It’s time to break you down a Kirby episode.
So, you know Lololo and Lalala, some minor boss characters turned useless side characters?
We get their origin story here.
A thing absolutely no one on the planet was asking for, no one wanted, and is not even
slightly applicable to the games.
You know, the thing we care about that this show is advertising.
I still haven’t gotten an explanation on why Lololo and Lalala were renamed Fololo
and Falala for the English dub.
Fuckin’ 4Kids USUALLY, usually doesn’t just rename characters that were already established
beforehand for an English-speaking audience, with at least one or two... glaring exceptions.
I’m wondering if it has anything to do with some kind of copyright garbage about the
Adventures of Lolo games, but that’s just a guess, I don’t actually know!
Obviously.
So, I will keep with calling them just Lolo and Lala, because in either the original or
the dub, that’s part of their names, so I’m not wrong in either language.
To start off this episode, Dedede orders Lolo to go get his fortune.
Because he has all the self respect of a middle class housewife who calls phone psychics.
Lolo and Lala are ready to get going, when Escargoon orders Lala to stay behind.
They refuse, as they do everything together and have never once left each others’ side.
Dedede gets unreasonably angry and orders the two of them to split up or he’s gonna
throw them out.
There’s no good reason stated as to why they want Lala to stay behind so much.
In the original, they told Lolo to get the fortune while Lala would stay behind and give
Dedede a shoulder massage.
That’s weird and awkward, so I get why they didn’t include it in the dub, but they also
didn’t replace it with anything either.
Escargoon: "No reason for ya both to go."
Lolo & Lala: [GASP] Escargoon: "Fololo can fly over to the fortune
teller alone."
So, the conflict of this story is…
Lolo and Lala really don’t want to separate, and they’re sad about it, and Dedede is mad.
Dedede: "You do as I say and split up!
Or both of you is outta here!"
A conflict soley set up for this specific plot that will never ever happen again.
Tiff: “Throw you out?
Why?”
Because they contribute nothing to the show?
Lolo and Lala are in a codependent relationship.
Meanwhile, Lady Like is scolding Tuff over something or other, it doesn’t matter.
Lady Like: “If we don't teach Tuff discipline, who will?
After all, we are his parents!”
I mean, you know when it’s convenient for us.
I guess their desire to never be split up causes Lolo and Lala to ask Sir Ebrum and
Lady Like where exactly they came from, as they seem to not remember.
Ebrum and Like really don’t want to answer that question, and after shooing everyone
out, the two of them proceed exposit at each other a retelling of an event for which they
were both present for and both remember.
Oh my god, how do you manage to manspread when you don’t even have legs?
See, when Tiff was an angry looking baby, Lolo and Lala were just kind of dumped on
them by Dedede.
They then off-handedly mention that after that, they found out that Lolo and Lala used
to actually be one person.
Ebrum: "Soon after, we learned they'd come from a strange monster named Fofa.
Which had, it turns out, been split into two creatures."
Quite a big reveal to just nonchalantly say in passing.
Maybe we should have… saved that reveal for near the climax of the episode.
When you deliver it like that, you make it feel like it’s not a big deal, when it really
kind of should be.
This is such an out-of-nowhere concept, too.
Lolo and Lala used to be one person named Fofa in English and Lola in the original.
Lololo and Lalala, in the Adventures of Lolo games at least, are boyfriend and girlfriend,
so having them effectively be twins here feels kinda weird.
In the Kirby games themselves, it’s not clear if they’re in a committed relationship,
but I’m going to take a wild guess and say they probably are.
They, at least, were certainly never two halves of one person.
In fact, they don’t have much of anything in common with any of their game counterparts.
They've never aimlessly pushed around one block in the entire series.
So, Sir Embrum and Lady Like want to keep the information that Lolo and Lala were ever
one person from them because they think it will make them sad.
I don’t know why Lolo and Lala don’t remember it themselves, maybe they just hit their heads
really hard when Dedede threw them and now they have a VERY minor case of serious brain damage.
But, uh-oh wah-wah, Kirby overheard their conversation of the information that they
both know and yet discussed out loud anyway, and because he’s a stupid baby, so his first instinct
is to just repeat these words like some kind of inconvenient parrot.
So, Dedede gets his stupid fortune, and the fortune teller basically says to not cause
problems on purpose and to fuckin’ pay them already.
Escargoon: "It says 'If you look for trouble, your trouble will double.'
Eeh!"
Is your fortune teller Team Rocket?
