be reaching Hokkaido soon (Which I'm certain would be changed if this was dubbed into English) which I think is the only really Japanese word on the show. (The woman in question is in fact the debut of Miss Nagisa, whom I believe is voiced by Kiiko Nozaki. She's merely Ken's teacher at the school.) Let's fasten our belt -- so we can be safe of course -- and one of the students is bored even though the airplane flight is thirty minutes long. SLACKER~! I just realized that the woman is in fact Ken's teacher as Ken asks about eating their boxed lunches when they touchdown. She blows him off nicely and Ken giggles so it was supposed to be a joke; and it sucked. (By the way, I think I found the first hair on the film in this series so far. A small one, but it's noticable on the top right of the screen.) Jump cut to the pilots in the front wearing all green with wireless transmitters; so this show was ahead of the curve in that department at least. Co-pilot is supposed to be shocked; but sounded bored out of his mind when talking as the pilot and is co-pilot realize that they are flying straight into a typhoon. Co-pilot claims that it's cherry blossom season -- thus proving that the show is in Japan --; but the pilot is going to fly in the typhoon for no good reason whatsoever. (The guise of this is that a typhoon in the middle of cherry blossom season is impossible. Maybe back in 1974 when human global climate change was less believable, this would work. 2024 sounds too believable to be possible and not be caused by some Juralian alien plot.)

We get the weakest pounding of waves I have seen -- although the animation was fine -- and then pan over to a city as the rain is pouring down. (That's the defintion of faint praise on my former self's part.) I swear that Hokkaido looks exactly like the city Ken lives in. (One of the pilots goes transparent; but even TaleSpin had this problem when Wang Film and even a Tamapro secondary episode is done.) We head inside the airport terminal as everyone made it in safely without any incident nor tension whatsoever. This was completely routine for the pilots. (The western pan shot went about a frame or so too long, as it exposed a recycled Caron Izumi in the same pose back in the last episode during the ending of that said episode.) Ken is looking out the window and he proclaims that it's weird to have a violent storm happening in the spring. You have NEVER lived in Nova Scotia my child! This happens all the time where I live! The teacher joins in on the back shot and she looks like she's annoyed by Ken's presence. The teacher who Ken called "Ms." earlier hopes that the weather will clear and the rain instantly changes to snow for no reason. (Remember what you said about Nova Scotia, my former self?! You are not that smart.) This goes on for a long ass whomping time as a horse arrives towards us and some old person with out of control white hair and elf ears is riding said horse looking like a goofball. It's laughing as the suspect is on a one horse open sleigh, HEY! The fiend is wearing a cyan bodysuit, a black tunic with a yellow daisy flower on the chest, a red cape and cyan blue gloves. (This is without question, the closest the show came in teasing a totally new villain that had nothing to do with the Jurals. Sadly, this character is a Juralian alien that didn't even try to be just a crazy human being with white hair.) Fiend is whiping the horse off-screen as we cut to somewhere on the ground as it's pouring rain again with two security guards who one of them looks like the pilot from earlier. The fat face security guard instantly chickens out and bails yelling mummy. (Dan Lambert, is this your future?! No, not really.) The other one brandishes his gun and then stops in a panic because here comes the mummy whipping the two horse open sleigh; HEY!

The mummy jumps from his horse as the guard shoots fire balls at the mummy's chest and the mummy completely no sells all. No wonder; there is no sound effects from that gun as the mummy invokes the DOUBLE EYE LASERS OF DEATH and completely vaporizes the holy living crap out of this guard. (Here's where no sound effects and really poor animation come into play: When I watched this again in 2024: The lack of sound effects, the fact that those "fire balls" were the size of bullets and the weather made it almost impossible to see, I assumed that the guard was literally scared and shaking his gun. Seriously! Then I read my former self's notes and thought that it either had a Mandella Effect or Discotek Media censored the scene. Nope! Former self was 100% correct and had better eye sight than me. This happens all the time in this show. You cannot tell what is going on almost half of the time and when you do, it's because of lack of visual and audio cues. This is what you get when you give no cares about the product at all. Sometimes it's hideously hilarious, sometimes it's awesome (Kick Buttowski's Last Fan Standing episode was the best episode of that series because they didn't care anymore.) However, more often than not, it's just hideous.) The scream from the guard sucked by the way as the mummy's laugh is hilariously annoying me now. This mummy has only five teeth and basically proclaims that he is going to slaughter all the humans in town, so at least he is playing the heel well. The banshee --- I'm guessing that this is what they were shooting for here -- bails as the teacher and Ken come out and notice the guard is dead with his eyes open. Ken instantly accuses the banshee of being a Juralian alien. How?! (The Freddy Jones conspiracy effect, everyone. Ken Izumi invented it and Freddy Jones stole it in 1988.) The teacher orders Ken to save the town right now. Yes; the adult is ordering Ken to be a child solider and Ken agrees to it. CHARGING, GO FISH~!! (Goodbye secret identity right there. Just to make the last episode make Ken look like a bigger whiner.) We even get singing for this one as Ken is riding the Sky Rod out of nowhere. Wait; what?! (Former self ranted these episodes out of order due to fansubbers getting the script before Discotek Media officially localized.) Get used to this guys!

You'll be seeing a lot of holes in the logic of this spot. (Okay, what?! I can understand the logic hole in episode #1 due to overkill and episode#2 due to Ken driving it before transforming; but Ken is going out in fierce weather here. This actually makes sense, former me. It ultimately kills the light gimmick from episode #2, but heaven forbid that Knack Productions' Z-grade team cares one lick at this point.) Did I mention that the Sky Rod has a circular silver ring rotating around at points? We jump cut back to the mummy whipping the horse again as Ken swoops in and uses the Sky Rod to clip one of the wheels of the sleigh. I have no idea why. Then we get the most absurd moment I have ever seen: The carriage crashes into a lamp post and the entire carriage, mummy and horse instantly burst into flames. I am NOT making this up! Somehow; the mummy is not touched at all as it curses Ken as Ken gets out of the Sky Rod proclaiming that he is not getting away. Personally; I like this mummy design of the Jurals over the normal one, so why didn't they just use this design?! It looked awfully cool in spite of being in the wrong cartoon to be using it. Mummy bails stage left and this show is alternating between pouring rain and snow shot per shot. I have no idea what the animators are shooting for here. Ken chases him and has jet boots on as we get a half dozen jump cuts as now they have decided that it's snowing. We see Ken's Alpha Gun and he fires it and shoots the mummy from behind like a cowardly heel and he gets vaporized. It's far worse because as mummy was bailing; he got smaller and smaller; that he was ant size when Ken shot him; making Ken look even worse as a babyface. (Ah, Ken's gimmick of shooting targets in the back. I wonder if it's just sadism, or a BS&P decision since the show didn't want head shot. Don't know. Don't care since the creators...you guessed it. Kill count is now ten, plus two horses however unintentional.) Closeup of Ken's face and then turns around as there are now at least EIGHT of these mummies on horseback laughing at him. (Okay, now the show is just doing this kill count for the sake of it. Also, let's Cartoon Duck Syndrome an episode that is only six minutes long.) At least the heels in this show act like heels as one of them tells Ken to die. They do the DOUBLE EYE LASERS OF DEATH IN STEREO~!

They have the same cotton candy color as Hoshi's headlight beam on the motorcycle; I approve of this. Sadly; only one of them actually reaches Ken and Ken easily dodges it. He goes to his belly and shoots his Alpha Gun basically killing every single mummy into vapor. One gets it in the upper thigh and dangerously close to the groin on one shot. Some of them are shooting yellow beams from the eyes and it doesn't matter because Ken dodges all with ease. He then hides behind a snowbank and yells that he must take them out all at once; so he takes to the air and shoots some more. The sound effects team is completely asleep at the wheel as usual. Here is what happens: Ken shoots the alpha gun and as this fight is going on; it's nailing the ground and cracking ice. The ice opens and I discover that they are either at a lake or on a frozen ocean which neither makes any sense whatsoever for various different reasons. Anyhow; the horses and the mummies go through the ice and drown as Ken does his finishing pose. Yes; one mummy killed a guard and Ken already killed it, and yet he then went on to kill EIGHT MORE of them afterwards. Granted; the mummies were trying to kill him, so it is understandable. However; Ken also killed the horses! What a horrible asshole Ken is?! Now; I would say that Ken is cruel but Baloo fried the feathers off of a condor in Destiny Rides Again, so this is not exclusive to Knack Animation. (So, the kill count stands with 18 Juralians, millions of butterflies, and eighteen horses; including two by fire and sixteen due to drowning. That kill count is going to get even more gruesome soon enough.) The final ice shot is a large hole in the icy lake as there are water ripples as the camera slowly zoom out and Ken watches on. (By the way, the sky shot of the water had ripples showing an icicle snowflake, which is symbolic of how Ken treats everyone.) We head back inside the plane as the kids ask Miss to please book a tropical island for the fall trip. That's stupid because tropical islands are most likely to be hit by typhoons and hurricanes. Anyhow; the glasses wearing kid with orange hair claims that he hates rain and snow. Miss agrees to book it as Ken chimes in that they should go there to see Ms. Nagia in a swimsuit! (What a creep?!) Nagisa is the same person who ran in to save Ken from X-6 in episode #8. Nagisa is wearing a green flower and she blows off Ken for being a jerk and Ken does the stupidest face I have ever seen as we jump cut to the exact same shot from the beginning of the episode which ends the episode at 5:20. (With no flourishing ending music at the end, despite it being a comedy spot.) Trust me; Ken is going to get much more heelish as time goes on. We will be begging for the days of seeing Ken making horses drown once this series is over. Episode was mostly crappy; but it's the usual stuff from Knack Animation. Call it 1/4* (5%). Again; no rating on the trainwreck scale.

Episode #6 - Uncanny! The Space Botanical Garden: Episode opens with a shot of a tower with the camera looking over what appears to be a lot of steel beams. Jump cut to a grassy area and pan left as the narrator I do believe debuts the concept that Chargeman Ken takes place in 2074; hence the hundred years statement and that it is in Japan. (I believe that this is the debut of the narrator, voiced by Fuyuki Takahashi I do believe.) If this came to America, it would be changed to America and the world instead of Japan and the world. Apparently; every school in Japan is contained in a single building. That's a load of BS as there is a pan shot of the upside down T tower as I mentioned in episode #8 later on, so this is the official debut as it is seventy stories tall. It's a one stop school learning center, which is so 1900's it isn't funny. (The school actually has a name: Yoi Elevator School; since you need an elevator to go to the top, you see.) Jump cut to a shot of the windows and the classrooms as everyone is in blue shadows not moving, because there is no animation present and we are already thirty seconds into this thing. They repeat the exact same shot pan three times in a row. Jump cut to a red haired girl in a pink shirt with a red butterfly on it, green pants, and yellow butterfly clips in her hair looking like a statue. Pan west to a boy with glasses and brown hair wearing an orange cheese shirt and blue pants. He might be the cheese reporters' son for all I know (See episode #12 for that reference!). Jump cut to Ken doing the weakest writing I have ever seen and the artwork looks pathetic here. This is the first sign of actual movement almost fifty seconds in. Jump cut to a glass cup of blue liquid on a television monitor and three test tubes on a wooden test tube holder, all filled with blue liquid. Then the picture fades out and in comes Miss Nagisa from the previous episode to address the students that it's time for some off-campus lessons as they are going to District M on a field trip to the Space Botanical Garden; because of course, in 2074; 90% of the green space throughout the world has been destroyed by mankind. No wonder some fans were defending the Jurals here; the humans are almost as bad as Ken Izzy is at being babyfaces. Almost.

A green suited brown haired boy with blue stripes across the shirt stops writing and tries to leave, but Nagisa cuts him off. He is addressed as Nishino by the way as we tease something, but then jump cut to outside with Nagisa and the students. I have no idea what they are doing, other than being in blue shadows. Jump cut to shots of the city and then a shot of a Japanese sign which reads "Space Botanical Garden". Jump cut to a shot of Ken's legs with Nagisa as everyone gets off the moving sidewalk. Jump cut to a completely different sign that says the same thing; so apparently, no one has any idea what is going on. Jump cut to Ken running in the SBG with a notepad as he is stopped by Barican and Caron. Why? Why not?! Ken demands that they go home because this isn't fun and games. Wait; so Caron and Barican sneaked off to join Ken? You know; all Caron had to say was that she and Barican were given premission from Mr. and Mrs. Izzy to go to the SBG and they brought a pass to go inside. That would make sense. Is the BSG only open to students, then?! None of this is explained and they had lots of time to explain why Caron is here. None of this makes any sense! Caron wants to join in and claims that she will blend in with the student. Why bother with is if there's no indication that the BSG is not open to the public? So Nagisa wants Ken to come inside and Ken decides to let Caron and Clipper follow him. Jump cut to Caron and Clipper walking behind Ken with Clipper inside the hamster ball during this. Even more hilarious, Nagisa is in the scene and she clearly sees Caron and Clipper behind Ken, but she has to pretend that she cannot see them. Now; if they had a clue, Nagisa would say that the SBG is open to the public, everyone giggles at Caron and moves on. (Also we get to laugh at Ken for being a geek.) But they don't have a clue as we jump cut to see various plants, some of them look like smiling green octopii. Seriously! So the students see plants for a while to no animation. By the way; the walking sequence with Nagisa and the kids was piss poor. The way Clipper speaks and his voice is downright raspy that I swear he was smoking during delivering this line. Clipper admits that this sneaky move was all his idea. Ken blows him off , tells them to stay behind him and shut up.

Nagisa points out flowers and talks about an seedling that was born on Earth and raised on another planet before returning to Earth and landing in the SBG. It's the same seed; but in a different climate and thus it was different compared to the other plants. Then she gasps badly as we jump cut to a red haired girl in a cyan blue shirt with a red clip in her hair crying while being squeezed by purple tentacles. Of course; since this animation team doesn't exist; it's a still frame with shaking the camera to simulate movement. Yeah; it's not just for explosions. Everyone is shocked and appalled as Ken runs in -- dropping his white clipboard -- as the girl's sleeves change from cyan blue to green. Next shot: Chargeman says "darn it" and teases throwing the POWER OF THE PUNCH; but the next shot shows him with his arms up as he's against a giant man eating plant which looks nothing like the plant that was eating the girl in the previous two shots! Jump cut to a set of green tentacles with needles, yellow spots and red stripes on them whipping in the frame. Children gets tied up and raised into the air as more children are shown shocked and appalled. (One of the students is wearing a shirt with a cursive D on the front.) Jump cut to a zoom in shot of the worst piranha plants in history. Everyone runs stage left as the brown hair boy is weaking a cyan blue suit and pants with polka dots on; looking like he is in his pj's. They all get caught and the tentacles are even wrapping themselves around their necks, a move that would be cut out had this been localized in America. (Despite TaleSpin allowing one of the goons of Trader Moe to grab Baloo's neck in the television show and a henchperson grabbing Kit's neck in a comic story. BS&P is weird.) Jump cut to Ken looking like he's ready to do some karate in front of Nagisa as we hear laughing from either a Jural or Satan. It's Maou's voice by the way, so Satan it is. We discover that Satan is pissed off at the humans because they grew the seedling on their own planet and these plants turning on them is the Jurals' revenge. Yes, the Jurals have turned babyface once again. Why doesn't that surprise me?! The Jurals turn on their heel to monster form by claiming that they are going to exterminate everyone on Earth for this. By the way; how is Satan talking to them; because there is just white waves and no device coming out. Not even an afterimage of Satan talking to Ken. This show is a horrible joke! A cruel, horrible joke!

