Monday, April 30, 2007

Eureka! We're Idiots!

While I have to tender kudos to Adult Swim/Cartoon Network for airing the exceptional anime SF series Eureka Seven with, on the whole, few edits, the channel had to forfeit a bunch of those kudos based on its inept handling of the final episode of that series' 50-ep run early Sunday morning. The creators of the series designed the ending episode with a touching epilogue that provided an emotional payoff for an often intense series.

Adult Swim cut the coda.

Clumsily, too. They sliced it off right after a card that read (in Japanese, granted) "One Year Later . . . ."

They also cut a monologue at the beginning.

All of this was after the standard warning card the network ran at the beginning of the series, warning about the "extreme violence" in the episode, and bragging about how they were running the episode "uncut" because "we are American cowboys."

Their definition of "uncut" appears to differ from mine.

So I did what, likely, numerous viewers did: I went to YouTube and watched an illegal, fan-subtitled copy of the episode. Coda and all.

Adult Swim made me do it.

****Update on 5/1/07*******

Adult Swim says it will re-run the episode on Saturday, May 5, with the cut bits restored. A representative called the cut "not intentional." How you inadvertently cut several minutes out of a TV show is unclear to me.

No comments: