For a brief and careless moment, I thought “Wait a minute - - baseball definitely wasn’t around for that long before Commodore Perry’s arrival!” and I started picking apart the historical consistencies of this episode. Then… I smacked myself upside the head for getting that stuffy about this show, of all shows. Who gives a shit if they fudge the timing by a decade or five?
This one was another gut buster. Oh, absolutely. Watching this makes me want to finally get around to watching that absurdly over-the-top BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL cult flick… just to find out which one was more ridiculous.
I don’t have the completest urge some have that will compel them to re-watch a show just to compare and contrast the dub with the sub. However, given the hilarious stereotypical American accents and clichés that are spouted off by the bad guys in this episode, I can’t but be curious about how much farther the dub team took the gag. At the very least, I’m sure there had to be some discussion about how to best portray the portions where the sailors are supposed to just be mangling the Japanese language.
Speaking of translation issues, I feel like I’m missing some big in-joke with the likeness of Kagemusha San here. Yeah, I know he’s a legendary ninja (and the notion of a deep cover baseball ninja who meet an honorable ends by getting impaled by wooden bat chips is a hoot, certainly) but his face and mannerisms seem way too unique to not be based on some real life person.
Were I to hazard a guess, I’d wager that he’s probably modeled after some comedian doing a guest spot in this episode. They more or less did that already with Andy Warhol’s “cameo,” so it doesn’t seem too far out of the question. Am I getting warm here?
Watch this episode, "Baseball Blues” below and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk
