KatzeMania: His Master's Voice

I'm not sure whether I should be apologizing for twisting this oldest and most respectable of record labels to my purpose; fact is, I thought it was very appropriate. And it's going to be misused twice, because I collected so many .wav files that I don't have the space to put them all up at the same time. These wavs are of Katze conversing with Sosai X, yelling at goons, laughing at the Science Ninja Team, feeling sorry for himself, or generally vocalizing in a way that I found either funny or typical or unexpected, even though I can't make out a word of what he's saying. (This is a gentle hint that translations are welcome and will be added to the soundbytes if/when received.)

As of 01-01-2006, I've started to replace the WAVs by MP3s recaptured off DVD, rather than nth-gen tapes. Apart from the laugh on the main Katze page, which I'm keeping for comparison; I used to think the quality of these WAVs was deplorable, but it sounds pretty good for an 8-bit file, and not that much worse than the MP3s which were captured at 16-bit CD quality before conversion. (To compare: this is the MP3 version, the hissing towards the end being Jinpei starting to say "oh shit!") Sound is only as good as its source, and these DVDs were remastered off material that was 20 years old and as unpolished in sound as in animation. Bad base material and interference from computer parts give every soundbyte a basic hum that increases with a raise in amplitude and is sharpened to a dentist-drill buzz by MP3 compression, unless the hum is drowned out by background sound effects which can be quite unpleasant themselves. Fortunately I found a WAV editor which will save to MP3 using the Fraunhofer codec in Windows with almost no loss in quality, at a maximum bit rate of 56 kb/s. The resulting files are quite small - all under 500KB - so I can safely put up even the largest files unzipped. On today's hardware they should play without difficulty.

These soundbytes may be freely downloaded to be polished up and used for whatever purpose people may have - a bwa-ha-haa-ing screensaver, for instance - although anyone who puts up the result of their creativity on the 'net has to state that this character is copyrighted by Tatsunoko etc. etc. Have fun.

Click on the link to hear the sound.

Watching what seems like a giant chesspiece with retractable polyp-like whips for eyeballs cut a life-size model of the GP in half on the monitors at the back of X's control room, Katze feels quite confident about taking on the Science Ninjas this time. X bellows at him at usual, then suggests applying a little psychology to root out the team? X monotonously booms throughout the dialogue, but Katze goes from sounding cockily assured to trembling with fear to respectfully listening to gradually regaining his confidence. (ep 85, 365 KB)

Katze's heart really isn't in it today; he sounds unusually meek and cowed, which of course gives X another reason to bellow at him. Their target this time is Queen Flake ("Frego"), a staunch supporter of Nambu and his Ninja Team, who will be presiding over some national festivity; a good time to deal a blow to the country's morale by attacking its monarch. (ep 66, 329KB)

Constantly having to bear the brunt of X's pep talks, it is not surprising that Katze should feel more than a little resentment towards the Science Ninjas, and should vow every so often to destroy them. (ep 44, 112 KB)

Towards his subordinates, he mainly displays tired annoyance, as when he is called all the way to the incinerator to check out a ...shoe. (ep 74, 351KB)

Occasionally, the visionary Galactor spirit comes to him, and he calls his men together to demand why the enemies of Galactor have not been vanquished yet. This time he has a meeting with the brilliant Doctor Ogawara (whose assistant Nakamora was the Galactor who laughed in the Ninja team's faces) in which he sums up all the mecha that have failed their purpose. The "uh-er" sound half-way through is Ogawara's apologetic protest. (ep 59, 69 KB)

But despite these short moments of idealism, he is mainly out to save his own skin. Here, he is pacing around the room wondering when the Ninja team are finally going to defeat a rival Galactor who might prove to be more successful at conquering the world than he is. (ep 90, 139 KB)
For this one I have the translation, straight from Alara's scripts:

KATSE: Shit! What the hell do the Science Ninja Team think they're doing? They've always been ready to attack me. Why don't they attack Dr. Finger?
GALACTOR: (horrified) Katse-sama, whose side are you ON?
KATSE: Shut up! Whose side are YOU on? Dr. Finger's? ...Shit...

But what really makes him foam at the mouth is having his biggest enemy talk back at him. The situation: three members of the Science Ninja Team are chained to the wall, and Katze calls on the fourth one to give himself up. (Ryu, meanwhile, is asleep on the GP.) To pressure Jinpei, he deals one of them a blow with a pair of long metal whips activated by levers which look and sound remarkably like bicycle bells, and the victim's verbal response makes him add a few more. (ep 96, 213 KB)

All the annoyances and hard work pay off when finally Crescent coral is destroyed, and Katze leaps gracefully into the elevator to take the happy news to Sosai X, humming all the while: "I've got to report this to the Overlord immediately. He'll be so proud of me!" This is an .avi file, and only for people who are immune to embarrassment ^_^ (ep 93, 1004 KB zipped, 1073 KB unzipped; remade and re-uploaded 01-01-2007, much better quality but twice the size of the old one)

NB. The sound track in this AVI has been recorded separately and can be extracted using VidEdit. I use VidEdit or the Win3xx Media Player for playing AVI movies generally, as for some reason they can look really bad when played under W95.

The following are very short soundbytes:

A laugh in a tall, echoing chamber, and another in a space with less impressive acoustics.

A wide selection of nani's: short and panicked, ditto but as part of a phrase, neutral, irritated, drawn-out, and stammering in disbelief.

Two ruminating hm's. (This is when Katze investigates into the identity of the person in the frightful plaid cap who bears such a suspiciously strong resemblance to Giuseppe Asakura.)

Finally, an exclamation of pain and two of surprise, the sound he usually makes when angry (here's an even better one!), and a surprisingly masculine-sounding "hai" from an early ep (when he was still wrestling with gender identity? ^_^).

Anyone interested in seeing the original logo, click here.