Maryoku Yummy - Build a Better Swingset and Ooka Times Two

I wasn't really planning on blogging Maryoku Yummy episodes--and I'm still not, but there are a few things about this one that I particularly liked and felt like mentioning here. The first half, "Build a Better Swingset," gets special mention for showing a good number of characters in hardhats and safety glasses (I don't know why, but cute characters are even cuter when they're in hardhats and safety glasses), and Young Fij Fij (so cute!).  Bonus points for having Yuzu completely fail at coming up with a rhyming catchphrase (something he usually does whenever he appears):

Yuzu: Need any help, Maryoku?  Using a hammer, drill, or ladder, Nonki and Yuzu are good... at... it all.

Nonki: It don't rhyme.

Yuzu: Hey, they can't all be winners.

The opening scene of the second half, "Ooka Times Two" is really why I'm making this post, as it's basically a spoof of every mad scientist movie ever made.  It starts in Nonki and Yuzu's workshop, with ominous organ music playing as they put the finishing touches on their latest invention.  Yuzu's expression is classic mad scientist, though his dialogue ("everyone is going to love this") isn't quite.  Until he tells Nonki to pull the lever, that is.  And it is, indeed, one of those ones.  Electricity surges, and their creation begins to rise as Yuzu cries out, "It's alive!"  Fade to black.  (They just made a robot, not an actual Yummy.)
I also liked this episode because it showed Maryoku finally cracking down on Ooka's goofing off.  It did feel a bit out of character, as she's usually more tolerant of Ooka's fun-loving side, but I imagine that Ooka's been ramping up her attempts to get out of work lately (as she greets Maryoku with "Isn't it a lovely Sunday?" and Maryoku immediately replies, "It's Monday" as if this isn't the first time), and even Maryoku has her limits.
Lastly, as part of a plan to get back at Ooka for tricking Nonki and Yuzu into using their robot to do her chores, the Yummies create The Wish Sitter Awards, and we get to see everyone (but especially Hadagi) glammed up.  The very end is a bit lame, but that's neither here nor there.

Random Bits on my Favorites

I've only been able to catch Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures sporadically, but since it's currently airing every weekday, I figure they'll lapse into reruns eventually and I'll see them all.  I'm not sure whether or not I'll blog them here, since I also figure that they'll be released onto DVD sooner or later.  After all, the episodes from Berryfest Princess and Glimmerberry Ball have already all aired as part of the series, so it's not hard to imagine that most of the episodes will be put together in similar "movie" fashion.  And it's just easier for me to write up a review when I have a DVD to work with, rather than a captured video.  In the meantime, I just want to say: Berrykin Bloom, stop rhyme-talking!  It's so annoying.  Also, I'm glad that Jadeybug finally got to talk, even if she didn't have a Spanish accent.

As I mentioned, Care Bears: The Giving Festival will be coming out soon, and to soften the blow of Princess Starglo debuting before her actual debut, Kidtoon Films is stepping up to the plate and showing Share Bear Shines during the month of November.  So that makes things a little better, I guess.  Is a DVD release far behind?  I certainly hope not.  Then again, there's no word on To The Rescue coming to DVD, and Kidtoon showed that back in April.

I've been enjoying Maryoku Yummy, though like SSCBBA, I only catch it here and there.  I'm really not that crazy about Inu.  I mean, Nozomu is a magical land, with crazy creatures; what do they need with dogs?  I also do not like Fudan, though he may be the answer to a quibble I posted when I first blogged about MY:

I mean, what if a kid wishes for an elephant for a pet?  Seriously, that kid is never going to get one, so that's a wish that will never get granted.

Fudan is a wish that has never been granted, and has thus gotten the hang of language (in that annoying like-a-toddler-but-not-quite way).  While most wishes just speak gibberish, I was amused to see that Hadagi apparently taught her wishes to say her name.  Most of the episodes I've seen have been fun, though I find it a little suspect that Maryoku often pulls tricks to make others learn their lessons, while if the others had done such a thing, they would have had to learn not to do that.  Best moment of the show so far: when Shika made a wish, and a little wish that looked like him was delivered. ^_^

And to close things off, someone wrote an abridged version of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic two-part pilot.  They did the latest episode, too.

The Hub On Demand is up

For those of you who have On Demand as part of your cable package, The Hub already has a channel set up.  Right now it's just a sneak peek, but you can catch two episodes of Maryoku Yummy.  I'm guessing that once the channel debuts officially, they'll start to put up recent episodes of their higher profile series (as Cartoon Network On Demand does) after they air.
The Maryoku episodes include two segments already shown on AGPbrands.com ("No Left Feet" and "The Biggest Wish").  Strangely, though "No Left Feet" was already shown as being coupled with "Ookas Just Wanna Have Fun," it's now seen with "Ready Set Glow."

