つっつん 八変化!!

（Tsuttsun Hachihenge）

Original Airdate: 3/3/1996

(NOTE: I did not have the time to add screen grabs and pictures. I will do so soon。)

Since the beginning of the shichihenge, they’ve been letting some of the standouts on the staff try their hands at being comedians. Today, they let director Tsuttsumimoto Yukiou, affectionately known as Tsuttsun try his hand with the shichihenge. Tsuttsun is known for being a fairly shy guy with practically no stomach for breaking bad news to the cast. He’s also known to get it crunk after work with his love of alcohol. But seeing as the last three non-comedians (Heipo, director Sakamoto, and producer Suga) didn’t do so good with the numbers, they’re letting Tsuttsun get 8 chances to make them laugh to even things out. Let’s see what Tsuttsun has up his sleeve for laughs.



Henge 1: Tsuttsun walks into the room with shades and a black tank top on. He sits down in his chair as he puffs his cigarette, and then gets uncomfortable and just kinda squats on the chair. Probably not all that funny in itself, but it might be if you knew the man. Probably one of those “I always wondered what it would look like if he did that” moments. Matsumoto laughed, putting the first bill in the money box. First blood for Tsuttsun.

Henge 2: Tsuttsun runs in wearing a Judo gi (the stereotypical martial arts outfit) yelling “Yah!”, like they do in judo schools. He starts grabbing the staff members and shaking them violently. Judo is a sport all about balance. There’s a lot of grappling, and throw maneuvers and you have to keep your balance while still being on the offensive. As a warm-up, a lot of judo practitioners warm up by finding a partner and then pushing and pulling each other as a way to get those stabilizing muscles working. He ends the gag with a less than enthusiastic “hai” and exits. This last bit gets Heipo to laugh, and forces him to pay.

Henge 3: Tsuttsun’s got a hat that essentially makes his head look like an acorn. On the little piece of branch are a few more acorns. He pulls one of them off to eat it, bites in and throws it away as it tastes awful. He then just gets up and leaves. Not very funny. Hamada right afterwards brings up a reference to Yamazaki’s fail-tastic shichihenge experience.
Henge 4: Tsuttsun comes in dressed as an anime character. I can’t seem to put my name on the anime though. His cell phone rings, and he answers with “This is Bell”. I wanted to say Zatch Bell, but that’s not it. Man, I’ve gotten out of touch with anime. Okay, I never was in touch with it, as I never really liked it much. Anyways, the conversation continues with “What?! Someone’s injured? I’m on the way.” Tsuttsun walks back out of the room, apologizing to everyone while leaving. This gets two staff members, producer Suga, and Yamazaki.

Henge 5: Tsuttsun walks in wearing a cartoonish police hat, a tie, his undies, a backpack and nothing else. He’s carrying a jitte, which is like a police nightstick with the little side protrusion bending the same way as the main shaft. I’ll let you do research on it if you so care, so I won’t bother you with the details. Basically, he takes the jitte and rubs it over Matsumoto’s face and body and all sorts of creepy ways. This gets Matsumoto and Hamada. On his way out, he does some little random moves.

Henge 6: OMG blackface. Okay, not really. Tsuttsun adorns some dark make-up, almost ganguro-ish (something else to look up in your free time), to imitate what the members assume to be producer Suga. He walks around the room, pestering Hamada in Suga’s style of talking closely and asking questions twice.

Henge 7: Wearing only cardboard angel wings and a halo, cherub Tsuttsun strolls into the meeting with his bow in hand. He straddles the helpless Matsumoto and shoots him softly at close range with a few arrows.

Henge 8: Dressed as a school girl, Tsuttsun sits next to Matsumoto and pesters him with cries of “do it~~~!” and “Gimme~~~!”. Really doesn’t get anyone, until long after the joke is over and everyone starts shouting their opinions. That seems to be a good way to avoid laughing during the joke: Knowing that you can laugh like hell when the person leaves the room. Much different from the “No Laughing” penalty games, where laughing anywhere gets you a penalty.

When the dust settles, Tsuttsun racks up 10,000 yen for charity. That means that he got 3000 yen more than Yamazaki did, and didn’t need the extra chance to do it. Anyone else up for filing a “GTFO Yamazaki” petition?
This episode’s opener wasn’t that great, but the talk is the great redeemer. Matsumoto talks about various topics like interracial children and sex. One write-in question asks about the concept of the “Half,” which is what the Japanese call someone of half-Japanese half-some other nationality, usually American. The question wants to know what it’s called when two “halves” make a baby. I was interested in what the hell Matsumoto was going to answer, as I’d imagine that knowledge of the word “quarter” is rare in Japan. Matsumoto’s answer is “that’s a traditional child” and he didn’t understand the question. He never gave an answer, but went on to say that he thought there were three or four words for it already. If this episode were just the opener, I would have given this episode a 2-star rating, but the great talk bumps it up to a 3.
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