Kirby Wiki
Register
Advertisement

'Escargoon Squad' is the 13th episode (12th in Japan) of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!.

Synopsis

After an odd sighting of a ghost in a picture that he took, Escargoon and King Dedede suspect that there is a ghost haunting Castle Dedede. After visiting the fortune teller, Dedede is told that there the ghost is real, and is out to haunt him...Will they be able to fight off the ghost?

Episode Plot

SKC Hyness Sticker
Spoiler alert: The following section contains plot-specific details.(Skip Section)

The episode starts with Escargoon taking a photo of King Dedede making a peace sign with his hand on the balcony. Upon looking at the photo once it develops, they find a ghost in the picture! Escargoon freaks and tells Dedede that the ghost could be the spirit of a citizen the king abused. Dedede begins to get nervous, but tries to hide it by saying that he wants to fight the ghost, and then he goes off to his throne room where he begins to shiver.

Kirby right back at ya escargoon squad ghost picture

The ghost in the photo

That same night, Dedede visits Mabel to fortune-tell if the ghost would come that night, and the answer is yes. Mabel also states that the ghost seeks revenge from the king. Afterwards, Escargoon drives Dedede back to the castle in his tank, as he tries to rationalize about it all. When they arrive at the castle, the bridge to it starts closing on its own as they were crossing it, causing their tank to slide down. Waddle Doo arrives to them and Escargoon scolds him for not looking after the bridge, while Dedede sees the same ghost from the picture again flying towards him!

Kirby right back at ya escargoon squad spooky at lady likes window

Lady Like encounters the ghost

Dedede hides his face and shivers, but Escargoon says he doesn't see anything there. Dedede gets back up and walks back into the castle with him. When they come in, Tiff, Lady Like, and Sir Ebrum tell the duo that they too had strange encounters with this ghost. Tiff heard footsteps in the hallway and then saw the ghost flying right towards her, Lady Like was closing the glass doors to the balcony when she saw it there and then afterwards seeing it in the room, and Sir Ebrum was in the dungeon when the bottles started moving all by themselves. Dedede gets even more frightened, but he tries to rationalize that it's just a trick by them to get him to move out, but they swear what they saw is true. Meta Knight overheard and states that he's surprised that the paranormalities don't have anything to do with him. Finally, Dedede stops with the excuses and freaks out.

Dedede goes to his throne room to order a monster to hunt down the ghost, but Customer Service says that his account is on hold until he pays his debt. Suddenly, the lights start flickering on and off, and he runs through the hallway as he tries to remain calm, but he hears footsteps in the hallway and gets scared, when Escargoon bumps into him and the two both scream. After they both calm down, Dedede requests that Escargoon helps him in finding the ghost, but he is too scared to do so.

Finally, Dedede makes it back to his room and decides to try to go to sleep, thinking that in the morning it will all be over. However, he was unable to sleep all night, and eventually he needed to use the restroom. As a result, he brought Escargoon with him, in case the ghost were to come. When Dedede was ready to go back to his bedroom, Escargoon ran back and left him behind. Dedede runs through the hallway frightened, and three ghosts come after them (who were actually Kirby, Lololo and Lalala wearing sheets, with Tuff helping them out). Tiff, Meta Knight, Lady like, and Sir Ebrum hear the king's screams, worried, and run to find him.

Kirby right back at ya escargoon squad dededes demise

Dedede's trapped

Meanwhile, Dedede is trapped in the wine cellar, chained to a table, with a giant blade swinging overhead! Kirby, Lololo, Lalala and Tuff scare him until he faints. When this happens, Escargoon arrives and rewards the group with lollipops. Tiff, her parents and Meta Knight arrive and question them. Escargoon admits that he was behind it all, and the whole thing was just an elaborate prank all along. He was trying to get revenge on Dedede for scaring him with so many pranks, and every single scary encounter he was behind, including bribing the fortune teller with cash in order for her to fool Dedede, and recruiting his own squad of ghosts.

Once Dedede wakes up, he gets mad and starts chasing Escargoon, Kirby, Lololo, Lalala and Tuff around. But King Dedede runs into the real ghost, which came after the king! After Meta Knight, Tiff, Sir Ector and Lady Like catched up, the scared Dedede runs and opens his vault and pays the ghost to leave him alone. The spirit enters the NME monster transporter. It was a trick by NME to get all the money the king owed for his bills. The episode ends with Dedede trying to hit Escargoon with his hammer in anger, but he gets away.

End of spoilers


Changes in the dub

  • At the beginning at this episode, Escargoon says he's finally finished with something. In the English dub, King Dedede asks him what he's holding in his hand.
  • After the photo of King Dedede develops, he says to Escargoon that he can take good pictures if he has a good model. In the English version, he says that he should maybe put it on a postage stamp.
  • The flashback of Dedede chasing Escargoon with a chainsaw was removed from the dub due to violence. Presumably, editing a laser effect on top of it (as in War of the Woods) was deemed insufficient by 4Kids in this case.
  • In the original version, Lady Like calls Tuff an impossible child for helping Escargoon scare King Dedede. In the 4Kids dub, she says to Tuff that she's ashamed of him.

Trivia

HnK ep12 Dedede1

Thunder scares Dedede witless

  • King Dedede being almost hit by the swinging axe is a reference to the novel The Pit and the Pendulum.
  • Besides his intentionally hideous depictions in Cartoon Buffoon, this particular episode has a few frames with some of the most distorted images of Dedede in the entire series, to the point where he is almost unrecognizable. In animation, such techniques are used to convey extreme emotion, but it is only seen for a flitting moment so that the viewer does not fully register the ludicrous portrayal.[1]
  • In the part where Tiff asks Escargoon what he means by revenge, Meta Knight briefly loses his blue color, but gets it back in the next part he is seen.
  • The original version's flashback depicting Dedede with a chainsaw shows him wearing pink clown hair, which may be a reference to various "evil clown" characters in other media, such as Stephen King's novel It and the movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
  • An oddly humanoid skeleton with its arms chained to the wall inside of a cell appears in Dedede Castle's dungeon during the flashback with Sir Ebrum. It appears to be wearing knight armor, and its presence is not acknowledged.

Errors

When Tiff, Meta Knight, Lady Like and Sir Ebrum are in the corner of the corridor together, there is no ground underneath them.

References

  1. Interview of Bill Watterson, artist of the acclaimed Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. (Wikipedia)
Advertisement