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Our professional artist friend and hardcore Simpsons fan Maddie Copp has returned from spending much of the year in Japan, making this the perfect time to discuss the season 10 finale! After the Simpsons live a thrifty life, they head to Tokyo for some hijinks that have aged better than others. Learn all about dangerous game shows and wasabi (among other things) in this week's international podcast!

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Thad Komorowski

Will dive into this favorite shortly, but as a 10 year-old when this premiered, I asked, “How come this racism is OK but the stuff in World War II cartoons isn’t?” I don’t know if I was being obnoxious or shrewd. “Little from column A, little from column b.”

Harry Thornton

It still floors me that, somehow, three Simpsons cast members were in the Roland Emmerich Godzilla movie. Like, was Roland just watching the series at the time or something??? The full story is that, in Japan, the Simpsons is NOT that popular compared to other countries, because of how specific and untranslatable the jokes are.

ShyRanger

In a later season, the Simpsons would eventaully make fun of how crazy and painful American game shows would get. I don't remember the episode, but they are watching TV and the game show is called "Touch the Stove." You can guess how it goes.

Frank Grimes

Always enjoyed this one, only thing I didn't really like was the third act when they had to win their tickets.

Dayken

This isn't too far from the point where I abandoned ship but from what I understand this is the last good travel episode; then again they hadn't made it practically a "once per season" thing yet.

Adam Esat

I can’t post pics here, but I tweeted @ your account a pic of a framed poster of the Simpsons cast at a Freshness Burger toilet. That and a few toys at nerd toy stores were all the evidence I saw of the Simpsons popularity.

Thad Komorowski

@ 01:38:00 - Not Japan but related. When John K. was working on the Jetsons reboot in Taiwan in 1985, he refused to eat anywhere but McDonalds for the entirety of his time there (close to a year).

Thad Komorowski

@ 02:27:00 - My line of the show. Sometimes the simplest is funniest.

Angel Young

The Roshimon joke slipped by me as a kid but having went to a film school, I appreciate it now.

Brian Hortin

The Chuck Garabedian character reminded me of the King of the Hill character Dr. Money that had a similar feel but with real estate scams and of course Kahn fell for it. That one was based on Tom Vu who also liked to pose on boats surrounded by women in bikinis in his infomercials. I guess there have been a lot of these kinds of guys with similar scams.

I.C. Weiner

Regarding Marge's coin jar in the hair, way back in Simpson and Delilah Homer reaches into her hair for a rainy day fund, but none is to be found.

Kiefer Fulsom

Fun fact: this episode contains a crossover between Godzilla & Gamera that has never occurred in movies. Gamera is owned by a different studio who in 2002 approached Toho studios to create a crossover but was turned down by Toho. Thinking from an animators perspective of course you'd have to do Godzilla for the final joke, but Mothra & Rodan are a moth and a Pteranodon, while Gamera is essentially a giant flying turtle with tusks, possibly easier than drawing King Ghidorah.

Tony King

I don't know what KFC Maddie went to in England but I can assure you that they do have sides 🙂

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

I went into this episode expecting it to be more racist than it was based purely on memory so that was a slight positive, but boy even with the mention that there'd be some transphobia in this one, I didn't think it would be THAT bad. Those insensitive jokes really make what is otherwise a fairly "meh" episode much less enjoyable to me. -- This podcast, however, including all of the Japan talk, was SUPER fun and a great listen as I vegetated New Years Day and played video games to relax after a long (but fun) New Year's Eve. An excellent start to Talking Simpsons in 2020! And as always, Maddie was a great guest

Alex Forsyth

Props to Henry for correctly saying JAL this time and not accidentally saying that other thing again :lol

Leah

After transitioning this year, I really notice just how transphobic all the 90s shows I love are at times. But after that it's clear sailing for trans people, right? I appreciate that you always call jokes like that out, and this episode has an especially disgusting one.

littleterr0r

I ate at McDonald's in Japan where everything comes with a side of corn in keeping with Japan's corn obsession but also at MOS Burger which is a more delicious Japanese fast-food chain.

nina matsumoto

-Sorry, I accidentally skipped Simpsons Bible Stories when translating the Japanese titles. It's "The Simpson Family's Great Holy Adventure." -I 100% thought it was Bill Gates on the cover of Wired, but looking at again, now I'm not so sure... I'm guessing they probably meant it to be him but messed up the colours. -1 Corinthians 6:9 being in a Flanders-related BG was previously brought up in "Summer of 4 ft 2" (I brought it up and read it). -The Capcom Bar closed a while ago. I'm not surprised because it wasn't great. -From what I've heard from people who've worked in Japan, even when a native English speaker translates something properly for them, they'll often go with what FEELS more correct to them (which is often wrong). Higher-ups ignoring hired help/good advice happens all over the world! -I tried KFC there once and it was honestly the worst thing I've eaten there. Not that I'm a big KFC fan to begin with, but the KFC in North America is way better! -"Suica" cards are a pun on "suika" (watermelon). They're pronounced the same.

Harry Thornton

I thought it was Bill Gates on the cover as well, totally forgot he also appeared in that Internet King episode.

