Post by tezukasensei on Sept 5, 2020 7:12:16 GMT
I suffer from an impaired memory, (though surprisingly I remember a lot about this cartoon), so some details I don't remember well. Please bear with me.
I grew up an 80s kid in Canada, and I remember this sort of educational cartoon series. I only saw 2 or 3 episodes of it due to the rather unorthodox way in which it aired on TV, (which I will explain in a moment.) I have asked about this series on other sites covering cartoons from the 1980s and no one else had a clue about it, nor have I ever found any clips or trace of it online. Let me explain the story of this cartoon series, and the one particular episode of it that I remember a bit about:
As mentioned, I grew up in Canada, and I remember this cartoon "airing" on the Vision tv network in Canada sometime in the late 1980s/early 1990s. (I moved out of Canada in the summer of 1994, and I'm sure it was a good couple years or more before I moved away that I saw this.) The strange nature of me seeing this cartoon is that I remember the Vision network being a really weird TV network. It was not a children's tv network by any means, nor was it a block of children's programming in which I saw this cartoon. I can best describe the broadcast as something like an infomercial, and there was a man talking about this cartoon series. It came off kind of like a televised pitch meeting. He wasn't exactly selling the cartoon to the viewers, there was a person like a host or something that he was telling about the cartoon. Then after his explanation of the cartoon, it went into playing a full episode of the cartoon.
I have trouble remembering exactly what the title of the cartoon was, but it was something like "Kung Fu Kids." It was about a group of street kids and their leader, an older teen/young adult named Kung Fu (I think?) who was their guardian and leader. He kind of had that 70s afro with headband martial artist look, with light brown skin tone. They gave him and his group very diverse skin tones and clothes, but despite the name "Kung Fu" the characters were not really asian looking. It had more of a southern/latino/maybe middle east look to me. It was nothing stereotypical anime either. I'm pretty sure it wasn't anime unless it was a multi-country partner production like Mysterious Cities of Gold. Before I get into the plot of the one episode I remember best, let me emphasize that despite the name "Kung Fu", while there was some fighting it was very non-violent as fighting/action was very much NOT the focus of the cartoon, and further it was not graphic at all in how it approached its subject matter. Now the very dark story that I remember from this one particular episode:
The episode features two younger kids (a boy and a girl I think?), maybe like 8/9 years old busking in the street doing juggling & whatnot for the crowd. They are street kids, so obviously they are just trying to earn a little money. The early bit I'm a bit fuzzy about, but I think Kung Fu talks to them and there's something about not going anywhere with strangers or something. Then it takes a very dark turn. The boy from the pair is lured into a limo (or some similar fancy car) and it drives off. The girl runs to Kung Fu for help and when they catch up they see the boy getting tossed out of the limo before it drives off--his clothes rather disheveled. We learn, (though we are spared any graphic detail), that the boy was molested by whomever was in the vehicle. The boy ends up getting aids and dying. (Again we really aren't shown any of this part, it's mostly just Kung Fu or the narrator explaining.) The story concludes showing the girl once again busking, but this time she is sadly without her partner.
So clearly this is a pretty dark way of teaching the lesson of stranger danger. This is what this cartoon series was, the episodes were meant to teach lessons like this. I always thought it had a good setup, and the Kung Fu character was pretty cool. Despite how dark it sounds, I can't emphasize enough how non-graphic it was in telling its story. The most graphic thing you see is the boy dumped out of the vehicle. His clothes are a little ruffled, but it only amounts to like his shirt being a little untucked. He's still very much clothed; they did just enough to indicate that something was a little off, and it's a VERY brief scene.
I grew up an 80s kid in Canada, and I remember this sort of educational cartoon series. I only saw 2 or 3 episodes of it due to the rather unorthodox way in which it aired on TV, (which I will explain in a moment.) I have asked about this series on other sites covering cartoons from the 1980s and no one else had a clue about it, nor have I ever found any clips or trace of it online. Let me explain the story of this cartoon series, and the one particular episode of it that I remember a bit about:
As mentioned, I grew up in Canada, and I remember this cartoon "airing" on the Vision tv network in Canada sometime in the late 1980s/early 1990s. (I moved out of Canada in the summer of 1994, and I'm sure it was a good couple years or more before I moved away that I saw this.) The strange nature of me seeing this cartoon is that I remember the Vision network being a really weird TV network. It was not a children's tv network by any means, nor was it a block of children's programming in which I saw this cartoon. I can best describe the broadcast as something like an infomercial, and there was a man talking about this cartoon series. It came off kind of like a televised pitch meeting. He wasn't exactly selling the cartoon to the viewers, there was a person like a host or something that he was telling about the cartoon. Then after his explanation of the cartoon, it went into playing a full episode of the cartoon.
I have trouble remembering exactly what the title of the cartoon was, but it was something like "Kung Fu Kids." It was about a group of street kids and their leader, an older teen/young adult named Kung Fu (I think?) who was their guardian and leader. He kind of had that 70s afro with headband martial artist look, with light brown skin tone. They gave him and his group very diverse skin tones and clothes, but despite the name "Kung Fu" the characters were not really asian looking. It had more of a southern/latino/maybe middle east look to me. It was nothing stereotypical anime either. I'm pretty sure it wasn't anime unless it was a multi-country partner production like Mysterious Cities of Gold. Before I get into the plot of the one episode I remember best, let me emphasize that despite the name "Kung Fu", while there was some fighting it was very non-violent as fighting/action was very much NOT the focus of the cartoon, and further it was not graphic at all in how it approached its subject matter. Now the very dark story that I remember from this one particular episode:
The episode features two younger kids (a boy and a girl I think?), maybe like 8/9 years old busking in the street doing juggling & whatnot for the crowd. They are street kids, so obviously they are just trying to earn a little money. The early bit I'm a bit fuzzy about, but I think Kung Fu talks to them and there's something about not going anywhere with strangers or something. Then it takes a very dark turn. The boy from the pair is lured into a limo (or some similar fancy car) and it drives off. The girl runs to Kung Fu for help and when they catch up they see the boy getting tossed out of the limo before it drives off--his clothes rather disheveled. We learn, (though we are spared any graphic detail), that the boy was molested by whomever was in the vehicle. The boy ends up getting aids and dying. (Again we really aren't shown any of this part, it's mostly just Kung Fu or the narrator explaining.) The story concludes showing the girl once again busking, but this time she is sadly without her partner.
So clearly this is a pretty dark way of teaching the lesson of stranger danger. This is what this cartoon series was, the episodes were meant to teach lessons like this. I always thought it had a good setup, and the Kung Fu character was pretty cool. Despite how dark it sounds, I can't emphasize enough how non-graphic it was in telling its story. The most graphic thing you see is the boy dumped out of the vehicle. His clothes are a little ruffled, but it only amounts to like his shirt being a little untucked. He's still very much clothed; they did just enough to indicate that something was a little off, and it's a VERY brief scene.
