Chiisana Ahiru no Ooki na Ai no Monogatari: Ahiru no Kwak

Ahiru no Quack, or better known as Alfred J. Kwak is a dutch anime aimed at kids.
But unlike most cartoons aimed at kids, Alfred J. Kwak features lots of mature and mostly sad the,es. Amongst others it deals with various social and political issues, like abuse, or power. Even with all these negative themes, the shows about important values too, like friendship, family and solidarity.

The anime is notable for the political themes on which it points a highlight. In the anime ...our main protagonist fights a evil fascist dictator, takes in refugees, saves whales against hunter and even oversees the changeover of his country from ... an sbolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.

Such themes are far from typical in a children'sanime, and form a big part of Alfred J. Kwak's appeal. Other episodes have satirised the Japanese love of golf, and criticised countries which have sharp north/south economic divides.

The story settles around a duck, some time after birth Alfred loses his parents and sisters, and is raised by a mole, which was a good friend of his parent. Together they wind up in lots of different adventures, fun adventures, but even so, very dangerous one's.

What's nice is that Alfred actually grows up, from a small kid, at the end of the show, he's an adult duck. In most kid's shows the characters don't age/or at least mature.

The art is simple, but astonishing beautiful, it has this old style which really appeals to kids, and yet, me too. I've seen the series as I was a kid, here on television, but I can still enjoy it when I put (the tapes) on. I've seen the anime in different versions, the original (dutch), japanese, german, english etc. etc. And most of the times the audio sfx's stay the same, which is good.

The characters are magnificent, we got Alfred, the duck. Who lives in a giant glog-shaped house.Then we got a mole who takes care of the duck.
Dolf, the leader of the bad organization "National Crows' Party", who resembles Adolf Hitler. Then we get a "black" duck, who's a refugee and Alfred's girlfriend, a polar bear who's a scientist, we even got a stork and a magpie as cool characters.

We've got lots of animals, who resemble or potrait cool, funny, evil and most of all, fun people (or just) fictional beings. For kids it's highly enjoyable, if you like serious anime's with a small touch of kids view, this is what you need to see.

This anime is liberal indoctrination propaganda.
I was no more than two years old when I started watching this anime.
I wasn't even a weeb yet and already I had seen my first anime.
But after re-visiting this anime (it is an anime and nobody believes it, but that's the truth) I found that many of it's themes were racist reductionist simplifications and some quite offensive.
That koala with the heavy accent for instance.
Also, sometimes I wonder what van Veen must have been smoking or if he was on some sort of elephant drugs. Because I'm pretty sure there is no clown living on the moon. People think this ... anime is deep and dark because it re-enacts the Nazi occupation in a really cartoonish way. (pun intended)
I think it's mostly absurdist and childish.
Do I still like this anime? yeah it was oke.
Pico bello!

A VERY mixed bag of a series.
Shortly put, some episodes are downright fantastic while the others had me dozing off with just how incredibly dull they were.
When the show decides to go for a more serialised approach with proper story arcs and continuity, it's really good. Dolf makes for a seriously great villain and the show is at it's peak whenever he takes a greater role in the story. But whenever the show leans torwards the more episodic, slice-of-life writing style, the episode quality can vary wildly.
There is also a noticeable drop / shift in animation quality at around the halfway mark of the series. ... While the first 26 or so episodes varied between okay and really good, the episode quality definitely takes a hit after the "Reign of Dolf"- story arc, both in terms of writing and animation.
Alfred J. Kwak also has the tendency to leave a lot of plotholes and end some story arcs very abrubtly. When an episode very heavily hints that the next episode is going to continue where the last left off, the show just decides to throw the characters to a completely different story. It honestly had me checking a few times if I had skipped a episode or two, it was that jarring.
However, for a show mostly aimed at children, the subjects some episodes tackle are actually incredibly ballsy for its target audience. While there are some very shoehorned enviromental messages in some episodes, others can cover some very mature topics such as dictatorship, government corruption and incompetence, racism and religious extremism among others. Major props for actually covering some societal issues that a vast majority of childrens shows would NEVER attempt to try.
All in all, Alfred J. Kwak is a very hit-or-miss show. There definitely is stuff for adults to enjoy and it can get genuinely thrilling, but be prepared to be bored to tears with some episodes.