Sorry for the delay, between work and family life I've been falling behind slightly in my reviewing but since nothing was voted for again lets talk about the Raccoons.
The Raccoons is a Canadian show from the mid to late 80s and early 90s, about, unsurprisingly Raccoons; it involved the misadventures of Bert Raccoon who is staying with his best friends Ralph & Melissa Raccoon as they try and thwart the evil aardvark industrialist Cyril Sneer who wants to destroy the forest.
So yeah it's an environmentalist show but more Sonic the Hedgehog than Lisa Simpson.
It's one of those shows that is really good but doesn't get the recognition it deserves, mainly because it wasn't a toy commercial at the same time, but it never wanted to be to begin with, that's what made it stand out at the time; in fact it was one of Canada's longest running shows right up until Ed, Edd & Eddy which shows more staying power than many of it's contemporaries at the time.
If there is one thing which is always remembered from the Raccoons, it's the music. From it's main theme to the copious amounts of insert songs, it's always been Raccoons biggest selling point, it helps that the voice cast is built up of professional singers and it spawned numerous musical specials including the "Lets Dance" special, a personal favorite.
Sadly in it's final seasons it wrote out a few characters and the quality took a nosedive as it was dragged into the 90s kicking and screaming, proving that even the better shows suffer with decay.
But taking it for what it is and comparing it to the rest of the 80s set, it's the one cartoon that didn't need to be like the rest to succeed.
Guarantee you'll be singing "Run With Us" for weeks after this review.
Really? I have to do Quick Draw McGraw? Okay lets get this over with.
Quick Draw is one of Hanna Barbara's many many Anthropomorphic characters with neck wear; this time it's a horse.
Quick Draw is the sheriff of his town often solving problems using many Western themes and references popular at the time of release in the late 50s early 60s, he is joined by a small donkey called Baba Looey who is probably a stereotype these days. Quick Draw joins the likes of Hong Kong Phooey in terms of incompetent as quite frequently he ends up shooting himself in the face with his own gun while drawing it, he also has a Zorro-esque alter ego named El Kabong who usually smacks people on the head with a Spanish Guitar.
Quick Draw is a lot more memorable than some of the other Hanna Barbara characters and has a lot of legacy within America much in the same way as Yogi Bear but it doesn't stop some things from being really bizarre; for example, why does an anthropomorphic horse ride another horse? And why does a sheriff need to mask as a vigilante when he's the law enforcement in town.
As a cartoon it was okay, I never found it anything special, Hanna Barbara's cartoon animal brigade very rarely makes any effort to standout other than voice accents and most productions will have similar plots, although how you get 45 cartoons out of a two joke show is beyond me.
Sorry that Q was lacking in choice, R should make up for it.
Next is an underrated series from the early 2000s, it's Pumpkin Scissors.
In alternative Europe, war has come to an end but the Post War Period is jammed full of poverty and former soldiers turned bandits unable to give up the fighting. Step forward aristocrat 2nd Lieutenant Alice Malvin, Field leader for Imperial Army State Section III, specializing in War Relief to beat the bad guys and give everyone rousing speeches just because she can.
Joining Alice is the spectacle wearing Martis and lady killer Oreldo, while at base issuing the missions is old man Captain Hunks; a 12 year old girl who's not really 12, Stecchin to serve the tea and messenger dog Mercury who likes biting people.
All is normal until they are joined by a walking giant of a man named Randel Oland, who is a former anti tank trooper, with powerful anti tank handgun and a seemingly invincible body as he ignores pain and fear to take down his enemies with the help of a Blue Lantern, in fact they were so terrifying in battle that they were referred to as "Gespenster Jäger" which is Ghost Hunter in German. Not the only German phrase you'll hear in this series, "Toten Sie" gets mentioned a lot which means "Kill Them" in German.
I will be blunt with this one, it's Full Metal Alchemist set in World War II minus the Alchemy, but it's not a criticism, far from it, along with the Gundam franchise it's one of the few shows that's good at portraying how terrible war is and how cruel certain people in power are, it's also one of the few anime that genuinely seems terrifying in context, once that lantern goes off, Randel is terrifying to watch and it gets worst meeting up with other units similar to Randel's Anti Tank unit including a man from a Flamethrower unit.
It's not perfect though, it clearly hasn't been given enough episodes to finish the bigger story and the sad thing is that it ends in a Ballroom Blitz scene where Alice keeps changing her mind about what she's fighting for when people continue to contradict her during her speeches which eats up a lot of running time, not made any easier when you consider that 1. she's an Aristocrat, 2. The people involved are against the Aristocrats and 3. She can't be taken seriously wearing an evening dress. It's also pretty poor at timing it's comedy as a deadly serious episode loses effectiveness when the ending theme is rather jolly. Also I'm no expert on recruiting but Stecchin clearly shouldn't be in this anime, she looks like she belongs in a moe military series, yes that's a genre now.
