Only I may have a moustache (Cartoon Network)

Member Name: kero-chan

Product:	Cartoon Network
Date:	13/01/01 (1544 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dexters Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Gundam Wing

Disadvantages: Old shows repeated to death

Cartoon Network has a simple concept – all cartoons, all day. A parent’s nightmare I’m sure, whatever the time of day your kiddies will want to watch something. Of course, the result of showing toons all day is a lot of repeats, often with the same episodes of the same show on the same day, although this can be hugely beneficial for those who miss earlier screening of Dragonball Z.

The weekday early morning line up on Cartoon Network is a pretty mixed affair, and goes up against some pretty stiff competition from Fox Kids screening of Digimon.

The Powerpuff Girls is a popular show combining elements of American super-hero comics and Japanese ‘Mahou Shojo’ (magical girl) shows in a yummy-scrummy parody form. The series follows the adventures of Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles who where created when their father, The Professor, accidentally spilt the ominous sounding ‘Chemical X’ into his recipe for the prefect girl. As such, they have amazing superpowers (and no fingers) which they use to fight the eviler residents of Townsville, including the most commonly recurring villain Mojo Jojo, an evil genius monkey with a habit of building giant robots and speech patterns derived directly from ‘60s anime dubs. The Powerpuff Girls is an entertaining, often hilarious show and is certainly well worth watching.

Angela Anaconda, whose most immediately striking feature is the mosaic style of animation used (think South Park with more detail and movement), is a show basically following Angela’s ongoing feud with Nanette Manoir, the local poser type. I personally can’t say I’ve ever personally been able to ever ‘get’ into the show, but I am told by its fans that it is excellent (then again, fans would say that wouldn’t they…)

The weakest links of the current morning line up are Tom and Jerry and The Smurfs. The Smurfs have, to be honest, never been any good. T
om and Jerry on the other hand is often superb, but years of TV re-running has rendered it a little tedious to watch. It’s a shame such a classic show has been rendered such.

The daytime line up is a similar mixture of over-used cartoons - Popeye, Looney Toons, more Tom and Jerry and The Flintstones. Maybe I don’t rate the Flintstones particularly highly, but the other are good, solid productions simply suffering from over use. I wish they would replace them for a while with something fresher and phase them back in. They also show A Pup Called Scooby Doo, a rather poor Scooby Doo spin off featuring the characters as children, and is best avoided.

Still, there are two personal highlights from the line up, The Moomins and The Magic Roundabout. The Moomins is the more recent animated version, and is based on an old Finnish book. It follows the tales of a group of hippo-like animals called The Moomins (and their friends of course) who live in Moomin valley. The show tends to take the form of short stories told over the period of several episodes, and does so in a fairly charming manner. Stories revolve around things such as a jungle suddenly growing around their house, or a trip by boat to a local, mysterious island. It’s watchable stuff.

The Magic Roundabout is something I’m too young to have seen previously to CN, and to be honest something I didn’t particularly expect to like. I suspect it probably needs no real introduction (I’d be surprised if anyone has not seen it previously, or at least heard of it), but I love the general surreal feeling of the whole thing.

The afternoon shows are largely excellent. Dexter’s Laboratory currently follows the infamous, original version of Scooby Doo.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Dexter is about a diminutive child genius called Dexter, who has a secret (and rather large) lab hidden in his house, in which he builds giant robots, space ship
s and all sorts of other weird and wacky inventions. He also has a sister, called DeeDee, who frequently breaks into his lab and wreaks everything. Dexter as a show relies frequently on parody (frequently of things the young audience won’t be familiar with, such as classic super hero comics, the original Star Trek and anime robot shows), and often consists of episodes playing on a single joke. Still, it is frequently patently ridiculous and very, very funny. The better episodes are highly inventive, and I applaud it for it.

After a much appreciated extra helping of The Powerpuff Girls, CN then screens Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy. The show follows three friends (err, Ed, Edd and Eddy), one of which is thick, one of which is a poser, and one of which is clever, and all of which seem to think they are cool. The three consistently scheme up ways to extract money from the other local kids in order to fund what is seemingly Jawbreaker addiction (I wouldn’t like to be their dentist). Wacky hi-jinks and disastrous results ensue. The animation is fairly rough in design; it looks different but can occasionally be annoying.

