TV Tuesday: The Ultimate Guide to Mainland Chinese Cartoons
Welcome to TV Tuesday, a column devoted to following the newest and most notable Chinese mainland television shows.
In honor of our upcoming Mandarin Month
mixer on June 24, we thought this would be an opportune time to list a
popular type of television programs used for learning a new language: cartoons!
The
mainland Chinese animation industry has rapidly developed, and there
are a lot of shows to choose from. For this list, we tried confining our
selections to animated shows for children recently produced in mainland
China.
Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf
This animated series has gone through a lot of changes since it debuted in 2005, but Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf (喜羊羊与灰太狼 xǐyángyáng yǔ huītàiláng) has by far remained one of China's most popular and lucrative cartoons.
At first evoking the slapdash 2D animation of South Park, Pleasant Goat has
since ventured into 3D computer animation on its big screen
adaptations. However, even after all these years, the current iteration
of the show maintains a predator-prey rivalry in which our dastardly
antagonist is still trying to get the upper hand through the use of
high-tech gimmicks. What's more, Gray Wolf is still trying to win over
his hard-to-please wife who remains by his side after all this time.
Purists who think the original theme song is the best can watch the first season in Baidu video.
The Boonie Bears
Do you love ethnic stereotypes? Well, you'll love the Boonie Bears (熊出没 xióng chūmò), the Chinese animated series that continues the same predator-prey themes left over by Pleasant Goat, and almost captures an equal amount of success in the process. Like their more successful non-carnivorous cousins, Boonie Bears have
also ventured onto the big screen with equally strange results that
include a talking robot and realistic-looking characters inserted into a
cartoon.
But as famous as they have become, the Boonie Bears will
forever be known as the cartoon characters that were banned from
Beijing's financial district. Statues of the shows mocking ursine heroes
were removed after shocked bankers took offense to their "rude gestures."
Big-Headed Kid and Small-Headed Father
Even though "father knows best," subverting the traditional family hierarchy has always made for good television. This lesson is well-learned by Big-Headed Kid and Small-Headed Father (大头儿子和小头爸爸 dàtóu erzi hé xiǎotóu bàba), a cartoon that firmly has The Simpsons in
mind when it comes to dopey dads. It's a dynamic that results in a lot
of hijinks, but unlike the selfishness of Homer Simpson, Small-Headed Father is completely subservient to the whims of his wife and child, putting him at the bottom of the family.
Needless to say, the show takes place in Shanghai, something proven by its Pudong skyline:
Proof that a successful idea is never alone, Big-Headed Kid and Small-Headed Father has inspired its own Chinese knockoff, Mala Father and Son.
Click "Read more" for the rest of this story.
Images: Baidu, Sunning
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