Dalam-iwa Goseumdochi

After a long hiatus, it's FINALLY time for another episode of "What is anime?" The last time I wrote one of these was for the Transformers Movie, which was removed entirely from MAL's database because the new management decided that it isn't anime after all. I actually argued in that review why Transformers shouldn't count as anime, but I didn't think MAL would actually remove that series entirely!

Today we look at the sheer insanity of North Korea's propaganda cartoon "Squirrel and Hedgehog"! Long ago, MAL decided that Korean animation would count as anime. The logic behind this was that China, Korea, and Japan all ... share some cultural overlap and belong to a family of civilizations. Anime on MAL went from being defined as Japanese animation to being defined as East Asian cartoons.

Here is where Squirrel and Hedgehog stands out. There is precisely NOTHING culturally "East Asian" about this series. It's a crude copy/paste of American propaganda cartoons from the 1940s. North Korea's Communist regime worked hard to completely eradicate all traditional Korean culture. They want worship of the Kim Dynasty and service to the current regime to be the only cultural traits of North Korea. The characters all wear military outfits and no traditional Korean clothing is featured. We don't get to see traditional Korean food or music or anything that distinguishes this series as being Korean. It's just Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips meets a garbage retelling of Redwall and the characters just happen to be speaking Korean. For anyone that appreciates culture, this series is absolutely revolting. Other countries have made propaganda cartoons that are overly violent for kids and kind of questionable, but I would rather watch Russia's Prince Vladimir 100 times on loop than watch another episode of Squirrel and Hedgehog. Vladimir Putin's 20 million dollar cartoon movie is a God Damn MASTERPIECE compared to S&H. Every minute of that film has references to Slavic Paganism, Orthodox Christianity, actual Russian history, cuisine, music, etc. You could show Prince Vladimir to an isolated tribe in the Amazon and after 2 hours they would have a basically accurate idea of what Russia and its people are like. In contrast, you learn absolutely nothing from watching S&H.

S&H was created when North Korea's first Supreme Leader, Kim Il-Sung, decided that children need a cartoon that will teach them to defend North Korea themselves and not rely on the Chinese and Soviets. The story is all about the peaceful animal country of the squirrels, hedgehogs, and ducks. The squirrels represent the Communist leadership, the hedgehogs are the army, and the ducks are of course the navy. They used to rely on a bear to defend them, but the bear gets drunk too often and is unreliable! There is no subtlety to be found in this cartoon. The invading forces consist of rats (South Koreans) and their masters the weasels (Japanese). When the rats and weasels are soundly defeated, they call upon Wolves (Americans) who are supposedly the masters of the weasels. The series ran sporadically for 40 years, but only 32 episodes were made that we know of. As far as the outside world is aware, the last episode was in 2012 and ended with the American wolves killing a bunch of squirrel children in a gas chamber and Communist Squirrel vowing revenge. Did you notice that China was nowhere to be found? The Soviet Union is clearly the drunk brown bear, but where is the panda bear?!! I guess S&H just wanted to give the middle finger to the 200,000 Chinese soldiers that gave their lives in the Korean War and are the only reason that North Korea wasn't crushed in the early 1950s.

What's more interesting than the series itself is the INSANE backstory. In the mid 1980s, the shitty Italian studio that made the infamous Titanic cartoons decided to license this! It received an official dub in 4 languages and was widely released on VHS. Then in the early 2000s, the same studio gave it a new English dub featuring Dan Green and Mike Polluck and released it on DVD! The English episodes for the first 2/3rds of the series are available on Youtube because Mondo TV is so proud of this series for some reason.

Here is where it gets even weirder. The last 1/3rd of the series features galling CGI and an overly sexualized fox girl named Lt. Vixen. A North Korean guy managed to flee to Russia and smuggle the newer episodes out of the country on a disk drive. In 2014, the newer episodes mysteriously showed up on Youtube featuring Russian subtitles and became a meme. It turns out a LOT of people love Lt. Vixen and make many NSFW drawings of her. Sort of like a North Korean Holo! In one video, it showed that North Korea attempted to have the videos taken down by filing a copyright strike. However, Youtube refused North Korea's request and the new episodes are still available in Russian subs.

In summary, I don't think this should count as an anime. However, I'm glad that MAL included it in the database. I search for incredibly obscure, garbage series to watch and this series is a treasure trove in that regard.

If you ignore the symbolism of what the species represent, it's a decent show. I was watching the last three episodes for the memes but was somehow wanting for more. It's a show meant for kids albeit it has guns, violence and death so there's nothing too complex besides the insane fight scenes. If you just watch the show putting the propaganda back in your mind it's a show somehow cohesive enough to enjoy. There's also the sympathetic outlook on how westerners should view north koreans when watching this show. Many just hate simply because it's made by NK and pushes for an agenda... Didn't ... the U.S. do that too? But anyways there's that human feeling that there are animators simply drawing a kid's show with even moments where I found myself expecting the MC to do something extreme but didn't simply because of my expectations on the barbaric nature of NK which I found myself caught lacking. I think more people need to watch this show to understand what the country's going through.