Fun fact: Voice of both Dedede and Escargoon, Ted Lewis, voiced James for the first few
episodes of the Pokemon dub, before the role was taken over by Eric Stuart, voice of Meta Knight here.
Dedede gets mad, and the only coping skill he knows is ordering monsters, so that way
EVERYONE can be dragged into his petty tantrum.
Monstah Man offers him a deal on a monster called “Slice n’ Splice”
since he’s a preferred customer.
Dedede: “I’m a preferred customer?!”
Monster Man: "You bet!"
Dedede: "Great!"
Escargoon: “What must the others be like?”
You know, I never thought about that before.
How many other people use this service?
How useful is a monster delivery service?
Are multiple petty assholes across the galaxy also trying to terrorize tiny little people
that really aren’t a threat to them?
Also, I’m just realizing Dedede’s got a teleporter specifically for this, and nothing else.
Why isn’t this amazing cross-galaxy teleportation technology more utilized in Dream Land?
Unless Dream Land doesn’t have this technology and this was also from Nightmare Enterprises.
In which case, how did Dedede even stumble upon NME?
I feel like I’m asking about things I was never meant to question.
Alright, anyway, he’s got Slice n’ Splice.
Which is a robot lookin’ thing that is not from the games that chops people up and mixes
their body parts together.
And when I word it like that, it sounds like some kind of Human Centipede or Tusk style horror movie.
No, see, it actually just mixes up people's heads and stuff in a comedic fashion, as if
they were Legos.
He does this by using magic staffs that are modeled after Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright.
A couple of enemies from the games.
You fight them initially in Kirby’s Adventure, then several subsequent games, and Marx makes
them fight each other in Super Star.
I mean, I assume that was them.
They were never named, but it’d be weird if they were a different living sun and moon.
But here they’re just some staffs.
Inanimate objects for the real villain of the episode to use.
We’re not gonna put actual enemies from the games in, but by god, we’ll dangle their
image in front of your face just to taunt you, you fuckin’ nerd.
Like, alright, get ready, I’m actually going to be mad about this for a second.
This, this here.
These little inanimate object cameos of Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright.
Who is this for?
Because anyone who’s already a fan of Kirby watching this is going to be pissed that they’re
just a non-living cameo attached to this made up villain instead of them actually just being
the villains, and any kid you’re trying to attract to the games with this show isn’t
going to care.
This show isn’t like Captain N or something where the writer admitted he MAYBE played
a level of each game that he was forced to write for, and basically didn’t care about
being any sort of faithful to it.
No, the people who worked on this know Kirby, this was overseen by Nintendo,
by people who worked on the games,
by Sakurai even.
These had to have all been deliberate choices, and ones I will never quite understand.
This isn’t even the only time in the series this happens, either.
I distinctly remember a Poppy Bros. Jr. being shown in a cameo at NME, only for him to never
actually be important or part of an episode.
And oh my god is that Mr. Frosty?
Why are you taunting me like this?
Back to the hijinks, Slice n’ Splice shows Dedede how he works by switching up his and
Escargoon’s heads.
They’re quickly switched back and quip at each other, which now that I think about it,
Dedede and Escargoon bickering probably takes up like twelve minutes of screentime per episode.
Escargoon: "One thing's for sure, that's the first time in your life you had a good head
on your shoulders."
Dedede: "Yeah, well it was real easy to carry 'cause there wasn't nothin' in it."
Escargoon: "'Least I don't have a waist size bigger than my IQ."
Dedede: "AHEHEHE!!"
AHEHEHE!!
Normally I’d beat yo head in for sayin’ that, but damn, that was funny, boy!
Having proof of concept, Triple D takes Slice n’ Splice into town to torment anyone and
everything in his path, and has Mr. Slice and Mr. Splice mix up all the Cappies with sheep.
These sheep just cannot catch a break.
Also, I’d just like to point out that Sheep Kawasaki is like… strangely adorable.
Rick and Tokkori get their heads swapped, and decide to go warn Tiff and Tuff and all
them about what’s going on.
Dedede is eventually threatened into putting everyone back to normal.
Which, Cappies should use threats more often, maybe break out the guillotine, even.
He seems to only rule over this one patch of land with a population of like forty people,
whomst all hate him, it’s not like this is a giant nation ruled by democracy and half
the people are Dedede supporters, no, you guys have the privilege of breaking out the
guillotine anytime you’d like, and yet you just keep using it.
That’s right, I’m victim-blaming the Cappies.
Alright, so Rick and Tokkori alert the children
about what’s going on.
Tuff: “They got the right heads but the wrong bodies!”
Tokkori: “No kiddin’, Columbo!”
