Xiaolin Showdown

[kingandy]

Okay, so yesterday I caught Xiaolin Showdown on Cartoon Network. It's an amiable enough story, involving ancient demons and a squad of elemental "dragons" - chosen warrior types, one for each of the (western) elements - from around the world who have to collect hundreds of magic items from around the world. (No doubt the items are, or soon will be, available for kiddies to collect for themselves ... everybody's hawking something these days.) The squad is reasonably diverse, there being Texan, Brazilian, Japanese and Chinese members. (All kids, naturally.) The first three members are cool, collected, worldly types, while the Chinese delegate ("Omi", mascot of the show) has been raised as a Xiaolin monk and knows nothing of such things as "electricity" and such like.

All, in and of itself, good stuff.

However, I'm generally horrified and appalled by the realisation of the Omi character. Being Chinese, naturally he's a nasty tiny yellow man with slitty eyes. That he thinks himself superior is a reasonable character flaw, given he has been training longer than the others (all his life), but his inability to master the English language is dreadful considering the fluency of all the other monks in the monastery (and the broad US accent of the temple guardian dragon). He's just this comical idiot with a massive yellow forehead.

It's mostly that he's yellow though.

Also, I was disappointed that the team traded their individual clothing in for pyjama uniforms at the end of the (presumably first) episode.

Comments

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Shocking. He'll probably invade Tibet and mistreat the poor Texan kid horribly while talking abot flied lice. "Racism in cartoons, as an aspect of American Cultural Imperialism - discuss"

[masinkie.livejournal.com]

How is this different from the fact that everyone looks the same in anime, but the American guy is big, strong, and dumb?



It's not cultural imperialism, it's lazy writers.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Bah. I scoff at your facts.

[kingandy]

Oh, he's not dumb, he's just quiet. And smug, like the other two "cool kids".

Oh, and it's not anime - it's a WB in-house show.

[masinkie.livejournal.com]

I understood that. I just meant that it's a lot easier to give someone a stereotype than to give them a personality. So it's not so much a sign of cultural imperialism as it is a sign of lazy writers.