Shorts Review: Samurai High Dodgeball Squad

 

Spoilers Below

Samurai High Dodgeball Squad is an Anime style short about five high school Samurais who compete in an epic dodgeball match against five high school Ninjas.

The kid with glasses gets knocked out first. Typical. The jock then grabs the short kid and rolls him like a bowling ball, knocking out one of the Ninjas. We then see a close up of the high school girls’ butts. If you feel dirty, then you probably should. Butt you’re not alone. (Hehe… I said, “butt.”) The jock hits on the girls by saying, “I just rolled a strike. Care to spare me some booty?” While he is distracted by the underage booty, the jock gets attacked by a billion dodge balls.

The coach of the Samurais performs the Facepalm of Shame and speaks in subtitles: “IDIOT! You’re thinking with the wrong head!” Shout out to the guys at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios for the proper use of “you’re.” The girl whose blood red hair somehow goes behind her eyes asks if anyone else saw the subtitles. The blonde girl who looks like an elf says that the subtitles were better than last year when the coach was dubbed. True otaku always prefer subtitles.

Then the elf girl gets knocked out. Redhead becomes enraged and Hulks out. She literally sees red when a Ninja throws the ball at her. (Move along, Grammar Nazis. I literally used the word “literally” correctly. Twice.) Red catches the ball, getting the kid with glasses back into the game. Only for him to be knocked back out right away.

Red and a Ninja face off, both with a ball in their hands. Red shouts something and makes her ball burst with blue energy or something out of Dragon Ball Z. The Ninja looks around to see that the rest of his team has fallen. Realizing his imminent demise, the last Ninja commits an honorable seppuku by hitting himself with his own dodgeball. Then we cut to the title screen with the logo for Samurai High Dodgeball Squad and it ends.

Samurai High Dodgeball Squad is a great parody of the anime genre. It turns the excitement of high school dodgeball up to eleven by combining it with an epic Anime battle. It’s short and simple, but has great animation. One of the things that I love about it is the high school stereotypes. There’s the jock who tries to show off to the girls and the nerdy kid with glasses who always gets knocked out first. Care to guess which one I was in high school?

Even though the plot is rather simple, I could see this becoming a series. Maybe in the next episode, the Samurais could play against transforming robots, kids in different colored Ranger suits, Japanese school girls, or mutant reptiles. Hey Seth Green, hit me up and I’ll write the script.

Be sure to check out Samurai High Dodgeball Squad and the other Stoopid Buddy Shortz on the Robot Chicken page of the Adult Swim website.