Viewtiful Joe/YMMV

• Awesome Music: Just listen.
  • Blue the Justice, Captain Blue's theme, is pretty catchy too.
• Cult Classic: The anime still has a decent following.
• Ear Worm: You cannot un-hear these tunes. Don't bother; Resistance Is Futile.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Alastor, just for the sheer amount of Devil May Cry Shout Outs.
  • Also Sprocket from the anime, for a couple of big reasons if ya catch my drift.
• First Installment Wins: While the sequels made successful sells and good reviews, everybody usually says the original is the best.
• Freud Was Right: Back in Devil May Cry, Trish was created by the original title's Big Bad to lure Dante to his doom, due to Trish sharing her appearance with Dante's deceased mother, Eva (a plot which almost worked). Aside from some arguable, possibly still-lingering Ship Tease in the first game, the true extent of their relationship (aside from being friends and partners) was never further explored and pretty much dropped. In the Dante's story in Viewtiful Joe, this is taken up a few notches, since Dante and Trish take the places of Joe and Silvia, the latter whom explicitly tries to passionately make out with the former during the opening scene.
• Game Breaker: Voomerangs make every boss fight roughly a million times easier. Shocking Pink is also a godsend during normal stages, especially the Hulk Davidson one, because it lets you blow things up without having to jump through hoops to get the bomb where it needs to be.
  • Zooming in turns Joe's punches into the Red Hot One Hundred, a speedy flurry of punches. Slowing that makes each rapid fire punch ridiculously strong, without the downside of them being, well, slow. The slowed RHOH is, without hyperbole, Joe's best move for hurting bosses; it can eliminate recurring miniboss the Joker in seconds. Sylvia gets a shoulder hit instead of that, making her sadly less powerful than Joe.
    • Unless she's fighting bosses that don't take the RHOH well in the second game, as she gets the Replay, allowing her to triple the damage of any single attack. Slow, Cool Blue Kick, then Zoom In for just as much damage in a single shot.
  • Red-Hot Kick, full stop. You might be surprised that, for an homage to the Rider Kick, it's not that powerful -- not so fast bucko. Use Slow-Mo and perform the Red-Hot Kick, then activate VFX Zoom. It turns Joe's attack from a simple diving kick into a spinning drill kick as he's covered by flames in the shape of a dragon head. The Dragon Kick takes huge chunks off most bosses' HP, even stunning Another Joe and Alastor, and can take off almost a full bar of health from Fire Leo^[1]. It also, if you're lucky, can hit enemies twice - including, once again, Fire Leo. Fighting fire with fire, anyone? Even better, the dragon kick is a fire-based attack itself, allowing Joe to completely bypass the puzzle portion of, once again, Fire Leo's fight.
  • Zoomed in and Slowed down, the final hit of Dante's normal combo in the first game can one-shot Fire Leo.
• Goddamned Boss: In the Boss Rush rematch, Charles has 4 times as much health as the first battle. Dealing damage to him, however, is tedious and drawn-out, especially since you start the rematch with a level 1 VFX gauge.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Six Machine preceded the Gurren Lagann mecha, which shares a lot of similarities.
• Memetic Mutation: Say it with us, everyone: HENSHIN-A-GO-GO, BABY!
• Memetic Sex Goddess: Silvia, Sprocket, and Trish.
• Moment of Awesome: Joe's speech after finding out that Captain Blue was the villain.

Joe: "Captain... uh, KING Blue... You used to be cool. Now, you're nothing but a loser. I'm gonna show you what it means to be a TRUE HERO!"
King Blue: "Go ahead. I WILL SNAP YOUR FOOLISH LITTLE IDEALS IN HALF!"

• • Followed, of course, by a battle as Six Majin against King Blue on the surface of the earth... and the planet is visibly round, indicating just how freaking big the two are. And after you do all that, you get treated to a duel against the original Captain Blue, in his youth!
• Most Annoying Sound: "DAAAAAVIDSON IS IN THE HOUSE!! HULK DAVIDSON IS BORN TO BE WIIIIIIIILD!! Hehehe..."
  • "WARNING! WARNING! A BOMB HAS BEEN ARMED! WARNING! WARNING! A BOMB HAS BEEN ARMED! WARNING! WARNING! A BOMB HAS BEEN ARMED!..." and this goes on for a good portion of the level, too...
• Most Wonderful Sound: "FINISH!" (cue boss' defeat dialogue)
  • "READY? ACTION! (snap) "JUST GO FOR IT!"
• Nightmare Fuel: Killer Hands. In-universe, too, as Joe is far from enthusiastic about being hugged.
• Spiritual Licensee: This makes a excellent game adaption of Last Action Hero, but with Toku themes instead. See X meets Y for more.
• That One Attack: Several, with anything Fire Leo throws at you (potential One Hit Kills, especially on higher difficulties) and King Blue's thunderbolts (unblockable even while using VFX Slow, do a good deal of damage to boot) taking the cake.
• That One Boss: DAMN YOU FIRE LEO! It's made worse by the Boss Rush beforehand. You have to fight all five of the previous bosses back-to-back, and you can't save in-between.
  • Just regular Fire Leo? Try Fire Leo on Ultra-V mode when he uses his spinning attack. With no skull markers to tell you whether he's going to attack high or low, you have to go by audio cues with only subtle differences between them.
  • Though oddly enough, Leo's frost-themed Expy in the second game is much easier to beat.
  • Also Gran Bruce, to some extent: his (hard-to-dodge) bite attack lasts forever until you break free, which can potentially kill you, even at full health. Mashing buttons or the D-pad will do you no good; only the left analog stick, in a game where the D-pad is encouraged, will let you escape (PlayStation 2 version).
  • Hulk Davidson. That frakkin' axe. He's infinitely worse the second time around, even if you do know what you're doing.
  • Charles the 3rd the second time you fight him is an absolute nightmare, and it doesn't help that he's significantly stronger and faster than before.
  • No Another Joe? He runs away from you and spams unblockable clones at you. Even if you catch him, you can only land a few punches before he runs away. The second fight with him is one of the hardest bosses in the game, until you defeat him and meet with Fire Leo.
• Villain Decay: In the anime, it was obvious that Hulk Davidson, Gran Bruce, and Charles the 3rd would go down easy... But you'd never expect Fire friggin' Leo to go down in his first appearance, humiliatingly, even!

1. ↑ Use Mach Speed to build yourself up to Red Hot mode, get to Fire Leo and hit him with a Dragon Kick to destroy his fire barrier.