Kirby Anime Sub and Dub Episode 15 comparison

Ok, I've been putting this off for 8 months, but it's time to talk about episode 15 of Hoshi no Kaabii or Kirby Right Back At Ya! Pet Peeves.

Look, this episode was really hard to watch, and I had to watch the sub and dub. I know for a fact that this episode traumatized some kids when it aired. I was already an adult when it aired and I barely held off the tears. But wait, it gets better! Just 5 fucking episodes later, the show does this again! I promise I won't hold off talking about that one for another 8 months.

This is the infamous robot pet dog episode. Kirby being small and clumsy has trouble playing with the local kids, so Fumu convinced her folks to buy Kirby a new toy so he has someone his size to play with. A mysterious toy arrives at Gangu's toy store, but he sells it to them anyway. At first, Kirby's actually afraid of the toy, but eventually he warm up to it and become friends. The other kids and even Dedede are jealous of Kirby's new toy due to it having so many cool features. One of those features is a self-defense capability that attacks anyone other than Kirby. Both the kids and Dedede experience the dog's power firsthand. Fumu gets suspicious and does some investigation into this mystery toy. We find out (to the surprise of no one) that it was made by Holy Nightmare Toys. Fumu goes to find Kirby to warn him all while Dedede keeps trying to steal the toy. The episode ends with Fumu and Bun going off to warn Kirby to keep away from the robot dog while Dedede makes one last effort to steal it. Kirby and the robot dog fall into the ocean and the robot dog finally activates its self-destruct countdown to kill Kirby. As Kirby swims toward the robot dog, the robot has flashbacks of all the good times it spent with Kirby and sheds a tear. The robot dog grabs Kirby, throws him away, and then jumps onto Dedede's boat to self-destructs sacrificing itself. The episode ends with Kirby staring out at the ocean in the night sky and waves to the spirit of his lost friend in the sky.

This was hard to watch once and even harder to watch twice. I definitely found some strange edits in the English version. First of all, the mystery toy box Nightmare logo was edited in the English version. The letter "T" was removed from the Nightmare silhouette along with the letters "HNM". I understand the latter since the English dub just calls it Nightmare instead of Holy Nightmare, but not sure why the "T" was removed. Someone took time to remove something so pointless.

When the robot dog boots up for the first time, the Japanese original shows the robot registering Kirby, while the dub boot-up changes the registration to just a bunch of numbers flashing across the screen. So pointless. Later they also cut out the part where the robot activates attack mode to escape from Dedede's prison. The English even changed the barking sound the robot made during this scene. What makes this weird is that the Japanese original, the robot dog made a weird high pitch sound instead of barking after activating attack mode, while the English dub uses a normal bark. I'm actually curious why the bark was changed for this specific scene in the Japanese original.

They also cut a short scene of Kirby and the robot dog frolicking in the field, probably for run time. The scene wasn't even animated, so no big loss. They also cut the robot's final activation to self-destruct short, no doubt for time constraints again cause they want to fit more commercials.

I know I keep saying this episode is hard to watch, but it's not a bad episode by any means. I like that Fumu's family does care about Kirby and was willing to buy something for him so he can have someone to play with. I love seeing Kirby stand up for the robot dog when it's getting bullied by Tokori even though moments earlier, Kirby was afraid of the robot dog. Just goes to show how pure Kirby is. It's wonderful but also an emotionally devastating episode to watch,and it hits hard! They going to do this again 5 episodes later.