Good Times with Weapons
Template:Infobox South Park episode "Good Times with Weapons" is episode 801 of South Park. It is known popularily among fans as the "South Park Ninjas" episode. It originally aired on March 17, 2004. This was the first episode of Season 8, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone have referred to on the DVD commentary as "The Year From Hell". This was due to the fact that their film Team America: World Police was filmed, finished and premiered while they worked on this season, which caused a huge amount of writer's block amongst the staff. This was also one of 10 episodes to be featured on South Park: The Hits DVD.
Plot
Template:Spoilers At the county fair, the boys come across a weapon store. After managing to trick the vendor into selling them several dangerous Asian weapons, they play a game where they pretend to be four ninjas, each with his own individual powers (except Cartman, who's power is to have any power he wants), on an imaginary adventure through South Park. In these situations, the episode's animation switches from the usual "paper cut-out style" of a South Park episode, into a stereotypical anime design, displayed in letterbox format, with the boys drawn as adults. Asian style ambience plays in the background. After showing off their weapons to Craig, the boys encounter Butters who wants to play ninja with them. The boys refuse and Butters dons his cape, bracers, and helmet to become Professor Chaos: bringer of destruction and doom.
The boys soon encounter Professor Chaos after an argument about the rules of having ninja powers. They engage in a stylized anime fight, where Professor Chaos displays his awesome power. Stan first shoots a jet of flame at Professor Chaos, only to have it turned back by his titanium cape. Kyle then catches the villain off guard with an icy blast from his nunchucks. Professor Chaos then retaliates by trapping the two boys in his "Web of Holding." Cartman then tries to use his powers, but realizes that Kyle had previously taken them away because Cartman tried to have too many. Kyle returns Cartman's powers, only to be transformed into a chicken by him. Finally, Kenny throws a shuriken into Professor Chaos' eye. The style instantly changes from the fast-paced anime style back to the regular South Park animation, showing the reality of the boys' fight with the weapons as Butters crying in pain having a shuriken lodged in his eye.
In order to avoid punishment that would follow questions asked at a regular hospital, Butters is dressed up (poorly) as a dog (using fur shaved off Sparky) and taken to an animal hospital. Unfortunately, the boys are waylaid by Craig and his friends, who have also bought weapons. The boys hide Butters in an abandoned stove, then face off with Craig's gang but Butters escapes during the fight. After an epic battle, featuring the "Let's Fighting Love" song, the boys realize that Butters is gone and join up to find him before he can tell anybody about their weapons. Butters, meanwhile, manages to make his way to the hospital, but his disguise fools the doctor, who sends him to the animal shelter, where other dogs urinate and defecate on him. The vet makes no attempt to treat Butters and prepares to put him to sleep, only to find that he has escaped. Fearing that they have lost Butters, the boys try to return their weapons to hide the evidence, but the weapons vendor does not give refunds. Craig and the others then informs the boys that Butters was wandering around on the other side of the fair auction. Cartman, in a panic, pretends he has the power of invisibility, and takes all his clothes off so he can get Butters before the parents see him. Obviously, since he doesn't have this kind of power, he ends up showing his genitals (barely, as his belly covers all but a tiny portion of it) to the audience, with Butters stumbling on to the stage a few moments later. The boys' possession of ninja weapons fall by the wayside as Cartman is punished for flashing the audience, while Butters finally has the shruiken removed from his eye.
Let's Fighting Love
The episode includes "Let's Fighting Love", a theme song that mixes Japanese and English lyrics without regard for grammar, tense or logic. This can be seen as a parody of the J-pop theme songs that are featured in many anime series, as well as "Engrish" commonly found in anime, pop music and everyday life in Japan as a whole. It is performed by series creator Trey Parker, who is an admitted Japanophile, and fluent in Japanese. [citation needed]
Lyrics
There are two translations for the lyrics. It is unclear which translation is more accurate. In a Q&A session South Park Studios claimed that the lyrics were:
Romaji
Suba-ra-shi chin chin mono
Kintama ni kami aru
Sore no oto saru bo bo
Iie! Ninja ga imasuuuuuuuu
Hey hey let's go kenka suru
Taisetsu na mono protect my balls!
Boku ga warui so let's fighting...
Let's fighting love! Let's fighting love!
Kono uta chotto baka
Wake ga wakaranai
Eigo ga mecha-kucha
Daijoubu - we do it all the time!
Hey hey let's go kenka suru
Taisetsu na mono protect my balls!
Boku ga warui so let's fighting...
Let's fighting love! Let's fighting love!
Japanese
素晴らしいチンチンもの
金玉の毛ある
それの音は サルボボ
いいえ！忍者がいます！
hey、hey let’s go!喧嘩する
大切なもの protect my balls
僕が悪い so let’s fighting!
let’s fighting love…
let’s fighting love…
この歌ちょっと馬鹿
わけがわからない
英語がムチャクチャ
大丈夫、We do it all the time!
hey hey Let’s go 喧嘩する・・
Literal translation
I have a wonderful penis
Hair on my balls
Is that the sound of sarubobo?
