Once upon a meow, Sanrio decided to get into the animation industry, starting with their popular mascot Hello Kitty. With little experience in animation, the company licensed its characters to DIC, who then created this complete load of rubbish.
In their wisdom, DIC decided to add a number of pointless additions to the series, the most notable being the two additional characters that play the antagonists, Katnip and Grinder, neither of these characters are interesting and DIC designs look positively jarring against Sanrio’s. Indeed none of the characters have any kind of personality to speak of, with Hello Kitty being a prime example of Mickey Mouse syndrome, a blank canvas to which things happen to.
The series is not helped by the annoyingly grating voices that DIC decided to put on the characters. Nor indeed the dialogue, which is peppered with abysmal cat themed puns that almost make the Smurf cartoon ones look like normal conversion: although I’ll admit it never gets that bad. It looks even better when a character talks without moving their lips.
The animation is, well what you - or at least I - expect from DIC; It's not that great, managing to be functional at worst, competent at best. To be fair the animation is no worse than much of the company’s output during that time, it is just that a few years later the animation would just look laughable.
The episodes are so short - each is just eleven minutes - that they’re over before they begin, a possible reason for making the show a series of adaptations; which ultimately meant that the company didn’t have to put any real story work into it. Additionally while I can understand the adaptation of fairytales and family films, it does seem a bit odd when you have a version of Jaws in the mix. Another thing that kills it is the extreme watering down of those said films and fairytales, you know for the kids. This is despite the fact that before the idiot censors and “Think of the Children” protestors dumbed everything on television down the kids quite enjoyed the uncompromising nature of said films and fairytales. The end result is a complete lack of notable dramatic tension and thus little resemblance to actual storytelling of merit.
I also wonder how the company didn’t get sued left, right and centre for the copyright infringement of the films that it "adapts", being the fact that these adaptations are barely parody in their execution, unless the aforementioned cat puns are enough. Maybe it’s because it’s a cartoon series.
There isn’t much to say about Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theatre, it is just another pointless, dumb, filler show that basically shows what little respect that DIC had for the licence it had acquired. The only people who would possibly like it are those too young even to go to kindergarten, the sort of audience who quite happily watch anything anyway, or those blinded by anything remotely cute. And that being the case, why not put on something that would be more palatable for the poor parent supervising them, though of course some think that the TV is an adequate substitute for a real grownup watching their kids.
It’s a little apparent that Sanrio didn’t think much of DIC’s effort neither, as they would take over production of their own future animated endeavours; from future Hello Kitty shorts to the recent My Melody anime. And if you’re going to watch any Hello Kitty or Sanrio cartoons, then go with these later ones that Sanrio made, they are generally, much better than this waste of celluloid.
/ 2 reviews)
Reviews for Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater
