Fighting Foodons

Original Title: 格闘料理伝説 ビストロレシピ
Romanized: Kakutou Ryouri Densetsu Bisutoro Reshipi
Literal: Hand to Hand Cooking Legend Bistro Recipe

Plot Synopsis

Somewhere in a land nobody cares about, people are very concerned with becoming Master Chefs. One of those people is a small boy named Chase. King Gorge and his Gluttons kidnap Chase's dad Master Chef Jack, and Chase sets out to find him--but not before challenging numerous opponents to badly animated duels involving food being turned into small monsters. This basically consists of cooking up a meal, sticking it onto a "Recipe Card," and sending it into battle.

Reader Review

Rating: 0.5 / 5
Reviewer: Animagess
Review Date: 2003-11-21

What a waste of good food.

Just when you thought you'd seen it all, along comes one of the worst Pokemon rip-offs to have ever graced the small screen. Or any screen, for that matter. Behold, each of the elements which makes Fighting Foodons so awful.

Animation: Pokemon on a bad day. The colors are dull and hard to look at, and the monsters move as if they were paper cutouts with lines jerking back and forth to convey movement.

Design: The people are typically generic for this kind of show: slightly chubby, but not even as uniquely ugly as the Beyblade characters. They remind me of the Mon Colle Knights characters, which is a show of almost the same ilk, which I also had the misfortune of watching. The monsters are basically anthropomorphized meals, kind of like the McDonald's mascots from the days of yore (remember the Hamburglar?) The most memorable was a box of french fries with a body, eyes and mouth. Mostly because of its voice.

Music: For the theme song, they took a well-known classical piece, butchered it, and added lyrics, much to my dismay. The background music is dull and kind of muted, which makes everything seem cheaper than it already is.

Characters: There's Chase, who is as typical as they come, his dorky friend, and the token girl. And then there's some bad guys or something. To put it mildly, cookie-cutters have more originality than these woe-begone individuals (I use the word 'individuals' in the loosest sense possible).

Concept: Scoring a low negative on the "Innovative" scale.

Dubbing: Scoring a high positive on the "Makes Your Head Want to Blow Up" scale.

There is very little reason, if any, to want to watch this show. You would probably have a better time sitting in the bathtub dropping random electrical appliances into the water, and you'll probably feel like doing so if you ever accidentally stumble upon it like I did. It's annoying, artless, and bad to the extent that only deliberation or extremely wrong-headed thinking could produce, and the only thing it has going for it is its utter forgetability. Your mind will automatically want to wipe all traces of it from your memory banks, so humanity was at least fortunate in that sense.

US DVD Review

None currently exists.

Content Guide

Suitable for anyone to watch. Not like they'd want to.

Violence: 0 - Not so much battling as sort of flailing with lots of black lines...

Nudity: 0 - No comment.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - I didn't watch enough to catch anything, but I highly doubt there's anything beyond a 0.

Language: 0 - Kid's fare.

Notes and Trivia

You used to be able to catch this show on the Foxbox with various other ill-fated animations. I don't know if you can anymore, and I don't care, because nobody in their right mind would go looking for this one and it will not be missed by even the most bored of small children.

And on the cast: I shall never forgive Eric Stewart for stooping this low.

Availability

Shown in dubbed form on the Fox Network's Saturday morning Fox Box in 2002-2003. Not currently available on video.

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