EB Games review: Fighting Foodons

  Hello! This is my first installment of EB Games review, though to be honest videogames won't be the only things I'll cover. Anything that strikes my fancy will be covered as well.

Ah FoxBox, later 4Kids, you were very memorable with all those show, from dubbed anime, to shows about mutant turtles. When it was still on air I remember a lot of shows that featured lot of monsters, such as Kirby, Cubots (methinks that's the name), and one of my favorites. Fighting Foodons.

  Fighting Foodons was a "mon" series that started out as some videogames on the gameboy color, and the wonderswan. It got a manga version as well which was said to have spawned the 26 episode-long TV show. Alongside with Pokemon and Digimon, this series used various monsters under the control of various human people. Though while Digimon and Pokemon became very popular, Fighting Foodons went very much under the radar, though it has seen a bit of a cult following in recent years.

From the name alone, you can probably guess that the premise is monsters made of food fight each other, and you'd be right. This was one of the first and most influential series to me as it sparked my interest in monsters, created a base for my food monster drawings, and allowed me to see just how creative things could be.

Nobody really seems to have the gusto to do and Honest-to-goodness review of this series, so I've decided to try to review it myself.

---STORY:
Once a long time ago there was a king who loved food. One day he asked his group of chefs, which out of two dishes he'd been served was stronger Roast Dock, and a Tofu soup. The chefs thought he had gone loony, except for one. That one chef knew what the king was talking about, and presented to him a magic card called a "Meal Ticket". This item turned the two dishes into monsters called foodons, starting an entire culture mostly centered on food and cooking and the monsters that could be created for "Food fights". Of course where there's power there are those willing to abuse it, which brings us to our villain, King Gorgeous Gorge. He has brought up a legion of rouge chefs to form the Glutton Empire, which hope to make the ultimately powerful foodons with bad cooking, as terrible cooking usually becomes a very nasty foodon. Along with this, Gorge and his four head chefs, called the Big Four, have taken many places over. One night at one of the bases, where the people are making a huge statue of Gorge (Because no overlord can seemingly resist doing so) a boy named Chase infiltrates a prison and releases his dad, a world renowned chef by the name of Jack. However Jack tries to stop a plan to create an uncontrollable foodon called Beefsteak by a cat girl named Clawdia, which fails. While this was happening, Chase as well as his sister, Kayla, her foodon, Omelet, and Chase's first foodons, the Burnt Meatballs, escape and catch the eye of another old master chef, Oslo, who rides around on a flying saucer plate for no explained reason. so from there Beefsteak goes on a rampage, and Chase is taught to use his first effective foodon, Fried Ricer etc. at this point you can probably guess what happens next; Chase saves the day, Clawdia vows revenge (though no body tries to stop her from escaping), And Chef Jack leaves to continue the good fight. Actually I didn't expect Chase's dad to live through all of that, and still leave, with a good reason for doing so.

From there Chase goes on a journey to become a great foodon chef and beat the Glutton Empire.

So From all of this you'd probably think of this as a bad Pokemon knockoff. And indeed that would be the case, but this works for me because the series doesn't take itself seriously to begin with. Case in point There is a wastern episode where they ride ostriches, in another featuring Cole Slaughter, one of the Big Four, Gorge drops him in the the classic "Hole-with-a-dangerous-animal-inside" trap - but Cole is immune, so he simply jumps out both times he was dropped in , with animals hanging off his limbs. Another time theres a Jamacan-speaking Jerk Chicken foodon that guard a curry powder island in the middle of a lake of molasses. It's silliness like this that sort of makes you accept the corniness of it all.

8 out of 10 on story. It is like the classic "to be the best there ever was" in terms of Chase becoming a foodon chef, but from the villains who've pretty much already taken over, A father figure who actually lives through a ton of bad stuff and does actually do things, an the enjoyably cornball nature of the story, I personally love it.

---CHARACTERS:
  Lets start with the human characters, shall we? The silliness of the series in general sets up the jokes they work off of.

  Firstly there's Chase, our protagonist, who is essentially the F.F. version of Ash, though possibly even younger. Both are strong-willed, both progress as their series progresses, though really I like Chase a bit better. why? He has a bit more character in my eyes, he gets angry and frustrated to more of an extent, he goofs up a lot, but he progresses. And he has a lot of neat jokes, (Case in point episode 8, when he's stranded on an Island

   Kayla is Chase's smaller sister, a very good member of Chase's group, who is actually helpful and relevant at times; I Found her very amusing and smart at time (such as when clawdia kidnaps her in episode 4), she gets a good laugh out of me every now and then, which gives her a lot of an advantage over Chase.

  Pie Tin is another chef, who joins Team Chase to free his parents from slave labor. has his moments but probably my least favorable out of the bunch, being the tagalong kid and all. but thats not saying much as he does get a good joke every now and then.

   Albert is the rival. At first I found him as an arrogant a-hole, like Seto Kaiba, but unlike most rivals he works out of it rather quickly, becoming a foil to Chase. I find it funny how much of a fan-boy he his for Chef Jack.

   Oslow is the typical mentor, which I find odd because usually there isn't a mentor on this genre. He has quite a few funny scenes, and his chef skills do come in handy which makes me like him (Witness his realization of an evil ingredient in a dish from just barely biting into it, I thought that was a clever way to make his skill useful).