Ken jumps into the air as it's CHARGING, GO FISH~! Now; remember that moment for now because I'll be going back to it in a moment. Speaking of bad moments; jump cut to something containing eleven Jurals. What the hell?! Oh; it's the ocean floor as the Aqua Rod drives through the Jurals; and then Ken jumps out of the Sky Rod/Aqua Rod and tells them to come for him. What?! Why does he need...Oh, forget it! This show's logic has no logic to it so let's just shoot the Jurals dead, yee-haw! (Yes, the Sky Rod doubles as a submarine, why do you ask?! Of course, using it makes sense since the story is that the fight takes place on the ocean floor. The kill count is now 29 Juralian aliens by the way.) Yes; there were literally no sound effects during this fight; outside of the music, and the dead screams. Ken then shoots a white crystal pillar with the Alpha Gun and it glows white; as we finally get actual sound effects, purple sparks, white sparkles and we cue the EXPLOSION PAINTINGS OF DEATH~! Jump cut to a shot of Ken blinding us with the white light on him. Somehow; this makes everyone in Fish Hooks look like total wimps when Steve Jackson takes off his shirt. Then we get a lot of shaking underwater; then a cut to the top of the pillar as it crumbles as somehow an entire spaceship is inside the SBG. WHAT THE HELL?! Half of the plants in the place die as the students and Nagisa are shocked. Jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper together as Ken is no longer Chargeman Ken. Ken then tells Nagisa that planting seedling on an unknown planet is a bad idea. Nagisa agrees with that sentiment since evil planets are targeting them. Okay; remember what I said earlier about remembering the transformation sequence: Well; Clipper blows this off because Chargeman Ken can beat them and Ken covers Clippers' mouth and threatens to scold him for saying that. WHAT?! If Ken was trying to shut him up claiming that he has a secret identity; ahem: EVERYONE IN THE SCENE SAW KEN IZZY CHANGE INTO CHARGEMAN KEN~! Nagisa not only saw Ken change in episode #5; she was the one telling Ken to stop the Juralian Mummy! What an insecure "hero", huh?! Clippers busts loose and tries to bail stage right; but pratfalls on his face, to no sound effects again, causing everyone to laugh, and I have no clue what they are laughing at. This ends the episode at 5:20. Yeah; this was **** on the trainwreck scale; for half of the episode having no animation, really confusing staging, the dumbest tagalong angle in history, artwork sucks, continuity sucks and an ending that makes zero sense and makes Ken look like an asshole. - *** 1/4 (-65%).

Episode #7 - Ken The Westerner! (Officially Translated Title: Man Of The West, Ken!): Episode opened with a ground shot of some horse's legs. Jump cut to Ken on said horse wearing a cowboy hat and has a holster with a gun in it. Yes folks; he's supposed to be 12 years old, why do you ask? (Well; Honker and Webby have held legit guns before, so whatever 2014 Me. Kit would probably have twirled one too if the storyline allowed.) Pan over to Caron on her horse and she is wearing a green cowboy hat for absolutely no reason whatsoever and has a belt on. Caron claims that she is a lady gunfighter as we pan over to Barican -- also known as Clippers for those who were paying attention -- on his horse wearing the lamest cowboy hat he could find, claiming to be a robot gunman. Sure you are, Clippers! Ken then notices dust clouds somewhere; but there are none because we see a bunch of overly racist stereotypical indians on horses with axes. At least the one they showed on the close up had an axe. One of the natives in the background looks completely transparent, like he is in a B&W drawing, and this show is in color. The white horse is bopping his head up and down as we get the stereotypical native American yell of death. I shouldn't be surprised by this; since I have seen Jynx and Mr. Popo enough times to know that the Japanese (still) do not understand western stereotypes. Jump cut to Caron and Clipper looking bored; and I'm certain Caron didn't say "what" in Japanese here. (Discotek had it as "hmm", as they looked so confused like they never been in a western before.) Ken tells Caron to hide behind the rocks because it's a man's job you see. I discover that Clippers is also riding the most sickly jackass he could find as well. He tries to do the "Heigh Ho Silver" promo and fails badly. (Barican in the Discotek Media version does a similar promo, but calls his pony a Nag. Maybe we should call Sony Ponies a bunch of Nags. Same reference, since they also nag us in a different and more toxic context.) Jump cut to the indians on horses and there is absolutely no sound at all here, thus the sound effect budget is gone barely thirty seconds in. Jump cut to Caron, Ken and Clippers behind a rock shooting their guns; which actually had sound effects. (Be jealous, DTVA characters!) The way they drew Clippers shooting the gun is hidiously hilarious here.

Jump cut to close up of gun shooting; then a jump cut to the indian in the white horse falling off the horse, none of this was animated of course. Jump cut to Clippers gloating about his "awesome" shooting moves. Riiigggghhhtttt. Clipper does the hanging gun spot and then bails as more gunfire ensues; more indians get shot in the chest and none of them spill blood; which is weird because this show does show actual bleeding from time to time. (Ironically, despite return gunfire, none of the natives on horses had guns. WHAT?!) Jump cut to Indian on white horse turning around and bailing. Wait; didn't he fall off his horse? Or was the spot just the horse panicking? I cannot tell as we jump cut back to Clipper mocking them for being cowards like the useless racist sidekick that he is. Jump to closeup of sign which Ironsharp translated as the O.K. Corral. (Same as Discotek Media.) Ken and his horse enter area. Jump cut to blond haired man on horse wearing a blue shirt and a green vest and I swear to god on the back shot, he might be Freddy Jones from Scooby Doo. I hope that is true. (Scooby-Doo was released like five years before this show, so copyright infringement would be possible.) Jump cut to two adult cowboys looking bored and as crapply drawn as ever as Clipper's jackass arrives, Clipper is biting his gloves in fear and doesn't like this at all. Jump cut to Ken who has now teleported to inside the saloon for no reason at all. Jump cut to a table with three cowboys; two of them are playing cards and one of them is drinking a pint of beer for fun. He has the most bigoted nose you will ever see. Jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper at the counter as an old man missing some teeth asks the kids what they would like to drink as Clipper orders milk and we jump cut to the cowboys giggling at this. (Which is a rare attention to detail moment: It's taboo for a gunfighter to ask for milk or anything that doesn't contain alcohol because alcohol makes you a man and milk makes you a cuck. Toxic masculinity, everyone.) Jump cut and pan shot of more cowboys including one smoking an unlit cigar. We pan over to Caron, Clipper and Ken watching the cowboys as Caron claims that they are the three wanted men. I swear it looked more like seven or eight men; but heaven forbid if Knack Animation can get anything straight in this show.

The one smoking the cigar with blue hair and the fat lips stands up and calls out Gunmen Ken; which is funny for all the wrong reasons of course. Clipper's sticks his head into his business and the cowboy blows him off and shoves Clipper away. Then the cowboy -- who has apparently gained an eyepatch and has black hair now on the next shot -- starts threatening Caron (of course!) and Caron blows him off. Now; Ken is ordering the cowboy to piss off, and he looks like he couldn't have cared less. Like it was so routine to him to say this. The cowboys jump cut and tell him to piss off with the tough guy act as Ken tells us that they are the Three Outlaw Brothers. The TOB's! Which is BOT spelled backwards! Thank you for giving away the surprise there, Ken. (Discotek Media said the same thing without making it sounds like an actual group's name. Discotek Media also called the town Saibu Town and I'll explain why this is stupid later...) The Freddy Jones cowboy chimes in that they commit robberies and murder people as the cigar cowboy tells Ken to stop running his mouth. I would be more concerned about Ken's idealogy on who is a good guy and who is a bad guy at this point. Jump cut to Clippers looking tough and you has Tummi's belly. I cannot take anything you say seriously. That tummy sucks! Cigar cowboy gets in Clippers' face and Clipper apologizes because he's a useless racist sidekick, of course. (Not only that, Barican stammers and says "Sorry" in English!) He gets shoved down; even though the animation made it look like the most contrived slap you would ever see. The cowboy motions Caron to come over here; but Ken cuts it off because Caron is a girl and she has to be useless in 1974. Today; she kicks this sexist's ass to the moon, wins, and even the males would be cheering for her to do it. So, cowboy takes out his gun and somehow Ken was able to get his gun well before the cowboy did. Ken shoots the gun out of his hand with ease. Clipper is complaining about wanting a piece of him instead of Ken. Sure you do Clipper; sure you do. The Freddy Jones whacks a mug into Ken's face; which Ken blocks with ease; and then all three cowboys -- which two of them look almost exactly like the cigar smoking cowboy -- lunge at Ken. Ken somehow shoves them away; and then we jump cut to Clipper stomping the Freddy Jones cowboy calling him a bum, swine, scumbag, scum and jerk in that order. Geez; don't forget to tell them how you really feel Clipper?! (Discotek basically has Clipper calling him a jerk over and over again! Ironsharp's translation was better here.) At least the left foot stomps appeared to be right in the cowboy's groin by the way.

Jump cut to Caron on the counter killing one of the hunched over cowboy (with grey hair) on the stool (NOT THAT ONE!) with a frying pan. Ken then does a really good uppercut as we even see the yellow line of the projectery of the actual punch on the cigar cowboy of doom. (Ken is literally a two punch boy, since he punched the cowboy in the stomach before the uppercut.) Cowboy goes flying nowhere as we see them laying in a heap literally one second later because Knack animation sucks. Pan over to Clipper wiping his hands clean of this crappy show and he failed badly in that. Clipper calls them not tough as Ken wants them to come with him to continue on the journey. We jump cut to a shot outside on a hill with the Wang Film-equse shadows of doom of the "babyfaces" (Scare quotes intentional, of course). Jump cut to Ken riding horse doing the Rocket Robin Hood style walking of the background moving. They get cut off by the three "heels" which makes no sense at all as they call Ken out for a gunfight. Ken proclaims that for their own sakes that they should have quit while they still had the chance. Can I get a drop of that?! (Discotek Media ruined that drop, so find Ironsharp's translation of it. It's better.) Cigar cowboy tells him to shut up (and thus turns babyface) and we get a very long staredown, followed by Clipper's jackass eating hay for no reason at all. Then it whines as we hear gunshots and then we see the heels and babyfaces with guns out and smoke coming out of them. I'm certain that firearms do not cause smoke. Sparks maybe; but not smoke. (Forsenic Files says you are full of crap former me.) The "heels" smile and fall on their backs dead and no impact sound comes out. By the way; if you have been reading my rants, I pointed this out in Dave The Barbarian as well. It's less of an excuse in Dave The Barbarian than it is in Chargeman Ken; because CK is on a shoestring budget and DTB is not. Jump cut to Clipper blowing his gun like Bugs Bunny, in one of the few cool spots Clipper has ever done while Caron giggles over how absurd Clipper is. Then we pan over to Ken and a conveniently placed sign which says "Saibu". Ironsharp pointed out that it was supposed to say "Seibu" which is the romance name for "Western". The romance name for "Saibu" is "Details". (This is was not translated by Discotek Media, which is a shame because it' would have been hilarious.) A laughable freudian slip if I ever saw one.

Ken wants to head home and Caron panics because all the "heels" have surrounded the "babyfaces". This completely gives away the fact that this whole thing is a work. An unconvincing work because if this were done by a better company, we would have seen fake blood at least and how fake blood works in a worked Western. We pan over to the cigar cowboy who has taken his hat off and clutches it to his chest as we discover that they are all robots, so they wouldn't have legit bled anyway. He thanks them for coming to the Robot Western Town and bows. (Discotek Media has this more or less the same name: Robot West Town.) Caron and Ken are confused as Clipper is not impressed at all with Caron's comment that they are different to Clipper. I don't know why; Clipper looks nothing like a human being. He looks like a robotic anime character in a crappy show. (Or the perverse pre-cursor to Mobile Suit Gundam's Haro since that production was about five year away from existing at this point.) Caron pulls the hat down over Clipper's eyes -- which looked crappy -- as Ken wants to return home for dinner. (Discotek Media was a lot more roundabout about Caron's comment on comparing Clipper to the robots. Sort of like the Juralian aliens plans in this show, so that made me laugh.) The "babyfaces" all ride into the sunset in shadow while the cigar cowboy and then we get a closeup of his face. His right eye turns yellow and then we superimpose an image of a Jural alien laughing before jump cutting to the cowboy again. This was crap! He proclaims that he knows who Chargeman Ken is and he'll be back for more fun and thus he will use a real gun to murder him. Wait; so the guns were in fact fake?! Geez; even the TaleSpin comics used real bullets in their shooting gallery segment, Idiots Abound! Then we hear laughing in the background which sounds great at least; causing the alien to be surprised as we then jump cut to Ken on a cliff on his horse. The horse is position so badly that it should be sliding and freefalling down the cliff in real life; but it just stands there. Ken calls out the "heels"; and the "heels" look up in shock. Ken calls this a hunch and really?! How did you figure this out Ken Izzy?! He must be watching his own show at the same time! That's creepy!

Jural alien brings out his gun -- still in cowboy form -- and demands that they shoot Ken dead. Ironsharp used damn here; but swear words in Japan are just one word anyway and thus can range from darn to shit. Legends of Localization has a great scoop on that during the Mother 3 translation that everyone should read. (To be fair; Discotek Media also used damn here as well.) Guns are a shooting. Ken and his horse jump off the cliff as Ken yells at the Jurals. In midair, it's CHARGING, GO FISH~! We even get the lyrical music for this episode! Ken transforms into Chargeman Ken and we have a staredown with the Jurals disguised as cowboys. Second "damn" of the episode from Ironsharp as the Cigar Jural Cowboy proclaims that playtime is over and we fight for real. (Discotek Media didn't use damn here, which is odd since the heels said it.) Ken doesn't care as the Freddy Jones Jural gets shot. Wait; WHAT?! Ken shoots at the Cigar Jural Cowboy with the Alpha Gun of course. Somehow; CJC gets shot in the chest; but the animation acts as if both he and the background Jural got shot. I am watching La Purfect Crime again only Chip has in fact being watching a Western. That's horrifying. (The shot also looked like it got the cowboy in the penal area. This show is not afraid to literally emsculate their men by boys. Sadly, there was an episode in Ducktales where someone was supposed to kick someone else in the chest, but the shot looked like a kick to the groin area. It's not just a Kanck thing.) I do like the children singing the song in this; so it entertained me to see that we instantly cut away from them and never see them get vaporized. (Since only three Juralians were robot, the kill count is now at 32!) We get a sunset in the west; then a pan shot over to the "babyfaces" on horseback; as we jump cut to a closeup with Ken calling the sunset beautiful and Caron calling it romantic. Jump cut back to the sunset background and the music ends the episode at 5:20. This is *** on the trainwreck scale for the badly named Saibu sign and the overt Native American stereotypes with badly designed horses and backgrounds. Call it -** (-40%). Only about a half dozen spots actually hit and only three or four moments were animated, including the transformation sequence.

Episode #8 - Juralian X-6: Episode opened with a shot of an upside down T shaped building complete with episode card. (This is the school from episode #6 since former me was ranting the episodes out of order. Also the second episode title that is one to one with Ironsharp's translation.) We jump to Ken sitting on the grass with an easel and a #2 pencil making probably the most animated faces you will ever see in the series. Ponder that for a moment and shudder. He draws for a while and then sizes up his easel and doesn't like it. (Sadly, we never got to see what Ken was drawing because I shudder to think what Knack would have done with this. Since it didn't play into the storyline, it was probably for the best we didn't see it.) Jump cut to a violet haired woman wearing a purple/red dress and violet boots in the far background. We then get a closeup of her face with red earrings and her upper turtleneck is green with an orange blotch on the lower left side of the screen; because when it comes to continuity; Knack Animation sucks at it! She transforms into a Jural alien; thus killing the entire suspense of the episode in less than thirty seconds. Way to go, writers! Then we jump cut to the exact same shot when we first saw the Jural alien woman as a woman for no reason whatsoever. Either this is a massive logic break; or the worst superimpose I have ever seen. I'm guessing that it's the later. So she invokes the ZAP LASER OF DEATH on a tree while rising her arms. I swear to god that the laser beam came from her right nipple. (As much as this sounds like a Knack motif, there is a lot of anime that has lasers coming out of nipples, regardless of gender. One of them is Lavo's second form from the video game Chrono Trigger that was kept even outside of Japan!) Of course we have no sound effects despite the fact that the tree is being cut; and even worse, it appears the tree is bleeding crimson red, like a human being would. Ken turns around and panics yelling at everyone to look out. A boy and a girl (wearing a crappy sunflower hat) bail and it appears that they were nowhere near the tree. (This was added to kill time, there was no reason to show it otherwise.) There was also a jump cut to a shot of a tree bending. Why? WHY NOT~?! Ken then falls on his face for absolutely no reason whatsoever and this bump actually had a sound effect of Ken gulping.