Joe Hodgson

Waiting for cheap airplane tickets is indeed a dicey proposition. My aunt moved from Massachusetts to Florida in the 90s and she likes to come home for holidays and family events like weddings and such. She's a teacher though so she can't come home for everything because it's not affordable, but her daughter took a job with Jet Blue a few years ago so she gets to fly for free now. The catch is she has to fly standby and pretty much every time she comes up she ends up having to kill a day (or sometimes more) at the airport just waiting to catch a flight. Luckily for her, there are a lot of flights out of Boston to Florida, though unfortunately she usually has to make a long drive from her home in West Palm Beach to Orlando if she wants to maximize flight ability. It's a free flight in the end, so it's still worth it in most cases, but it sounds like enough of a pain that I wouldn't want to wait around an airport hoping for the chance at a cheap flight.

nina matsumoto

One more note : most of the Domino pizza tracker is made up, except for the "out for delivery" notice, which is the only part that matters anyway.

MENDOZABLE

Kinda suprised/bummed you guys didn’t bring up that in the Mexican dub of the episodes that when the factory squid song ended , Homer says in spañish “isn’t DragonBall Z on?” I remember watching it in spañish and having my mind blown by weeby references in the Mexican dub. I really do hope you guys talk about how Big The Simpsons is in Mexico, it’s the biggest foreign animated show there , well next to DragonBall.

mavrick

the 33 cent store sells SkittleBrau, the made up drink homer wanted back in Bart Star - sort of surprised no one mentioned that!

Micah

I was taken to the robot restaurant on a business trip to Tokyo . I didn't actually eat there (it was a show primarily) with a lot of neat robotics and staging etc (and campy as all get out) but the overall trappings and theme seemed to be kind of racist. Or rather, pandering to what foreigners think of Japanese culture to make money (Though I am very much a white nerdy American so I dont have all the context) If you can get over that it was fun once. Big stress on once

James Babbo (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-07 23:00 A few comments on the kaiju aspects of the episode: I would agree that disrespect for the Emperor probably led to the episode not airing in Japan but as Henry mentioned, TOHO, the company that owns the trademarks for Godzilla, Mothra, & Rodan can be counted on as being reliably litigious. Something I have experience with as I had received a cease & desist letter from them for making Godzilla t-shirts. And as mentioned on the commentary for Treehouse 6, the producers never bothered to get permission to use Godzilla's roar for Lard Lad. So while they might get away with parody use of their characters (side note: Gamera is from rival production company DAEI), using the actual Godzilla roar yet again was most likely was the cause of Japan not airing the episode without compensation for TOHO. And regarding Henry's comments on the dubbing of those 60s films, interesting side note - one of the better production dubbing companies was TITRA who employed Peter Fernandez as supervising vocal director on films such as "Destroy All Monsters." Peter is well known as the voice of Speed Racer among many other anime/cartoon voices.
2020-01-14 05:17 A few comments on the kaiju aspects of the episode: I would agree that disrespect for the Emperor probably led to the episode not airing in Japan but as Henry mentioned, TOHO, the company that owns the trademarks for Godzilla, Mothra, & Rodan can be counted on as being reliably litigious. Something I have experience with as I had received a cease & desist letter from them for making Godzilla t-shirts. And as mentioned on the commentary for Treehouse 6, the producers never bothered to get permission to use Godzilla's roar for Lard Lad. So while they might get away with parody use of their characters (side note: Gamera is from rival production company DAEI), using the actual Godzilla roar yet again was most likely was the cause of Japan not airing the episode without compensation for TOHO. And regarding Henry's comments on the dubbing of those 60s films, interesting side note - one of the better production dubbing companies was TITRA who employed Peter Fernandez as supervising vocal director on films such as "Destroy All Monsters." Peter is well known as the voice of Speed Racer among many other anime/cartoon voices.

A few comments on the kaiju aspects of the episode: I would agree that disrespect for the Emperor probably led to the episode not airing in Japan but as Henry mentioned, TOHO, the company that owns the trademarks for Godzilla, Mothra, & Rodan can be counted on as being reliably litigious. Something I have experience with as I had received a cease & desist letter from them for making Godzilla t-shirts. And as mentioned on the commentary for Treehouse 6, the producers never bothered to get permission to use Godzilla's roar for Lard Lad. So while they might get away with parody use of their characters (side note: Gamera is from rival production company DAEI), using the actual Godzilla roar yet again was most likely was the cause of Japan not airing the episode without compensation for TOHO. And regarding Henry's comments on the dubbing of those 60s films, interesting side note - one of the better production dubbing companies was TITRA who employed Peter Fernandez as supervising vocal director on films such as "Destroy All Monsters." Peter is well known as the voice of Speed Racer among many other anime/cartoon voices.

oldmetalpossum

I'm catching up and just wanted to say: yes, your pizza tracker IS accurate! Sort of! At our store, the amount of time it takes to go in the oven is accurately reflected by the tracker afaik because we already track that metric for store evaluations. The oven time is always the same though due to food safety laws, and the final "quality check" is just boxing it up and might take longer if there's a lot of food coming out but it isn't accurately timed if it's a carryout order.

Anonymous

Any chance you could post all of those hilarious Japanese Simpsons episode titles somewhere?