Maryoku Yummy Comes to AGKidZone

Upon learning that AGP finally found a home for its Maryoku Yummy TV series (The Hub, come October), I went to see if the official website, maryokuyummy.com, had been updated yet (the last time I checked, it just had a "coming soon" message).  Not only was it updated, but it had been made into a page on AGKidZone.com, with a fair amount of content (not surprising, as they've been trying to get the TV series off the ground for a while now).  Exploring Nozomu reveals various character profiles, which cleared up a few mysteries, such as the names of Hadagi's friends (Oolong and Baburu, i.e. the romanization of bubble, predictably not pronounced anything like that) and that Tapo Tapo is apparently the leader of the Nozomu, and not just some mystical guru-type guy.  There are also games and coloring pages already, and 9 video clips, only two of which are from episodes already seen on AGPbrands.com.  Speaking of videos, the Strawberry Shortcake page still only has the interview clip representing the 2009 version, despite the fact that there are two DVDs out and the TV series has already started to air in some places.  Come on, AGP, get on the ball!

A Voice Acting Fact Finding Mission

In trying to find out whether or not the Maryoku Yummy series is actually airing anywhere, I saw that a new episode had been posted on AGPbrands.com. And not just any new episode, but a Formatted Episode. That is, instead of just being one of the two 11 minute stories that make up an episode, this one is both stories with bit of filler in the middle *and* the closing credits. Which is very good for me, since I could finally see the list of voice actors. As per usual, the cast is listed without any acknowledgement of who plays who, but I have a few guesses:

Shannon Chan-Kent - Maryoku

Scott McNeil - Shika

Maryke Hendrikse - Ooka

And I was right that Chiara Zanni is in it, thus she must be Hadagi. I based a few of my guesses on watching clips of other things they've done, to pinpoint the voice actor if they hadn't done anything I recognized, which was kind of funny when I was watching Death Note clips of Misa, trying to see if the voice sounded closer to Maryoku or someone else.

Looking up the VAs, I noticed that a few of them were in the same titles over and over again, which means that most of them are in the Ocean Group dubbing company (they do a lot of Viz-related dubs). I also noticed that some of them were in the dub of Powerpuff Girls Z, which surprised me because as far as I'd heard, it hadn't come out over here yet. When it came out in Japan, I watched about the first twelve or so episodes and then just read Moetron for any more info I wanted, since their posts were usually more interesting than watching the series. And it was Moetron that gave me the info I wanted to know: apparently, the dubbed episodes haven't been shown in the states yet, but have aired in Australia and the Philippines. But the real reason I'm bringing this up is because they linked to some clips that have been put up on Youtube, including a clip with the Gangreen Gang, and when I was watching it, I very nearly said "Ace is Ikura!" outloud. And sure enough, it was Andrew Francis. Also, Mark Oliver (Grizzle's VA) is Him:

One more thing. While pinning down whether or not Maryke Hendrikse was a close enough match for Ooka, I watched a little bit of Barbie and the Diamond Castle, mostly the part where her character gives the backstory on the villain of the movie, Lydia, an evil ex-muse who trapped two others, and I saw something that just made no sense to me. You see, in the flashback we see the three of them before Lydia turned evil, but while the other two are wearing simple tunics, Lydia is already decked out in her villainwear. I mean, normally you'd think a muse that turned evil would have an Evil Costume Switch, not be Obviously Evil from the get-go (and to be fair, her flute does get an evil makeover), especially when the other two seem to have some kind of muse dress code going on. Unless this was a gradual thing...first, she traded in her flower headband for thorns to hold her bun, then she started playing death metal songs on her flute, and then came the outfit. All the clues were there, but the other muses refused to see the truth about what was happening to their friend until it was too late. Either that, or since it was Melody's flashback, she just remembers it happening that way ("All the muses were nice, except for Lydia, who was evil. Evil, I tells ya!").

Evalana goes shopping

So, I went shopping yesterday for the express purpose of finding the following: Sushi Pack books and Maryoku Yummy products. You see, I recently learned that two Sushi Pack books were released back in January, both of which are available on Amazon.com, but since I got a Borders gift card for my birthday, I figured I'd see if I could find them there. I was only able to find the first one (based on the episode Rex Marks the Spot) and not the second (based on Wassup Wasabi), so I may be placing an order on Amazon sooner rather than later. You can see images from the first book here and the second here.

Not too long after I learned about the Sushi Pack books, I noticed a couple of press releases on AGPbrands.com that pertained to Maryoku Yummy. One mentioned the upcoming animated series and a March debut, but I haven't been able to find any information anywhere else about this, so I'm assuming it got delayed. But the other, more recent one mentioned that you can now find Maryoku merchandise in Justice/Limited Too stores, so I swallowed any embarrassment I might have and went straight to the front of the store. There I saw a few products including mini-plushes, pins, lip gloss and lollipops. As you can see, I got mini-plushes of Maryoku and Hadagi (of course) and a set of pins. The mini-plushes are very cute, and they have elastics on the back so you can tie your hair up with them if you so desire. Hadagi is definitely too magenta and not purpley enough. You can buy the mini-plushes and large plushes (which I didn't see in the store) on the Justice website.