Wait, Columbo exists in the Kirby universe?!
What?
Also, I appreciate this phrase.
“No kidding, Columbo” for when your TV-Y rating prevents you from saying “No shit, Sherlock."
Kirby shows up after Ebrum and Like smacked some duct tape over his mouth because he wouldn’t
shut up about Fofa.
Then Dedede shows up, then Slicey Splicey Dicey ends up chopping Kirby in half with
basically zero effort.
But since monster magic, I guess, instead of chopping him into two bloody halves, this
creates two little Kirbies.
One that appears to be a boy, and one that appears to be a girl.
Escargoon: “Well, well.
I guess we all have a male and a female side to our personality.”
Are you ready to dissect that shit?
[DEEP BREATH]
If our personalities are half masculine and
half feminine, then why do the majority of people just have the one gender?
I mean, I guess it’s saying that everyone has what are considered to be masculine traits
and feminine traits.
But since he’s talking about personality, that’s about the idea of gender as a social
construct and not necessarily physical sex.
So, why does Kirby, who is a baby and probably doesn’t care about what gender he is, and
is also gender neutral in Japan, split into male and female Kirbies?
Are they just Kirby but one contains all masculine traits and one contains all feminine?
Or does the boy Kirby just have more gray matter density in his brain or something?
And I mean, alright, as we find out later, this is how Lolo and Lala came to be, but
Lolo isn’t especially boyish, and Lala isn’t especially feminine, they act pretty much
the same, almost identical even.
Man, what the hell even is gender?
Like, sure, I am what is known as “girl,” but I feel like I don’t really have an attachment
to that identity.
I consider it kind of irrelevant to who I am as a person.
Then there are the people who are agender or bigender, or genderfluid, or any shade
of non-binary.
Where would they even fit into this mess of philosophy?
There are the people whose gender identity is very important to them and they
feel very connected to it.
Sometimes in a very horribly scary way.
Would they even have another differently gendered half to their personality?
Why am I questioning this, this is a baby show from like 2001…
This line about the male and female sides of the personality isn’t even in the original.
There’s no explanation in the original for why when you split one person into two persons,
they come out as one boy and one girl.
I think this line was something 4Kids thought up in some kind of desperate attempt to make
sense of any of this.
I’m sorry, 4Kids, but you can’t, don’t think I don’t appreciate the effort though.
However, instead of answering one question, you just raised several more specific questions.
You get a sticker for trying though.
So, Lolo and Lala run away with the little Kirbs, and get them alone, and get a chance
to really look at them and realize that they look kinda like them!
Girl Kirby has a giant bow and everything.
After all, a giant bow is just basic female anatomy.
Lololo: “But at least they know where they came from.”
Lalala: “Yeah, not like us.”
Why are you questioning this now, anyway?
Why not ten years ago?
And seriously, why don’t you remember it?
Like, I’m assuming it’s from the blows to the head, but we're never are actually told.
So, in order to keep the halves of Kirby safe, Lolo and Lala decide that they have to make
the ultimate sacrifice, they have to be more than ten feet apart from each other.
The horror!
They each take a Kirby and fly around trying to throw the Really Rottens off, resulting
in a Scooby-Doo doors joke, because of course.
Finally, Slice and/or Splice gets them cornered and is about to obliterate them into a fine
paste, but stops for a sec because he recognizes Lolo and Lala, and decides to hold off on
killing them to tell them their dumb backstory.
Escargoon is contractually obligated to shut up and wait while exposition is happening.
See, Splicey Splicey was the one who chopped Fofa Lola in half, creating them, after Nightmare
decided to rip Dedede off by sending him his OC.
Monster Man: “Well, King Sucker’s back to get his pocket picked again.”
Nightmare: "Send him Fofa.
Better yet, chop it and charge him double!
HAHAHA!!"
Monster Man: "Brilliant idea, NME."
Uh, you forgot to hand up.
Ah shit.
Also, why did Dedede even order monsters before Kirby showed up?
Is he just that big of an arbitrary dick to his subjects?
And this is where this whole moronic twist should have been revealed!
I do not know why that bomb was dropped so casually so early.
The Kirby getting chopped in half to make two smaller Kirbies, the scene where Lolo
and Lala speculate about how the Kirbies remind them of themselves?
That was all the foreshadowing you needed, then this is the reveal.
And it would all make perfect sense.
Yes, of course it’d be obvious anyway that’s what it was building up to, but this is a
baby show, everything is going to be at least a little predictable.
The important thing is it isn’t spoon fed to us in the worst way.