Another closeup shot of the woman's face and now the orange splotch is purple like it should be. She does the EVIL SMILE OF DEATH as I swear that her face is as scary as any monster on The Mighty Hercules. I would not be shocked if that show was animated overseas in Japan. I hope it was because it looks similar to Knack animation; only crisper in some respects. (Sadly, it wasn't.) She giggles as we watch tree dominoes for a while. Then the tree manages to say "screw you" to her and falls towards her -- although they spliced a tree going the wrong way in one shot --as she is horrified and cowers in fear. A Jural is scared of a falling tree?! Really now?! (Just vaporized the tree completely with your laser, you fool! It's as organic as human beings are. This show is a horrible cruel joke for a reason!) She has a red stripe in the middle of her chest going vertically for no reason. She pratfalls on her face like Ken. Two sides think alike eh? Then Ken jumps in as the JAW tries to stand up, Ken tackles her away from the tree which crashes onto the ground, and that is given an actual sound effect. Jump cut to Ken and JAW lying on the ground and Ken yelps in pain because his feet were crushed by the tree. GEEK! (Even more obvious when Ken was so far away from the tree and had more than enough time to dodge the tree without killing himself. The animators are bigger geeks than Ken are here.) JAW stands up as a male voice comes out of nowhere telling her to kill Chargeman Ken right now. I'm certain that was Satan saying it; but considering how stupid this show gets; it might be Clippers at this point; just for a rib. (It's Maou obviously.) This Jural actually has a name called Juralian X-6 which is basically a naming scheme for the main character in My Life Is A Teenage Robot. Did the voice say "Cross Loader" in English? You wish you were in Digimon Fusion pal. (Geez, you are only encouraging Ironsharp to school you again at this point. Surprised the user didn't. I guess this means kill.) X-6 out of nowhere produces a dagger and points it in such a way doing this face that screams "I am the worst assassin in history". Then a woman and two kids -- I presume it was the same two kids who bailed earlier; but knowing this show, they cannot get them straight -- run in causing X-6 to bail like a coward stage left. (It's two kids from the school and Miss Nagisa running in. This makes sense actually.)

So, the group is trying to wake Ken up, who is out cold. Then we jump cut to a Jural alien whipping the living crap out of X-6 with two Jural aliens and Satan looking on. This was of course torture; but at least the Jurals are supposed to be irredeemable monster heels; so it works out in the end. (Yeah, sexual assault as a term is so overused at this point that calling it that is the wrong thing here. Torture is a perfect term for this.) I'll say this though: As crappy as this show gets; the writers at least get what makes a villain. It's not like Vince Russo where he has no idea what makes a hero and what makes a villain. Granted; the hero part in this show might be worse than what Russo does, but you cannot say that this show doesn't know how to make a villain. Satan on the closeup as he is blowing off X-6 for being an idiot; and he was completely off-model here, and somehow this was an improvement. Apparently; the Jurals have discarded emotions because those base are inferior. So, her evil laugh is not an actual emotion?! That's an interesting defintion of emotion there. (Not to mention that Satan was angry, which is a form of emotion by the way. Discotek had it as forgotten, which makes less sense since discard makes it intentional.) Still; that is what heels should do, so good for them at least. (Yeah, denial and hypocrisy go hand in hand, don't they?) X-6 attempt to sell pain was horrible as Satan wants no more excuses and wants X-6 to kill Chargeman Ken; which X-6 agrees to do. (X-6 no selling pain makes somewhat sense if they were discarding emotions, but the gimmick is killed instantly so it means nothing.) Scene change to another upside down T building; only it looks more Middle Eastern style. Jump cut to a bedroom with Ken lying down with green cover and casts on both legs complete with a pink blanket. Ken's dad Mr. Izzy is so concerned about the well being of his son that his mustache has turned white. The doctor (your typical stereotypical doctor with grey facial hair) informs Mr. Izzy that his brain waves and EKG readings are normal; and should fully recover in two weeks. (By the way, Papa Izumi looks like Tom Selick.) Jump cut to a closeup of Ken's face sleeping.

Yes; they make no mention of the fact that he has TWO broken legs. (Discotek Media did mention a blow to the body which is hilarious because while the legs are part of the body, why can't a doctor say "blow to the legs"? What's wrong with saying that? Please explain this to me that makes sense.) There is no way Ken Izzy recovers in two weeks fully; unless he is a god. (Please remember that for the finish. Discotek Media did make it more hilarious by claiming that it was ONE WEEK! Sorry Ironsharp, Discotek outsmarted you this time because that makes what happens next slightly more hideously hilarious.) Jump cut to hallway and pan east to jump cut of X-6 in a nurse outfit looking evil as usual. She claims that she has sneaked in perfectly which sounds awkward, but it's a fan translation, what can you do? So, jump cut back to Ken sleeping in his bed looking dead. Jump cut to side shot of X-6 in nurse's outfit with her dagger in hand and her outfit changes completely purple on that shot. This is like MS Paint where you didn't draw enough pixels to encase the spots to color and then used purple paint on the spot. Dagger sparkles. (Is Sunwoo involved in this show?!) and then jump cut to shot of her face and everything has a purple coat of paint. At least this is meant to be artistic, but the setup was crappy so it came off as laughably awful. Her voice sound effects were the best things about this as we jump cut to her arms shaking. Jump cut to Ken from the sky shot and he looks legit dead now. Then we get the same side shot from earlier and it's completely in shadow and her left arm bleeds into her head when she raises the dagger above her head. When Chargeman Ken is crappy; it is hideously hilarious! The dagger sparkles again and that is enough for Ken to wake up and panic; and he looks like he is opening his mouth to say "AHHHHHHH" from a doctor. That was funny; for all the wrong reasons. Jump cut to a closeup of X-6 raising the dagger up; and it's perfectly drawn. Ken rises up and is wearing blue/white striped pjs; which he should be wearing as his main outfit, but he has no fashion sense, so there you go. He instantly concludes that she is a Jural alien; despite the fact that Ken never saw her as such at any point in this episode. HOW?! Then we get another completely shadowed side shot; only X-6 is sweating like Oscar from Fish Hooks at a Oscar cloning station.

We then hear Satan's voice getting pissed off that X-6 has not murdered Ken yet. Hey Maou; the boy has TWO broken wheels, it's not like he is going anywhere. (BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, the pitfalls of watching this show cold.) X-6 grits her teeth, then drops the dagger on the floor and falls to her knees admitting that she cannot kill Chargeman Ken. Considering that Ken always wins; this Jural alien has something Satan never had in this show: common sense with simple booking. Ken is watching on in shock and apparently grabbing on his red ascot like a noose during this as X-6 asks why he saved her. Ken claims that it's obvious because Ken never knew she was a Jural alien until right now; which doesn't make sense, but his motive makes sense at least. X-6 is having a breakdown talking about having emotion that she was suppose to discard. If this was done on a better show; this would be a great moment, but this is Knack Animation, so anything that involves pathos is so laughable that it comes off as memorable for all the wrong reasons. She runs out as Ken has teleported onto the floor on his knees and somehow has his Ken sweater with him. X-6 runs out into the hallway and is cut off by three Jural aliens who blow her off for failing in her orders to kill Chargeman Ken. One of the Jurals zaps X-6 in the chest and she turns into a Jural and then does the disappearing vaporization spot right in front of Ken who has somehow changed into his regular outfit a mere five seconds after teleporting to the floor. WHAT?! He is still wearing the casts on his leg as he is shocked and appalled. (By the way, after EIGHT episodes; this is the first time a Juralian alien was killed by the Jurals and NOT Ken. Remember my reminder from earlier? Well, Ken is God (whom in the bible genocided millions and millions of humans (among other spieces) and Satan/Maou is well, Satan (who killed no more than ten humans). UNREAL! Worse, it's not like this show is shying away from it as there is a literal preacher who thumps their bible and a Christian church in later episodes!)

I pretty much knew what was going to happen next: Ken transforms causing both of his legs to be fully healed. This makes no sense at all because they use the same transformation sequence in every episode; which means his Burl Rupxin shoes instantly disappear and we'll never seen them again. Then he kicks the Jural's ass like nothing had happened to him. X-6 does a great job of providing the worst death screams I have ever heard. It sounds like someone gurgling water in their mouths while brushing their teeth; which is still better than having zero sound effects for the laser beam. (Jim Cummings actually stole this for the Don Karnage getting electrocuted with the Sub-Atomic Power Amplifier in Plunder and Lighting Part IV.) The Jurals proclaim that she betrayed them and then rush Ken as Ken struggles to get up; and then it's CHARGING, GO FISH~!! Yeah; just what I predicted, he stops selling like Sting when he makes the comeback in pro wrestling. Jump cut to No Sell Izzy with his laser gun and he shoots it three times while not moving; killing all three Jurals as they get vaporized; and then we get a laughable moment as Ken goes into his closeup pose while twirling his gun. This would have been fine; but they used the wrong background as they made it look like he was outside instead of being in the hallway when he vaporized the aliens. STUPID! (Murder with a smile, eh?! So, the kill count is 35 Juralian aliens for Ken, while for Maou, it's like less than five at this point, although it is the first Jural that was murdered. Maou will somewhat make up for the kill count when this is over, but for goodness sakes...) Zoom into Ken's face; and then we jump cut to outside with a shot of a top of a tree with a sunset. Slow pan down to the ground as we see Ken in shadow with a bunch of flowers which we clearly see on the closeup. Ken proclaims that he'll never forget X-6; which I'm certain will be a lie because this writing team doesn't know what continuity is. (Yup, Ken never brings it up again. So episodic of you, show.)

Then Ken proclaims that he was thinking that opponents like her were among the Juralians; which Ironsharp thought was comical. I don't think the problem is that he called her an opponent per se; in that he called her someone who was an opponent of the Jurals despite being one herself. That makes sense at least; so I think the way it was translated was awkward. Ken throws the flowers down and wipes the no tears from his eyes saying goodbye to her as Caron and Clipper run in for no reason. Now here's some BS: Caron informs Ken that they are having a big supper to celebrate Ken coming home from the hospital. Considering that his transformation was the reason that he is fully healed, why doesn't this surprise me?! So Ken and company leave as Ken has stopping giving a crap about X-6 (of course!) as we see the sun setting over the green mountains to end the episode at 5:21. No one should be surprised by the writing team having to make Ken care more about supper than someone who just got killed by her own kind. Ken's behavior will get MUCH worse than this; trust me on that one. This was ** on the trainwreck scale just for the Sting-equse miracle healing at the end and the laughable attempt at a somber tone which would have been fine if this were made by a better animation company and didn't have Caron and Clipper at the end turning the pathos into a complete joke. Call it -** 1/4 (-45%).

Episode #9 - Enter, The Juralmons!: Episode opens BEFORE HAPPY HOUR (Sunset) with ocean waves crashing as we jump cut to a large cruise ship riding on waves which are animated. Jump cut to a sea captain -- who is a white mustached male -- with binoculars looking at the water as his mate is at the wheel as the Captain claims that there is something shining ahead. Umm; shouldn't it be "something shiny up ahead"? (Ah, no; this is fine as speech. What is wrong with you today?) The wheel mate thinks it's a lighthouse; but the image is shining against the water; so he's a moron. Out from the water comes a giant snake like metal dragon with red horns and fangs. Somehow; the captain and his wheelmate got into the ship and are looking out the window. The ship mate has gotten older, changed his nose and hair and is naked from the waist down. Seriously! Like I was kidding when I said that this show is a horrible joke? Here's a tip for future animators: Never color your pants to match skin color. Nothing good comes out of it. The ship tries to wheel it out and exposes the pant color to match the skin color even more now as the ship goes in the southern direction on the sky shot. Jump cut to Jural-Ryu (That's my name for the dragon and I'm sticking to it!) riding on the water towards the west. Jump cut to the Swiss Cheese Underground Jural Hideout of Death and jump cut to Satan inside smirking with a green parasite background. He watches the monitor as it's completely blue in the background with the Jural-Ryu as Satan claims that his best minds built that machine. The official name for it is called...wait for it...Juralmon. *HEADDESK*. This has to be an embellishment by Discotek Media, it cannot be anything else. No self-respecting fan would ever use a Digimon reference for this stupid thing. (So, wait; former me is already complaining about something that was shown translation on the damn title card at the beginning of the episode?! I cannot take this rant seriously. You suck! To make the thing even more silly, it's NOT a Discotek embellishment at all since the literal translation is Duralmons. The only change is one letter. This is Knack's fault, not Discotek Media.)

Jump cut back to the ship as the wheelmate's hair is brown now. Captain wants increase of speed; but their hope chest is gone as the JAWS OF HALF LIFE from the Jural-Ryu come out and pinches the back of the ship. No sound effects; but a lot of camera shaking ensues. Jump cut to a shot of the front of the ship; then a jump cut of Satan laughing. Satan claims that this monster will cause Japan to fall into chaos. Yeah; I'll bet! The giant machine whale from Cash As Catch Can has more creditability than this monster. Basically; Japan is the base for the conquest of Earth. Wait; isn't the Jural's base near Japan, so why would he bother needing to made a second base in Japan?! God; this show is a horrible joke! The Jural-Ryu raises the ship up and throws it away. Yeah; no sound effects, no screaming and basically, just like that. Then he uses the DOUBLE EYED BUTTER BEAM LASER OF DEATH to vaporize the ship and kill everyone on board. Even more hilarious; there is an outline of the ship which is so poorly done; that it looks like the ship is collapsing under it's own weight. So, after all of this serious (Riiigggghhhttttt, Mr. Weagle...) death occurs, we head to Ken's house AFTER HAPPY HOUR and all of a sudden, BARICAN'S THEME SONG STARTS PLAYING~! (Oh swell, the debut of the spring harmonica music that haunts my dreams and nightmares for an enternity. It makes the Christian hell almost better. Almost.) This show is a horrible joke, a cruel horrible joke! Head inside as Clipper is thrown on his ass on the floor. Ken comes in with the worst jump kick I have ever seen. (I wish Bryan and Vinny commentated this sequence and buried it because it's the dumbest fight I have ever seen in a cartoon and I saw Baloo and Louie's "fight" from For A Fuel Dollars More in TaleSpin!) For those of you who cannot believe people like me who claim that Ken having "Knife Fight Friday" can exist in this cartoon, witness this entire sequence of Clipper and Ken fighting each other for no reason whatsoever. Ken misses the kick and has to hold his foot while shedding a tear and he has a broken toe to boot! Rendering both Ken and the Jurals into complete idiots! Caron is sitting in a chair with giggling mirth; and who can blame her? She's the only one who doesn't look like a complete tool in this episode. Yet.