The afternoon houses what will no doubt become an increasingly large programming block – Toonami. Toonami has been adopted from the US Cartoon Network, where it was the result of the station acquiring a number of Japanese shows. The basic formula used in the US - anime combined with US action shows - is the same as is used over here. Toonami current consists of two shows - Dragonball Z and Batman of the Future.

Dragonball Z is a fairly old, long running Japanese martial arts show span off from a successful comic book and an earlier (frankly far more entertaining and humorous) series Dragonball. For a while in the pre-Pokemon days Dragonball Z was one of the most popular children’s TV shows in the US, and having now been adopted by CN over there is going through a bit of a revival fuelled by new episodes. C
N obviously hopes it will prove as popular over here. The Dragonballs are a bunch of magic crystal balls which, when brought together, can be used to summon the dragon Shen Long to grant the possessor one wish. After the wish is granted, the balls scatter and cannot be used again for another year.

The series itself follows Goku (hero of the original Dragonball, only much older and taller here) and his son Gohan. Over the years, Goku has become an insanely powerful martial artist and got married to Chi-Chi (in the original Dragonball he promised to marry her in exchange for one of the dragonballs). At the start of the series it is revealed that Goku is in fact a Saiyan, a member of an alien warrior race, and that more Saiyans are on their way to wipe out the human race and sell the planet on to the highest bidder. So he trains more. The show tends to follow a fairly basic story structure – evil power reveals itself whilst Goku is unavailable, everyone else gets beaten up for a while, Goku eventually shows up much harder than before and beats the bad guy to a bloody pulp. Well, not so bloody, it is kids TV.

Still, the show runs in very large story arcs involving fights running over several episodes (dare I say it, some longer than entire TV shows) and epic stories to go with them. The rather stop-start nature, in which battles are frequently broken up by large chunks are dialogue, can be rather irritating at times. The animation also looks fairly dated (it is a pretty old show). The show has also been rammed through the American Cultural Blender(tm), which results in the show losing much of what made in charming in its original Japanese run, not to mention the fact that the new US soundtrack is wholly ineffective of producing any kind of tension or excitement. Its still a fairly entertaining show, but watching it every day (the only way you can possibly keep up with the story) is a big commitment. Give it long enough and it’ll probably wo
rks its way under your skin, whether or not you want it to is another question. Even so, its popular with the kids.

Much more consistent is the latest entry in the Batman canon – Batman of the Future (Batman Beyond in the US). This series sees Bruce Wayne passing on the mantle of Batman to Terry, a young man wanting to revenge his fathers death at the hands of a rich business man. The show is dark, but often full of rather dark humour. Its well written, well animated and well directed, the big let down being that CN constantly loops around the same 13 episodes of the shows first season. My personal favorite episode is a rather dark parody of The Fantastic Four; it really is worth looking out for.

Starting on the 15th of January is the latest Japanese import, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (or just Gundam Wing for short). Having already proved massively successful in the US, we thankfully haven’t had to wait the same five years for someone over here to pick up the English language version.

Gundam Wing is derived from a old late 1970’s Japanese show Mobile Suit Gundam. The original Gundam (often called ‘First Gundam’ by fans) was a seminal production for both the giant robot genre and Japanese animation as a whole. The whole popularized what has become known as the ‘Real Robot’ genre, basically shows in which giant robot suits are used as weapons in gritty war stories. Gundam shows are generally split into two categories, UC Gundam, which exist in the same continuity as First Gundam, and alternate Gundam shows which form their own continuity. Gundam Wing falls into the later category.

In Gundam Wing the people of Earth have created space colonies on which to live. The people of the colonies, originally seen as independent colonies, find themselves oppressed by Earth government. The government of Earth employs a special military force OZ, formed by the Romfeller Foundation, for their military operat
ions. The OZ’s primary weapons are Mobile Suits, large humanoid and highly armed suits of robot armour. Sick of the expansion of the OZ, rebel groups on five of the colonies independently build highly advanced and heavily armoured mobile suits, called Gundams, and send them to Earth to cause chaos among the OZ. Of course, the pilots of the five Gundam suits are unaware of each other or each others motives.