Also, Lolo and Lala being blue and pink makes sense because Fofa Lola was purple.
So, why for everyone else is the boy green and the girl orange?
Shouldn’t the little Kirbies be white and red?
And yeah, I know blue is a primary color, so I guess I can’t have that complaint about
Dedede’s halves.
Whatever, not important, moving on.
Dedede: "Ya'll look after these here scrawny rejects, 'cause I don't want 'em!"
Ebrum: “Uh, but your majesty…”
Like: “We already have a brand new mouth to feed!”
Dedede: “Then you're lucky these two ain’t got no mouths!
HAHAHAHA!!"
Yeah, it makes them way easier to dub!
You know, regardless of the uselessness of having the rods be Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright
I don’t even know why these rods are the sun and moon.
I’m pretty sure it’s not symbolic for anything.
The moon isn’t known for... making genders.
So, remember how Ebrum and Like wanted to keep this info from Lolo and Lala because
they were afraid it would make them sad?
Lady Like: "Their hearts will break if they ever learn the real story."
Sir Ebrum: "Let's just hope they never hear the name of Fofa."
Well, turns out they were 100% wrong, and they are DELIGHTED.
Lala: "We finally know where we came from!"
Lolo: "Right!
We're not just Fololo and Falala!"
Lala: "We're closer than that!"
Lolo & Lala: "We're really Fofa!"
Good going, guys!
You refused to tell two people trying to make sense of themselves for ten to thirteen years
where they came from for no reason.
I know Ebrum and Like aren’t acting as Lolo and Lala’s parents or anything, but I think
this qualifies them at least a little for a sarcastic Parents of the Year award.
Tuff: “I wonder what that sun rod does.”
Piss me off mostly.
So, Tiff and Tuff finally come flying back into the plot.
And blah blah blah, they manage to steal the sun rod and get to the roof where they mash
Kirby back together.
And the idea of splitting up Kirby into multiple smaller Kirbies was then used in Kirby’s
Massive Heart Attack, and everyone promptly forgot about it.
Thank god you knew mashing him that that sun rod would actually make him one person again,
and not just squash him like an extra juicy bug.
Sean Splicer catches up to them, and Kirby eats the moon rod, and once again, the most
basic of abilities serves as our climax.
Kirby becomes Cutter Kirby!
Meta Knight pops in for all of three seconds to tell us that!
Me, as Tiff: "Oh, now you decide to show up!
Yeah, thanks so much for your help back there, Meta Knight!"
Me, as Meta Knight: "Tiff, I have severe depression from watching everything and everyone I’ve
ever loved wither and die, and I physically cannot give a damn about every tiny stupid
thing you people do.
I’m not even going to stick around for the end of this.
I have no attachment at all to these floating gumballs, and I do not care about how their
situation turns out.
I came here to tell you Kirby’s ability, and that's it.
I’m going to go lie back down."
So.
Barely a fight happens, and Kirby chops Splicey Slicey in half.
This does not make two smaller versions of him, but rather just straight up murders him.
Which is a little more troubling than some other monsters, because he was, like, a talking
self-aware, like, person.
But he’s a robot, so we can show his on-screen death, don’t worry about it.
Kirby chops up Rick and Tokkori, and fortunately and unfortunately, this cutter works about
the same as the moon rod, and instead of just getting gruesomely decapitated, they get smashed
back together correctly.
Tiff is about to mash Lolo and Lala back together, but they’re characters from the game that
combine into a character not from the game.
We can’t have what few canonical characters we have getting exiled from the show, and
can’t just go and mess with the status quo like that.
Sooo the remains of Cut Man abruptly explode, shattering the sun rod in its entirety, while
the actual squishy living beings remain completely unharmed.
While a minor disappointment for a second, Lolo and Lala seem, you know, okay with this.
This is how they’ve been for as long as they can remember, apparently, so they have
no attachment to their former life as a singular being.
They lived at Nightmare Enterprises, so it was probably quite terrible, actually.
Lala: "We may have two bodies!"
Lolo: "But we got one heart!"
It's actually a serious medical condition.
God, this episode is weird.
No one was aching for this backstory!
It will never be relevant again!
You choose to focus one entire episode of the entire series on these two, and this is
what you did with it.
This didn’t involve pushing things at all.
Lolo: "I'm not Fofa!
I'm Fololo!"
Lala: "And I'm Falala!"
No, you're Lololo and Lalala.
Aah, I feel like talked way too fast, but I don't feel like recording this again...
♪ And it wasn't quite me and it wasn't quite you ♪
♪ I think it was someone entirely new ♪