   Chef Jack/John is chases dad, who actually survives his first five minutes in the series and becomes a ninja mentor later on. Oh please, They do try to disguise him as best they can in his ninja getup, but its obvious from voice and body structure that is Jack. I thought that was the only dumb thing they did, but he gets some pretty amusing moments when he tries to disguise himself as a tree or shrub.

   Coco is Chase's love interest, though she, unusual for her position, is a strong female character, who - while is a bit mean spirited at first, she grew on me. The wok on her head acting as a straw hat was an interesting choice and makes for a memorable design. She works along with Jack while he is a ninja mentor, and helps chase with some foodon battles and other important things, such as leaving a trail after being kidnapped.

Of course there are other human protagonists but If I kept this part of the review going we'll be here forever. Now for some of my favorite foodon monsters!

   Fried Ricer is Chases main foodon, and sort of this series's mascot. I like that he uses huge spoons, as well as his fists to attack. I also noticed that a lot of foodons are human-esque with food in place of thier head, not really bothersome to me, but they tend to use that concept a lot. Still its kinda cool to see Fried Ricer do things like kick a little pudding monster and smack it with His spoon, sending it up into the air where it explodes.

   The Burnt Meatballs are Chase's first foodons, and they are pretty good at being useless to the point that its funny. They apologize for everything, usually suck at everything they try to do to help in a fight, are never taken seriously, and I think they wind up clogging somebodies nose at at least two points in the series. The way they put themselves down for being so pathetic and being comidically put down amuses me a lot.

Sir Dumpling is a British-speaking tai-chi fighter. I like british accents and phrases like pip-pip and cheerio, so He's one of my favored.

    Hot-Doggone-it is a hot dog foodon, and easily one of the best, as one of my fondest memories of the show from when I was little is where he refuses to attack a Witch foodon called Ham Scamwitch, and is subsequently slashed in the face with her nails. However he was subjected to the much-hated 4Kids edits, and his guns were replaced with ketchup and mustard shooters, which is a personal vendetta I have against 4Kids, as they did that with the other foodons guns as well, Its extremely noticable and embaressing to see at times. Other than the dubbing of his weapons Doggone-it was pretty cool (how many times have you seen a cowboy shoot at a rampaging shark?).

    The Dim-Sumthin' Dragons are really cool. You can't really go wrong with Chinese dragons. The different ways they sing thier names is unique. My favorites out of this group are Dim-sumthin' Blue for the way she sings her name and Dim-Sum Deluxe because it actually kills off one of Chase's Foodons.

    Juice Man is one I had to include, simply because Of his initial design. He doesn't look anything like a foodon, he looks more like a Black Knight in spiked armour. But on further research I found that he's a sea urchin juice Foodon, which makes his design more understandable and awesome.

There are so many foodons that I like, like The Chowderheads, Pound Cake, Donut-So, Fowligator, Jerk Chicken, and so many more, but it would take up too much time.

Lastly we have the villains of this show. Most of these villains are pretty badass in their own rights and are usually portrayed in such a manner. Keep in mind though that these guys don't get a lot of focus until a little ways into the series.

Clawdia, probably the most popular villain on the show, clawdia is a cat-girl foodon chef. What is odd about her though is that she never uses the same foodon more than once an episode. I found it kind of irritating that some of the more cooler foodons she uses don't get more screentime, but oh well. in any case clawdia is essentially this shows team rocket if there was only one person. She's not really meant to really be taken seriously, but can cook lots of dangerous foodons, and usually battle more effectivly than Team Rocket did, which I guess is why she used so many kinds of foodons. She gets some of the best slapstick and jokes.

Cinnamonkey is a nostril-laser-firing monkey man...you read right. Hes probably my least-liked character, simply because he doesn't feel the same as the others in the Big Four. He only amused me twice, when he complains that Clawdia's praising of the Glutton Empire is giving him a headache; and when Two of the burnt Meatballs are tossed into his nostrils and he snorts them out like two boogers. That and he made his only major appearance in my least favorite episode in the series.

Cole Slaughter is the Seafood Expert of the Big Four, and the muscle. I find him interesting because he is extremely honorable i his dealings with Chase and his group to the point that it seems that if he weren't part of the Villains' group, he could be treated as a friendly rival. He has very good funny moments, such as surviving the pitfall traps with piranha and alligators hanging off him, and being chased by an angry shark. He also makes some of the more B.A. foodons, like Sizzler (a seafood stir-fry foodon who sounds like Booberry from those monster cereal commercials), & Octopoison and Squid-Vicious (two seafood foodons made to prey on Fried Ricers fear of octopus and squid). I also notice His low tolerance for Clawdia when she butts into his first confrontation with chase, also humorous.

Muscles Marinara is an ally to the Glutton Empire who holds the preliminaries for the S.S. Foodfight tournaments early in the series. He has a pair of huge kitchen scissors  on his back which he never uses, and reminds me of Dwayne "the rock" Johnson if he were an anime character. He created Shrimp Stompura, which gave Chase his first non-Clawdia battle. I wish that he made more appearances, as he never appears after one of the villains bases is destroyed.

-work in progress-