Kangoo

Kangoo is a 1996 french cartoon chronicling the adventures of five anthropomorphic, basketball-playing Kangaroos known as the Kangoos. Like a lot of cartoon teams, they are defined by a character trait and their position on the team: Napo, the fearless leader, Kevin, the irritable brawn, handyman Nelson, Archie, the mellow mathematical genius, and Junior, the lazy kid. The cast is rounded out by their trainer Sammy and his scantily-clad daughter Tiffany. They are often antagonized by the villain Mister D, who looks like The Joker after years of substance abuse, and his niece Vipera, who only looks slightly better. Joining the cast occasionally is the mystical, elderly kangaroo Jango that's a sort of mentor/parental figure to the Kangoos, as well as a Jacqueline Kennedy lookalike in animated form and her husband, the city leader.

The premise is simple - the Kangoos are a professional basketball team from a tropical paradise, the island of Sierra Kangoo. The Kangoos befriend Sammy and Tiffany after saving them from an attack by Mister D. Together, they prepare for basketball tournaments in the city against various themed teams with their own gimmicks, while also dealing with the antagonists' many plots. Sometimes they will stumble across a bad situation and go out of their way to help those in need, because that's the good-natured roos that they are. As for the villains, their actual goals often shift from episode to episode between satisfying their own greedy desires, going after the city leader (or more precisely, his wife), or harassing the Kangoos.

Kangoo is not outstanding but it is being held back by several flaws. The show got over 60 episodes for its single season so it seems the budget needed to be stretched. The animation quality is inconsistent and the show has more stock footage than a magical girl anime, which becomes apparent when an episode with janky animation comes along and gets mixed in with the stock footage, especially on the ball court. The writing also leaves much to be desired; there's a lot of potential in the scenario that isn't tapped. The supporting human cast isn't nearly as endearing as the kangaroos. Sammy yells a lot and chews his hat when the Kangoos are losing. Tiffany is mostly eye candy and kidnap material for the villains. And probably most disappointing, the Kangoos don't play off of each other's personality as much as I'd like them to. Mister D suffers from a large case of stupid villain syndrome. He has magical and alchemistry abilities that he only uses to evade capture. His preferred method of attack is a sniper rifle, which he has terrible aim with. There's also this strange fascination with the Kennedys. There are several motorcade scenes throughout the series, and more than once, Mister D hides out on a rooftop with a sniper rifle and aims it at the cartoon's equivalent of the Kennedys. That might be one of the reasons Kangoo never made it to the USA, since the show otherwise would most likely have taken off here.

The basketball games also suffer. Cartoony hijinks on the court seem like they would be the main draw, but the best gags (like the kangaroos jumping out of each other's pouches to form a ladder to the basket) are regulated to stock footage, so the actual matches become very procedural and predictable. The opposing teams aren't very interesting either; their gimmicks are never taken to the extreme. It all goes back to that untapped potential.

Though that sounds critical, Kangoo does have its inspired moments. Watching the kangaroos is always fun when they're allowed to shine, and there are great moments of self-aware humor, like when Archie installs a tracker on Tiffany's clothes because she gets kidnapped all the time and, sure enough, she's kidnapped again before the end of the episode and they put the tracking device to the test. I also found the Kangoos, one by one, started to grow on me as I watched more episodes. There are just certain quirks that get assigned to them.

Kevin's always getting angry and blowing smoke from his nostrils or angrily swinging his fist at someone, yet his petulance is often justified, and things rarely go his way. Despite being the brawn, a lot of fights usually end with him getting his butt kicked, and he is prone to being humiliated from time to time, so I feel for the guy. Being the courageous leader, Napo gets into some trouble. The villains take to kidnapping him and subjecting him to bizarre torture methods, like body swapping and feather tickling.

But in the end it all comes back to what I was saying - potential. If there's one thing I really want out of Kangoo, it's to be able to go back in time and turn everything about this show up a notch or two. Increase the animation budget, improve the writing, refine the character personalities, be a little bit more daring, and get it more exposure (like an actual North American release this time). The show was successful, but unfortunately no one thought, or could at least get, for these things to come to fruition.

The Kangoos left the airwaves in 2000 (after an Olympic-themed sequel series), but they weren't forgotten. In 2002, they were revived in a spin off called Kangoo Juniors, adding yet another cartoon to the piles of "Kid version" spinoffs that downsized all of its characters. This "prequel" series doesn't make any sense and already contradicts the original series, and if they needed to spruce the characters up with a new concept for a new series I don't think turning them into kids was the right decision, but Kangoo Juniors is a different story for another review. There's been an uptick of cartoon revivals/remakes, so maybe in a couple of years someone will revisit Kangoo and fill in the potential and edginess the original series almost had.