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Japanese Version

Wish Upon a Wizbit

The Wizbits, Episode 100

Never Aired in North America

Summary

Lander is just an ordinary boy in an ordinary town, but fate may just something extraordinary in store for him. His teacher, Mordechai, demands that Lander take part in a final trial of courage. Can he climb to the top of the creaky old tree Heart of Earth using only his wits? And what will he find?

The plot of this episode remains effectively unchanged from the Japanese version (see below).

Notes

The original pilot episode, Wish Upon a Wizbit (or, more accurately translated, The Wish of the Elemenstors), was never aired due to several cultural elements that the American distributors felt were too Japanese to sit well with the target Age 6-12 demographic. Among the elements deemed undesirable were:

• Lander and his sister Leaper bathing together.
• Professor Dervmont's uncharacteristic drunkenness (a trait never again referenced in the Japanese series)
• Mordechai displaying a Star of David tattoo on his bare chest.
• Mordechai displaying a Star of David tattoo on his bare chest, as he was robbing graves at midnight.
• The innuendo of Leaper and her "friend" Lela's relationship.
• The on-screen, 20-minute botched seppuku by Lander's grandfather.
• The countless, countless tentacle rape scenes that really had nothing to do with the plot.

However, some fans are under the impression that because it never aired, it was never translated or produced. In fact James Langomedes presented it as "potentially a cultural revolution for American television" and was told by the producers to destroy all copies of the "pilot" and to try again. It is suspected that if they hadn't already signed a number of lucrative merchandising deals, The Wizbits Cartoon might have ended at this point. Fortunately for fans of the show, Langomedes managed to tone down the more culturally unacceptable aspects of the show by "reimagining" them--a process which started with the second episode (which thus became the first) but continued throughout the American run of the show.

It should be noted that several clips of The Wish of the Elemenstors were used out of context and redubbed in the American Christmas specials. Further, a script penned by Langomedes and titled Concerning the Emergence of the Wizbits was found amongst Langomedes's personal effects along with a more well-known artifact.

As the first episode in the production run, Wish Upon a Wizbit did not include a moral.

Another interesting tidbit about this episode is that it began with an opening narration (presumably the voice of Harbinger Portent) that refers to the land in which this animation takes place as "The Lost Land of Numbia," where all other references throughout the show refer to Battal.

Cast and Crew

Written by

James Langomedes

Directed by

James Langomedes

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