After watching an episode of The Simpsons a while ago, something about this particular episode annoyed me. So I did a little research find out more about the episode from Season 7, “Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie”.

For anyone not familiar with the episode or haven’t watched the show at all (it also means spoilers!), the episode is about Homer applying to voice a new character for the Itchy and Scratchy show, Poochie. When the episode of I&S aired, there were a lot of mixed feelings about the show-mostly involving Poochie as his role didn’t make any sense… Some of us, being Anime fans, can relate to that!

In the episode, a character who is known in The Simpsons universe simply as “The Comic Book Guy”, gave his opinion of the Poochie introduction episode. In this case, I mean argument. He thought “it was the Worst. Episode. Ever.“!

But I found out something hilarious-something I didn’t get ages ago when I was younger. The Comic Book Guy’s catchphrase, “Worst. Episode. Ever.” was inspired by the rants of a hardcore Simpsons fan on alt.tv.simpsons via Usenet dating back to 1992…

Here is a snippet of a post on alt.tv.simpsons from a fan disgusted about the episode, “Itchy & Scratchy, the Movie”.

…The bad thing about things like this is that I used to disagree with parents who didn’t let their children watch the Simpsons – I no longer disagree with them…Star Trek…Now, the Simpsons have done it, and they didn’t do it any better than anyone else. Should have left it alone, and come up with something original…

…This episode was an appeal to the lowest common denominator. It exploited cliches instead of exposing them. It twisted character traits in order to go after laughs. It relied on gimmicks that got a laugh in the past. It became a parody of itself. I repeat, this was by far the worst episode ever…

The entire episode made sense to me, so to speak. Skimming through it, it’s all “rant, rant, rant”. It’s a typical case of fanboy banter from almost 20 years ago, and on the Internet of all places before the days of Twitter! But let’s move forward to 2010, with something that happened on this blog earlier in 2009.

In 2008, I wrote a post about the then criticized Dragonball Z Remastered “Widescreen” DVD Boxsets. After one year of no comments, the post finally received it’s first comment… one from a Mr. “Crosstopher”. Wait, I take back the “comment”… but rather, blog post he posted.

…First off – with wide screen, FUNimation did not simply block off a random area of the screen and say there, its a widescreen product. The original animation cells were drawn in the same same as most other animes…there is more area than can fit on the screen with any type of croppng for presentation. You are still gaining screen area on the sides even though you are losing a small amount on the top and bottom, those scenes can be viewed either way. I’ve watched a lot of both wide and full screen versions and you don’t lose much either way….

…I’m not going to argue with you about the audio tracks but any redubbing process is going to carry through holes, even subbing will have some given errors. If you ever want to get the closest to original experience possible you have to watch something in the original language…

…Most of the other comments you made are fairly minor details, I see your point and I understand that its something that you’re looking for in a DBZ set but most of these are pretty minor if you are really looking to pick up a copy of the DBZ series….I mean why be concerned about what ever figures or whatever are coming with the your DVD when you are buying a DVD to watch the show anyways….that’s just marketing anyways…

Hmm… I wonder if it’s the same I&STM guy? But where he said “you stated minor details”, they weren’t really meant to be taken seriously in the first place. And if you read his original comment, at the end when he says “be a little easier on FUNi next time”, I didn’t say anything that harsh about FUNimation, but pretty much what several fans in the right mind was saying (as well as “photographic evidence” of the cropping).

My post on the matter was really just a rant within itself; that I agreed with what everyone was saying, as a proud DBZ fan. For the sake of the blog as well, I was just trying to create some conversation… and it worked. I will admit that my writing was very amateurish reading it now (*shudders*). Although I can go back and fix what I said, I still stand by my words.

It’s just that I find this particular comment interesting and definitely different from the comments I’ve received in the past that would contain vulgarity (and I thank him for not being out of line. To Crosstopher, if you’re reading this, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way). Not to mention that it’s a little similar to the Usenet post. But when he mentioned I gave “minor details” on the Spanish version of CHA-LA-HEAD-CHA-LA, I was a little hurt. Merely a wishful thinking statement. FUNimation could have included every foreign language version of the song on the DVDs like they almost did for the movies, since the show has that big of a fan base around the world… But then again, licensing issues.

Of course, that was a couple of years ago… But the post and everything else could be null and voided now that FUNimation released the first three parts of the Dragon Box collection. Now that I have a couple of copies of my own, I am very satisfied of what should have been released on the original season sets, which I almost invested in when the prices of the sets were coming down in price.

As for the theme song, I’m not the only one who wants a strange mixture of audio selections. With the upcoming release of the second Dragon Box set, user Micheal S. B. on Amazon.com wonders if there will ever be a release featuring Japanese voices with the American soundtrack. (In the minds of Anti-Falcouner fans, hell has to freeze over… again?)

What this has to do with The Simpsons is that the fact he went this far to defend the “widescreen” sets in a similar fashion as the Usenet poster on Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie. I don’t feel so bad about it: there’s a little Comic Book Guy in all of us, whether being an American comic book fan or a manga Otaku… We can make mistakes, too! Now that I think about it, the Dragon Boxes are intended for “hardcore” fans. The season sets that some of us hated so much? For casuals… not to offend anyone, but I’d rather have my Dragonball Z in fullscreen, with the English dub (in my opinion, anyway) and the Japanese music track.

It would be nice to have the Spanish version to make the US Dragon Box stand out from the Japanese Dragon Box. And the part where he claims I was being harsh on FUNimation? Again, I don’t wish to mean any harm to the company. They did release something of the Dragon Boxes after releasing all 9 seasons the first time, right? In fact, I thank them over 9000 (pun sort of intended) times for doing so! It is obvious they are doing their best to meet the demands of fans of a 20 year old series.