Some of those are nit picks and I can't really complain about it's production values or dubbing as everything is top notch.
Final Verdict: It's very underrated and needs more support than it currently gets, definitely worth a watch.
I'm so happy I get to review this title, this is easily in my top ten favorite cartoons of all time, it's Oban Star Racers!
Oban Star Racers is a French Pseudo Anime cartoon about a girl named Molly, who by a series of events in trying to reunite with her estranged father ends up joining an intergalactic race team owned by said father to compete for the "Ultimate Prize" in the Great Race of Oban (No not the Scottish town Oban)
No one knows what this prize is but every species in the universe wants it and will compete in this race very reminisce of Star Wars Pod Racer to do so, and by any means seeing as you can use weapons.
Not long into the first race, the Earth Team's Star Driver is mysteriously injured and Molly takes his place for the rest of the series with varying degrees of success barely scraping into the finals only for an incredible revelation to shake the foundations of the story and lead it to one of the best finales of any cartoon in the last ten years.
What I love about this cartoon is that it doesn't use any cliches at all, lets list some of things it does differently.
The main character is female. (Despite editors wanting the character to be male, the story goes that the creator rejected the recommendations from corporate editors and decided to make his own studio and finished the cartoon under his own command)
Lead character's cocky attitude is justified seeing as her father did abandon her for a long time.
She doesn't win every race (barely any at all) avoiding Miracle Rookie Syndrome.
It's Pseudo Anime and it doesn't suck.
It somehow manages to not rip off Star Wars.
The enemies don't seem to win much either.
In fact it's never made clear who the main enemy is.
Molly's motives have nothing to do with the plot in the first place.
The romance sub plot fails despite the lead being female.
There's no "rival" character.
The cartoon avoided censors with a lesbian couple.
and Earth's motives for the Ultimate Prize aren't much better than the Crogs motives, so much for Earth being Mr Benevolent.
With everything here, no wonder it won several awards, the only downside is that between this show and Code Lyoko, the French have never made another cartoon even close to the standards this one produced; granted not every idea that a cartoon maker gets full control over is going to be good, heck you only have to look at many of the small independent works to see how horrible things can get but when done correctly, you get a creation of genius like Oban Star Racers.
Next up is Naruto and to avoid unnecessary ranting I shall only review part one and not Shippuden.
I'll save the description, we pretty much know what Naruto is, for those who don't, Naruto is basically a Ninja story about a ninja boy possessed by a Fox spirit who goes through life trying to earn the respect and admiration of the village he lives in by becoming the best ninja around, and there's lots of crazy enemies and this is a Shonen Jump Anime.
Now these days, part one is kind of forgotten in a way, which is a shame because it was Shonen Jump at their finest; I will say that the definition of ninja in this anime is somewhat skewed but then again it's the same for pirates in One Piece. Naruto has never been afraid to take risks early on such as using character types that really don't fit in the show, (See Hinata Hyuuga review on Walk of Fame for an example) abandoning the mission format in favor of a tournament format then changing again to a save the world plot and then by the end of the canon story, switching to endless filler for a year returning to the mission format.
The last part of that was not a proud moment for Naruto, going through a year of filler is like Pokemon going on for months without a single captured Pokemon, it doesn't go anywhere fast and it becomes boring, special mention to the Shino laughing and Curry of life episodes for being the worst of the bunch.
Now I promised I wouldn't rant too much so lets talk about good things.
The cast of characters is amazing, there's never been a character I've hated until Shippuden, which says a lot about how well this show did so early on.
The choreography for the fights particularly with Rock Lee and Gaara are on par with some of the finest action anime on offer.
Naruto is also good at portraying drama, more so than it's peers; it will take a character death very seriously and seeing Naruto himself fail at retrieving Sasuke despite him being billed as the ultimate hero you actually feel sorry for him. Equally you take a lot of the other character's hardships to heart which makes characters like Rock Lee, Hinata & Shikamaru all the more special.
The stuff Naruto does well, it does really well, the stuff it does wrong, can easily be overlooked as filler doesn't do much for most anime anyway and filler seems to be the only thing wrong as the story canon has hardly any faults.
Final Verdict: The first part of Naruto deserves it's high ranking status and it's hype but the decision to end the first part of this long show after a never ending sequence of fillers didn't do it's legacy any good, but then again anything is better than what Shippuden is right now.