Clippers headbutts Ken in the back, like a total heel and then Ken rolls and stop selling his toe. Clipper charges in and Ken shoves him down and jumps up and down on him with knee drops on Clipper's belly. Ken bails as Clippers is dizzy and punch drunk. There is no way I can take this fight seriously; because that goddamn spring harmonica music is in the background. Ken grabs Clipper and we get the BOWSER TAILSPIN OF DEATH; only with the arm. Clipper hits something off-screen with no sound effects and a lot of camera shaking. Clipper didn't hit anything anyway and is dizzier now. Ken asks if he quits; and I wish they would quit so we can advance the plot since this is completely pointless. Caron tells Clipper to snap out of it. No Clipper; say "I quit" now! Clippers gets up, no sells and does the HAMSTER BALL HEADBUTT OF DEATH on Ken as Ken goes flying and Ken does the Ron Tussin spot into the sofa. Caron approves of his violence and praises Clippers for being strong. The same Caron who threatened violence on Clipper just because Clipper would always be with her. Clipper shows off his right arm; like a jerkass. Then we jump cut to a brown haired man wearing a white suit with a pink hexagram on it; on the television in front of the desk. I'm sorry; but this show is way too offensive to be trying to crack the obvious joke here. Besides; it's not the cheese reporter, so who cares? He tells us that a large nuclear-powered freighter fifty kilometers off of Niigata which sent out an SOS before sinking a short time ago. (It would be changed to 50 miles in a localized version and no one would care either way, except for everyone outside the USA who uses metric. I also love that the word "News" is on below the television screen, for no good reason. Also, they somehow found remains despite the thing vanishing completely due to vaporization? This show is a....you guessed it.) Ken has recovered enough to listen to this with a serious look in his eyes; which no one is buying by the way. The announcer talks about authorities and the instant he says this; we jump cut to the Sky Rod in the sky at night. WHAT?! Yes; once again, Ken can fly the Sky Rod without transforming into Chargeman Ken. Why bother with the transformation sequence then?! Just stay as Chargeman Ken; no one in storyline cares except the Jurals and it's not like they don't know him as Ken Izzy anyway.

Jump cut to Ken noticing the Jural-Ryu saying "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" and then turns around in a whip lashing way. Somehow; this had inbetweeners! Jural-Ryu fires the buter beams from his eyes and vaporizes a giant wacky tower that looks like a wacky jukebox, so the Jural stole their wacky meatgrinder design from the humans. Why doesn't that surprise me?! Jump cut to a repeat shot of the Sky Rod flying and shoots the laser beam right in the back of the Jural-Ryu, like a heel. You know; if you want to convince people that Ken is not a cowardly heel who coldly shoots Jurals in the back; how about saying that their back is the only weakness! (Here's the thing though, you know what you are doing and care about the storyline. These designers don't. The scary part is that they do a better job than the bible in caring. Ponder that for a moment.) That would at least make it so we can understand why this must be done that way. (Sadly, the beams don't vaporize the Juralmon, but it does piss the monster off if nothing else.) Then we get more shooting as Disoteck Media has Ken telling the Jurals to go to hell! (I expected the Jurals to say that, but not Ken. Ken really is a true Christian and that would terrify me if Chargeman Ken was you know, real.) If that isn't embellishing the script; I don't know what is. Jural-Ryu's eyes glow and it's pissed off now. Jural-Ryu shoots more eye beams and actually hits the Sky Rod! OH MY GOD! Ken is dead! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS...crap. Sky Rod goes into a tailspin (BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - That means a lot more than normal.) as we jump cut to a repeat shot of Satan laughing. That was funny in fact; but that's just me. Now; this is where Satan should have told Ken to go to hell; just to give a middle finger to Ken, but he tells him to die, which means Ken has a big potty mouth. The animators are tired and the Sky Rod heads straight down. Ken is inside sweating and looking like someone is watching it sideways on a mobile phone as he is allowed to say hell; but not damn! The Sky Rod's steering controller is damaged and it's all over for him. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ken decides to use the air cushion which is basically compressed air coming out of the Sky Rod and somehow; not only does the SkyRod rise up; it rises up with the nose up.

Somehow; we jump cut as the Skyrod is now on the ground and Ken jumps out onto the ground. WHAT THE HELL?! Then complete silence as the Jural-Ryu is shown again as it invokes the JAWS OF HALF LIFE; but Ken dodges the shot on the beach. I think; it's not like this show makes sense anymore. That is enough for Ken to invoke CHARGING, GO FISH~! (This might be the first time the voice talent didn't sound awkward saying it at all.) Jump cut to Ken flying like Astro Boy now with the jet boots. Ken flies around the Jural-Ryu and brings out the Alpha Gun as he proclaims that he'll focus on the eyes. He shoots the Alpha Gun with sound waves going right into the hard camera and it hits the Jural-Ryu right between the eyes; and that is enough to cause the Jural-Ryu to explode with sparkles coming out in between the eyes. Then a whiplash jump cut of a still shot of the Jural-Ryu exploding into multiple pieces, which looks really gruesome by children's cartoon standard and somehow comes off ultra goofy. Cue EXPLOSION PAINTINGS OF DEATH~! Jump cut to Ken on the beach looking at the completely destroyed Jural-Ryu in pieces smoking on the ground. Good thing that thing was unJuraled; because that means no Jurals were killed in this episode. This is like TaleSpin in terms of special days! (Not only was this only the second time in the series that Ken not murder aliens, it's the FIRST TIME Maou and the Jurals killed more than Ken Izzy! This is truly a special day. Wow, just wow. Episode #11 is the only episode where no one killed anyone; but there was a really good reason for it.) Then we go to a sunset shot of the Sky Rod flying away, because why not? Continuity? What's that?! Me not know how this can exist in this show? Worse; we jump cut to the Sky Rod taking off from the beach! WHAT?! (Continuity? What's that?! Me not know how this can happen twice in fifteen seconds?!) Then we get night and a full moon as the Sky Rod flies away from the hard camera. That ends the episode at 5:20. This gets *** 1/2 on the trainwreck scale for no Jurals being killed, the most pointless and stupidest fight in history, the usual crappy animation, the Sky Rod actually getting hit and no contiunity whatsoever. -** 1/2 (-50%).

Episode #10 - Barikan (Clippers) Goes Berserk!! Or Hair Clippers Rampage!! (Officially Translated Title: Barican Runs Amok!) - We begin this one at Yoi Elevator School and title card which is really the most boring title card ever. (Are you serious former me?! You must be trolling on us, there is no other explaination.) We get a closeup pan shot of all the purple shadowed classmates sitting down at their computers on the stalking window shot; and then a back shot of Ken standing up and yawning. He proclaims that he is all finished; and sadly, it's not being finished being a babyface. (It's not even started understanding how to be one, former self.) Cut to outside as Ken walks out with classmates and then a closeup of Ken and man; who did Knack subcontract the animation of this episode to?! Ken looks more animated than usual which would be considered very off-model for this show. I also discover that Ken goes to school on Saturday. Yes; Saturday. Do kids go to school on Saturday in Japan?! I'm curious about this. (Believe it or not, yes and no. Some schools allow Saturday classes outright; but for the most part, it's five days a week like school here in Canada and the United States.) Then we hear a voice calling for him and then Ken looks around like an idiot to find what looks to be Claire's long lost sister from Luminous Arc 1. The second she talks; Ken's facial expressions look patently absurd and animated. Didn't anyone in the animation house get the memo that Chargeman Ken isn't supposed to be this animated?! (This episode clearly got an animation bump early on; but I don't expect it to last.) I find out that the Luminous Arc character is in fact named Hitomi and we get solid green background as Hitomi wants to make small talk with Ken Izzy. Okay. She claims that she knows a lot about him; so it's clear that she is a Jural, as if the evil look at the beginning didn't give that away. Ken admits that this is awkward. Is this an admission of guilt that Ken is a bad babyface?! Of course not. Hitomi giggles and bails; causing Ken to go after her. Yes; a SCOOBY DOO CHASE SEQUENCE in a cartoon with worse limited animation than anything Hanna Barbera could have pulled off. This goes on for too long as Hitomi giggles and suddenly disappears because Ken stops in the middle of the road and looks around wondering what happened.

Ken wonders where she is and Ken's suit is a much lighter shade of yellow than usual. Ken just stops and can someone explain to me what the point of this is: Ken just stands there and panics and sweat as we cut over to Hitomi giggling and then laughs like a man. (Ken is trapped in a cube of ice that looks like transparent glass, because the animators don't know what they are doing. It shouldn't take me several scenes to figure that out as my former self explains later on.) Then Hitomi transforms and we discover that it's not just any Jural in disguise. It's SATAN in disguise! What a perverted purple winter warlock this Satan fellow is?! He wishes he was Satahn. (The main villain in the horror faux that pretends that it's a "real snuff film" Snuff.) Satan calls this like taking candy from a baby. Don Karnage has completely killed off any humor in that generic line. Cut to BEFORE HAPPY HOUR (sunset) at a playground with Caron sitting on some large bench singing about red dragonflies and sunsets; which at least makes sense to sing here since it is sunset in this scene. So, someone was paying attention here. She is singing to her doll and then she stands up and screams; because here comes a regular Jural with a flashing eye. This apparently is enough for the Jural to grab Caron and walk away. Okay; so the flashing eyeball caused Caron to fall asleep?! We see Barkian (aka Clippers) hiding behind something and then yelling for Caron while pratfalling just to expose the fact that there are no impact sound effects in this show. (Barican also says "Alley-Oop" in the Discotek Media version.) Cut to outside a mountain range with a shot of the Jural space ship, which I have stated before, looks like a wacky meatgrinder. Inside the spaceship as Mr and Mrs. Izzy are in a steel cage. Wait; what?! How?! I don't know! Why not?! (Cinema 101, everyone. Believe it or not, the gullotine is actually shown here due to the sparkle on the blade, but the scene is so poorly staged that I missed it the first time.) We see Satan arrive with Ken under glass in an elevator made of glass. The animation here is so Sunwoo-ish; it's funny actually. Mr. and Mrs. Izzy demonstrate nicely that frowning all the time makes the expression stuck there. The parents wondered about the children seconds earlier as Ken asks if they are okay. I would say no; judging by the frozen facial expressions of panic on their faces.

Then we get a far shot as a Jural is just sliding to the right with Caron as she apparently has woken up and is unable to free herself from the Jural who is moving like a character in Rocket Robin Hood. I'm tempted to say that this is awful; but realized that Sailor Moon S did the same thing with a monster and Chibiusa so it's isn't just a Knack animation motif. Thankfully; the plate underneath it's feet prevents it from exposing the business. She is crying for mama and doesn't say "Sea Cucumber Doggy" in the process. Just wait until the next couple of rants for that moment. Ken says "damn you" to the Jurals. (He doesn't say that in the Discotek Media version. So, hell is fine, but damn is not.) It's harder and harder to take this seriously after seeing the first 27 episodes of this series. (Former self ranted these episodes out of order. Don't care to rewrite them, just point them out.) Satan tells Ken to look and Ken is in horror because apparently; Jurals bleed purple blood since there was a lot of purple like blood on the glass cage. Ken was trapped in the glass cage all this time?! Yip; another scene where I couldn't figure out what was going on because the cameraman staged the shot so poorly. (This is so poorly colored that I missed that the ice cube was melting at this point; which makes the Jurals look even dumber in hindsight. Should have went with the glass cage.) Cut to a shot of the guillotine which Mr. Izzy points out in the educational line of the episode. Considering that in episode #21, the Jurals wanted to burn the family at the stake, this is amusing in that this is supposed to be a group of aliens who are five hundred years ahead of us in technology depending on five hundred year old human inventions. I find it amusing that the Jurals have all these organic laser beam skills that they know how to use and kill people with; and they are depending on a five hundred year piece of human technology just to kill Ken Izumi. Just drole. (Well, if you were someone who doesn't want to waste your cool stuff on them and just use the very thing humans created in the first place, it's the perfect irony and revenge to a race who ought to know better when you put some thought into it.) Satan calls it a fitting implenment, he's just an asshole. Which is fine because he is suppose to be the number one heel of the show. (Again, irony. Discotek Media didn't use an exact number for the year, but it doesn't matter.)

Cut to Clippers popping from some purple metal hiding spot which is outside the ship. We then proceed to get about ten seconds of complete silence as Clippers is practicing the fine art of not being seen. Cut back to the shot of the guillotine and I'm going to do the latest edition of: BOOK THAT SPOT~!! (Here's a prime example when you know your show or spot is beyond the pale horrible: When I start explaining how to book a better spot.) How would I book the next spot? Well; since I have captured Ken, the smart thing to do is to put Ken's head in the guillotine. Why?! Well; because if I kill Ken first, then I can completely demoralize his family so much that they will be easy to pick off one by one, since the "hero" -- the biggest threat to of the Jurals -- is dead and there is no hope left. So, who gets the honor of going to the guillotine? Answer: Caron Izzy! WHAT?! This makes no sense at all. Worse; it's not her neck that is in the hole; it's her entire body. Why would you do that?! If there is some obscure rule about necks not being in guillotines on Japanese television, for goodness sakes; book a different execution method then! (Plus, it's moot because Caron isn't going to die anyway because the show is for children and Caron is like third on the babyface totem pole next to Ken and Barican. Idiots!) To make matters worse; when Clippers shows up looking behind the window, they use the worst music of the show: the Nickeledeon-equse spring harmonica music. Way to go, show! You rendered a serious moment into a complete joke. (If you wonder why I HATE this background music, it's how it is used in a moment that is supposed to be "shit just got real" moment. A deadly serious moment. Horrible, cruel joke this show is.) Here's what happens next and just laugh at the inept animators on this whole entire sequence: Clippers proclaims that he must save everyone. Cut to a shot of Clipper's feet and legs. Clipper trips and falls into the wires and control panel; which create yellow sparks. Satan notices the control room lighting up and orders the Jurals to stop Clipper. Clipper pulls levers and springs as he manages to electrocute himself and then uses the SHOCK TREATMENT OF DEATH to hold off the Jurals. He calls them scumbags and then pushes buttons while looking like Calvin when he gets that evil look in Calvin & Hobbies. Seriously.

Not to mention that he misses the control panel containing the pink buttons at least 75% of the time. This was a trainwreck of a sequence by the animators. (Discotek had Barican call them jerks. So, scumbag is on the no use list from this company. Good to know.) I realize then that Ken is in some sort of block of ice because he keeps doing this cruifix pose the entire time he is shown. (He's in a crappy 3D cartoon now, which is the ultimate torture for tooneguy. If you don't know who Nick is, consider yourself lucky.) Ken looks up and notices that Clipper actually overloaded the heat lamp and it is a block of ice because that purple blood effect is in fact ice melting. Boy; the artists are out to lunch again. (You wonder why this show sucks?! Because no one bothered to color the ice in a way so that we know that it was ice.) CHARGING GO FISH~!! So Ken is free from his ice tomb and shoots the Alpha gun on the iron bars to release Mr and Mrs. Izzy ands tells his dad to help Caron. Yes; he saves his parents first -- who are in not in danger at the moment --and wants them to save Caron who is in danger of getting her head cut off by the guillotine. I would like to say that this is lazy sexism at it's worst; but knowing these writers, they really don't know what they are doing. The Jurals are still battling sparks as Satan yells at them to get the hell out of there because there is going to be an explosion painting commencing. Okay; he didn't say the painting part; but, we know Knack knack of animating explosions. We see Clipper in ball bouncing away, and a poorly stage attempt to show the "babyfaces" running stage left being chased by the Jurals. We never get to see the parents save Caron; even though we do see them in shadows escaping from the wacky meatgrinder ship. Ken stays around and shoots the Jurals to death; yee-haw! The only thing of note in this sequence was that one of the Jural managed to no sell the beam for more than five seconds. (Ken's kill count on the Jurals is 38 Juralians, almost four Juralians an episode had to die for Jesus in this stupid war.) The family runs behind some rocks and of course Ken has not gotten out yet as pointed out by Mr. Izzy.

