5 "Arashi no Shintaisou, Neko no Mai de Kagayaku Hoshi ni Naru Nyan!"
(Stormy Rhythmic Gymnastics, Becoming a Star with a Cat's Dance, Nyan!)		2002-05-04
5 "Gymewstics" 2005-03-26
Ichigo, Moe, and Miwa are running to school, when a truck heads straight for Ichigo. Luckily, she flips out of the way and lands in front of her friends. They ask her about her recent behavior, but Ichigo avoids answering. Unknown to them, a few girls from the school's rhythmic gymnastics team had seen Ichigo's flip. The captain decides to get Ichigo to join the team.
Later that day, the girls approach Ichigo and ask her if she is interested in rhythmic gymnastics. They introduce themselves as the Daikan Junior High rhythmic gymnastics team, and they beg Ichigo to join their team. The team needs one more person to join a competition, or else they'll drop out. Ichigo says that she has things to do after school, but the captain begs her to join. Moe and Miwa tell Ichigo to join, but Ichigo still refuses. The captain blows her whistle, and the other team members put her into a leotard, which makes Ichigo join the team.
At Ichigo's first practice, she watches the other girls do tricks with ribbon, balls, and hoops. However, with all of the things flying around, her cat instincts go crazy and and chases the ribbon and bats the ball around. As the team watches in awe, Ichigo tosses the ball into the air, blanks out for a moment...and gets hit in the head by the falling ball. The captain tells Ichigo that she was amazing, and that they will definitely enter the competition.
The team is training and Ichigo is having trouble stretching and runnning. At Cafe Mew Mew, Keiichiro explains rhythmic gymnastics to Mint and Lettuce. Ichigo wishes she could use Mew Ichigo's power to help her in the tournament. She asks Keiichiro where Ryou is to ask him about it, and Keiichiro heistantly tells her he's on the second floor. Ichigo runs up there, and knocks on the door, but doesn't get an answer. Finding that it's unlocked, she opens it and finds Ryou inside the room, which has a bed and a computer in it. She wonders why he's living in a place like this, and wonders about him in general. Then Ryou spins around, and yells at Ichigo wondering why she's peeping on him. Ichigo yells back, telling him to get some clothes on. Ryou quickly pulls his shirt on and Ichigo runs off, not asking him anything. She runs to the park and says that she'll quit the team. Masha alerts Ichigo that Aoyama is coming. He stops to speak to her, and mentions about her being on the gymnastics team, and that he'll cheer for her. Ichigo decides to stay on the team.
The next day, Ichigo is outrunning the rest of the team. Ichigo practices beautifully with the ribbon until she ties herself up in it. The captain says that the meet is this Sunday...
And now it's Sunday. Ichigo is surprised that so many people showed up. She sees her friends walk up, and she thanks them for coming. When it's time for Ichigo to perform, she sees Moe and Miwa dressed as cheerleaders cheering her on. But she wonders where Aoyama is. Suddenly, she freezes up and can't move. The captain cheers her on as everyone else watches. Suddenly, Ichigo sees Aoyama walk into the building, and he apologizes for being late and wishes her luck. Ichigo finally performs, and very well at that.
Outside, Kishu has appeared, and sends out a parasite to infect an animal. Back inside at the competition, Ichigo's team is performing when Masha gives off a warning. The lights go out, and Ryou opens a smoke container and yells that there's a fire. Ichigo runs out and finds Kishu with a seal-like Chimera Animal. Mint, Lettuce, and Ichigo all transform, and pose. The seal tosses it's explosive ball at them, then attacks with a horn and ring combo attack. The girls scatter, run, and all get hit. As Ichigo dodges the rings this time around, Mint destroys them and Lettuce breaks the seal's horn, leaving Ichigo to defeat the Chimera Animal, and Kishu teleports away.
After the battle, the awards for the compeitition are given out. Ichigo's team didn't place first, but the team is still happy that Ichigo tried, and they call her their MVP. Later, Aoyama and Ichigo are walking together, and Aoyama is happy that everything turned out well. Ichigo is happy that Aoyama is watching her, when the seal randomly comes up and tackles Ichigo. Aoyama remarks that the seal seems to really like Ichigo, while she complains that they were just getting to the good part.

This episode was pretty good, very few actual cuts. It's not one of my more favorite episodes, so I really didn't care if it was butchered really badly. Mini-Mew seems to be the comedic relief, as he made me laugh again with his "crushing me alert!" line. One thing I really hated was the transformation scene squish. I want to see Lettuce's alone ;_; The other thing I disliked was the three-way mini-rap. But I knew it was gonna come sooner or later.

Decent episode. Some stupid dialogue. Mew puns.
Mini-Mew's "Crushing me alert!" was cute, but they're starting to overdo the "alert" thing.
The insert song was the worst one yet in my opinion. And come on 4Kids. Like, the words like, like and like, totally, are so totally like, 1999.
I don't really have much else to say.
And I shall close with this: Mary Lou looks like a man. Mary Lou sounds like a man. *Arrests her for steroids usage* *Government spends way too much time and money investigating, which they could use to investigate real things*

Script was...blah. Mimi and Megan desperately need to drop the "like, totally" thing they have.

Daikan Junior High is renamed Mountain Valley High. Even the school sounds like it would house valley girls.

Hongo Junior High (the school that won first in the competition) is renamed Caramel Hill High. Odd name.

The captain of the gymnastics team is named Mary-Lou Smith. Bland, and it sounds like Mary-Sue. And she's VERY stuck up.

(4 seconds) Shot of the clock outside of the school is cut.

First: "Uh...a girl who forgot her pants?"
And then: "Still, what's with the no pants?"

Lolz, no pantz

"Oh no, I think I'm having a very mew mew moment right now..."

Mew mew moment...

(15 seconds) In the original, Ichigo mused about and watched Ryou a little longer before he noticed her.

"I was not spying, and I'm not a chest! Uh, I mean, pest!"

Cute, yet silly. More of a silly dialogue alert than a stupid one.

The sign at the gymnastics meet is de-kana'd.

"Right...so glad you could make it..."

Actually, all of Zoey's lines when she's speaking to everyone from the cafe are done VERY sarcastically. In the original, Ichigo was truly happy that everyone came.

The banners around the inside of the building are also de-kana'd.

Somehow...Elliott knew that Dren was the one causing this. In the original, Ryou just said later, when he was standing in front of it, that it was a Chimera Animal. At this point in the original, they don't know the name of who's causing the attacks and such.

I decided to list this as an alteration rather than a cut...anyway, instead of showing the three transformations separately, 4Kids decided to squish them all together, and add a silly insert song. Because of the ending of the silly insert song, the part where the girls pose in shadow is also paused for a second to let the song end. The dub ends up losing 1 minute 4 seconds of footage because of this thing.

From Mark's line "I'm just glad they were able to reschedule after last time. What a disaster!" it makes it seem like the rest of the competition was scheduled for another day or time. Originally, it was on the same day, and Ichigo's team lost because of the faults that Ichigo made (the excuse from Keiichiro being that she had to perform after fighting) This is just how I see it, so it could be wrong.

(5 seconds) The ending with the seal hugging Ichigo got cut short.

Total Retained 79%