***
I am terrified of the Joro spider invasion of the US! I know, I know, they're harmless, non-aggressive, and despite their size their fangs can't even penetrate human skin and their venom doesn't affect people even if they could. That just doesn't comfort me when I have nightmares of walking into their webs and their 4-inch legs start crawling on my face! I won't even get started on baby Joro spiders flying around! Ugh... Well, at least Tom and Bob found a way to live with them. Forget math, karaoke is the universal language!
I had a few challenges with this episode. First, I wanted there to be a language barrier, but the kanji font just didn't look right, so I used the transliteration from Google translate when I put in the dialog. If there are any Japanese speakers who notice any egregious errors in Joro's dialog, take it up with Google, I just copy-pasta'd what it gave me. Secondly, I wanted to avoid Joro speaking "pigeon English" or some stereotypical non-pronunciation of the English "L", or anything else that would seem racially insensitive. In the end, I think Joro is just a polyglot that has been sand-bagging his skill with English until it came time to sing "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. And finally, at first I was troubled with how I was going to transition from their argument ostensibly in their webs to a dingy karaoke bar. But, I think Bob screaming at the bartender made it clear where they are located at the end there. This is also the first time I had to show more than two spiders singing together, since it's usually just Tom and Bob singing so using a single text bubble (square) is easy in that case. I think it came out ok.
Enjoy. And as always, sweet dreams.
Carlos Diaz
May 26th, 2025
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