Original Run
October 2, 2004 to September 24, 2005
Total Number of episodes 51
Plot
Following the games' storyline, movie lover Joe and his girlfriend Silvia enjoy a seemingly normal trip to the movies to see an action flick starring Joe's idol, Captain Blue, when suddenly the leader of the evil Jadow force reaches out of the screen and takes Silvia into the movie. Joe is forced to follow her by Captain Blue's mecha, Six Majin (renamed "Machine Six" in the English anime, and "Six Machine" in the Spanish dub), and meets Captain Blue in the flesh who grants Joe the power to become an action movie hero in his own right called Viewtiful Joe.
Media
The English version of the anime features voice acting by Jeff Nimoy, Philece Sampler, Mona Marshall, and Wendee Lee, among others. Bob Papenbrook, under the name John Smallberries, voiced Captain Blue for the show's first twenty-one English dubbed episodes. Papenbrook died on March 17, 2006, due to complications from a chronic lung condition, making Viewtiful Joe his final piece of work. He was replaced by Paul St. Peter for the remainder of the dub.
The U.S. broadcast began with the fifth episode, with the first three episodes not being shown until a month later. The show's pilot was localized in the United States by Phuuz entertainment. A few censoring edits were made to the English dubbed version of Viewtiful Joe. In Brazil and Spain, the show was aired completely uncut. In the English version, the name of Joe's flying machine, Six Machine, was renamed in the English dub to Machine Six. There is speculation that it was renamed because its original name sounded close to the phrase "sex machine". Also, Six Majin was renamed to Robo-Six. Joe's middle finger was edited out in his henshin transformation sequence. Silvia's super hero alter ego is renamed from "Sexy Silvia" (which was also used in the games) to "Go-Go Silvia". Sprocket's jumpsuit is always zipped up completely, though it was originally unzipped (showing large amounts of cleavage) and one of her signature moves was to zip it up. This move was eliminated in the dub by cutting out the scenes, resulting in Sprocket having much less screen time than in the original.
Although it was released on DVD, I could only confirm 8 three episode volumes were ever released. Meanwhile, only 1 three episodes UMD was ever released. In North America, Geneon partnered with Kids Foot Locker to promote the show by including DVDs with purchases at the shoe retailer.
Bonus UMD Insert