tek's rating: ½

Viewtiful Joe, on TV Tokyo
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This is based on a video game which I've never played. And the first ep that aired was a ways into the series I guess, though eventually I saw the first couple eps in reruns, but somehow it still isn't clear to me exactly what was going on. But anyway, there's this guy named Joe whose girlfriend Silvia was kidnapped by some movie villain, the leader of an evil group called Jadow. Brought her into the movie world, I guess. And somehow Joe got brought in there too, where he met his favorite movie hero, Captain Blue, who gave him this V-watch thing that gives him super powers, so now Joe becomes Viewtiful Joe, and has to try to rescue Silvia. There's also a kid who calls himself Captain Blue Jr., because he wants to be a hero like his idol, Captain Blue, and he becomes Joe's sidekick. Junior is often frustrated by Joe, who's just really goofy and easily sidetracked and kinda dumb and has a bizarre cheeseburger fixation and talks like, I dunno, some kind of Valley/skater dude or whatever, y'know? But Joe's also good and loyal and totally dedicated to finding Silvia, and fighting the bad guys, and whatnot. He may have alot of bad qualities, but he's also got alot of good qualities, and can be, like, totally inspirational, man.

So, Joe and Junior, in their search for Silvia, often have to battle the forces of Jadow. The group is led by the "Almighty Leader," though we don't really see or learn much about him til the end of the first season. His identity is quite the revelation, on more than one level, though you might well predict it before it's revealed. Anyway, his second in command, who we see running Jadow on a regular basis, is a woman named Sprocket. Some of the goons under her command include a fiery tiger-man named Fire Leo, a bat-man named Charles III, a green rhino-man named Hulk Davidson, and a shark-man named Gran Bruce. Of these, Fire Leo is the strongest, and the others are rather buffoonish. But there's also an agent named Alastor, who is rather mysterious, and has his own agenda, not always the same as Jadow's. He seems to be the strongest of all of them, but he only goes along with orders when it suits his purposes, and sometimes even helps Joe instead of fighting him. There are also some weird little robot guys called Biankies, who don't talk in an intelligible manner. They do seem to have minds of their own, even if they're mostly just drones. There are alot of them which are indistinguishable from one another, but there are also several with independent personalities and styles of dress, who can talk, and may command a bunch of the standard biankies, though the drones are more often commanded by Sprocket or her goons.

Welp, Jadow is defeated at the end of season one, so there'll be a new enemy in season two, and Silvia will become a superhero herself. But I haven't seen any of that, and I don't know if I ever will, since Kids' WB isn't showing it. Anyway, the series as a whole is... I dunno, kinda lame, dude, but also kinda cool, y'know what I mean? It's just weird, is all. But kinda funny. I'm just sayin'... Oh yeah, and also I thought the theme song was kinda catchy.


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