Weekly Shonen Jump’s insane adult-styled parody series is back with Illumitoon properly subtitling the Japanese track this time around. When we last saw our heroes, Bo-bobo, Don Patch, and Beauty had just survived an encounter with Kode-bun, the Hair Hunt Troops’ mind-reading assassin. Now they get ready to take on a whole new crew of weirdos, including a Green Tea Rice Soup Alien from outer space, the skilled fighters of C Block, and Softy Serve who looks like… well, his head is soft-serve ice cream. No sane mind is safe when BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo is on the TV. From Illumitoon Entertainment comes the uncut version of Bo-BoBo: Scream for Ice Cream.Â
Stats
DVD: Bo-BoBo: Scream for Ice Cream
Release Date: 5/1/2007
Release Studio: Illumitoon Entertainment
ADR Production: Phuuz Entertainment
MSRP: $19.98
Audio: English 2.0 DD, Japanese 2.0 DD
Subtitles: English
Episodes: 4
Runtime: 100mins
Extras: Kanji Opening & Closing, Character Bios, Character Line Art, Preview Trailers
Notes: Review is based on a Screener copy of the final product.
Episode five picks up from our previously insane episode with the trio of fighters still making their way through the woods. Beauty spots a pretty flower and stops to look at it when Don Patch knocks her over from behind. The orange sun is jealous of Beauty being the heroine of this series. The two begin to scuffle when the director calls cut. Of course, the director is Bo-bobo… dressed up as a baseball coach… moving along, Bo-bobo assures Don Patch that he is the heroine of the show and hands him a script for their new play, titled: Labyrinth: The Maze of Love. Yep, Bo-bobo and Don Patch are putting on a play in the middle of the forest. Just as Don Patch finishes his singing number, Beauty once again tells Bo-bobo that she believes someone is following them. Bo-bobo reveals that it’s probably a Green Tea Rice Soup Alien who forces their victims to eat… well, green tea rice soup. Just then a real a Green Tea Rice Soup Alien makes an appearance, and the fight is on between the alien and Bo-bobo.
Episode six opens with Beauty and Don Patch enjoying a train ride until Bo-bobo happens to hang glide by the train. No wait, they are really on an airplane! Don Patch doesn’t want to be beaten to the next destination so he jumps out the window with an umbrella to slow his decent. Beauty is stunned when she turns her head and sees Bo-bobo now sitting next to her. After landing, Bo-bobo takes off to try to learn the Fist of the Somen Noodles from Master Ramen. However, Beauty finds Bo-bobo and reminds him that they need to find Don Patch so they can keep moving with their true mission. Some cops have Don cornered when Beauty walks over. She quickly explains to the cops that he’s their emergency food and the cops let Beauty have Don back. As the trio are walking through the streets, a purple beam is fired at them from a rooftop. Gechappi of the Hair Hunt Troops is trying to take them out! The mysterious boy who follows the group rushes to save Beauty, but doesn’t make it in time as Beauty is pushing Bo-bobo out of the way. Struck by the unknown beam of energy, a symbol appears on Beauty’s forehead which says “fall out.” Yes, Gechappi’s hair-plucking beam will cause Beauty to lose her pink locks in ten hours if she doesn’t get the antidote from C Block HQ.
Our seventh episode introduces us to the trials of C Block HQ. Each level is guarded by a skilled fighter who must be defeated to gain access to the next level. The group break into the headquarters with an ambulance trying to save Don Patch after crashing his car off a mountain turn (don’t ask). The chaos of Don and Bo-bobo trading insults and gags keeps the entry-level guard distracted before he figures out how to capture Don Patch. Bo-bobo turns his attention to the Hair Hunt trooper and makes short work of Tesuikatsu with a Super Fist of the Nose Hair attack. Tesuikatsu warns of the levels the group must endure when they happen to find an elevator. But someone accidently blows it up and it looks like the stairs are the only way to reach the top to find Beauty’s antidote. Level by level, the gang take on the toughness of C Block’s… video rental stores. Yes, video rental stores. Hey, those guys are mean if you don’t rewind the tape.
Our final episode introduces the skilled fighter, lame dresser, and ice cream shop owner known as Softy Serve. He welcomes the “Angels with their wings torn off” to take him on in his lair of the fourth floor. Softy hands over the antidote for Beauty’s hair-plucking problems because she smells just like him. Beauty doesn’t take this well, but downs the hair-saving formula anyway. Now it’s time for the two warriors to battle. It’s Super Fist of the Nose Hair versus Super Fist of Babylon and Softy is managing to block Bo-bobo’s attacks. The deity of Babylon is on Softy Serve’s side and weakens Bo-bobo. But all is not lost for our afro super hero as he turns the table on Softy by introducing the sacred nose hair domain of Bo-bobo’s World. Yes, Bo-bobo takes all of them to his own personal nose hair space so he can help liberate their souls.
BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo is wacky insanity in a similar vein to Excel Saga and Tokyo Pig. Bo-bobo is the coolest dude with a ‘fro and every episode is as odd as it is funny. Takehito Koyasu leads the Japanese cast by capturing every odd turn Bo-bobo takes in this series. Equally enjoyable are Ai Konaka (Beauty) and Masaya Onosaka (Don Patch) as each actor is given a workout trying to cover all the different personalities that hide inside their characters. Phuuz Entertainment provides the made-for-TV English dub that airs on Cartoon Network. It will never win an award for accuracy, but it can be pretty funny on its own as the writers try to translate all the Japanese jokes to be funny to a Western TV viewing audience. Richard Epcar (Bo-bobo), Kirk Thornton (Don Patch), Vicky Green (Beauty), and Michael McConnohie (Narrator) do an admirable job in such a weird series to voice. My only real concern is what is going to happen to the real plot as the show moves forward. Some minor details in these episodes get left out and this could create some plotholes in the future.
Bo-BoBo: Scream for Ice Cream continues to be one silly episode after another, and the show is perfect because of this. The video quality still shows some noticeable artifacting during the episodes and is very obvious during things like trailers for other shows. The subtitles, while far more accurate on this volume, still need a lot of work. A misspelled word, lines that go unsubbed, and poor subtitle timing plague this disc to no end. Episode six often has the subtitles half a second behind a spoken line while episode seven has the subtitles several seconds behind a spoken line. Episode eight is also strange with subtitles varying between correct and half-a-second early. Fans of the Japanese version are once again going to need to contact Illumitoon about fixing these subtitle issues and doing some better quality-control before starting the press on the final version of the disc. Meanwhile, Illumitoon has fixed other details, including adding back the original logo in the opening credits and letting the ending credits remain fullscreen. The DVD extras include kanji versions of the opening and ending credits, character profiles (based on the English dub), and a slideshow of character line art. Overall, Bo-BoBo: Scream for Ice Cream is a great improvement over the first volume from Illumitoon, but I’m still hesitant to suggest buying the show with these kinds of errors (unless you’re a big fan of the English dub on Cartoon Network).