The Beatles had their own cartoon in the 60's, Jackson 5 in the 70's, Kidd-Video in the 80's, and M.C. Hammer in the 90's with HAMMERMAN. Now there is HI HI PUFFY AMIYUMI, with their own cartoons. At the time when Godzilla was 50 with the release of GODZILLA FINAL WARS, I saw previews of this show. It looked like fun. So fun that it out shined THE POWERPFUFF GIRLS. Because at that time, I was losing interest to PPG do to the "PPG style" fashion trend. Ever since I watched this show since day one, I loved it and got glued to it. I not only laughed but learned Japanese. "Toktejama" means "Shut up". "Kora" means "Stop it" or "Cut it out". "Daskatey" means "Help". Before I ran into that show, Godzilla and other kaiju taught me Japanese. After I watched the show, I researched and listened to samples of other Puffy songs. This show introduced me to J-Pop (Japanese pop music). The way the character were designed, were trying to be anime, but it is 0% percent anime. It lampoons it. If you look at the J-Pop princess, they look anime-like, but they are not 100% anime. Kaz looks like as if he is created by Fujio Akatsuka (creator of TENSAI BAkABON). Now, just look at the other characters, like Blair, King Chad, Professor Marvelous, Teen-Team, and Harmony. The same goes to their pet cats Jen-Keng and Tekiai, and their dog, Dommo. The don't look like anime, they look like something off from our modern-day American wacky cartoons, that can make CODENAME: KIDS NEXT DOOR look like a Disney creation. At the beginning of the show after the opening sequence, you get to meet the girls, the live-action versions. The fool around with some shenanigans, or give the viewer a behind the scenes look at their day in the life, and on with the cartoon. Ami (voiced by Janice Kawayne, who did Jenny in MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT) is this pink-haired girl who is sweet and nice, Yumi (voiced by Grey Deluise, who did the voice of Mandy in THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY)is this purple-haired girl who looks like a Gothic punk, and is sometimes nasty, and Kaz (voiced by Keone Young), who is modeled after their manager, Kaz Hadara, is a hilarious money- hungry manager, and hates two things, taking care of their cats and loosing his money. He is also their dysfunctional father-figure. The story lines in every episode are imaginative and wacky. Everybody is bashing this show on various message boards, but I find nothing wrong with this show. It is clean and hilarious. Well except the part where the Vampire rock-stars put glue-gunned the sandwiches for the opera-singers and when they ate them them their mouths were stuck and they can't sing. That freaked me out because if you attempt to do that, you will feel extreme pain and misery that it will scar you for life! All in all, this Flash- animated show taught me to do some thinking outside the box. Sadly, this show went off the air circa. June 2006. It was such a great show, and Cartoon Network pulled it off the air. Here are the reasons: Everybody was bashing the cartoon and were wondering why can't the girls themselves do their own voices. It got predictable (e.g. episodes like "Cats vs, Kaz", "Claw and Order", "A Harmony Cartoon", and "Spree"). No one bought their franchising. The concerts and albums were under-promoted. I mean for crying out loud, I would love to buy their albums and go to their concerts. I even saw them on the Macy's 2005 Thanksgiving Day Parade. Another reason, is the ratings went down. Why did the ratings went down? Here's why. This is because no one in America could not afford to get cable. My previous reasons on why people hated the show. Parents bickered constantly to their kids prohibiting them to watch TV (shows like that). This show, like INVADER ZIM and MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT, had some episodes that aired in other countries, but not America. "Surf's Up" was said to air on December 31st 2004, but it got replaced by a rerun due to the tsunami incident in Thailand. Here the girls go surfing and a Tsunami leaves them lost at sea! This episode came on Comcast's Cartoon Network On Demand on May 2005. I was lucky I taped it! Bottom line: This show is fun for the entire family. Rated TV-Y7 for crude humor, comedic down-played violence, mischief, and all manner of wacky going-ons.
