Scene of a busy Tokyo commercial district. Zoom to a second-story window of a building. Cut to interior of a small room. Inside, a disheveled man is hunched over a table, writing with intense concentration. He is surrounded by bits of wadded-up paper on the table and the floor.
Voice Over: This man is Kangae Hakuchi, writer of Gatchaman scripts. In a few moments, he will have written the most moronic episode in Tatsunoko history...and as a consequence, he will die...groaning.
Hakuchi stops writing, pausing to read what he has written. A look of sudden consternation spreads across his face and he collapses over the table, groaning. He staggers to his feet and stumbles around the room, groaning with mounting appallment, then clutches his chest and drops dead to the floor.
Voice Over: It was obvious that the script was lethal...that no one could read it and live...
Hakuchi's editor enters. The editor reacts with dismay and tries to shake Hakuchi awake but to no avail; the writer is indeed dead. The editor then sees the script lying on the table and reads it. With a look of greater dismay he groans loudly and collapses dead on top of Hakuchi's body.
Cut to exterior of building where news reporter is commenting on the scene.
Reporter: This afternoon, shortly after lunchtime, stupidity stuck this animation studio. Sudden...tragic...stupidity. Police have barricaded the area, and their chief inspector is here with me now.
Inspector (wearing bomb-squad body-armor): I shall enter the building and attempt to remove the script.
Just then a paramedic is seen crying out and collapsing through the open second-story window. He gasps and dies slumped over the window sill. He is followed by the coroner, who while groaning falls completely out of the window and lands with a splat on the parking lot below. The inspector and reporter watch this sadly.
Inspector: I shall be aided by an audio playback of Jerry Seinfeld's "Master of his Domain" comedy episode broadcast from those loud- speakers, and also by the men of Alpha Division who will be reading "Dave Barry Turns 50". (He points to a group of policemen chanting aloud from the book) The atmosphere should protect me in the case I accidentally read the script.
The inspector gives a signal. The policement chant louder and the Seinfeld episode is played loud enough for people to hear it up the street. The inspector lowers his helmet's blast-shield over his face, squares his shoulders, and bravely marches into the building.
Reporter: There goes a brave man. Indeed, an incredibly brave man. I don't think I've ever seen so much courage than when test audiences for the 1998 Godzilla movie remained in the theater long enough to witness the Jurassic Park ripoff scene. In fact, I-
The inspector suddenly appears at the front door, moaning in horror, holding the script aloft. He clutches at his chest with his other hand and falls face first onto the ground. More policemen rush forward to assist their fallen comrade, and each of them drop like flies, having apparently read the script's top page.
Voice Over: In light of the tragic deaths, the producers at Tatsunoko decided to take the script to an outside studio in an attempt to have it rewritten into a usable episode. Tatsunoko was already two weeks behind in the production of a new episode and there was no time to start over- they had to make the best of what they had. The script was separated into individual words by editors brought in from foreign countries, people who could not read or understand Japanese and so were safe from exposure to the killer script. However, tragedy struck again when a young editor from California who hadn't revealed her elementary Japanese skills read two words and immediately fell into a coma.
Scene of a young woman holding up a page to read it, then slumping over her desk.
Voice Over: The script was transported in steel cases to Los Angeles, (animation of an armada of airplanes flying over the Pacific Ocean) where experts at the second studio were waiting. (photo of a tall skyscraper at 10960 Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles)
Voice Over: There, writers who specialized in adapting popular Japanese anime into series' suitable for American consumption began to work on the killer script.
Photo of the same building, with sounds of a paper shredder, chainsaw, wood chipper, and Cuisinart food processor heard in the background.
Voice Over: However, the project was not without its share of pitfalls, as a few of this studio's staff also had rudimentary Japanese skills which went unreported to the people at Tatsunoko.
Cut to interior of office, where a short, perky brunette woman is seen reading a few pages of the script. She cries out "Oh, mah GAWD!" and collapses to the floor.
Voice Over: Shocked by the sudden fall of their associate, staff at the American studio immediately sent the killer script back to Tatsunoko. There, taking extreme safety precautions to protect their staff, the script was worked into an episode.
Workers in white hazardous material suits are seen handling pages of script with long metal tongs; alarms sound and lights flash whenever someone enters the room.
Voice Over: It was so dangerous to even try drawing the animation, that artists could only draw one line at a time. More than three at once could send an artist to the hospital for weeks. Cell production had to be done by robots, lest that painters suddenly die of over-exposure to even one.
Interior of a Toyota automobile production line, where giant robot arms once used to weld Celica sportscar bodies are being used to paint animation cells.
Voice Over: The end result was a rather poorly drawn and choppy episode, but it was the best they could do. The episode premiered on Japanese TV, the studio just making their production deadlines.
A young girl and boy watching television in suburban Japanese home. Halfway through, the children suddenly begin to suffer seizures. A woman screams off-screen.
Reporter at the scene of a hospital jammed with convulsing people: Today as this week's installment of Gatchaman Fighter was aired, some 650 viewers were felled by seizures and nausea while watching the episode...
An exhausted doctor being interviewed by reporter: -it's horrible... There just isn't enough manpower to handle all the cases. I've never seen anything like this since the Pokemon disaster...
Voice-Over: Strangely enough, the American studio went ahead with plans to purchase the broadcast rights to the series. They proceeded to adapt each of those episodes for American release, although they skipped over the killer one and pretended that it never existed. Unfortunately, the planned domestic television release of sixty-five episodes was cut drastically short to a mere sixteen, when American audiences suddenly began to exhibit a lesser form of the same symptoms suffered by the original victims. It was decided that for the greater global good, the episodes should be withdrawn from the air.
Interior of a bedroom. The father closes his book and regards his three young children.
Father: And that boys, is why Saban never aired their version of "Enraged G-1, a New Way To Kill", also known as the infamous "Mad Cow Episode". Now go to sleep, all of you. I'll see you in the morning.
Children (together): Aw, dad, please read us another one. Read us the one about how Jetman was bastardized into Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers!
Father: Ah, now boys, it's way past your bedtime. It's time you were off to sleep.
Children: Please? Please? Read us the one about how Carl Macek destroyed Macross and created that dreadful "Clash of the Bionoids! Yeah, read us that one! Please? Please? Awww....
Father: Nope, that one can wait until tomorrow. Right now, it's time for me to say good night. Good night.
Father closes the door, but then suddenly reopens it. He looks directly at the camera.
Father: And now for something completely different.
Scene of a ragged and disheveled woman frantically swimming up to a beach. "Jaws" type music is heard. The woman screams and points behind her:
Woman: IT'S-!!!
THE END
The preceding was brought to you by Pythonian (Gatch) Pictures, Ltd. A subsidiary of: Disturbed World Productions / Canon Fodder Inc. (c) 1999