The More, the Yummier - Maryoku Yummy

Today I am going to talk to you about Maryoku Yummy.  You may or may not recognize the name, but if you do, it's because you remember it from descriptions of American Greetings' licensed brands.  That's how I know of it, anyhow.

Now, for a good long while, next to nothing was known about this mysterious and strangely named property.  Only the very basics of the character were revealed: Maryoku looks after wishes that are made before they get granted.  Not exactly all the interesting, but good for birthday cards.  At least, that's what I thought until I discovered that, just like with the revamp of Strawberry Shortcake, AGPbrands.com put a handful of videos of the animated show based on this property, and while only three episodes are up, I think I love it already.

Maryoku Yummy takes place in Nozomu, and as you might have derived from that, the majority of the characters have psuedo-japanese names.  I say pseudo because while some of the names actually mean something relevant to the character (maryoku means magic power/charm), some of the names are unintentionally hilarious (one character's name, Hadagi, means lingerie), but most of them are either too broad (Shika can mean any number of things, including the price of paper or Japanese poetry) to have actual meaning, or just sound japanese-y without actually meaning anything coherent.  I should note here that nozomu means "to wish," but the characters all pronounce it no-ZA-mu instead of no-zo-mu.  Basically, nothing is pronounced the way it would actually be pronounced in Japanese, but is pronounced the way someone looking at Japanese would pronounce it (especially egregious in Maryoku, which is pronounced ma-ryoku, but all the characters call her mary-oku).

Bad pronunciations aside, the show is delightfully cute.  The characters (called Yummies as a group) all have a minimalistic design that was inspired by Japanese silkscreening.  The characters also tend to replace parts of words with 'yum' (as in 'yumderful,' 'yum's the word,' etc.), and they all have some sort of crazy design going for them.

While all kinds of Yummy live in Nozomu (doctors, bakers, handymen, police), the focus is on the wishsitters, groups of three Yummy that keep an eye on ungranted wishes and supposedly help them come true.  (I'm not entirely sure how this is done, even though one of the episodes details the process.  Apparently there are things a wish needs to know before it is granted, and hugs are part of it, too.)  The wishsitters live in a group of three and take care of up to eight wishes at a time.  When there's a deficit, it's usually filled pretty quickly by Bob, who brings the wishes in from somewhere else.  As the show description indicates, Maryoku is head of a wishsitting group, along with her timid friend Fij Fij and boisterous underling Ooka.  Maryoku is one of the those can-do-no-wrong main characters that tend to show up in these kind of shows and is generally the voice of reason in her little group, but she's also a terrible meddler (seriously, in the two episodes posted that focused on someone other than her wishsitting, she went out of her way to check in on the other wishsitter on multiple occasions).  Her touchy-feely approach to wishsitting tends to clash with the by-the-books police officer Shika, whose frequent flaunting of the rules inspires both fear and annoyance from the general population.  Still, he is the one they go to in a crisis.  There's also some kind of wiseman character named Tapu Tapu that the other characters go to for advice, but I'm not entirely sure of his complete role yet.

The wishes themselves are treated as a mix of pets and very young children.  As in, they're obviously sentient, but they don't really understand anything except having a good time, yet the Yummies talk to them as if they could understand, but probably don't.  I have to admit, I just don't get the whole wish concept here.  I mean, the conceit of the show is that when wishes are made by children, they become these candle-like entities and show up at some kind of HQ.  Wishsitters keep an eye on them and teach them what they need to know to be granted, but what about the wishes that can never be granted?  I mean, what if a kid wishes for an elephant for a pet?  Seriously, that kid is never going to get one, so that's a wish that will never get granted.  I guess I'm thinking too hard about it.  This is just a kid's show, after all.

The show is aimed at preschoolers, in fact, but the lessons are not hamhanded, and generally flow in a fun manner.  For instance, in one episode, Hadagi, a member of another wishsitting group, takes it on herself to try and get an enormous wish granted without any help (so she can claim all the credit), and the majority of the episode shows the messes she gets herself into as she tries to keep the wish out of trouble.  (Granted, I could be biased because this was the episode that made me love Hadagi, and not just because she's obviously voiced by Chiara Zanni, who also voices Kani on Sushi Pack.)

The series is slated to come out "sometime in the future" which has been officially stated as 2010, but since it was stated earlier to be 2008 and 2009, there's really no telling when this series will debut.  Which is too bad, because it looks like a fun little series, and I for one am looking forward to seeing more of it.