No-One In Japanese Cartoons Ever Looks Japanese. This is bizarre, but true. They look (in classic anime, up to and including Robotech) really like characters on the cover of Michael Moorcock novels, with long hair, long faces, and skinny arms. Although lately they resemble those horrid eighteenth-century paintings of children with their pekinese dogs - huge eyes, teeth and faces. The dogs even more so. The only exceptions to this rule seem to be the occasional sensei figure who is ugly, squinty and beige, and is always called "Marthter" (rhymes with laughter. Sorry).

By the way, there are usually only two actual Chinese or Japanese actors in any Hollywood karate/ninja/judo/bash-'em-with-nunchucks movie: the grandfather or sensei or weird bonsai grower down the road, who teaches the boy/girl/children/feckless-young-man-about-town how to beat the snot out of any unfortunate "bad guy", even if this person is only a harmless deadbeat car salesman with an unexplained fear of cheese; the other will be the top bad guy, a member of a tong, triad, or mafia group which is trying to steal the grandpa's shop, house, trophy, girlfriend or magic bonsai beanstalk. The children are then sent out to defeat a huge number of masked nasties who find it impossible to beat the little toadstools. They manage to singlehandedly rescue Grandpa (the only Asian in the family) or Gramps' girlfriend, trophy, trophy-girlfriend or magic bonsai/sword/scroll/bamboo windchimes. Why the police aren't called instead is a mystery. Even if the police are really incompetent/corrupt, a gun is a far less time-consuming way of dealing with the problem. After all, a martial art is a complex and beautiful life-time of effort and concentration and graceful body movements, which is actually completely useless when faced by an automatic weapon. ("Pst! Why Not All Attack At The Same Time? Win First, Be Sporting Later!").

Cartoons Exist Only To Sell Merchandise. This has grown, to the point that the merchandise controls the show. Power Rangers got a makeover every six weeks so that a whole new range of trucks and cars and colour-coded bug-eyed action figures with no other recogniseable facial features could be sold off. Said merchandise chewed up batteries by the truckload and broke if you so much as gave it a funny look. Anime has gone several steps beyond such perfidy (love that word). Several hundred pokemon (hey mon! poky mon! ganja mon! etc) were invented so that children could waste all their money and free time collecting the stupid cards, fluffy toys, inflatable toy hammers, video releases and any other possible spin-off. Children became so addicted (why? they look like arcade game characters with electrostatic power points and pouffy hair) that they lost any interest in normal everyday activities. Heathy their skinny white ass. The Japanese have a word for people who sit in their rooms all day and obsessively collect strange things that look like beetles - otake. It probably means "really really weird". Poky-mon (ie a Jamaican proctologist) was closely followed by DragonballZ and Beyblade and other overpriced, addictive junk. There was a silly fighting-robots cartoon as well. Bug-eyed children, 15-hundred cute little mascot animals with high voices, and some sort of vague hint that maybe, at some point, somewhere, the concept of a plot could have existed. In an alternate universe. With alien gas-based lifeforms. On Venus.

Also, there is always someone with purple hair. Or a green face. No-one remarks on this. Occasionally, dead people come back to cry at weddings. (This really disturbed me in Robotech). Nevertheless, Robotech was absolutely awesome. The SDF-1 would transform into a huge bank of laser-gun batteries and take out oodles of nasty Zentraedi pod-fighters. There was a lot of repeat footage in the space dogfight battles, but one had to forgive that in the days of expensive and time-consuming 3D (real) animation. Now any stupid Canadian or Korean with a computer can design a 2-D show with a silly moral at the end, like Don't Leave Your Glowing Orb of Power/Magic Crystal Amulet Lying Around; or You CAN Be A Nice Person If You Really Try ("so stop hitting your brother, you naughty little bugger..."); or Any Problem Can Be Solved If You Want It Badly Enough ("No, you cant make your divorced parents get back together or replant the rainforests! So stop crying!"). I always wanted to be a flight-lieutenant in one of those Robotech jetfighters. Apart from the zooty uniform, the ability to shoot the ...crap out of asteroid belts at high speed was a great attraction. It was rather sad that the show went on too long, and even though the Zentraedi were defeated, the mysterious Protocol Masters still hung around, building slimline large-eyed frankenstein green-people to attack Earth and upset the heirs of Admiral Globel. Way to ruin a good show...

I adored Minmay, who was supposed to be a Japanese superstar, but didn't look vaguely Japanese (and yet she and Rick-the-American spoke the same language, whichever one it originally was). She sang so well I still remember whole choruses. "I Can't Believe that I'm a Star" made even "lord" Breetai cry (Deep Voice: "This woman has a voice... that could make a man feel sorrow."), and he was Admiral of the Floating-Potatoes-with-Cannon-ports-Fleet! Exxor, the green little runty secretary, cried all the time anyway - probably a nervous tic. Somehow the huge Zentraedi (ooh, I can still spell it, after all these years!) could be shrunk to human size whenever necessary, to fall in love and have children in spite of genetics. I detested the abundance of silly clumsy sidekicks, I think out of burlesque Japanese opera. (Comic relief in-between insane tension and murder. Could be any opera, really).

Lisa Heyes and Rick Hunter were the central characters. I think they ended up together at the end, although what happened to Minmay I can't recall. Max and Miriam (Maria?) were the great romance, even if one of them was slightly green, and they were both amazing pilots - always blew the same enemy pod up, though. Animators would need time in the nut-house if they could've heard 6- and 4-year-olds shrieking "Repeat footage! Repeat footage!" every five seconds. Did they think we wouldn't notice?

I feel so sorry for kids these days, stuck with endless re-runs and cheap stop-motion\CGI. There's nothing creative out there any more, just "relaunches" and crappy Teletubbies-clones. I'd even force any kids I might have to a strict diet of Vege-Tales (the songs are adorable) rather than permit even a passing acquaintance with Barney the Dumbosaur. (Man, do I know some rude song-ripoffs of that show...). Although Vege-tales might be cute for their own sake - even at my age. All the cutesiness of Tweenies et al sure does beat the horror of the Dark Crystal (scared the heck out of me, at any rate) or the utter lack of plot enjoyed by She-ba or Lee-ma or whoever. (How come she was He-boy's sister, but she lived on another planet in an alternate universe? How'd she get there? Who brought her up? Where'd she get the horse, and do they come in alternative colour-schemes? Plot holes everywhere).

"I hate you, you hate me,
lets all gang up and kill Bar-neyyy
With an AK-47 Barney's on the floor
No more Stupid Dinosaur..."

Sing Along, KIDS! That one's the least rude. Unlike this one:

"I love you, you love me,
Barney gave me HIV..."

(I, um, don't remember the rest...).

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