[6.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Let’s get this out of the way. Parts of this episode, the worst parts in fact, are insensitive and even racist. It’s hard to not to see Kimiko and her father as a pair of Western stereotypes of Japanese people and their culture, and it puts a taint on the good things this episode does.
At the same time, there’s that really lovely little dream sequence that’s an homage to Miyazaki and tons of other Japanese stories for the screen that the creative people behind the show truly love. It’s well done, and almost worth the price of admission on its own.
The episode is also fairly schizophrenic. The first episode is mainly an aimless but amusing riff on comic book hype and nerd culture. The opening bit featuring Radioactive Man vs. the fossil fuel 4 is silly in a way I enjoy. And Bart and Milhouse’s child-like enthusiasm for the reboot comic is amusing.
But then we transition awkwardly into a rushed story about Comic Book Guy finding love and soon, in the third act, to one about his putative father-in-law learning to accept his daughter and her beau. Neither is so bad in isolation (apart from the aforementioned uncomfortable cultural issues), but don’t have much to do with one another in practice.
Still, I like the clumsy effort to humanize CBG a little, despite his not-great song. The riffs on nerd properties that follow are scattershot but cute. And Stan Lee’s cameos here are arguably even better than his self-deprecating turn from seasons earlier.
Overall, this episode has plenty of problems, with a rudderless story and some rough cultural material the show does poorly with, but aims to do something nice with CBG and does better with the nerd gags, so it’s far from a lost cause.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2019-06-13T17:10:40Z
[6.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Let’s get this out of the way. Parts of this episode, the worst parts in fact, are insensitive and even racist. It’s hard to not to see Kimiko and her father as a pair of Western stereotypes of Japanese people and their culture, and it puts a taint on the good things this episode does.
At the same time, there’s that really lovely little dream sequence that’s an homage to Miyazaki and tons of other Japanese stories for the screen that the creative people behind the show truly love. It’s well done, and almost worth the price of admission on its own.
The episode is also fairly schizophrenic. The first episode is mainly an aimless but amusing riff on comic book hype and nerd culture. The opening bit featuring Radioactive Man vs. the fossil fuel 4 is silly in a way I enjoy. And Bart and Milhouse’s child-like enthusiasm for the reboot comic is amusing.
But then we transition awkwardly into a rushed story about Comic Book Guy finding love and soon, in the third act, to one about his putative father-in-law learning to accept his daughter and her beau. Neither is so bad in isolation (apart from the aforementioned uncomfortable cultural issues), but don’t have much to do with one another in practice.
Still, I like the clumsy effort to humanize CBG a little, despite his not-great song. The riffs on nerd properties that follow are scattershot but cute. And Stan Lee’s cameos here are arguably even better than his self-deprecating turn from seasons earlier.
Overall, this episode has plenty of problems, with a rudderless story and some rough cultural material the show does poorly with, but aims to do something nice with CBG and does better with the nerd gags, so it’s far from a lost cause.