The glory (???) of advertizing
Written: Nov 17 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: You aren't forced to watch it. You can easily turn it off.
Cons: There is a partial list in the lengthy article below.
The Bottom Line: Here's my nomination for Worst Animated Series currently on television. It's basically one long product commercial. I'd avoid it on principle, but then it's also terminally lousy as a program.
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| catu11us's Full Review: Yu-Gi-Oh! |
This is a completely revised version of an earlier review entitled “What Hath the Advertizing Department Wrought?” on the basis of some very helpful comments.
There have long been trading cards (among other products) associated with various TV shows. There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking advantage of a show’s success with a little merchandizing. Given the propensity of children (or, as they’re known in the business world, “consumer trainees”) to buy anything shoved under their noses, this has been a highly lucrative venture. I’m sure parents are aware already that consumer trainees develop little product savvy and self-control before their early 20s, and when it comes to males and toys, this development hardly ever happens. It’s at this point that they graduate as full-fledged “collectors”, and the one who dies with the most wins.
But merely manufacturing alleged “collectibles” isn’t, apparently, lucrative enough. “Why not,” the trading card people must have said, “make the shows shill for the cards?” That approach might lead to little bits like, “If you enjoyed the show, buy the cards.” But more to the taste of the merchandizers would be shows that shill their little hearts out. The result would be travesties like “Pokemon”, a show directly based on trading cards, although it never mentions them. Even so, the subtext of “you gotta catch ‘em all” is obviously “you gotta buy ‘em (the cards) all”. That the cards should also be the basis for a game was a principle already well-established by earlier trading-card games.
“Pokemon” is one of the more awful animé series on current TV. It suffers, for instance, from the more ludicrous conventions of the Japanese school: particularly showing emotion by distorting faces beyond anything human, as well as using hair styles that would make the characters into human sheepdogs were they not held in place (apparently) by rubber cement – and, of course, huge sweat drops on the back of the head, denoting almost any sort of emotional stress. What’s up with that? The individual episodes are fairly silly, involving fighting between various Pokemon(sters) and highlighted by villains less serious and less threatening than anything you’d see in a Punch and Judy show. Low-grade comic relief, I suppose.
Awful as “Pokemon” is, and even more awful as the soppy “Hamtaro” series is, “Yu-Gi-Oh” is just dreadful. This series not only shills for the related cards, it positively pimps for them. The cards the consumer trainees are supposed to buy are themselves the center of the action. (And you should look at the prices for those things!!) In order to give the cards some stage presence, they’re surrounded by magic-like razzle-dazzle and a mythos that only makes sense if you know nothing about ancient Egypt (magic card games in the era of the pyramids??? – give me a break).
The show itself appears on the Cartoon Channel and on Warner Brothers (and the gods know where else) nearly every day and night, a saturation campaign matched only by the ubiquitous sappy Barbie commercials. One can only despair for a generation that falls for this stuff. (Well, maybe that’s unfair. In the 1940s all they had to say was, “Buy Cheerios”, and we would.)
Visually, “Yu-Gi-Oh” has some effective graphic moments. The process is almost certainly fueled by profits realized by printing little cards and selling them at something like 100 times the cost of production. It’s a pity this sort of quality is squandered on this dog – sort of like carving bobble-heads out of Carrara marble. However, the good-looking animation is often spoiled by some of the aforementioned Japanese conventions. The main character (Yugi), particularly, is saddled with something on his head that can only be characterized as a really bad hair day gone completely mad. I wish I could say it was ghastly, but in fact it’s only pathetically amusing. Maybe the kid wears a papier-maché wig – except (get this) he sleeps in it.
It gets worse. The “heart of the cards” referred to so frequently in the show is that the heart of the shill is having the cards at the heart of the episode plots. The cards aren’t just an adjunct to the series, they are the series. For those who haven’t seen it, the characters fight “duels” using the cards, which represent various creatures and things with various powers. Cards are randomly drawn and eventually played, holographic machinery whines and grinds and produces their images, they destroy and dismember each other, and eventually somebody loses all his life points (don’t ask) and the other one wins. Since the rules of the game are fairly intricate (and not altogether rational, it appears), and since cards seem to abound in secret or unknown special powers, the duels are just one deus ex machina after another. At the end of every duel, some deity punches some button somewhere, Yugi (the main character) draws some highly improbable-looking card that operates in some way completely different from the expectations of everyone around (except Yugi, of course).
The “Yu-Gi-Oh” series has an overall plot whose purpose is to get characters involved in duels with their cards as much as possible, the better to tout the product of course. The plot involves such charming concepts as demon possession (which too many people take seriously as it is), kidnapping, imprisoning people in a limbo-like “shadow realm”, lying, cheating, stealing, murder, gambling (players essentially bet cards and other valuables on the outcomes of their duels), abuse of power, betrayal, secret plotting, deceit, and the ludicrous idea that a deck of cards can influence physical reality (subtext: “tarot”). It is true, of course, that the series makes a certain effort to tout virtues such as loyalty, friendship, and fair play – but such things always pertain to people whose devotion to the cards is selfless and fanatic. The subtext here is painfully obvious, but then there’s absolutely nothing subtle about this overextended hype.
The various episodes center on the product, of course, with characters fighting duels, preparing for duels, recovering from duels, planning duels, and/or doing other stuff with cards. There is almost always a cliffhanger at the end (unlike Pokemon, for instance, in which each episode is a self-contained story). The moral (if that is the word) center of the series is Yugi, a basically nice kid who succeeds because (a) he’s possessed by a demon and (b) the deus ex machina syndrome is always pro-him and (c) his devotion to the cards verges on worship. Yugi needs to have reality bend his way a lot because in this series the devil not only has the best lines, but the best cards and the best magic devices.
The nice thing here is that the villains are really serious (taking over the universe with a deck of trading cards … riiiiiiiiiight). And it’s very easy to tell who they are. Each one speaks sneeringly and condescendingly, is full of supercilious quirks, and laughs meaningfully every time it’s his turn and they’re going to play some card that’s horribly powerful and ultimately useless. And all the while everyone’s mouthing the hyperventilating script with all the earnestness of used care salesmen on TV.
I’m sure there’s worse animated drek than this on TV. I just haven’t seen it. It’s impossible to recommend this material for children of any age. As a bottom line it dwells on concepts that even some adults are stupid enough to believe in: demon possession, cards being able to influence reality, “spirit worlds”, and the like. It also gets involved with nearly every deadly sin and class-A felony in the book. It’s one thing to treat this kind of stuff to satirical put-on (South Park, Family Guy), but it’s another make it all part of a deadly earnest sales pitch.
Recommended:
No
Type of Program: Cartoon or Animated
Program Quality: Turn the TV off
Best Suited For: Other
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Epinions.com ID:
catu11us
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Member: Rod Walker
Location: Encinitas CA, USA
Reviews written: 237
Trusted by: 25 members
About Me:
"I'veBeen aPartOf SoMany BigBangs ThatIfOneOfThem HadCreatedAnything, I'dKnowIt." "Six" in "TrippingTheRift"
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