In 2004, Cartoon Network was going through a major transformation. The most noticeable one was in its advertising. The channel went through its second major rebrand in the 12 years since the channel launched. Gone were the days of the "powerhouse" bumpers, for something more elaborate. Cartoon Network started the "CN City" era, having every commercial and coming up next bumper be intertwined within an experimental new concept. In these, all of the original shows on the network all crossed over and seemed to live within the same city, with Miguzi happening underwater and Toonami in space as it always had been. Characters from completely different series interact with each other inbetween shows in an attempt to bring all of the channel's shows together and have more unified advertising and marketing compared to the competitors. Even the logo had changed after 12 years!
Another, maybe less obvious change was in its schedule. By this time, older Hanna Barbara cartoons had been pushed to the wayside, off the channel entirely and off to the spin-off channel Boomerang. Even the first of the original shows, the "Cartoon Cartoons," had been pushed to early mornings. Instead, CN had looked towards newer originals alongside acquired works, mostly anime. Anime had dominated the channel during the early 2000's, playing every afternoon on Toonami, alongside early Saturday mornings and late on Saturday nights. This transitioned to Miguzi as well, which played anime alongside cartoons that took lots of inspiration from anime, like Teen Titans and Code Lyoko. So to say the least, Cartoon Network, for a time was infatuated with Japanese culture at the time in the midst of the ongoing anime boom. In some ways, it only felt natural that the subject of today's post would happen the way the network was moving.
I mentioned Teen Titans a few sentences ago, and for good reason. When Teen Titans started in 2003, the show had blown up in the ratings and did very well for Cartoon Network. But one popular aspect of the series in particular was its theme song. Since Teen Titans tried differentiating itself from the rest of the DC Animated Universe by taking animation cues from anime, they also tried keeping up its "anime-ness" by actually getting a Japanese pop group for its theme song. This is where many American viewers had first heard of Puffy Amiyumi. Ami and Yumi had been popular in Japan since the mid 90's, and Teen Titans having them sing the opening may have been what swayed Cartoon Network to pick up a series based around them. Around the same time as the first season of Teen Titans was ready to release, Sam Register, then Vice President of the channel, pitched a show about the J-Pop duo. Renegade Animation, coming off of two failed pilots for CN and having only worked on commercials and shorts beforehand, had a stroke of luck when the network picked up the pilot for what would be Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi. The pilot itself definitely felt different from the final product in a few ways.
The final product is about animated versions of Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura and the different adventures they go on inbetween gigs on a seemingly endless world tour taking them to practically every part of the world with a stage, alongside their penny pinching manager Kaz along for the ride. The dynamic duo face off against insane fans, talent sucking vampires, former band members wanting to take over and just about whatever else the writing staff has in mind. Pink-haired Ami is the typical optimistic girly girl, loving shopping and pink things and seems to fluctuate between drums and guitar in addition to vocals, just depending on the episode. Yumi is more of a sarcastic punk rock type, dressed up in purple. As you might expect, the two contrasting personalities clash pretty often in the show. So about the show itself? It's pretty ok. The comedy can be kinda hit or miss earlier on, as the staff is figuring out what they can do with this show. The dialogue can get hampered at points by some kinda weird voice direction, making them miss their mark. More often than not, thankfully, the direction works! The voice actors they got for Ami and Yumi are great. Ami was voiced by Janice Kawaye, who voiced Jenny-XJ9 in My Life as a Teenage Robot. Yumi has the voice talent of Grey DeLisle, who did Frankie Foster in Foster's Home and TONS of other characters for cartoons. Good on this show for getting them, because they really play a big part in making these characters feel memorable and endearing. They both do great jobs despite the occasional slip-up, and really fit the characters well.
Although I can't deny there are two more parts in the equation that make this show stand on its own as a pretty alright entry in Cartoon Network's original lineup. It's cute as hell and there's J-Pop involved. As you readers will soon find out and what friends I've had already know is that I'm a simple man. You don't need a ton to win me over. A show that combined two of the cutest character designs in western animation mixed with a genre I love and some great voice acting and decent comedy to go alongside it and I was totally sold. There are many moments in the show that use Puffy Amiyumi's music, mostly during montages. It runs the gambit of the group's career, from their debut AmiYumi to the then latest album at the time of the pilot, Nice. They also played songs in small music videos occasionally in the first two seasons. I really liked this aspect because it got me to dive into the discography of the real band, and it was some of the most fun I had listening to music this year!
Season 3 had downscaled two elements I really liked about the show. The music had showed up much less, as the short videos disappeared and less episodes used tracks. Another aspect that seemed to disappear later on were the live action segments. For much of the show, the real life Ami and Yumi showed up to do skits at the beginning (and in season 1, at the end) of each episode. They felt a little awkward at first, especially with how disconnected they were with the segments, but they really began to grow on me, kinda like the show itself did in a way. It helps that the real band were super cute like their animated counterparts were. After Cartoon Network stopped broadcasting the show, the latter half of season 3 dropped these segments entirely. At first, I had thought that it was a mistake on the part of the network that the last five or so english episodes got captured from, but that got proven wrong because the final episode had a live action bit in the upload which was a montage of Ami and Yumi having fun on the set over the seasons. Maybe they thought that the videos and live action were too distracting and got in the way of the show? The tradeoff seemed to be that season 3 was all in all the funniest of the seasons. The writers seemed to realize that the show wasn't gonna last long and reveled in that by doing more fourth wall breaking gags and bringing back characters as opposed to just whatever the new setting of the week was, even if there was lots of that in season 3. My biggest wish was that Julie from the final episode had been used more than once, her design is just as cute as Ami and Yumi's and the idea of her constantly trying to destroy the band sounds like it could've been pretty funny to see in new ways.
I saw this show a little bit when I was younger, mainly on Cartoon Network Fridays, as it didn't have tons of reruns compared to the other originals on the channel. I was ok with it, but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me. On a rewatch, Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi was fun. A lot of fun. Like, more than I was expecting going in. The songs are great, the plots are fun if maybe generic at times with almost sickeningly sweet endings, the comedy works and Ami and Yumi are a great pair. Cartoon Network seemed to like it for a while as well, as it became a mini marketing machine at the time. Several online and console games, an complilation album, a decent bit of advertising and even a thanksgiving day parade float! Maybe it was not the best Cartoon Network had at the time, in an era of modern classics like Megas XLR or 80% of the Toonami lineup at the time, but I certainly had a good time with it. This could've only happened at the exact time in the exact place on the exact channel it was on. So maybe it's a good time capsule into what was happening with animation during the mid 2000's. I'm a sucker for time capsules, anyway.
Thanks for reading this word vomit all the way through. This didn't have the sort of personal narrative that my last cartoon review did, but I just finished a rewatch of the show and I just had to talk about it. I wanna bring up the music one last time, because the first post of a new segment I'm calling Albums I Adore (and Why You Should Too!) will be covering the antics of the real band behind these colorful characters, covering my personal favorite album of theirs, Nice. This will be after the next Circle of Friendz. Hope you read it.
BYE BYE BOO~!!! sorry i couldn't help myself.
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