Ten seconds later; Ken is out, he does his rolling spot and shoots the Alpha Gun for no reason whatsoever. (He was actually shooting the spaceship to set up the final explosion. Again, this was staged extremely poorly.) At least he was rolling on the ground this time and not two feet in the air; even though the cameras rolled about three seconds too long. Ken pounces in front of the rocks where his family is hiding and then the meatgrinder ship finally blows up; giving us the EXPLOSION PAINTINGS OF DEATH! Cut to a shot of the orange shadowed babyfaces behind the rocks as they see the ship engulfed in flames. Cut to a closeup of the family as Mr. Izzy declares Clipper the hero of this as Ken says and this is a direct quote: "A minute later and I would've been put on ice!" I have no idea if this was Ironsharp mistranslation or Ken is joking around; but Ken was ALREADY PUT ON ICE by Satan two minutes into this episode! STUPID! (Not quite. Discotek Media's localization was that if it were a few minutes longer, he would have been frozen solid. Even though in storyline, the ice block was melting. That's even dumber than Ironsharp's translation of this line. However, that means it's better than Ironsharp's translation since this show is supposed to be this bad and more.) Mrs. Izzy thanks Clipper and Clipper tries to be humble; but he loses his balance and bounces down the hill to petch a pail of something something. The kids go after him while the parents try to hold back their laughter and fail. (By the way, Barican will get more "heroic" moments like this in future episodes and the family will bury him deep within the earth for it. At least here, Barican buried itself, so it's not too bad.) That ends the episode at 5:20. I rate this ** 1/2 on the trainwreck scale for the poor animation quality, poorly staged moments and the guillotine, who has been tortured enough by the Jurals. Please think of the guillotine, everyone! I hear it's been used in many factories shown on How It's Made. - 3/4* (-15%).

Episode #11 - Protect The Earth! (Officially Translated As: Save The Earth!): Episode opened with a shot of a wall with a flatscreen television showing outerspace and a meteorite coming towards earth. Bad animation moment: Before the title card was shown; the meteorite is not animated. After the title card disappears; the meteorite animates and stays in one spot at all times. Jump cut to closeup of outerspace with a giant pale fire sphere like rock which looks like the moon as a male voice tells Ken -- because we hear his voice in this briefing -- that a meteor is heading to earth which that have called "Iron Star". (Discotek Media had it as "Planet Iron", which makes even less sense than "Iron Star". I'm guessing copyright issue.) Zoom out and one of the professors on stage with Ken has literally lost his pants as Ken calls the meteor the falling remains of a dead planet. (Discotek Media had Ken saying that it was a dead star. No one can make up their minds. Perfect way to describe this show.) I discover that Professor Pantless himself is named Professor Yoshizaka, which I love as a booking name. He's the one with a porn style mustache, heelish style hair and a crimson red ascot with his blue lab coat. (Yup, this was the poor professor's debut. He looks like someone who just went swimming, or is about to do a professional wrestling match after this is over.) Yoshizaka and Ken exchange notes on the situation of avoiding a collision at all costs as they mention something called the Gulliver Ray. Which I almost thought he really said Gullible Ray. (Sadly, Discotek Media kept Ironsharp's translation because my localization of it would be hilarious.) Ken claims that he knows that it's a beam of enormous strength created by nuclear energy; which can blow up a small planet to bits. One of the professors at the table next to Mr. Pantless has an eyepatch on his left eye which is drawn poorly; and he looks awfully familar to a scientist that we will meet later. Something to do with destroying Europe or something. (No, I am not watching that episode and doing additional commentary. My brain is fried enough as it is and I'm not long for this world to accept the horror Terror! Mental Hospital turned out to be. I'll correct errors and format it better; but that's it. I have said my peace on that episode and I wish literal burning death on it.) He is wearing the sharpest pointy red bowtie in history.

He explains to Ken that the Gulliver Ray pulls objects in as well as destroys planets. What a horrible weapon this Gullible Ray is?! Yoshizaka then proclaims on another closeup jump cut that in the weapon's current state, the "Iron Star" cannot be moved by the Gulliver Ray; which means everyone is safe from irresponsible ejaculation. Yoshizaka apologizes to Ken as he has a dangerous mission for him which is basically a whip lashing jump cut to Mr. Izzy sitting at his desk shocked that Ken accepted said dangerous mission. Ken is in his office claiming that only he can do this which Mr. Izzy blows off because he might screw up the plan and put his life in danger. Now; what is the Krackpotkin plan of this mission you ask: Ken has to ride a space ship to the Iron Star; set explosives on the Iron Star and leave the Gulliver Ray to take care of the rest. Memo to Mr. Izzy: Oscar Vandersnoot did this unsupervised in TaleSpin without any problems. (Keep in mind, Baloo didn't know Oscar was going to do this anyway, as Baloo wanted Oscar to stay in the SeaDuck. Kids disobeying adults happens all the damn time in cartoons. Get over it! Be better adults, then.) Ken is going to be fine doing this; unless you are implying that Ken is a complete klutz; which I doubt very seriously. (Discotek Media is basically saying that Ken is dead on one mistake; so yes, Hoshi Izumi thinks Ken is a clumsy boy. Which makes the next episode seem like whiplash when you put more than ten seconds of thought into it.) Mr. Izzy isn't buying this plan at all and goes over to the telephone which is connected to a computer and television screen. He is calling Yoshizaka to inform him that he is refusing to let Ken follow through with this plan. Yes folks; even in this godawful show, there is an adult who actually has more sense than Baloo in TaleSpin. (No, not really.) As he is calling; the screen turns on and we see Satan who Ken calls the King Of The Juralians and he wants to speak with Ken. Satan proclaims that this meteorite is a huge problem for him as well. Yes; the monster heel thinks that this Iron Star is so threatening to his cause, that Maou is willing to help Ken. Never mind that he tried to off the entire city with butterflies in episode #3. None of this makes any sense! (You are just going to forget Stuck On You after all these years?! Shame on you, former self!)

Satan wants to join forces with Ken to destroy the Iron Star together before becoming enemies again afterwards. Ken looks angry about this but he realizes that both parties are screwed and agrees anyway. Jump cut to a shot of the meteorite bopping in space towards earth; then a jump cut to the meteorite coming down on the closeup. The instant that is over; it's time for CHARGING, GO FISH~!! Then we jump cut to Ken's spaceship in space going up. The background is clearly moving the ship; not the ship itself. Then the closeup shot is hilarious as the entire spaceship outside seems to be literally blending in with outer space, except for the inside where Ken is. Granted; this is also Gundam Zeta logic as well. Jump cut to the spaceship coming towards the meteor. Ken fires two missiles at the meteorite and then bails away. This did absolutely nothing of note. Ken goes back in as we discover that his spaceship is called the Sky Rod; which is completely lame. Jump cut to more recycled shots of the space blending ship and then back to the scientists watching on from the screen.We get a western pan shot of the scientists and one of them looks like an ex-con; as we see Mr. Izzy looking stunned with the scientists. One of the orange haired scientists was sweating bullets. He's trying way too hard to sell this angle, and he is failing. Recycle shot of the two missiles being fired at the meteorite; and note that Satan has done absolutely nothing so far in this episode. Weak explosions ensue as we jump cut about three times between the Sky Rod descending and the explosions. Jump cut back to the scientists watching on as Yoshizaka proclaims that the meteorite has gotten smaller. No, it has not! It looks exactly the same as before. You need your eyes checked O'Pantless one, or blame it on the animators. Either option is acceptable. He tells the orange haired scientist to inform Ken that he can leave and they'll take it from here. Jump cut to a silver tipped rocket and we see that Ken is inside the rocket. Wait; WHAT THE HELL?! Ken was in the Sky Rod; so how did he get into the rocket?! (Wouldn't be surprised if this was time constraints since it's a less than six minute episode.) This Ken has been dabbing in Lezard's lost magiks again. The rocket opens up it's ass and begins firing a red circular wave beam at the meteorite as I discover inside the rocket that this is the Gulliver Ray.

This is not working well at all as the beam cannot pull the object away; so another yellow circular beam fires on the meteor as we discover that it's coming from a Juralian ship, more to the point Satan's ship. (The waves are firing in reverse. Why? Why Not?!) Satan is talking to Ken on the monitor saying that Ken is having his problems. You don't say Satan?! (Sadly, his babyface problem with credibility is terminal.) Satan has a ray called the Bascal Ray which means that even in 1974; the heels had a cooler name for their weapons. (Discotek Media called it the Pascal Beam, which makes more sense, but is less cool because this show is a...you guessed it.) Satan acts like a rival to Ken in wanting to test his ray against Ken's; which is dumb because they are pulling the object away together, so I don't know how this could be anything but trying to solve the problem of a meteorite destroying the Earth. This goes on for a long ass whomping time as there is no indication that they succeeded, other than the scientists in the conference room happy and awing at this. (This thus proves that the Jurals advanced technology was much better than the humans. How the Jurals lost this war in the end is, oh wait; I know. The show is written by humans because history is written by the winners. Amirite?!) Jump cut to the ships towing the meteor away and the camera once again has it as you can barely see the rocket Ken is in when it should be in the center. DUMB! They tow the rock as Ken is signalling victory with Satan looking on with a Jural alien with determination. The ship suddenly fly up and allow the meteor to fly past them with ease.

The meteor is now going in the opposite direction and they have to jump cut it four times in order to make it look like it's animated. Just hideously hilarious. Then it stops moving and disappears just to make it worse as we jump cut to off-model Satan talking that they really did it. Somehow; a dozen Juralian ships arrive with only four of them drawn properly. Then we jump cut to a closeup of Ken's face as he proclaims that the Jurals technology is awe-inspiring. It's a tractor beam shooting yellow rays. It's basically a slightly more powerful version of the Gulliver Ray, and it still took two ships, two tractors and about eight to ten missiles to stop this meteorite from destroying the earth. He also proclaims that he will not lose to them; despite the fact that if it wasn't for them, the meteorite would have destroyed Earth. He just turned Satan babyface; which is not how it's supposed to be done as we see a far shot of the Sky Rod flying away just to break logic even more; and that ends the episode at 5:21. (Even more hilarious, Ken in the Discotek Media version called the technology deadly. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Projection much there, Ken Izzy?! No wonder no one buys Ken as a good guy.) I give this a ** 1/2 on the trainwreck scale, mostly for Yoshizaka's lack of pants and all the gaping logic holes in Ken teleporting from the Sky Rod to the Gulliver Ray and back to the Sky Rod. Of course; Satan didn't turn on Ken in this episode, but Ken turned on Satan in a subtle way which means Ken turns heel. Anyone who sees Dynamite In The Brain will realize that we all should have seen this coming. -* 3/4 (-35%).

Episode #12 - We Can't Eat Vegetable Salad!: We begin this one with a shot of Ken Izzy's house and we get the really dumbest title card ever. (Are you kidding me, former self?! It's 1:1 with Ironsharp's translation and it's almost 1:1 with the Japanese version, only replacing "we" with "I". This is one of my favorite title cards in the series and one of my favorite episodes to mock.) Jump cut to Caron's room and a shot of a 1990's radio in crimson red. (So, an example of someone unintentionally dating themselves too soon. Happens all the time in futuristic cartoons. One of the main reasons why I love present or historic shows, no matter how inaccurate those cartoons can get.) Pan shot to Caron doing exercises and it looks like she is lightly rubbing her ass doing leg lifts. She does the weakest stretching I have ever seen and her voice actor does a decent job counting in Japanese at least. (Sadly, Mr. Bull did a better job and he's supposed to be the "Idiot Of Culture" in Peppa Pig Tales.) The the radio frizzles out; which is funny because there was no music nor voice from the radio to begin with. (Yes there was. The background music at the beginning of the episode was in fact what was playing on the radio. It's amazing that former self missed it even though the show did a decent job demonstrating that it was on the radio!) Ken has entered her room and has the radio, mocking her for doing calisthenics, which looked horrible by the way. (I blame the animators for most of this and the writer who thought lightly rubbing your ass was cool. It's creepy, not cool!) Ken then proclaims that it's impossible for her to get pretty. What a hero, eh?! (Discotek was much more roundabout about it, but ultimately said what Ironsharp translated. What a shithead?!) Caron is pissed off at the suggestion and blows off Ken for barging into a lady's room (Okay, this was not in any final version of this rant; but it's a hilarious story: On first draft; I wore "bargining" which maybe even funnier than what Caron actually said. Yes, I literally said "Caron blows off Ken for barginning into a ladies room"! That is parody level subbing that I didn't intend to happen. Again, the brainfarts didn't stop with Chargeman Ken. I said "face his face in" in a Fanboy & Chum Chum rant that I never corrected and Kit whispers under his belt in the Plunder and Lightning rant! That last one is corrected. There is lots more, but most are just boring.). So, she's actually in the bathroom?! (Of course not, you creep!)

Ken puts the radio down and tells her to get out of the room because it's time to eat. Caron is giddy, does more stretching and counting, then dances around and knocks the radio down onto the ground. This somehow causes the radio to work! That is funny. The voice on the radio informs us that there have been explosions from an unidentified source to agricultural facilities causing a lot of damage; thus causing acute shortages in the supply of vegetables. Yes, just vegetables. Fruit is still all right; it's the veggies. Whomever is responsible for this is a hater of vegans; and I guess someone hates good wrestling too. (Bryan Danielson, everyone. Whomever is responsible should be put in a neck crank for sixty minutes straight like that little shit Wheeler Yuta. I'm still waiting for that video from AEW. Who cares about Jack Perry and CM Punk?! Come on Tony Khan, give me what I desire!) Jump cut to table filled with meat products, cheese, rice and cups of coffee. Jump cut to Mrs. Izzy eating bread; so grains are still intact; asking Caron why she is not eating. Jump cut to Ken eating. Jump cut to Caron not eating along with Barikan/Clipper. Caron proclaims that she hates meat and only eats veggies because if she doesn't eat enough veggies, it would be bad for her figure. (I have extremely bad news, everyone. Ironsharp's translation was not accurate. Caron is not a vegan in the Discotek Media version. You can disregard all I said about the vegan angle in the next sentence, it's irrelevent now.) You know what; now I perfectly understand why no one books vegans as doing it for their health and it's always for the animals: It's not due to PETA; it's because this show does it the way I want to see it and it sucks! Jump cut to Mr. Izzy deep in thought while holding a cup of coffee. Jump cut to Ken spitting. Jump cut, yes! (Ken did a spit take because he thinks Caron should stop trying to be a toxic masculinity doll and just be herself. Which would be wonderful if he wasn't mocking her in the previous scene.) Jump cut to Mrs. Izzy blowing off Ken for doing the spit laugh of doom because it wasn't funny. I disagree. This is spit funny because Caron is such a loser. (True, but not for wanting veggies more than meat.)

