Thirty Minutes over Tokyo
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"Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" is the season finale of The Simpsons' tenth season. The episode aired on May 16, 1999.
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[edit] Synopsis
The family, on Lisa's suggestion, visits a cyber café named The Java Server. However, things go bad there when Homer, looking at his bank account online, is cyber-robbed by Snake, which saddens Marge, because they were saving the money for their family vacation. After Homer has a discussion with Flanders (when Ned catches Homer burglarizing his house to recover the lost money), he says he got more for less by attending the Chuck Garabedian Mega-Savings Seminar, and Homer takes away Flanders' tickets (and his Jesus fish fridge magnet). The family attends the seminar, which explains many money-saving strategies, with some examples used by Chuck was that his suit was the same suit that Roy Cohn died in, the houseboat he owned smelled like cat urine, and the beautiful women by his side used to be men. Later, to save more money, they go to a 33¢ store where Homer eats a can of plankton contaminated with red tide, as warned by the “Mexican Council of Food.” They get tickets to go to Tokyo, Japan when they get mega-saver tickets at the airport, narrowly snagging them from the Flanders family.
The Simpsons arrive in Japan. Although Lisa wants to explore Japanese culture when they go there, Marge and Homer decide to eat at an American-themed restaurant named Americatown. Later on, Homer and Bart attend a sumo wrestling match. When they are there, Homer picks a fight with one of the sumo wrestlers. He and Bart knock him out, and the Emperor of Japan comes to congratulate Homer. He, too, is knocked out and put in a pile of used sumo thongs by Homer (who mistakenly believes the Emperor is a fellow wrestler), and he and Bart are put in jail. They stay in jail, learning Japanese and exploring its culture until Marge pays the bail. But when Homer makes an origami crane from his last million yen, he loses it in the wind, saying a Japanese version of his famed "D'oh!" catchphrase.
After losing the money, the family goes to the U.S. Embassy, and the Ambassador suggests that the family get jobs. They eventually do get jobs in a fish-gutting factory in Osaka. The Simpsons are dissatisfied with their new jobs, until they watch a TV game show, Happy Smile Super Challenge Family Wish Show. They decide to enter the game show. Their wish is to get plane tickets back to Springfield, but they have to go through a rough ride and suffer physical torture (particularly Homer). The Simpsons are given their tickets, but they must be retrieved from a bridge over an active volcano. Lisa is able to get the tickets, but the bridge breaks and the whole family falls into the volcano, which is actually only orangeade—with lots of wasabi added. The family gets their plane tickets and leaves Japan. As they leave, their plane is confronted by Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, and Rodan.
[edit] Trivia
- Although a Japanese-dub of The Simpsons has been produced for many years, this episode has never aired in Japan. This episode didn’t air in Japan because it displayed Japanese game shows as cruel and nonsensical and because of the scene when Homer throws the Emperor of Japan into a pile of mawashi.
- In the Japanese version of the series, Homer usually says “D’oh!” as opposed to the phrase heard in this episode, (shimatta-baka-ni or “damn it, idiot!”) but when the subtitle is shown it reads “D’oh!”
- The origami crane scene with the “last million yen” makes the value of ¥1,000,000 look trivial, but in reality one million yen are worth approximately US$8,000-9,000, depending on the current exchange rate.
- After Battling Seizure Robots goes to commercial a brief photo of the reporter interviewing the 2-headed cow from the commercial for “Mr. Sparkle” (from “In Marge We Trust”) is shown.
- Television closed captions misspell "wasabi" as "wasabe" in relation to the orangeade.
- The camera zooms in to see Marge's shoe fall off into the "lava", yet when she falls down the tube and gets back up, both shoes are on her feet.
[edit] Cultural references
- The title is a reference to Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, a film based on the Doolittle Raid.
- The gameshow which the Simpsons take part in to win tickets back home is an extremely over the top parody of Japanese gameshows. Although not even close to being as brutal as depicted in this episode, Japanese gameshows are notorious for being very unusual, some demanding a lot of awkward physical activity from its participants. Of partial note is the passing resemblance of the bridge over the volcano to the Takeshi's Castle game bridge ball
- In the scene at Moe's Tavern, when Barney is impersonating Homer, one of the phrases he says is "That boy ain't right!" This is a phrase Hank Hill often said on King of the Hill to describe his son, Bobby.
- The fish that Bart kills during his job in Osaka ("Spare my life and I will grant you one wish") is a reference to the fable The Fisherman and His Wife.
- Americatown features pictures of the Kool-Aid Man, Uncle Sam, and Elvis on the sign. It's decorated with other pictures of a star, a gun, a pie, a guitar, a baseball bat, and a baseball. Inside animatronic figures are seen: E.T. seems to be pointing up Marilyn Monroe's flying skirt, Abe Lincoln dances with the Statue of Liberty, and Muhammad Ali fighting Neil Armstrong.
- When Marge says to Homer on the plane that she liked Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, Homer claims he doesn't remember it that way. The underlying joke is that this famous film is about people remembering different things about the same event.
- Battling Seizure Robots is a reference to the Pokémon episode Dennō Senshi Porygon. The flashing lights (caused by an exploding rockets attack) during that episode caused seizures throughout Japan, resulted in the brief hospitalization of hundreds of children, especially those with epilepsy. The episode was later banned, though nowadays, most countries often include a warning about some TV programmes containing flashing images that might affect epileptic viewers.
- The square watermelon Homer buys is a reference to the real ones that exist in Japan.
- One of the lights (seatbelt, smoking) on the plane is Godzilla and lights when he attacks.
- Lisa spots the Hello Kitty factory.
- Chuck Garabedian is a real name of a talk show host in Milwaukee, WI.
- When the subtitle translates Bart as saying "Shall we tell them the secret of inner peace?", he in fact says "Satori no himitsu oshieru no?" (悟りの秘密を教えるの？), but Satori is usually translated as "enlightenment" - not "inner peace".
[edit] External links
- "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" at the Internet Movie Database
