Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

Episode Count	76
Season	Fall 2003
Genres	Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Shounen
Source Material	Manga
Rating	TV-Y7
Streaming	TBD

Believe it or not, the title becomes easy to pronounce after a while. 7 Bo's.

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, I think, is a parody of Fist of the North Star which quickly goes off the rails. If your only exposure to anime were bite-sized borderline offensive parodies made in America during the 2000s, you would assume most anime were like this show. This is the kind of series your mother would warn you about when telling you that cartoons would rot your brain. The plot is supposed to be that an empire of bald people are shaving the hair off everyone they see, and Bobobo is here to stop them with his whip-like nosehairs (surprisingly not as disgusting as it sounds), but the actual plot is whatever the writers feel like doing that week. Full battle arcs will just end abruptly, which I can only guess is because the writers got bored.

I guess I should bring up the dub since it's one of the most noteworthy aspects of the series. Against the odds, all 76 episodes were dubbed and aired on Cartoon Network despite being love it or hate it among practically everyone. People assume it's a gag dub, which is a dub that forgoes an accurate translation in favor of turning the series into a self-parody (these kinds of dubs are extinct today). But I sort of disagree, I describe Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo's dub as "accurate to a fault". When watching it with a friend, we would often go "that could not have been in the original Japanese", so we'd rewind and turn on the subs, and 3/4 of the time it would be an accurate translation. The dub adds stuff but it doesn't subtract. Most of the time, if they replace a joke, it's to keep up the bit of ignoring all on-screen text.

I think Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is hysterical. In my eyes, the only major flaw is the length. It is a relentlessly insane cartoon, which after a while becomes exhausting. At the time of writing, I've only seen the first half of the series just because me and my friend needed a break. We'll be going back at some point, and so should you!

- 0215MADman