South Park

South Park (サウスパーク) is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Contents [hide]

1 Overview

2 Japanese Broadcast

2.1 Banned Episodes

2.1.1 Saddam Hussein Episodes

2.1.2 Chinpokomon

2.1.3 Krazy Kripples (世界征服クラブ, World Conquest Club)

2.1.4 I'm a Little Bit Country (戦争反対の賛成なのだ!?)

2.2 Trey Parker being a "Japanophile"

3 Video Games

3.1 List of Games

4 Characters

5 Related Videos

6 Related Illustration

7 Related Articles

8 External links

8.1 English

8.2 Japanese

9 Article in Other Languages

Overview

South Park (サウスパーク) is a cutout-styled cartoon that airs on Comedy Central in the United States.

Despite the cute characters, the show is characterized by a gap in its adult-oriented content, including racism, eroticism, gore, scatology, bullying, drugs, parody, pedophilia, poverty, murder, social satire, attacks on real-life celebrities by name, and political criticism.

The formula is beyond sick, it has reached the realm of crazy.

In recent years, television has become more and more restrictive in terms of extreme expressions, so it is no longer possible to broadcast an cartoon series as extreme as this one.

However, it has become a huge social phenomenon, recording the highest ratings in cable television history (excluding sports programs). Many of the satirical episodes and science fiction/fantasy episodes are spectacularly accomplished, and the show itself has received high praise, winning several Emmy Awards.

Japanese Broadcast

In Japan, WOWOW acquired the broadcasting rights and broadcasted the dubbed version of the show in 1999, but KUZUI Enterprise, the domestic rights holder, went bankrupt in 2005, so the show ended after the 7th season broadcast in October 2004. WOWOW had the intention to continue broadcasting the show, and the show's website was left for a while, but it was closed later.

The DVDs were also released by Warner Vision Japan (now Warner Music Japan) in 2000, but due to troubles between MOON RECORDS(also now Warner Music Japan) and KUZUI Enterprise, the distributor and rights holder, the DVDs from season 3 onwards were not dubbed (the DVD series itself was discontinued after season 4).

Other than that, Warner Vision Japan is the distributor for the rental VHS and Buena Vista Home Entertainment (currently Walt Disney Japan, but actually Pony Canyon is in charge) is the distributor. The Japanese subtitled versions on VHS and rental VHS and the DVDs of seasons 3 and 4 are provided by Viacom Networks Japan.

After a long period of silence, the domestic rights were returned to MTV, and in 2010, MTV aired the 10 episodes from the DVD "Matt & Trey's Best 10" with subtitles. MTV started airing season 8 on February 13, 2011, with the first 10 episodes aired in one go (subtitled version).

In addition, the eighth season began airing on FOX bs238 in Japan on October 3, 2011 in the MTV Entertainment Zone slot with an all-new dubbed cast. The ninth season aired in April of the following year in a subtitled version only, but has not been aired since.

However, in 2018, two subtitled DVDs containing parts of the 5th to 14th seasons were released by Pony Canyon. In 2019, the 20th anniversary of the show's landing, Netflix released the subtitled versions of the 15th to 21st seasons on October 15, and the dubbed versions on October 16. In addition, the 22nd season was newly subtitled and dubbed on May 16, 2020, and the 23rd season was subtitled and dubbed on February 1, 2021. This is the first official Japanese version in eight years, since 2011.

When these seasons were not officially broadcast in Japanese in Japan, episodes with were given Japanese subtitles translated by fans and posted on Japanese video posting sites, albeit without permission.

Banned Episodes

Due to the extreme content of the program, some episodes were not aired in Japan.

Saddam Hussein Episodes

Episode 14 - Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus (テレンス&フィリップ緊急特番, Terrance & Phillip Emergency Special
Episode 57 - Do The Handicapped Go To Hell? (ティミーは地獄行き?, Is Timmy going to Hell?)
Episode 58 - Probably (地獄の三角関係, The Triangle of Hell)
Episode 57 - A Ladder to Heaven (天国への階段, Steps to Heaven)

Please note these are not official translations so some of these could be wrong

All of these episodes were banned because Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq at the time, appears in them.

Of these, episode 14 was included in a newly dubbed Japanese version when the DVD box was released, and aired for the first time on AXN.

In addition, episodes 57 and 58 were included on the DVD in subtitled versions.

After Hussein's arrest the ban was lifted, so the 15th episode of the 7th season, "It's Christmas in Canada" (アイクをたずねて3000里, 3,000 Miles to Find Ike) was aired as is. Coincidentally, this episode became the final episode of the WOWOW broadcast version.

Chinpokomon

In Season 3, the episode called Chinpokomon, a parody of the Pokémon anime, was banned in Japan nor have a DVD release.

There have been various speculations as to the reasons for this, but some of them include the possibility of protests from Nintendo, the copyright holder of Pokémon, and the possibility of protests from right-wing groups because the name of the president of the Chinpokomon Company is Hirohito, the same as Emperor Showa's name.

As for the former, Nintendo's U.S. subsidiary has not made any claims or comments about the episode. As for the latter, it is generally considered a taboo in the Japanese media to use the Imperial Family as a laughingstock (see chrysanthemum taboo).

Krazy Kripples (世界征服クラブ, World Conquest Club)

A preview of the next episode was shown but due to the sudden death of Christopher Reeve, the Superman character used in the story. Season 6, episode 3 was replayed.

I'm a Little Bit Country (戦争反対の賛成なのだ!?)

Not a banned episode but what is the celebration for being the 100th episode is the 94th episode in Japan. Kyle mentions this at the end of the Japanese dubbed version.

Trey Parker being a "Japanophile"

One of creators of South Park, Trey Parker have been shown to have a deep appreciation for Japan and it's culture. He has studied Japanese in college, has lived in Japan, and has an ex-wife of Japanese descent (divorced in 2010).

In South Park, where characters fight with countries all over the world and sometimes even destroy them, Japan is given preferential treatment.

Video Games

The series had also branched off into video games. Many of these games comprised of shovelware titles. It wasn't till Matt and Trey where on these games starting with South Park: The Stick of Truth in 2014.

Some of these games were cancelled such as a GTA styled game for the sixth-generation of video game consoles. A Game Boy Color puzzle platformer ROM was leaked in 2018 showing that this cancelled game was repurposed into Maya the Bee (with some sprites of the characters within the code).

A Week In South Park was also a cancelled game made for PlayStation and PC. This was gonna be a point and click adventure game made around the time as the video game named South Park.