Mrs. Izzy informs us that the stores have no more veggies and they'll have to do without for a while as Caron says okay. So, Caron doesn't hate meat; she just wants more veggies?! That's a more reasonable character; but this show sucks so it makes it even worse. (Mama Izumi was more harsh in Discotek Media's version than the Ironsharp translation.) Ken excuses himself from the table; which somehow was animated. Jump cut to Ken sitting down on a green chair and turning on the television. Jump cut to closeup of the screen showing an orange haired man in an orange suit, white shirt, orange tie and wearing glasses. It's the cheese reporter! AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (I believe it may or may not be related to the Cheesemiester3K user on X. I'm so sad that this report had no cool name like Brie Recotta from Mega Man: The Ruby Spears edition.) He informs us that the relevant agencies are investigating the cause of the produce shortage, details of the cause are still unknown which causes a jump cut to closeup shot of Ken looking bored. Jump cut to the cheese reporter on television informing us that the damage is so bad that it will spread to the supply of meat and fish, pretty much giving it away that it's not damage by natural causes. Ken motions to Mr. Izzy that something is fishy and he's going to check it out. Mr. Izzy agrees to the terms as long as he comes and Ken is perfectly fine with that. Then it's CHARGING, GO FISH~! Ironsharp claims that this was too early; but in the next shot, he is riding the Sky Rod, I thought this made sense. (Hey, at least the creators made sure Ken was supervised by Papa Izumi this time after refusing to accept Ken's dangerous mission in the previous episode! The transformation made sense which this show has messed up at least twice in this series already. It's the fact that Papa Izumi is with him, which in itself would be fine if he literally did more than talk.) I think it's sad that the music didn't play during the transformation sequence. (Worse, they never play the heroic opening theme at any point in this episode, only the ED marching band music at the end! This is what happens when...you guessed it!) Jump cut to a field outside the city which is completely barren and then pan over to see a Juralian alien ship zapping the ground with the PINK SPARK RAY OF DEATH! The pink ray of death destroys cabbages on the ground and apple trees, banana trees and apparently they also zapped a building to death on the next shot. None of these had any sound effects mind you.

We see the Juralian spaceship towering over the destruction as a voice tells them to destroy the food control tower and that will destroy all of Japan's food supply. (Amazingly enough, Maou says "food control tower" in English. Why?! Why not?!) I'm guessing that voice was Satan as the alien ship bails stage right. Jump cut to destroyed area as the Sky Rod appears. Jump cut to closeup of Sky Rod with Ken piloting and Mr. Izzy on the passenger side. Ken proclaims that this is bad as Mr. Izzy wants Ken to fly to the food control tower. Jump cut of closeup of Ken saying okay. (Surprisely, Ken addresses his dad as "sir" here, despite Papa Izumi and the Juralians knowing his secret ID in the Discotek Media version. That was weird.) Jump cut to Ken's arm pushing the lever (JESUS~!). Jump cut to Sky Rod flying away. Jump cut to the Juralian alien ship staying still while the background moves. Jump cut to outside the city and a far shot of green fields. Jump cut to closeup of tower as the alien spaceship approaches it. It looks like a double headed screw, I'm guessing this is the food control tower. The ship looks like a squashed fly on the shot. Jump cut to the Skyrod coming in from the hills; and the animation is even worse than the Juralian alien ship coming in. Jump cut to closeup of Ken and Mr. Izzy in the Sky Rod as they realize that the Jurals are behind this. Jump cut to Jural piloting his ship and turning around to see that Ken has arrived. Jump cut to outside the ship as the Skyrod flies underneath the spout of the alien ship; and then teleports to the meat grinder side on the closeup. The shot continuity is beyond the pale horrible here as we get the pink laser fire -- which turns yellow on the next shot -- and then on the next shot we see Ken and Mr. Izzy shocked and appearing to be outside the Sky Rod. There is no background of them inside the Sky Rod. Jump cut to Sky Rod dodging the yellow laser fire. Jump cut to delta meat grinder still firing pink lasers; as it's clear that no one in animating this knew what they were doing because when the Sky Rod dodges the next shot, it's still pink after changing to yellow on previous shots. Oh; and no sound effects at all during this sequence either.Ken flies up above the alien ship. Jump cut to Ken doing the worst angry face in history cursing the Juralians. Ironsharp used damn here; I'm fine with that. (Discotek Media, after allowing Ken to say "hell" and not "damn", they allow Ken to say "damn" here. Even Discotek Media has totally given up here.)

Jump cut to the Juralian alien ordering Ken to stay out of this episode -- which you know Ken is going to refuse -- because this is HIS show after all! Here's the finish everyone: Skyrod moves out of the way. Jump cut to Ken yelling now. Sky Rod's silver loop ring animates. (This is when the marching music starts, by the way.) Jump cut to sky background showing two yellow laser beams. Jump cut to spout of Juralian spaceship as the two yellow laser beams making contact with the spout. Cue EXPLOSION PAINTING OF DEATH! Jump cut to ground with victory music as the alien spaceship falls to the ground and crashes; causing an actual animated explosion, smoke and flame to come out. Yeah; that is how this ends. The smoke looks like the top of Catasrophe from Final Fantasy V. Jump cut to Ken and Mr. Izzy in the Sky Rod as Mr. Izzy praises Ken for a job well done. Apparently; he just saved western Japan's agricultural industry. Way to bury the heels there guys: The Juralian alien only tried to destroy western Japan's food supply, and couldn't even do that without getting killed by Ken! (Ken's kill count is now at 39 Juralians.) They look into the hard camera for no reason and then we jump cut to the food control tower shot as the Sky Rod bails stage right and that was that. Jump cut to repeated footage of Caron doing leg lifts while rubbing her ass and counting in Japanese. Then the music stops for no reason as we jump cut to Ken with the radio in his hands as he has invaded Caron's privacy again like a jerk. Ken claims that she looks a little prettier and Caron calls him a meanie. Just a meanie, Caron?! Where I come from; Ken is sexist! Ken taunts her for eating veggies and this pisses off Caron so much that she runs Ken out of her room, running slower than a turtle. No wonder Ken gets away with everything, Caron's running sucks! (Even worse than Tittles The Tortoise from Peppa Pig no less! How can Caron live this down?!) Caron knocks over the radio again -- despite being in Ken's hands previously -- onto the floor. We hear the announcer tell us that the crisis has been averted and veggies are back in homes. The whole world is right again for Caron Izzy as this episode ends at 5:22. A lot of logic breaks and Caron counting in Japanese gives this a ** 1/4 on the trainwreck scale, and -* (-20%).

Episode #13 - Showdown! The Undersea City: Episode opens in a dark room with little lighting as Nagisa is on a white table. Jump cut to a closeup of Nagisa waking up and looks around without moving her head. So Clutch Cargo of this show. We then heard a Juralian alien proclaiming the obvious to us. The alien apologizes for violently bringing her here. Is the alien admitting that he sexually assaulted her?! I know I shouldn't even bring that up; but this is Knack Animation we are talking about here. (Surprisely, there is no signs of binding anywhere, so Nagisa could just get up and leave. These Juralian aliens are so stupid!) Nagisa sits up and demands answers to this outrage; sadly, none involved asking why this cartoon sucks so much. The alien blows her off and she's going to be a Juralian, which causes her to instantly have a headache and scream. That is enough for her to faint on the table again as smoke surrounds the table as the alien informs her that she must bring the class on a field trip to the undersea city. That sounds like a bad Pokemon town name to me. (It isn't. Discotek Media clearly addressed it as the undersea city, not the city's actual name.) The smoke is animated by the way as Nagisa claims that this is correct. Are they brainwashing her or torturing her with smoke?! I cannot tell in this scene. (Brainwashing or poisoning, doesn't matter. If I hear "indoctrinate" being used as a sub for brainwashing by anyone, I will assume that they are trying to gaslight me. Education is useless if indoctrinatation doesn't occur. Call it brainwashing or even poisoning if you are talking about someone harming children, because that is what you mean. If there was a doctrine in style, I wouldn't mind being indoctrinated with.) Basically; Nagisa is told to blow up the Undersea City and kill Chargeman Ken! Yes; this is the prototype episode to "When The Cuckoo Clock Strikes Three"; only before Ken killed Professor Volga; so this didn't get nearly the pop that the later episode would ultimately get when Caron was brainwashed. (Yeah, Ken hasn't even killed humans at this point. He's only killed Juralian aliens, an entire spieces of deadly butterflies and eighteen horses which apparently were Juralians themselves because why not!)

Jump cut to a car going up a tube in the ocean. (Actually, it's an elevator going up a glass tube surrounded by water.) Fish swim around and they look awfully ugly; but at least they are animated. Jump cut to the entire class of Nagisa, except for Nagisa. Ken appears to be with his back turned and wearing a lot of yellow this time around. (Not only that, Ken appears to have an ass crack on his backside. Why not?! It's not like this show doesn't love to shoot the moon to the audience.) Jump cut to Nagisa appearing out of nowhere on another shot which contains a lot of transparent kids; because the budget for painting is extremely low. And animation in general actually. Jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper looking from the glass and they are painted, because they are the stars of the show. This is a prime example of why modern cartoons will NEVER be the worst shows of all time. Most human beings don't care if time and resources were a factor. Sure; it explains it; but it doesn't justify it. Ken tells them not to make too much noise. Hey Ken; you're making too much noise already. Babyface, heal thyself! (BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Good luck on being one, Ken!) Oh; and apparently, they remembered episode #6 in that Caron and Clipper got special permission to come along. You know writers; this would have been a good nod to continuity if in episode #6, the SBG was only open to students and you told the audience that. Otherwise; this renders the special permission in this episode completely pointless and tacked on. Caron giggles at the fish for a while as we jump cut back to Nagisa as we see a boy wearing a cheese shirt with a diamond in front with cyan blue sleeves. (Barican claims that Caron thinks everything is fun, which is super creepy in hindsight considering what is to come for poor Caron Izumui...) Sadly; I was hoping he was transparent like the other kids; but he's fully painted. He asks Nagisa about some pipe as we get various jump cuts of fish swimming around in the ocean and a closeup of Nagisa's face explaining to us that it's the pipeline to bring oxygen to the surface. If it broke; then everyone would sufficate. Geez; I wonder how the Juralian aliens are going to brainwash Nagisa into killing Chargeman Ken and kill everyone else then?! Nagisa then stares in a cold manner towards a confused Ken as the kids look at the fish in a cinema theater that completely contradicts the glass tube they were in.

The doors open -- so I assume that they are inside a room; or on the top of the elevator tube; it's hard to tell since this is...you guessed it -- and out comes three men; including one with white hair and a grey mustache wearing all blue with a symbol that looks like a combination between a crane and a noose. (It's actually the Christian fish symbol drawn poorly. It might as well be a tie for all I know and care.) Apparently; Ken goes to school in District A of Japan; which sounds like a Discotek embellishment to me. Nagisa addresses herself and the old man calls her a beatiful teacher. That is a little creepy. Jump cut to a brown haired man blushing wearing a cheese shirt underneath the blue uniform as the old man is the director of the Undersea City and this is a grand tour. (Which in hindsight was much creepier than the old man fishing for compliments. See what I did there?) It's basically a giant undersea wildlife area; if no one notices the obvious here. The old man appears to have a bout of Bell's Palsy by the looks of things; but I'm no doctor. Nagisa is fine with this as Ken stares at her; looking mad for some reason. Why?! I don't know! (Maybe Ken saw the icy stare of Nagisa and assumed this was out of character, but that proves nothing except Ken is probably on Nagisa's shit list again for being a naughty babyface. Still more kind than most of the audience.) Now granted; we the audience know Nagisa has been brainwashed in storyline, but Ken is not supposed to know and yet he's acting like he knows what is going on here. We head to a playground complete with rides and a wading pool and then jump cut to Ken pouting while sitting in a chair. Caron comes over and asks if he wants to play as Clipper calls him out claiming that Ken is acting funny for the last little while. I doubt that very much Clipper; I think it's because this show thinks Ken has psychic powers now. Ken claims that Nagisa seems to be a different person now. How in the blue hell could you tell, Izumi Ken?! Inquring minds would love to know. Sadly; he doesn't explain why as Clipper tells him that the director and Nagisa went into the central control room and Ken has that look of "Something's up and I'm going to stop it!". Jump cut to inside the central control room with Nagisa, the director and four copper colored robots working the room. The director calls this room the heart of the undersea city as we get a logic break as there are four robots working the computer wall instead of three as they work without rest to operate the city's functions. Yes, even in 2074; robot slavery is still a thing.

Then we get the low point of the episode and the series as the director turns completely transparent and talks about having tea. YES! I wondered when Knack would stoop to that low?! Then the B&W painted director is stunned as we get a closeup of Nagisa's eyes and nose as she asks which robot stops the air in the pipeline. So, Nagisa's evil gimmick is that she can make people do her bidding by staring at them. Nagisa is like Medusa, except she brainwashes them rather than turns them to stone. You know; turning them transparent would have been a neat side effect, if the director wasn't transparent before she officially brainwashed him. It turns out that robot #12 who controls the oxygen as the director gives Nagisa a whacky remote control and she pushes the button and in comes copper robot #12 as it is ordered to stop the oxygen. The robot obeys without question and then Nagisa orders the robot to destroy the other robots in the room. The robot teases pushing down the lever (JESUS~!); but Ken runs in and headbutts the robot and bounces off! HAHA! Stupid idiot! Nagisa orders Ken to go back into the playroom this instant! Yeah; he will so obey you. Not. Besides; Nagisa mouth moves three seconds BEFORE she actually orders Ken to go back to the playroom. (Considering that Nagisa will also die due to lack of oxygen if the robot succeeds -- along with everyone else --, Ken has every right to stop this.) No surprise; Ken no sells this deal because it's not Nagisa and Nagisa is confused. Umm; if she's brainwashed, why would the Juralian aliens care what she does?! She couldn't even grab Ken and throw him out; or order the robots to do the same?! Oh wait; I know why, the Juralians are stupid! Ken is almost keeping up with the insanity because he rushes the robot again and fails. (Just change into Chargeman Ken then, it's not like the secret identity gimmick means anything anymore at this point.) Nagisa then orders the robots to kill Ken Izzy! Perfect! Then the Juralians won't have to kill everyone else to win. If they were perfect heels; they would anyway, but this show is so stupid that it won't happen. Three of the four robots back up Ken and it's CHARGING, GO FISH~! Ken transforms with children sings and this causes Nagisa to glow and she appears to be in pain. WHAT?! She faints to the floor and Ken grabs the remote control on the floor. (A remote control that was never on scene until now. Talk about written in by teleport!)

Ken orders everyone to return to what they were doing before Nagisa ordered them and they walk away. Wow! Actual humanity in this show! Why is the Sky Rod in the control room now?! Okay; I think Ken stopped Nagisa from being brainwashed and has returned to normal. (Yes, Nagisa's brainwashing was broken because Ken changed into Chargeman Ken! This show is a horrible joke! A cruel, horrible joke!) So, the episode can end there, right? Silly person; this is Chargeman Ken and there has to be one spot where Ken destroys something or kills a bunch of aliens. Here is the finish: Ken rides the Sky Rod west towards a conveniently placed underwater plane like ship. The color scheme clearly indicates it's Juralian in nature. Jump cut to a shot inside with a closeup of an alien cursing Ken for actually solving a problem without violence. Yeah; that is so wrong in this cartoon, deal with it critics of the world! The alien notices him and Ken shoots both sides of the ship with the Sky Rod Gun. Ship flashes and cue EXPLOSION PAINTING OF DEATH! (Ken's kill count is now at 40 Juralian aliens in the most pointless fight ever at this point. They could have removed the entire sequence and none would have been the wiser. Stupid show is a stupid show!) So, that is that as we return to shots of fishing swimming in the sea. The animation is so bad that they stop in mid swim before continuing on. It's like they slid two animation cells together, have problems seperating them when they came together perfectly, kept the camera on during this and then continued on their merry way. They cannot even animate a fish swimming scene without screwing it up. More repeated shots of the kids, Ken, Caron and Clipper in awe watching the fish as we jump cut to a close up shot of Nagisa looking at Ken. (The animators are about to animate Nagisa's lips again to not speak; but gets cut off anyway.) Ken tells Nagisa to not walk home from school alone. Sod off Ken Izumi; you rape apologist! Thankfully; Nagisa orders Ken to walk home from school with her! Ken takes this as a compliment -- since Nagisa points out that he saved her --; but Clipper chimes in that this means Ken can never have time to play again. Ken awkwardly giggles as everyone laughs at his expense as we end with a pan shot of the underwater subway tubes to end the episode at 5:21. Just your typical Chargeman Ken episode; * on the trainwreck scale for the implied sexual assault spots and a nonsensical way of breaking Nagisa's brainwashing. DUD (0%).

