Nippon Tuck

Am not giving low ratings and negative reviews to the Blue Racer cartoons with pleasure. Being actually somebody who likes a good deal of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises' other work (though it is overall a wildly inconsistent output), hates being too critical and who loves animation. On the most part though, this particular series of cartoons doesn't do it for me. The good things that all the cartoons have are similar but pretty much all of them have the same flaws.

While there are definitely worse cartoons in the Blue Racer theatrical series, 'The Nippon Tuck' to me is not a particularly good, and also not particularly memorable, cartoon and has a lot wrong with it. Also a strong example of why the series never really clicked with me, in terms of the common good things and the common bad things that outweighed the good. 'The Nippon Tuck' has a few good things, but on the whole it's a lacklustre and forgettable outing in an average at best series.

The good things will be started off with. The best aspect is the music score, which the series had in common in fact. Regular composer for the company Doug Goodwin provides a lot of much needed colour and vim to his score that sadly is not present in nearly everything else. Close behind is the fun opening credits sequence.

Larry D. Mann brings a little more of the craftiness that he had in 'Snake in the Gracias' that was missing in 'Hiss and Hers' here. The service station and career lines were amusing and the air action looks quite good in the character animation.

On the other hand, a lot doesn't work. Most of the animation is scrappy in drawing and flatly coloured, the studio did do their cartoons in a purpsefully abstract visual style which was done beautifully in the 60s but here it is overly-simple to the point of cheapness in particularly the backgrounds (which look unfinished). Blue Racer was better as a supporting character in 'Snake in the Gracias', his personality in his own series can rather one-note and is not that distinct. Worse is the distasteful stereotype that is the beetle (think Mickey Rooney in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' in beetle form and that's pretty much the character), and he is also incredibly annoying. The voice acting for the character is very broad and stereotypical, Tom Holland's attempts at broken English is rather embarrassing.

Writing generates very little spark and only has two amusing lines and too many dumb ones with the beetle. The gags are not original and are nothing special or particularly funny, the tobasco gag is a very old gag that has worked well in a lot of cartoons but it needs a lot more visual imagination to work than what was shown here. The gag is also too short and throwaway and maybe if the action in the air was fifteen seconds less or so or if the cartoon was half a minute longer that may have helped. No surprises going on in the pretty threadbare story, it's pretty much 'Hiss and Hers' times three with slight variation.

Lacklustre on the whole. 4/10.