February 27th, 2008: Heads-Up: Bakugan

Y'all don't come Bak-u-gan, ya hear?

Cartoon Network recently premiered the Japanese/Canadian collaboration Bakugan: Battle Brawlers. They premiered an hour's worth of episodes after the premiere of the latest Pokemon movie. Cartoon Network has also purchased the merchandising rights for the franchise. That is something they have never done with any anime before it, not even Pokemon or Naruto (easily their top anime series at the moment). One could assume they have high expectations for it, but just imagine what a waste of money that will be if the show doesn't catch on.

If you aren't familiar with the series, then here's a brief synopsis. A group of kids create a card game in which they battle each other with gigantic monsters (sound familiar?), but unbeknownst to them the game they play relates to a struggle for supremecy in another dimension where those very monsters are sentient beings who are eternally locked in some sort of conflict (that should sound familiar as well). In other words...it's your typical kid-marketed anime that needlessly rips off Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon. But unlike Duel Masters, this one isn't being played for laughs.

I never could get into Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I only enjoyed Duel Masters because it was a parody dub that made fun of the genre. But this generic tripe - Bakugan doesn't seem to have anything going for it. So why would CN bother buying the merchandising rights? I've heard that the merchandise does sell pretty well in Canada, but I thought CN figured out long ago that what works in Canada only works in Canada. But I digress. From what I've seen of this show I do not expect it to do very well on Cartoon Network, but as I already said - I don't like these types of card battle shows.

I have always been one to believe we should "live and let live". After all, at least someone will like Bakugan and I am not going to stop them from watching and enjoying it as they see fit. I'm just going to stay as far away from it as possible. That would be pretty easy, if it was just on Saturday and Sunday mornings (as is planned for now), but as soon as I heard CN picked up this anime I began expecting it to join Toonami at some point. Apparently that hunch was right on.

Advance schedule information has revealed that Bakugan is coming to Toonami about a month from now. I wouldn't even raise a stink over that if it was able to get Toonami back its 8PM hour, but CN has decided that the public needs an extra episode of Bakugan in the 10PM hour. Now...it's personal. If this schedule does not change, then Bakugan will be replacing the new episodes of One Piece currently airing on Toonami (while Naruto continues double premieres and DBZ is also replaced by something else.) I was willing to ignore Bakugan, even if it was taking up space on Toonami, but they are tossing aside my favorite show in order to give it an extra slot on top of its Saturday and Sunday morning slots. That is more than enough reason for me to despise the network and Bakugan.

It is quite obvious that CN has high expectations for Bakugan, but at this moment I hope it bombs, just so they can understand what a costly mistake placing their hope in this show was. If kids are as fickle as they've always been, then I don't think it will long before CN gets the message.

 

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