Episode #14 - The Daibutsu That Vanished Into The Night: Daibutsu means "Giant Buddha" by the way. Episode opens with a far shot of a giant statue of Buddha AFTER HAPPY HOUR (after dark) surrounded by trees. Then we do the most pointless pan shot in history before jump cutting to a closeup of the statue's face whose eyes are opening and then we jump cut to inside a Juralian spaceship with the Juralian alien using a wacky invention of some sort to emmit butter spark beams as this causes the giant statue to become a golem basically. One that can change facal expression and look evil and flash colors. It can move like a Ted E. Bear character and growls in the most unconvincing way possible. (This technique was used in The Mighty Hercules 1960's cartoon as well. Ted E. Bear was a surprisely decent series with really good artwork. The problem was that no one hired inbetweeners for the animation and thus every time they had to do a different pose, it would go directly to said pose instead of drawing enough pictures inbetween to make it look fluid. It's jarring to say the least and in action scenes, it can easily confuse the audience. Also, it's worse if you have inbetweeners and run out of time and/or resources as seen in the first animated scene of Twinkle Nora Rock Me, which I previously reviewed in an earlier Easter Sadism article. That OAV was fine outside of the sexism and animation of course.) The statue turns around and stomps away into the northeast and that is that. Oh; and there was no sound effects when he was stomping, but I repeat myself. (They did shake the camera to make the thing create earthquakes. Sadly, it's not nearly as charming as shaking the camera everytime Peppa and company jump up and down in muddy puddles in Peppa Pig.) Jump cut to morning outside Ken's house. At least they didn't use Barican's theme song this time around as we head inside the house with Mrs. Izzy working on a giant computer. Yes, despite being in 2074; computers are still built like fridges. Sadly; this isn't the only thing where this show was way off in hindsight. Apparently; this computer counts calories as the computer screen says in white letters on a screen: "20 calories". (That's because the display was in Japanese. Mama Izumi still says calories in English by the way.)

Mrs. Izzy doesn't like it and then pushes some more and the computer says this is 1550 calories. Which she claims is nutritious. WHAT?! Wait; so this show thinks the whole concept of nutrition is that more calories are better for you?! Remember; this show was marketed to children. (Granted; 20 calories for breakfast is not good either; but 1550 is way too much, unless she's sharing the thing with the family.) The computer is basically a meal making machine on a conveyer belt as we jump cut to Ken sleeping in bed and then jump cut to Caron yelling at big brother to wake up. Ken claims that he's not hungry and wants to sleep a little longer. Caron no sells this deal as this is big news as Ken curses her because it's on a Sunday too. Ken does believe in Sundays being a day off for him. Geez; that kind of kills the gimmick of Ken being a beyond the pale horrible monster there, guys! (Nope, it doesn't former self!) Ken walks out anyway to the living room as we jump cut to Ken and Caron watching the television with a guy with orange hair, orange tie and a red suit so it's not the cheese reporter sadly. (More like the bloodlust reporter. AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! POW! OUCH! Ummm... Damn Fox News reporter strikes again.) Clipper has joined as the reporter explains that the Giant Buddha statue still has not been sighted yet; but reports claim that some have seen something strange walking around. Ummm; that means the thing has been sighted. Idiots! Furthermore as the adults join into watching the show on the next shot; the red idiot reporter claims that energy resources have been laid to waste as we see footage of buildings being destroyed and smoke coming out of a building off-screen. Normally; this would be BS&P censorship; but this is Knack Animation and is probably because they don't know what they are doing. Ken is shocked and appalled as he bails stage right telling his father that he's going to check it out as Clipper and Caron run after him as well. Because, why not?! Mr. and Mrs. Izzy have awful serious faces on; but Mr. Izzy tells Ken to be careful, so I assume he approves of this, because why not?! It's not like Ken can die in this cartoon even if the writers book it as such. Not even BS&P is needed to prevent this. (If BS&P and Papa Izumi couldn't stop Ken from a dangerous mission in episode #11, then everyone just gave up at this point.) Ken is immortal and immoral beyond the pale.

Jump cut to a really weird ground shot of Ken standing, and thank goodness the camera screwed this up since it appeared that they wanted to show off his groin. (Another inch and they would have succeeded in either showing the groin or not showing it at all. This show cannot get out of it's own way.) CHARGING, GO FISH~! Another episode with the theme song being sang by the kids as we jump cut to a far shot of the house as a faint image of the Sky Rod flies west in the background. Jump cut to inside the Sky Rod with Ken, Caron and Clipper as Caron is telling Ken that she cannot believe that a symbol of peace can cause a rampage. (Considering that the first two tennants of peace are the same two in death, Caron should have used a better term. Life would have worked better. If anyone told me to "Rot & Wither" (Which was the original Japanese phrase for the infamous "The World Is Square" puzzle in Final Fantasy VI. To be fair to Ted Woolsey and later Tim Slattery, the original was probably a pun that was difficult to localize accurately in English.) I would smile because it would be more accurate after death. Be one with the earth would be kinder than Rest In Peace. Believe me on that one.) Geez; I hope she never studies Christianity or Islam or any religion for that matter, because if she does; she's going to really become a atheist and who could blame her for that?! (Answer: Everyone who wants to be a god and rejects reality, that's who would blame her.) Ken isn't so convinced that this statue is rampaging on it's own accord and wants to check this one out. The Sky Rod flies some more as Ken is now shocked and appalled as there is a giant Buddha statue rampaging in the energy source portion of town, growling badly.

I don't know if this was bad acting or on purpose to demonstrate that Buddhists cannot be mean to save their lives, but either way; STUPID! Statue is doing better exercises than Caron in episode #12; that is for sure. The Skyrod dodges the statue and Ken is about to shoot it with his Alpha Gun; but Caron orders him to stop. Because you see; destroying a sacred statue is a criminal act. Unless it's a statue of Cornwalis; then it's perfectly okay; because screw that racist scalptor! (Please don't destroy the Cornwalis statues! Move them onto private property if you like, but destroying them is whitewashing history and that's worse. (2024 Gregory Weagle Say: Nah, destroy them! It's not like we have photos of the statues anyway. Treat them like a solar eclipse and you'll be fine. Cornwalis is dead and the corpse is not worth burning.)) Ken is confused and the Buddha statue does the Dumptruck screw punch on the Sky Rod; sending it into a tailspin (BWHAHAHA!) in the slowest manner possible and the Sky Rod limps away stage right. Okay; that was funny; I laughed at it. Sky Rod flies behind Buddha's back and Ken notices the Juralian spaceship and notices who is controlling the giant statue. Ken deduces that the Juralians are behind this heinous act, and he's right this time. At least he waited until he saw the evidence before accusing them instead of his usual accusing them before any evidence is even shown to the audience themselves. Ken pushes the lever (JESUS~!) and starts to land; but the alien notices him right away. Ken fails at the element of surprise; what a surprise?! Scrooge's advice to Dewey during the Nerf Gun game in Ducktales 2017 is sound after all! So the meatgrinder of doom rises up and then literally lands somewhere else on the next shots seconds later. Wait; what?! Sky Rod finds them anyway as the alien proclaims that he is going to kill him (How Knack Wants the Audience To Respond: BOOOOOOOOOOOOO! How The Audience Actually Responds: YAYYYYYYYYYY! Ken is like the Roman Reigns of cartooning right now; and even Roman Reigns hasn't legit killed anyone.) Caron is scared as Ken is shocked and appalled because the meatgrinder of doom is unleashing the SMOKESCREEN OF DEATH! Oh noes! The Juralians are smoking the wackiest cigar in history! Whatever shall Ken do?! Ummm, kill them! Because that is what Ken's purpose is in this stupid, idiotic, heinous cartoon.

The Buddha statue is forced to run in from behind as Ken curses and struggles at the controls. The Sky Rod flies away as the giant statue smashes his hands together and the giant statue would have missed even if Ken had not moved at all. The Sky Rod heads straight for the spaceship of meatgrinders as the alien is pissed off at the statue as the Sky Rod bails stage left which is folly -- in the animation context; not in the storyline context -- because Ken shoots left when he should have shot right and destroys the antenna on top of the device. I almost thought Ken had shot his own Sky Rod for a second there since the shot they used for the antenna looked similar to the top front of the Sky Rod as bolts of thunder fly inside the spaceship; and you'll never guess what happens next. There was no EXPLOSION PAINTING OF DEATH here! They did a jump cut to a shot of the giant statue as debris from the spaceship rains on it. Yes folks; they didn't have enough in the budget to even do an EXPLOSION PAINTING OF DEATH scene. Suddenly; the statue teleports from standing and angry to it's natural pose of peace in mere seconds without any animation, or sense. (At least former self said it like the statue was dead, so I can forgive it for using the word there. Ken's kill count is 41 Juralian aliens at this point.) Jump cut to Caron and Ken feeling relieved, and Clipper must be taking a dump off-screen during this since we don't see him. Why was Clipper even in this episode? He did nothing AT ALL. Except to cut a joke about having a gentle face while still being scary. Sod off Clipper! Just sod off! Ken wants to go home and put the statue back in it's rightful place another time. That sounds like a bad idea to me. Yes, the punchline to Clipper's joke is that the statue looks like Mrs. Izzy and that laugh at it. What a bunch of ungrateful assholes these children are?! Mrs. Izzy looks NOTHING like that Buddha Statue at all. Screw you kids, just screw you! Jump cut to a northern pan shot of the statue as the Sky Rod flies overhead and that ends the episode at 5:21. So, what did we learn kiddies? Destroying a statue is bad, but jettisoning an old living person and causing his death is all right. More on that in Dynamite In The Brain. (This show contradicts it's own internal logic all the time that it makes me sick.) This is *** on the trainwreck scale for the whole plot and the usual BS stuff this show churns on a regular basis. -** (-40%).

Episode #15 - The Art Gallery Mystery!: Episode opens with peaceful music and a peaceful sky complete with a building painted with abstract art; because it's an art gallery, DUH! Pan down to ground level and then jump cut to a shot of the inside with paintings hanging on the wall. (Which look like they took the pictures from a camera and placed them in the animation because they look better than anything else on the show. Sadly, my experience seeing paintings is really bad, if anyone can tell what the paintings are in real life, please let me know. One of them looks extremely creepy to say the least.) Pan over to Nagisa and ten students looking on. (I'm almost certain the one on the bottom left corner is Ken Izumi judging by the clothes even though it doesn't have the red ascot. Not that Knack's crew cares anyway.) One of them is wearing a green chess pawn piece on his head. Nagisa asks if anyone is enjoying this, no one responds, which is often a bad sign for the art gallery. Nagisa wants to go to the next room as we jump cut to an awkward pan shot of awkward sculptures with awkward colors. We see Ken with Clipper on his shoulder as the sculpture is called "Work Of Art A". Has to be a rib. Ken apparently has decided to wear lip stick on his lips. Why?! Why not?! (It's gone on the closeup shot.) Ken's response to Clipper's confusion is to say: He might not get it; but others understand it just fine. Question: Does Ken understand it?! Probably not. Oh wait; he doesn't and he's trying to sound like he does and fails. Clipper giggles as Nagisa asks Ken where Endou and Saitou are. Why should we care since this is the first time we have heard of these names?! Considering Knack Animation knack -- to pardon the pun -- of screwing up at every turn, how would we be able to figure them out anyway?! Basically; Ken has not seen them, so Nagisa puts Ken on missing children finding duty. Of course! Ken and Clipper look around as the place is huge. Jump cut to two girls popping up and one of them is wearing a four leaf clover hairpin as she proclaims that Megumi and Ryoko are missing as well as Nagisa gasps in horror, badly. Jump cut to what might be the cheese reporter's son claiming that Suzuki has disappeared as well as Nagisa think something strange is going on. (I don't know why Discotek Media is doing, but I'm getting annoyed at the use of "miss" over and over again.)

Sadly; it has nothing to do with the quality of this show as we do another pan shot of "Work Of Art A". Ken tells them to stay close together and they will search the museum together at once. Sounds reasonable to me. This goes on forever and after a few uneventful jump cuts, jump cut to a painting on the wall containing a giant rock and a farmer wearing a blue coat and straw hat sitting on a tree stump. (Okay, the Juralians are stupid to have a giant rock that looks like an egg. You couldn't just make the spaceship invisible?!) Once again; the color stylist is completely out to lunch as we do three whiplash jump cuts and see that the old man has a full on mustache and beard and his outfit is now a blue vest and green shirt. Oh; and the man is leering at the kids. Jump cut to a shot of a bunch of shocked kids. Check out those outfits, man! Dress code?! What dress code?! The brown haired boy on the right is wearing star knee pads to match the star blue shirt. Everyone calls it creepy and weird; so they all bail. Except for an orange haired girl wearing a yellow skirt with red sleeves as she stares at the painting for much longer than it can be healthy. (The film quality is so horrible that flashing green light ensue for no reason other than to annoy my eyes. It's not suppose to do that, but it does here.) Ken turns around to notice this as we jump cut to the creepy man waving at the girl. Jump cut to the girl literally doing the zombie walk. This apparently is enough to cause her to literally walk into the painting. Geez; this makes cartoons coming out into the real world sound believable. Of course; it's down without inbetweeners, like the Ted E. Bear specials; only worse since the old man hand waving is animated normally and had inbetweeners. Jump cut to Ken shocked, appalled and sweating. We also have a name for the girl: Noriko. Everyone is shocked and appalled as Ken headbutts the painting. No; not really, but that's only because he was supposed to dive into the painting. The old man leads Noriko into the giant egg like stone which now has an opening of a door completely out of nowhere. Man turns around and winks at the hard camera complete with the biggest sparkle effect the animators could find. Ken instantly accuses it of being a Juralian alien as the door closes behind the two; and Ken deduces that all the missing children are inside the painting. I hoped that all the kids mentioned that were missing just came out of nowhere, just to make Ken look like a stupid idiot. Sadly; that would imply that Knack had a clue. They don't.

Nagisa proclaims that she knows where this is painted and Ken just cuts her off with CHARGING, GO FISH~! That was awfully rude of Ken! Let her finish her promo, okay?! Wonderful; the kids are singing the theme song. Jump cut to the Skyrod flying out of nowhere and then we jump cut to a giant meadow. Wait; WHAT?! I think the spot was that when Ken transformed; it gave him powers to enter the painting. Okay, fine. How did the Sky Rod get involved in this?! This makes no sense! Jump cut to inside the Sky Rod with Ken piloting; and then a sky shot of the Sky Rod with the silver ring animated fully this time. Then the Sky Rod lands about a hundred feet from the giant rock egg ship. What was the point of the Sky Rod then if you were just going to park it inside the painting?! The giant rock transforms into the wacky meatgrinder, yes; Ken was totally right about this being the Juralians being behind this. That kind of kills the diversity of plots right there, sir. Meatgrinder rises from the ground. (Complete with a dust particle rising on the ship on the bottom right, exposing the business as usual.) Jump cut to all the kids inside who were kidnapped; so this is a redo plot from episode #1. Then for no reason; the Sky Rod is back into the air and Ken is at the controls as they justify having the Sky Rod in the painting as the chase is on and is more awkward than my life. The Juralian ship shoots it's cotton candy lasers which contain no sound effects and change into butter literally on the next shot which was dodged anyway. Literally; there was no dodging in this scene as Ken makes it to the meatgrinder literally without incident. Jump cut to the alien in the window looking shocked and appalled. Then we get a logic break: Ken shoots his laser gun from the Sky Rod and kills the alien. Now normally; this would make sense, except there was glass in the window and it wasn't broken before and during the shot; but it was on the closeup shot. Then it get dumber as Ken fires a second shot and the aliens literally have to move in full view of the window to take the shot; and the beam carries over to another alien in the background. These are literally the stupidest heels in history. Even dumber; despite all this, the ship is still shooting cotton candy lasers at Ken well after the fact. At least Ken dodged the shots this time as the cavity of the laser opens to reveal a vacuum cleaner sucking device. Now this episode really sucks! HAHA!

