Samurai Pizza Cats

"Samurai Pizza Cats"

Kyattou Ninden Teyandee was made for television outside of Japan in 1990/91 by producer Andy Thomas for Saban International and featured an all Canadian cast of vocalists (and a few behind the scene's people too). When the show was made for English television it wasn't translated (Thomas didn't even look up the proper spelling for Samurai - thus we get Samuri, which is funny all the same!). The original dialogue and sound track was kept from everyone (except Thomas) and they created an entirely new show (but some things had to be kept the same because you can't change the cause and effect responses embedded in the cartoon). The writers were given the animation, re-arranged a bit by Thomas so that they couldn't do a carbon copy translation it if they wanted - and that's all they had to work with. Andy Thomas came up with the title Samurai Pizza Cats, re-named all the characters; making them international so to speak ~ Speedy after the Mexican theme Speedy Gonzallez, Guido's name is Italian, and Polly... she's named after Andy Thomas's sister! The bad guy's names became puns of sorts - Bad Bird's name is self explanatory, Jerry Atric is a pun on the medical term Geriatric which refers to an old person, and Big Cheese is a slang term given to a person in a position of power. It was set in Little Tokyo - 'Little' probably because the characters were rather short and 'Tokyo' because the show is set in Japan. Andy Thomas came up with the brilliant idea of having a know-it-all narrator providing some direction, communication, explanation and hilarious comic relief!

The tone of the entire show was lightened immensely (most likely for censorship reasons). The city is modified: becomes Little Tokyo. Characters change: becomes Speedy, becomes Polly, becomes Guido, becomes Francine and the become the Samurai Pizza Cats. The bad guys change too: becomes Bad Bird, becomes Jerry Atric and becomes Seymour "Big" Cheese. The most significant change there is that Big Cheese is a rat, not a fox like his Japanese counterpart. The entire idea of civilization is changed from to Little Tokyo; where as the citizens of are animaloid, the citizens of Little Tokyo are flesh and blood or a robotic/humanoid combination (like the Borg from Star Trek). Some character relationships are altered (the crush has on does not exist between Polly and Speedy) and some stay the same (the general idea behind /Seymour Cheese).

When all is said and done the unedited English version is longer than what we got to see on television. Due to censorship (don't ya just hate it) they had to cut out many of the cross dressing jokes and other innuendoes (I bet now that I'm actually old enough to completely understand the majority of the jokes, the unedited version must be hilarious!). Most of the episode titles for SPC are parodies of sayings, songs, movies, ways of life, etc... Two episodes from KNT were left untranslated (KNT ep 10 and 51) and one was totally re-done (KNT ep 54 - Cats Cop Cartoon Careers). It took a while to get the show on television because Haim Saban held the rights back, but when it finally got going (thank you to the WONDERFUL person who convinced Haim Saban to do so) SPC started out it's fan base in England, 1991/92, where the censorship laws were relaxed enough so that all 52 translated episodes could air. The fall of 1992 saw Canada's Youth Television (YTV) pick up a 48 episode package from Saban and Samurai Pizza Cats thrived in Canada *Click Here for YTV premier dates for SPC episodes*. Airing on YTV from 1992 to 1997, the majority of it's time was spent on Saturday mornings but had it's greatest triumph in the most prestigious after school slot on YTV's "The Zone" for the 1993/94 school year. Over the course of the next several years Samurai Pizza Cats spread out across Europe and down into Australia - the cats learnt many new languages in the process. However it took 5 years for the show to air in it's English companies home land - the USA (something Thomas thought wouldn't happen).

In 1996, Saban used it's own television station - Fox Family Channel - to air the show. However, strict censorship laws prevented many episodes from airing (some of them happened to be key episodes) and the deal the American's received was widdled down to 41 episodes. None the less, Samurai Pizza Cats spawned a huge fan base in the USA, no thanks to lousy/terrible promotional efforts on Saban's part. YTV's Samurai Pizza Cats promotion was without Saban help and the station did a much better promoting job when the show was featured in "The Zone" commercials and publications *click here for some Zone clips*. They even had vocalists Sonja Ball and Pauline Little on for an interview during the 1994 Zone season where they talked about SPC and other shows they had featured on YTV. When the respective stations pulled the plug on the shows, they pretty much had no choice - Saban had pulled it from the market. Efforts have been and ARE currently under way to bring the show back to television (Check out the "Samurai Saving Time" and "Petition" links at the top of the page). Anyone who has watched the show knows that this is quality programming and deserves more respect than it's getting, many shows on television pale in comparison to the kind of show Samurai Pizza Cats is.

* I have heard that on occasions Samurai Pizza Cats has aired in the UK as a place filler (like where an event has been cancelled or postponed - they may use SPC to fill in the time) and Fox Family aired "The Cheese Who Stole Christmas" in 1998... so there's still hope!

KNT Info | Episode Directory | Episode 1

HOME