Good Times with Weapons

"Good Times with Weapons" is episode 801 of South Park. It originally aired on March 17, 2004. This was the first episode of Season 8, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone have referred to the year in which it was made as "The Year From Hell". This was due to the fact that their film Team America: World Police was filmed, finished and premiered while they worked on this season, which caused a huge amount of writer's block amongst the staff.

Plot
At the county fair, the boys come across a weapons store. After managing to trick the vendor into selling them several dangerous Asian weapons, they play a game where they pretend to be four ninjas, each with his own individual powers, on an imaginary adventure through South Park. In these situations, the episode's animation switches from the usual "paper cut-out style" of a South Park episode, into a stereotypical anime design, displayed in letterbox format, with the boys drawn as adults. Asian style ambiance plays in the background. After showing off their weapons to Craig, the boys encounter Butters who wants to play ninja with them. The boys refuse and Butters dons his cape, bracers, and helmet to become Professor Chaos: bringer of destruction and doom.

The boys soon encounter Professor Chaos after an argument about the rules of having ninja powers. They engage in a stylized anime fight, where Professor Chaos displays his awesome power. Stan first shoots a jet of flame at Professor Chaos, only to have it turned back by his titanium cape. Kyle then catches the villain off guard with an icy blast from his nunchucks. Professor Chaos then retaliates by trapping the two boys in his "Web of Holding." Cartman then tries to use his powers, but realizes that Kyle had previously taken them away because Cartman tried to have too many. Kyle returns Cartman's powers, only to be transformed into a chicken. Finally, Kenny throws a shuriken into Professor Chaos' eye. The style instantly changes from the fast-paced anime style back to the regular South Park animation, showing the reality of the boys' fight with the weapons as Butters runs around wailing in pain having a shuriken lodged in his eye. In order to avoid punishment that would follow questions asked at a regular hospital, Butters is dressed up (badly) as a dog (using fur shaved off Sparky) and taken to an animal hospital. Unfortunately, Butters escapes on the way when the boys are waylaid by Craig and his friends, who have also bought weapons. After an epic battle, featuring the "Let's Fighting Love" song, the boys realize that Butters is gone and join up to find him before he can tell anybody about their weapons. Butters, meanwhile, manages to make his way to the hospital, but his disguise fools the doctor, who sends him to the animal shelter, where other dogs urinate and defecate on him. The vet makes no attempt to treat Butters and prepares to put him to sleep, only to find that he has escaped. Fearing that they have lost Butters, the boys try to return their weapons to hide the evidence, but the weapons vendor does not give refunds. Craig and the others then inform the boys that Butters was wandering around on the other side of the fair auction. Cartman, in a panic, pretends he has the power of invisibility, and takes all his clothes off so he can get Butters before the parents see him. Obviously, since he doesn't have this kind of power, he ends up showing his genitals (barely, as his belly covers all but a tiny portion of it) to the audience, with Butters stumbling on to the stage a few moments later. The boys' possession of ninja weapons fall by the wayside as Cartman is punished for flashing the audience, while Butters still has the shruiken removed from his eye.

Let's Fighting Love
The episode includes "Let's Fighting Love", a theme song that mixes Japanese and English lyrics without regard for grammar, tense or logic. This can be seen as a parody of the J-pop theme songs that are featured in many anime series, as well as "Engrish" commonly found in anime, pop music and everyday life in Japan as a whole. It is performed by series creator Trey Parker, who is an admitted Japanophile.

Trivia

 * This was voted the second best South Park episode of all time by fans.


 * One of the knives on display looks like a "Klingon" knife from "Star Trek"


 * This episode marks the start of Cartman using Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to support his anti-semitism.


 * This episode aired almost a month after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at Super Bowl XXXVIII. At the end of the episode, the townspeople are enraged that their children saw Cartman naked, rather than being angry at the vulgar gore of Butters with a shuriken lodged in his eye; Parker and Stone's intention was to satirize the American public's ludicrous concern towards nudity and sexuality in entertainment rather than gratuitous violence and gore. Sheila's comment "This is what happens when the moral fabric of society breaks down" could be self-reflective of the meeting itself (that is, a generally greater concern for nudity and sex in deference to violence and gore).
 * At the begining of the episode, the two men who are looking for the knives actually are the two nerds from 4th Grade.
 * This is one of the 2 episodes that shows Cartman's penis, The other episode that shows his penis is Imaginationland Episode II

References to anime

 * There is some resemblance to the fighting game Street Fighter. Stan's ninja costume is exactly like Ryu's just with different colors. Jimmy's ninja costume is exactly like Sodom's just with a yellow shirt and no mask. Token's entire ninja look can be compared to Dee Jay; his attack looks like the animation from Dee Jay's Air Slasher attack. Clyde's ninja costume is similar to Adon. And Kyle's looks similar to Fei Long. Craig's outfit appears similar to Geki from the original street fighter, or Guy. Cartman's appearance is similar to E. Honda. Kenny's costume looks similar to Mortal Kombat's Raiden.


 * In the original airing of this episode, an unidentified individual talked about anime (and mentioned his favorite director) in the closed captions during the commercial break.


 * With the exception of Kenny's attack on Butters, the boys don't actually fight with the very dangerous weapons they've purchased. They're content to pretend to fire energy bursts from them, mimicking the Hadoken from the Street Fighter series.


 * 味　The tattoo on Cartman's left arm means "taste",and the subtitle 珍棒　means "rare stick", possibly a reference to a penis.


 * The fight scene between the eight boys mimics clips from various anime movies, mostly the Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie and some from the Street Fighter Alpha movie. Some proof of this is when Clyde charges up his power, he looks exactly how Ryu did charging up his power in the Street Fighter Alpha movie.


 * It is also worth noting that the anime scenes look and move in a manner extremely similar to Toei studio's godfather of fighting anime, Fist of the North Star. Professor Chaos in particular looks and behaves especially like Raoh the Conqueror and indeed just about every big anime baddie ever. Though his name and outfit pay particular homage to Doctor Doom, who isn't an anime character.

Censorship
When this episode aired on the CW11, the shot of Cartman's penis was blurred-out in syndication.

Goofs

 * When the boys are looking at the weapons on the counter, the red nunchakus under the yellow ones keep disappearing when the camera angle changes.


 * One person refers to Cartman as "that fat little eight year old boy" at the end after Cartman inadvertently flashes the audience. However, the boys would be nine and in fourth grade, ever since the middle of the fourth season.


 * Kyle's anime counterpart has black hair, whereas he really has auburn hair, as shown in How to Eat With Your Butt. However, this may be excusable because the boys are imagining their ideal selves and Kyle doesn't like his hair.


 * After Stan tries to pick out the ninja star with a pair of pliers, we see all four of the boys and Kyle tells Stan to "stop dude! You're gonna scramble his brain!" If you look on the far right on the snowy tree closest to Kyle, we can see a black line in the shape of Butters eyebrow, If you watch closely, it moves exactly like the eyebrow on Butters when he moves his head.