Ron Sparks: It sucks more than Sean Desmond.
Captain Obvious: That's the biggest understatement in the history of animation!

Indeed, Captain Obvious, indeed! Ken is shocked and appalled as the Sky Rod gets hit. Sadly; as seen in episode #9; this trick is even less likely to work than Bullwinkle pulling a rabbit out of his magic hat. Ken gets out of it by doing literally nothing and we jump cut to a repeat shot of the Sky Rod beside the Juralian spaceship. WHAT?! Worst teleport spot ever! Worse yet; Ken shoots the Sky Rod beam and despite glass blocking the window; it goes through the glass and kills the Juralian pilot sitting at the controls, dead. This show's a horrible joke, a cruel horrible joke! (Ken's kill count is now at 44...) Then it gets worse; this somehow causes the pilot's chair to disappear and causes the old man on the tree stump to be engulfed in flames. WHAT THE BLOODY FUCK?! He vanishes into a pile of smoldering ashes as a result; without any sign of transforming into a Juralian alien. Is this the first human Ken has killed in this series?! Granted; it is supposed to be an image of an old man, but this is an awfully bad sign for Ken Izzy's character right there folks. (Umm, no. Earlier in the episode, the old man basically was a Juralian alien in disguise, therefore it's not a human being. Ken's kill count is now at 45 Juralian aliens.) The ashes disappear right on cue anyway before we jump cut to a far shot of the painting. There was no signs of the Juralian spaceship crashing; so I assume all the kids have not died as a result since they are all shown in the next shot pointing out that the old man has disappeared. (Oh, and after all of this BS, BARICAN'S THEME SONG START PLAYING~! This show is a horrible joke, a cruel horrible joke!) Clipper proclaims that he would rather not understand art after all; so yes, the Jurals have ruined the world of art for Clipper and Ken. So; there's one evil deed that they have succeeded in this show. Ponder that for a moment and cry! Clipper then calls out Ken for lying as Ken does a pose that makes him guilty of sin right away. (Okay, that look was funny and I laughed at it.) Then Clipper bails stage left as Ken chases him throughout the art gallery. Geez; this Ken is so insecure! Even more so than me. Everyone laughs at Ken's expense of course and that ends the episode at 5:21. This gets ** 3/4 on the trainwreck scale, mostly for the worst teleport spot ever and the tragic death of the old creepy man, who was originally Togo from Manos: The Hands Of Fate reincarnated. (Considering that Manos: The Hands Of Fate was a Z-grade movie like this is a Z-grade cartoon, the connection makes way too much sense to be a coincidence. This is not the last time I will mention this movie because there is scene later in the series that literally screams Z-grade.) -* 1/2 (-30%).

Episode #16- The Dreadful Melody Of The Murder Record (Officially Translated To: Murder Record, Melody Of Terror!): We go from the worst title card in the show to probably one of the best titles for an episode in this show. Episode opened with a mini tower like building with crowd chatter and then we jump cut to a still shot of various denizens walking on the street. (Discotek Media translated the shop as "Records". Very generic.) One of them wore peach pants which were dangerously close to being flesh colored. One kid had green hair to match his sweater; and yet another one had lavander hair. Jump cut to back shot of the denizens chattering and one of the males was wearing a shirt with a badly drawn Hersey Kiss chocolate on the back. The woman next to him is wearing all green including her hands and it's blended into the entire character. Kind of like MS Paint type coloring. Jump cut to closeup of a man's face with a red collar on his shirt and a woman behind him wearing a green hairband as the man asks for Brahms' Symphony #8 and remembers to say please. Jump cut to man in a blue shirt asking for "Bakacho Goldfish" by Mariko Hanazono which means "Foolish Goldfish". This song is fake because all Google searches point back to this show. (Discotek Media decided to localize the title as "Silly Goldfish", which is more or less the same.) Then we get a closeup look of the lavander haired girl wearing a red hairband asking for the single "Wonderful Aliens". Is she a double agent for the Juralians?! TUNE INTO BACKACHO GOLDFISH TO FIND OUT~! (Well, that joke is dead because Discotek Media localized the name as "That Wonderful Spaceman". I guess Wonderful Aliens is copyrighted now.) Jump cut to counter featuring two clerks who looked way too dressed up to be anything but a setup. The Juralians seriously need to realize that generic disguises are best when you are doing grunt work. The woman clerk has green hair and a pink collar on the dress and I think she is serving Mrs. Izzy who has shown up out of nowhere for no reason. (It's not her, but it sure is damn close.) Jump cut to a man in blue pants, brown boots, and a cheese sweater with a purple neck playing a 1960's record on a turntable. Yes; this show is in the future and they are still using vinyl records for music. So stupid. (Probably the biggest faux pas of the show in hindsight.)

Jump cut to man throwing the switch which we never saw in the previous shot of the wall. At least this was animated as we see the record turning on the turntable on the closeup shot. Jump cut to man listening and then he is stunned because the music doesn't sound right.The music sounds like the same music we have heard before and this causes the man to have acute chest pain and he grunts. (Yes, one of the pieces of music we hear in the show is now cursed. They didn't have any funds to buy a license to a new song. Hideously hilarious!) He appears to be having a heart attack and then we jump cut to him on the ground looking dead. He instantly looks like he's 90 years old. (I guess this is why it was called a murder record. Too bad it only killed one person, I think...) Jump cut to record on turntable as we jump cut to the various denizens who are supposed to look old, but they look really ugly, so this record causes people to become stereotypical witches. It also doesn't help that the giggling is so lame in this scene too. (They killed the gimmick and made the Juralians look completely ineffective, thus making Ken look like a heartless murderer in hindsight. Also, there was literally no animation during the sequence. Also, the record player is still animated in a repeat shot after this.) Jump cut to outside with the same back shot as before and then in comes Caron on the previous shot before that. Jump cut to Clipper asking what is wrong with Caron. Clipper wants to go home soon to make sure Ken and company stop getting tired of waiting. Jump cut to outside music store. Jump cut to Caron saying that she's right and she's buying a record. (While her mouth never moves. She is supposed to be in thought, but there is no attempt to use an echo effect to inform everyone that she was deep in thought.) Jump cut to the two Juralian aliens disguised as music store clerks as the male of the group has male pattern baldness. They see her as Ken's little sister which begs the question: How do they know this?! (Actually this makes sense since they kidnapped Caron in episode #10! Again, I wrote about this episode before Discotek localized the script officially for this series, so there you go.)

The woman clerk proclaims that they have caught her -- implying that they are kidnapping her; which makes no sense at all -- and once she has a record, Ken and his family will be destroyed. (Discotek cleared this up with the genric "we got them" speech.) How?! (The record is suppose to turn them into old people and die due to old age much more quickly. Basically poisoning them with a painful poison of some kind. The idea of this makes sense as a plot, but Knack's attempt to execute it is so poor that it's laughable.) Jump cut to Caron asking for Johnny's single against a sky background. (Discotek Media had it as "Johnny's Record". More or less the same.) Again; this team has no idea how to do backgrounds right. Her mouth doesn't even move despite the audio as the grandpa clerk with the blue sweater tells her to wait one minute. One minute in this world equals literally one second as the female clerk gives her the record in a cyan blue sleeve. Jump cut to the actual album and it looks nothing like the album the clerk gave to her. It's white in color and has a picture of two guitar players. One of them has chest hair and wear a lot of mustard colored clothes. The one on the microphone with the brown hair and glasses has two green dots on his shirt where his nipples would be. He is also wearing blue pants. Jump cut to a room where Caron has put the record in the turntable and the rest of her family are sitting down in chairs. (I'll give Knack Productions credit here, at least the music they used for the "murder record" is the exact same in all scenes. They at least maintained continuity in that regard.) Mr. Izzy is wearing a white shirt for this episode on this shot. (Papa Izumi is also wearing a black vest that may or may not be a bulletproof vest.) Jump cut to record playing on turntable. Jump cut to Caron not too pleased with the music she is hearing. Jump cut to record playing; then jump cut to Caron as she does the worst selling of pain I have ever seen. She looks like she's coughing and her voice actor did not give a crap here at all. Everyone falls to their knees selling their heads; except for Clipper who is perfectly fine, because you see; Clipper is a robot and thus cannot grow old like human beings. If you cannot guess who puts a stop to this horrible aging music, you have no business reading this rant.

Worse; we never get to see the family age at all. They had enough in the budget to keep the family somewhat on model; but not enough to do them off-model on purpose. Clipper is confused as Ken is yelling at Clipper to destroy the record; because he has no taste in music. (Ken is literally holding his throat to sell this murderous record, the animation is failing him badly. Also, Clipper claims that the song is perfectly fine, like a troll move if I ever saw one. Yes, they actually did a spot where Barican is deciding weither to break the record or not because Clipper doesn't think it's a bad song. So, neither of them have good taste in music.) Here is how Clipper stops the music: Barican magically has the record and throws it to the ground; which jump cuts it so much that the record bursts into flames. Then it vanishes without a trace. I wish that I was making this up; but it's true. The family is shown in shock; which actually makes sense. However; they are shocked for the wrong reasons. Jump cut to Ken sweating and panicking as he proclaims that this record is designed to drive people insane and he instantly blames the Juralian aliens for it. He is like kid Freddy Jones combined with Wildwing; that I expect to find out that Red Herring is not a Juralian alien, but Freddy might be. (Red Herring is supposed to be a rib on shows that continue to reuse the same villains over and over again: Freddy Jones always blame the obvious suspect even though Red Herring does absolutely nothing wrong. Amazing how Freddy Jone somehow grew out of this phase where conspiracy theories are in his mind absolutely true. Kid Freddy Jones would be the perfect G-rated role model for MAGATs! Ponder that for a moment.) Also of note: Ken proclaims that this record drove them insane which is wrong because the record is supposed to age them to death. (Surprisely, Discotek for the most part kept the lunacy part by claiming that the record drives people mad.) But more so; Japanese television today often edits out words like crazy, insane and lunacy as they are now forbidden words.

That sounds impossible; but after seeing various governments in Japan introducing bills for adult content, I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this. (Don Karnage, call your office!) I'm certain DVD's are uncensored and it's only television. However; the more impossible moment is Ken, Clipper and Caron instantly teleporting into the store and calling the clerks out on selling such an insane record. (Discotek media called it a crazy record. Again, Don Karnage, call your office!) The ableism here is tame compared to what is to come in this show actually. (In fact, it's even tamer than Stuck On You, which is the episode where Don Karnage got triggered by the word "crazy" multiple times during the episode. You cannot make this stuff up even if you wanted to!) Jump cut to Ken, Caron and Clipper who are supposed to look angry, but have more of a blank staredown. Jump cut to Ken looking angry now as he will never forgive them for this. For selling a record that causes them physical pain?! Projection much there show?! (Discotek claims that Ken will show no mercy which makes Ken look even more cold-blooded than Ironsharp's translation. Well done, Discotek.) Jump cut to the clerks looking shocked and appalled; with a zoom in and then we jump cut to the clerks running away stage left from Ken. Yes; this was animated with an actual run cycle! Then we get an anime background covering the scene; and now they are running with a different style background that looks more purplish/pink in color. Then the Jurals -- at least three of them -- suddenly appear out of nowhere giggling and doing absolutely nothing of note. WHAT?! One tells Ken to prepare himself and Ken counters with CHARGING, GO FISH~!! No lyrics sadly as Ken is flying in the air shooting his Alpha Gun, the aliens get shot in the chest and vaporize, YEE-HAW!! Jump cut to outside the Izzy residence as apparently; the battle is over despite the fact that the two clerks were not even touched at all. Yes, they never actually got their comeupperance. DUMB! (I'm going to assume the two clerks turned into Juralians during the Juralian laughing sequence and be done with it. Ken's kill count ends the first rant at 50 Juralian aliens because the scene showed FIVE aliens killed, so my theory stands! Deal with it.)

Jump cut to another record on the turntable and then jump cut to Clipper and Caron dancing poorly. ("Johnny's Record" apparently is a guitar riff of the opening theme song without lyrics. Of course! What I fool am I?!) Caron's dancing is basically bending her knees as if she is exercising and then Ken comes in and making scratching sounds by rubbing two seashells together; which is cute by the way. Then he removes the needle from the turntable -- I think; I couldn't tell who did this, I assume it was Ken --; and then laughs out loud. Okay Ken; the spot was cute, but it wasn't funny at all. Ken's laugh was way better than whatever joke he was pulling off as Caron and Clipper are not amused. (2015 Gregory Weagle Says: It took a lot of watching; but the one who removed the needle from the turntable was in fact Caron and not Ken. That makes sense because Ken was making scratches like a record scratching, Caron removed the needle from the record player; and then Ken laughed out loud. Which makes Caron and Clipper look like thin skinned wimps. This was funny and it wasn't even a cruel joke. It was a decent prank in which no one got hurt or killed. The problem is; it took at least a dozen rewinds for me to figure that out because the hard camera completely zoomed into the record player; so I couldn't tell which hand it was. It shouldn't take a dozen rewinds to figure this out; it should take ZERO. I should figure this out the first time and the cameraman here did a horrible job!) Clipper looks like he is knuckling up to punch Ken in the face and this ends with Caron and Clipper chasing Ken like Ken was chasing the aliens during the finish. That was in fact funny because this one also had a run cycle; which is a bonus for animation fans out there. We end with a jump cut of a view of the city which is mostly a maple colored tower and that ends the episode at 5:20. The record music itself became a running gag for MAD videos; along with Ken's "How dare you sell a lunacy record?!" which is slightly different from Ironsharp's translation, but the meaning is the same. This plot is so goofy; and the execution of it was terrible. I give it *** on the trainwreck scale for Ken's pained face expressions, Clipper being useful for one moment and actual animation being used during running. The "lunacy record" promo Ken cut is hideously hilarious as well. -** (-40%).

THE REVIEW LINE

Wow; we did the first sixteen episodes and all of them suck in so many ways. This show will get worse by the way as Ken hasn't even really began becoming truly evil character yet; as most of his heelish stuff is stuff that I see in many cartoons today and in the past, actually. The artwork for the main characters is fine; but there is no continuity, no sound effects, no logic and everything done makes no sense even when it is suppose to make sense. Episode #4 was actually dangerously close to "Fanboy" from "Random! Cartoons" all because Hoshi was awesome in that episode for the short amount of time on screen. He was a semi threat to Ken; he had cool moves and he lasted longer than any Juralian alien in the show thus far. Sadly; Ken killed off his heat with one blaster shot of course, but it was fun while it lasted. If the animation wasn't so horrible, the episode might have gotten over ** 1/2. Also, that's the regular rating, not the trainwreck scale rating. Yeah; this was hideously hilarious and there is a lot more to come as Ken fights a mad scientist in a mental hospital! (Which I AM NOT rewatching ever again!) Caron tries to murder his brother after a piano class! (Which I AM rewatching on a Friday no matter how much progress I have made.) The alien use a scientist as a human bomb causing Ken to make the most heinous decision in the history of animation! (Which aired BEFORE the clock struck three on a Friday.) Jurals use a troubled boy to set fires to houses! (Which I got schooled by Ironsharp and probably will get schooled again for assuming something like an ass.) And much, much more. TONS OF FUN TO MOCK~! So...

Thumbs down for all shorts in this show so far on the regular scale. Thumbs in the middle for episode #1, #2, #7, #9, #11, #14, #15 and #16; thumbs up for episode #6, while thumbs down for episode #8, #12 and #13 on the trainwreck scale. The rest get no rating, of course. I'll see you all next time.

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