February 10th, 2008: Wulin Warriors
Pili – it's a Taiwanese television phenomenon that's been around since the mid-80s, and it uses a combination of wire-manipulated puppets and special effects instead of traditional animation techniques. But make no mistake, Pili is not your grandma's Punch 'n Judy slapstick show; it's a wire-fu epic about Chinese warriors of myth and legend dispensing punishment on the baddies. By all accounts it has a well-written storyline with deep characterizations, but at the same time it's not something you'd expect to see on Cartoon Network. Yet Pili made it to American shores and stuck around for two brief episodes, in a blink-and-whoops-you've-missed-it stint on Toonami. What? Puppets on Toonami? Our Toonami? I swear it's true:
The magic of Williams Street almost makes this cool.
You might not have even seen it, but Pili rode from the translation gates of Animation Collective under the guise of "Wulin Warriors" in February of '06, only to disappear after exactly two episodes amidst viewer outrage. So much for Taiwanese doll epics scoring big with American audiences. Go figure. And it wasn't just us animation fans decrying the appearance of live-action - or something like it - on our beloved block. The fans of the original Pili (all five of them?) were justifiably incensed at the hack-job of a conversion.
Remember, Pili has been running since 1985 in Taiwan. It's a verifiable epic, and as I said earlier (assuming you're able to get past the whole doll thing), it's fairly chock-full of complex character development and evolving relationships. In short, it's a sprawling soap opera entrenched in Chinese mythology, and as a result its gained itself some pretty faithful fans over its almost 25-year run. Wulin Warriors, on the other hand, is just thirteen episodes extracted from the fourth story arc of Pili - a miniscule pecentage of the total content - cobbled together into a brand new, vaguely coherent storyline. I understand the logic: was there really any hope of bringing the entire thing to the US? Instead, Cartoon Network chose the Harmony Gold route, reducing Pili's grand landscape into a little scrap pile of fight scenes and audiobytes in the process.
That's what the Pili fans say, anyway.
The other nail in Wulin Warrior's coffin is the fact that is had absolutely no right to be on Toonami. At all. While 'Cartoon Network' has long been a subjective term (look at Adult Swim Comedy), Toonami has always, always been about cartoons. It was the Better Cartoon Show, not the Better Stop Motion Show, or the Better Marionette Show. So it was with justification that the Toonami legions rose up in indignation at the first hint of Wulin's arrival. February 4th, 2006 would be a day bathed in blood if CN didn't wake up to the will of the viewership. I remember the first time I saw that :15 promo. I was incensed, and jumped off the couch to get on the computer and see if anyone agreed with me. Turns out everybody did.
Can you really blame us? I mean come on.
Thankfully, Cartoon Network responded to the upheaval and dropped the show like a putrid racoon after its second episode. The minseries never reappeared on the channel, on any of its special programming blocks. It seemed that the Wulin Warriors that the Revolutionaries had spurned was destined to rot in ignominy. Then last year, in March of 2007, it resurfaced on AOL Kids. The thirteen dubbed episodes, in all their glory, can be streamed here for free.
Looking upon the miniseries with fresh eyes, the show isn't as bad as it seemed at the time. I can say with certainty that I've never seen better puppet swordfights, and while the dolls' lack of expression still plants them firmly in the Uncanny Vally, their movements (complimented by snazzy camerawork and special effects) are impressive in their intricacy. That doesn't excuse CN's absolutely boneheaded decision to bring it to Toonami. I'd love to find out just what they were thinking when they licensed a puppet show for a hardcore animation block, but my guess is that CN's opinion is that this egregious little moment in the channel's history is better left forgotten.
Answers might come eventually. Until then...gah, what the heck. EVERYBODY! "WOO, LIN, WOO, LIN, WOO, LIN, WAR-RI-ORS!"
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