City Sushi

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"Crack Baby Athletic Association"

"City Sushi"

"You're Getting Old"

"City Sushi"
Episode no.	Season 15 Episode 6
Production no.	1506
Original airdate	June 1, 2011
Episode chronology Previous Next "Crack Baby Athletic Association" "You're Getting Old"
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This article is about the episode. For the eponymous restaurant, see City Sushi (Location).

"City Sushi" is the sixth episode of Season Fifteen, and the 215th overall episode of South Park. It originally aired on June 1, 2011.

Synopsis

Butters is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.

Plot

Spoiler warning! Plot details follow.

Butters is distributing flyers for a newly opened City Sushi restaurant, giving a flyer to Tuong Lu Kim, the owner of the Chinese restaurant City Wok. Bewildered at the prospect of a Japanese restaurant next to his, an angered Lu Kim enters the establishment and starts a fight with the owner, a Japanese man named Junichi Takiyama. Butters is then sent home by the police for indirectly starting an Asian Turf War. Butters is then taken to Center for Criminally insane children for an evaluation, where he ends up being misdiagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder by the psychiatrist Dr. Janus. However, it soon turns out that Janus is the one with severe multiple personality disorder, and unknowingly puts Butters in situations under his different identities, that make the boy appear more mentally unfit, including criminal ones. Videos of him are also filmed depicting him urinating on Butters and physically assaulting him in his bedroom while asleep.

While this occurs, Lu Kim is further infuriated that everyone in South Park is lumping the Chinese and Japanese together and confusing the two. He proceeds to enact a plan to get rid of Takiyama by first faking a truce and then publicly humiliating him at the school by depicting old stock photos of the atrocities Japan committed against the Chinese during World War II and brings up the suicide rate in Japan. He later makes an apology while building a tower between the two restaurants, intending to murder Takiyama and make it look like a suicide which would not arouse suspicion due to the stereotype that many Japanese people kill themselves over "shame". At that time, Butters is investigating Dr. Janus's house at the insistence of one of his personas and learns that Lu Kim is actually another persona of the therapist.

Butters contacts the police and as they arrive, Lu Kim is attempting to push Takiyama off the tower and visibly changes his personality in plain sight before the town. Out of shame for being fooled into easily thinking a white person was actually Asian, Takiyama ironically commits suicide by jumping over the edge of the tower and landing on the City Sushi building, destroying it on impact. Despite Takayama's harassment, death, and the disorganized state of Janus's mental health, the police decide to keep Lu Kim around since he owns the only Chinese restaurant in South Park. Lu Kim, in a prison cell, covered in a blanket, and when a fly lands on him, a voice-over can be heard where he says he will show them he is fine as he would not even harm a fly. In the end, Dr. Janus' transparent face can be seen on Lu Kim's, indicating that the other personalities still exist. The scene then cuts to the City Wok Chinese Restaurant.

Critical Reception

AV Club gave "City Sushi" a "B+" rating saying: "City Sushi ended up being one of those episodes that I appreciated as a whole more than often truly enjoyed in the moment, admiring it as an overall story without finding anything specific in it that I’ll still be laughing about months later out of context—not like “Vunter Slaush,” for example. Overall, it was a bit akin to its ending, which recreated the denouement of Psycho right down to having Janus/Lu Kim repeat Norman Bates’ interior monologue word-for-word: It was clever in its execution, but ultimately lacking that extra madcap sting that pushes South Park over the edge from good to great."

IGN gave "City Sushi" a "6.5" rating saying: "This was a bittersweet episode for me, because there were flickers of brilliance scattered throughout, but nothing was consistent enough to make the story pop. I really wanted to like this episode, as I usually enjoy the Butters stories quite a bit. Right before this episode, Comedy Central aired a rerun of the hilarious "Butters' Bottom Bitch" (wherein Butters becomes a highly successful pimp), and it really made me miss the days when this series was much more consistent with its quality, which weren't even that long ago. Season 13 was lots of fun, Season 14 had its ups and downs but it was still a winner. So far this season has displayed a drastic drop in quality, and its sad when even Butters can't make it right."