The main story follows the pilot of the Wing Gundam, Heero Yuy. Upon arriving in Earth space, Heero is spotted and attack by high ranking OZ officer Zech Marquise and is forced to bail his Gundam. On Earth, he is spotted landing by Relena Darlian, the daughter of an important ambassador between the people of Earth and the Colonies. Heero soon flees (he happens to land right next to a military base), but for cover he secretly registers himself with a local school with the intention of hiding out there for a while. Of course, this just happens to be the rather up-market school which Relena goes to, and when she recognizes him he promises to kill her.

Anyway, that goes up to about as far as the halfway point in the first of Gundam Wings 49 episodes. As you can probably gather, Gundam Wing relies highly on an ongoing narrative that runs throughout the entire series. As the series goes on Relena is forced into an increasingly important role in the future of Earth, and the war takes a very unexpected and dramatic shift, changing base of power of Earth. What is the secret of the Gundam mobile suits and their pilots? Who build them? What is their purpose? Well, you’ll have to watch to find out.

Whilst often seemingly ridiculous and overly melodramatic, I like Gundam Wing a lot. It’s entertaining (although humourless), and has a genuinely well thought out storyline. The animation may be beginning to date, but the design is good, and was popular enough in the US for Cartoon Network to be showing more Gundam – including Firs
t Gundam – in the near future. It also benefits from not having been rammed through the American Cultural Blender(tm), resulting in fairly minimal edits for violence and language.

Coming soon to Cartoon Network is another Japanese import, Tenchi Muyo! The title is most commonly translated as ‘No Need For Tenchi’ (although ‘This Way Up’ apparently also works). As for the show, it is a strange sitcom about a Japanese teenager called Tenchi who somehow manages to end up with a bunch of cute alien girls living in his house fighting for his affections. As well as this, Tenchi gradually comes to realize that he himself has a strange power, and has to fight off those who wish to abuse his position.

What will no doubt confuse people is that Tenchi actually comprises of three different continuities (well, they will be screening three different continuities, there are another two relating to the Mahou Shojo spin off Magic Girl Pretty Sammy). The three continuities relate to the original Tenchi series (which was released direct to video in Japan), the first of the TV incarnations (known as Tenchi Universe) and the second TV incarnation (Tenchi in Tokyo). Tenchi Universe actually completely started the whole series again, and has a story completely unrelated to the original series. This annoyed people, mainly because the video series didn’t end properly (only this week has there been a post on the production studio AICs website suggesting a new video series to complete the story is in production), and the fact that everything which followed is increasingly inferior to the original. Still, Tenchi is an often hilarious, frequently touching series that actually has a story to it. The TV version does have some minor editing, mainly digital repainting to disguise the occasional lack of clothing evident in the original video version.

Two shows which only seem to get later and weekend showings on CN nowadays are Johnny Bra
vo and Cow and Chicken. Johnny Bravo is a show I frankly hated when it first began, following a conceited posers attempted to chat up every pretty lady he encounters, but has slowly grown on me until I genuinely liked it. More recent episodes are certainly of a better standard than the earlier ones.

As for Cow and Chicken, I prefer its spin off series, I Am Weasel, following the rivalry between I M Weasel (a weasel who seems to be an expert in everything) and I R Baboon, who attempts to out do Weasel at everything with unsurprisingly comic results.

Cartoon Networks weekends is more of the same, but mercifully is short of the bland daytime shows. Cartoon Network also occasionally shows movies, but many of these are of dubious quality.

The general presentation on Cartoon Network is superb. Whilst it has no presenters, the channels eye catches are excellent. Adverts put together for their shows are frequently superb, but the best thing is some of the filler material they produce. Occasionally shown between shows is Tales from F.E.A.R, a short using footage taken from old Hannah Barbara show Birdman. It is basically a series of short stories about a criminal organization, F.E.A.R, in which only the number 1 (the leader) can have facial hair. It borders on genius, frankly.

In all, Cartoon Network is my preferred children’s station. Fox Kids may have the American Cultural Blender(tm) version of Vision of Escaflowne (one of the finest fantasy shows every produced in its original form), but the general quality of Cartoon Networks shows is higher. Hopefully Toonami will prove as popular here as in the US (if only so we can see the new addition to its US line up, Outlaw Star. Its fabulous), and hopefully they’ll continue to produce excellent shows of their own such as Dexter and The Powerpuff Girls.

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