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

I saw this for this first time when I was a kid growing up in the Netherlands, and it was THE cartoon. Like many people already said before, it's a kids show, but it has a lot of mature topics like diseases, starving, crime, death etc.
I really think that this show shaped me in a way because they didn't go out of the way to show children how the world really is.
To me, and this might be the nostalgia talking, was the best cartoon of all the cartoons of my childhood.
Thank you for having this on My Anime List, it really makes ... it a legit anime :)

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!

Judging by the picture in the front page, this series appears to be a typical fairy tale with cute animals and cheery stories. Well… IT ISN’T! It’s a grim story, dressed in bright colors and light humor.

Here is the premise. The protagonist is a naive duckling. While playing happily, it goes away and escapes its mother’s attention. This saved its life, as a rich animal inside a luxurious car RUNS OVER ITS ENTIRE FAMILY! The rich bastard simply says, “I’m too rich to care” and keeps driving WITHOUT EVEN SLOWING DOWN!
Later, the duckling is looking for its family, but it doesn’t find them (thank God). ... It is found and taken cared by other animals and things start to get better. But the entire universe is simply out to get our tragic hero. A kleptomaniac friend of its, steals a jewel and “accidentally” drops it on the duckling’s head.
“Look! The duckling that dumped its family is the thief! What a bad animal you are. Shame on you!”
“But I…”
“Shut up! The universe says you are never to be proven right!”
And something similar like this keeps happening to the duckling over and over throughout the rest of the story…

If Bambi’s dead mother is the limit in cruelty, this series goes off the charts. It’s so mentally scaring for children (I was only 10 when I watched it and it gave me nightmares about the poor duckling looking for its dismembered family). And the whole “everyone is out to make your life miserable” attitude is miseryporn from a point on, like watching ReZero or Rainbow. It is supposed to be ironic and humorous but it only feels petty and cruel. You could see it as a variant of Oliver Touist but it will still feel overbearing.

Yet, this is the same reason why the series stands out among most anime for kids. If you keep watching, you will actually see a story where there are dozens of references to Fascism, Apartheid and European monarchy. Really, it isn’t a typical children’s story with simple good guys and bad guys in some magical fairyland. It is in fact portraying the modern times of our world in a very sad way. I don’t say I like the way it presents all that (deaths and malicious acts on part of the bad guys) but it is trying a lot more than your typical fairytale (it’s eons more sinister that the average stupid villains who never kill in typical cartoons).

The duckling’s tragic story makes it interesting for a while, but all its naivety and Diavolo Ex Machina blaming gets to your nerves pretty soon. Still, that duckling matures a lot as a character. We watch him grow older, get a girlfriend and take part in an uprising against Fascism, Apartheid and other forms of malicious acts. Quite a lot for kiddies to grasp, right?

Then there’s the villain of the story, who is pretty much half a dozen infamous historical figures in one body. From Hitler, to Napoleon, to Godfather, to greedy faceless oil company suits, he causes more harm and death than Cobra Commander and General Havoc ever did during their endless terrorist armies in old cartoons. And in far more sinister ways too! He looks like a silly crow and yet he is evil incarnate. Plus, he has a backdrop story that excuses his behavior. He was not “born evil”.

Still, it is true that after a while they act in silly ways and the end-result is a happy ending to a sad story. It’s not trying to be miserable all the way to the end, the same way Ranking of Kings flipped over anything it was building in its first half. The rest of the cast is not as great as these two so it’s an issue if you have to watch the whole series without strong support characters. Also, yeah, cute little animals don’t deserve such treatment. Not even in fiction.