Alfred J. Kwak

Excellent childrens animation, animated in Japan, and associated with Dennis Livson who brought us The Moomins. Follow Alfred from hatching and the early death of his parents, through political and environmental adventures. In due course Alfred falls in love with a wonderful black duck called Winnie.

Lots of allusions to the real world of the time and no holds barred presentation of apartheid and environmental damage. Intelligent, well drawn and animated, a delight (but be warned- some episodes have rather sad / down beat endings).

This shows has amazing storytelling, blending world history, human rights and justice, and learning to look beyond stereotypes, all told from the perspective of an adopted duckling who comes of age in a fictive Netherlands. It starts out focussing on the difficulties of growing up and develops towards major historical events, such as the second world war or the forging of universal human rights by the UN. It is incredibly well written and (for its time) animated. I truly hope they revisit this show so everyone on the globe can enjoy Alfred.

I should preface this with the fact that this show is primarily meant for children; the review will therefor be written from the perspective of what a child aged 3-5 can get out of this unfortunately quite obscure masterpiece.

Anyway, on to the proper review.

In the modern era of bright, non-educational and frankly brainrot-inducing children's media this decades-old show stands as a standard to which all children's entertainment should be held. While it is far from perfect, it teaches solid morals to young children, doing so in a playful manner without needlessly talking down to its audience.

This series also shows a surprising amount of dark theming without being traumatizing to its young audience (unlike many of its contemporaries). It handles its themes well and doesn't fall into the trap of simple moral dynamics (i.e. A demarcated "good" and "bad" side) while still keeping it comprehensible for the average child.

All in all the stories that are told all carry a message which is still (mostly) contemporary thirty years after its release. While sometimes it can feel preachy, the show truly cares about teaching even the youngest children a lesson in kindness, compassion and justice.

If you are a kid you probably wont mind the frankly quite unprofessional dubs (especially in the earlier episodes), which make watching this as an adult a bit of a challenge. What however does not disappoint is the animation, which, while not being stellar for its time, shows merit in a distinct fusion between western and Japanese animation style (it was animated by a Japanese studio).

In conclusion, this show is critically underappreciated as a children's show. On the internet it's known as "that anime related to Moomin", but there is little to no attention to the original target audience of the show. I hope this review may change that.

Alfred J. Kwak was created in the late 1980's by the Dutch writer, performer, musician, composer Herman van Veen. He made up the character and the stories for comic books for Unicef. They'd ordered him to create a serie of comic books to point the reading children at the bad things in the world and in the past, but without boring them. The comics became such a hit in the Netherlands, that Unicef and a Japanese producer decided to make a animation series out of it. The stories are about the same as in the (now rare to find) comics, but they are animated in Japan. But Herman van Veen did had a big influence in the direction of the episodes and about the way some of his characters should be drawn. He also wrote the music, which became very popular music for children here in The Netherlands, and was also translated to lots of other languages. If you haven't seen it yourself, please let your children watch it: it deals with racism, poverty, etc. without boring your children, or making it all to obvious.