Gwen Stefani To Blast Hideous Cartoon Into Your Living Room
When I look now at all the great shows on television (mostly through cable and streaming) I’m blown away by the contrast between the quality of TV in 2016 and, say, 2004. Back then if you didn’t want to watch reality shows you were out of luck, because that’s all that was on. Animated shows were also sagging — Saturday Morning was gasping its last breaths, Cartoon Network’s output was increasingly cheap-looking, Disney was obsessed with depicting school, and Fox had cancelled most of their animated shows (for now).
I had successfully suppressed these memories until now, but when I saw the preview trailer for Gwen Stefani’s new Nickelodeon show Kuu Kuu Harajuku, it all came rushing back.
This cartoon looks exactly like it time-traveled out of 2004, when Gwen’s song Harajuku Girls first hit the iPods. Incredibly lazy Flash animation, hideous Bratz-y character designs, airhead dialogue…..I can’t imagine a kid sitting down to this now, not when there are so many better alternatives.
2004 was also around the time when anime and manga hit a peak in America and watered-down adaptions of Japanese culture by white people flooded the market. Gwen was one of the public figures responsible for this, and it appears her obsession with Japan’s Harajuku district never faded away, because it’s back again.
Stefani looked at how this turned out and saw the opposite of what I did. “The artwork is so beautiful and the whole series turned out better than I could have ever imagined. I love that this is an animated series for young girls that celebrates creativity, imagination and individuality.” Which is why they all look the same?
Well, anyway. The Gwen Stefani-approved Kuu Kuu Harajuku will premiere Oct. 3 at 4 PM on Nickelodeon, and after that, air regularly on Saturdays at 8:30 AM, for as long as it lasts.