No! Ninjas are here
Hey hey let's go, getting in a fight
The important thing is to protect my balls
I am poor-looking/bad, so let's fighting
Let's fighting love! Let's fighting love!
This song is a little stupid
It's incomprehensible
The English language is absurd
But that's okay, we do it all the time!
Hey hey let's go, getting in a fight
The important thing is to protect my balls
I am poor-looking/bad, so let's fighting
Let's fighting love! Let's fighting love!
A more coherent translation
I have a wonderful penis
Hair on my balls
Is that the sound of a sarubobo?
No! The ninjas are here!
[Hey hey, let's go] fighting
The important thing is to [protect my balls]
I'm baaaad, [so let's fighting]
[Let's fighting love -- let's fighting love!]
This song is kind of stupid
It doesn't make sense
The English is all fucked up
That's okay [we do it all the time!]
[Hey hey, let's go] fighting
The important thing is to [protect my balls]
I'm baaaad, [so let's fighting]
[Let's fighting love -- let's fighting love!]
Pop Culture References
- One of the Knives on display looks like a D'k tahg from Star Trek.
- This episode marks the start of a recurring quip in several episodes in which Cartman cites Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ when making anti-Semitic remarks against Kyle.
- This episode aired almost a month after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at Super Bowl XXXVIII. At the end of the episode, the townspeople are enraged that their children saw Cartman naked, rather than being angry at Butters having a shuriken lodged in his eye; Parker and Stone's intention was to satirize the American public's ludicrous concern towards nudity and sexuality in entertainment rather than gratuitous violence and gore. Sheila's comment "This is what happens when the moral fabric of society breaks down" could be self-reflective of the meeting itself (that is, a generally greater concern for nudity and sex and indifference to violence and gore).
- As Kyle struggles to throw away his weapons down a well, Cartman attempts to dissuade him, telling him, "You know this to be true." This is reminscent of Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back when he reveals he is Luke Skywalker's father.
- The various designs of the boys' ninja forms are drawn largely from numerous different video games. Though the character parallels are not absolute (some more so than others), they are approximately:
Ninja Alter-Egos
| South Park Character | Ninja Name | Weapon | Anime/Game Character | Origin of Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stan | Shadow Hachi | Tonfa (Metal rods) | Ryu | Street Fighter video game and anime series |
| Kyle | Buraku | Nunchaku (Nunchuks) | Fei Long | Street Fighter II series |
| Cartman | Bullrog | Dual Sai | E. Honda, Balrog | Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha series |
| Kenny | Called "Ninja Master Kenny" by voice over, though "true" name is muffled when Kenny says it | Shuriken (Ninja stars) | Raiden | Mortal Kombat video games |
| Butters | Professor Chaos | Psychic powers | Dr. Doom | Fantastic Four series |
| Craig | Ginta | Katana (Japanese sword) | Ryu Hayabusa | Ninja Gaiden series |
| Token | Black Jaku | Nunchaku | Dee Jay | Street Fighter II series |
| Jimmy | Unknown (not given) | Persian clubs (actually his crutches) | Sodom | Final Fight and Street Fighter Alpha series |
| Clyde | Unknown (not given) | Kamaitachi (throwing sickles) | Adon | Street Fighter video games |
| Chef | None | None | Akuma | Street Fighter series |
Goofs
- When the boys are looking at the weapons on the counter, the red nunchucks under the yellow ones keep disappearing when the camera angle changes.
- One person refers to Cartman as "that fat little eight year old boy" at the end after Cartman inadvertedly flashes the audience. However, the boys would be nine and in fourth grade, ever since the middle of the fourth season.
- Kyle's anime counterpart has black hair, whereas he really has auburn hair, as shown in How To Eat With Your Butt.
- When Butters challenges the boys to battle, they seem not to know the identity of Professor Chaos. However, in the episode My Future Self n' Me, Butters reveals to Stan that he is in fact Professor Chaos.
- When Kyle insists on throwing away the weapons to hide the evidence, Cartman tells him that his "Jewish blood" won't let him "throw away anything he payed fifteen dollars for". At the beginning of the episode, the price on Kyle's nunchucks was $7.95.
- When Cartmen keeps on inventing his own powers, Stan gets frustrated and takes them away. Later on in the episode, Cartmen begs Kyle for to give him his powers back, when it was Stan who took them away.
Miscellaneous
- This was voted the second best South Park episode of all time by fans.
- In the original airing of this episode, an unidentified individual talked about anime (and mentioned his favorite director) in the closed captions during the commercial break.
- Butter's mother asks him to bring a pie to the Thompsons. The Thompsons were characters in the episode "How to Eat with Your Butt" and suffered from TPS.
- Kenny throwing the ninja star at Butters is the only instance in the episode when the weapons are actually used as such: otherwise they pretend to fire blasts of fire/ice/etc. from them.