Bunny Maloney

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Bunny Maloney is a French 2009 CGI animated show produced by MoonScoop Group, who was also known for creating cartoons such as Code Lyoko and Hero 108 and in co-production with France 2 and Telegael. The show is based on the Flash-animated pilot Pinpin le Lapin: Attack of the Giant Red Octopus (French: Pinpin le Lapin: L'attaque de rouge geant). The series chronicles the adventures of a pink anthropomorphic rabbit named Bunny Maloney and his friends. The series was canceled after one season, due to low ratings and highly negative criticism over the show's inappropriate themes.

Bunny Maloney

You thought Mr. Meaty, Breadwinners, Super Duper Sumos, and Little Princess School were the most inappropriate kids’ shows ever? Well, this one overtakes it.

Genre:	Comedy Action
Running Time:	12 minutes
Country:	France
Release Date:	March 29, 2009 – February 28, 2010
Network(s):	France 2, Canal+ Family (France) Kabillion (United States) Kix/Pop Max (United Kingdom)
Created by:	Nicolaï "Méko" Chauvet Utku Kaplan
Distributed by:	Mediatoon Distribution Studio Tanuki MoonScoop (formerly)
Starring:	French: Martial le Minoux Élisabeth Ventura Marc Duquesnoy Corinne Martin Laurent Pasquier Vincent Violette English: Matt Wilkinson Jules de Jongh Tom Clarke-Hill Walter Lewis Keith Wickham Phillipa Alexander Dan Russell
Seasons:	1
Episodes:	52

Plot

Bunny (the titular character) is an anthropomorphic pink rabbit who's constantly blundering and over-confident. He lives in an apartment with his adorable yet very rude pink rabbit girlfriend, Candy Bunny, and his blue dog best friend Jean-François. Sometimes, they are accompanied by a badger called Stan Ookie. They live in Bunnyville, a town that is the target of their sworn enemy, the infamous Professor Débilouman, along with his companion, Modchi. The place is sometimes visited by a red badger/tanuki named Stan Ookie and a cute white cow named Charlotte.

They have one enemy by the name of Professor Débilouman, who always gets in their way because he's evil. He also has this light purple unknown creature called Modchi, who is smarter than him as he likes to spit out sarcastic remarks and sometimes annoy his boss. They fight him using a huge red mecha called the Bunnyganger, though there are other ways that Débilouman's submarine will sink at the end of each episode.

The series also includes elements akin to Japanese culture - it has elements reminiscent of manga and anime in its design, followed by some manga iconography and instances of text being written with the Japanese language. Some episodes also reference popular culture, like the franchise James Bond.

"Holy Crap-olah!" Qualities

Misogyny/Misandry: The show has some slight, if not extreme, clichés of this type:
- A majority of the characters holding idiot balls only for the sake of comedy, which can be annoying once in a while.
- A couple of the two main bunnies try to execute the "nice girl, rude guy" trope when Candy has notable flaws that can make her as unsympathetic as Bunny.
- In general, the show tries to make Candy look superior to Bunny by treating her as the "straight woman". Throughout every episode, especially those where she's one of the focused characters, she's bossy, temperamental, and abusive at worst.
- Also applying to the said couple: "Abuse is funny when it's woman on man!", which blatantly happens in a majority of episodes. It can get incredibly cringy and even uncomfortable to watch, especially when Candy still can get ticked off at Bunny at the end of "Bunnies are from Mars" which sort of involved them getting mad at each other.
  - In "Text Message Madness", Candy nearly almost kills Bunny with rockets for a fake message talking of a breakup.
  - There are also some gags like in "Think Extinct", where she threatens Bunny with a shotgun at one point. What’s worse than it happened again but with Modchi doing it to Debuiloman.
  - The show tries to excuse this toxic relationship by essentially saying "even if it's super problematic, they still love each other anyway, so, it's okay!"
While it's passable, the CGI animation with cel-shading can be dated by the mid-2000s.
The characters, despite cute-looking, are very simple-looking. Bunny and Candy were supposed to be bunnies, but they look more like pink vinyl figures with a few bunny trails.
Limited facial expressions on most characters, which can range from awkward to severely cringeworthy at times as well, like in the episode Carrots Are a Girl’s Best Friend, Bunny makes some weird faces after he fell over when he saw Candy and Charlotte. It gets worse especially when they have hearts in their eyes.
The characters, which can range from being ridiculous or not being established enough:
- Bunny, who can be unintentionally unsympathetic and is even considered a jerk according to the plot.
- Candy can be annoying and unlikable due to her mean-spirited personality.
- Maybe even sometimes Jean-Francois or Louis if they count for arguably being sort of useless throughout the show.
Then there are some incidental characters such as:
- Charlotte, Candy's best cow friend, is portrayed as dull and lustful, but mainly wants Bunny to be her boyfriend. How does she want him even though he already has a girlfriend?
  - Also, she occasionally tends to sexually harass Bunny, even in public or when Bunny’s girlfriend Candy is around.
  - Speaking of which, Charlotte's design, while cute like the rest of the characters, can look very confusing because we can't tell if she's supposed to be a cow or goat.
  - Although it's known that Charlott is a cow, the fact that she doesn't have spots or udders on her design can make her look more like a goat.
- Ben Tonari, Jean-Francois's slightly strange best friend (who doesn't even have a notable or good personality in general), who only can speak some weird language, sort of like gibberish.
- Noacak is a giddy-up dictator who leads an army/group of soldiers but doesn't help Bunny and the ProtecTeam per episode, making him more careless.
  - It's also rather baffling that Bunny decides to join his army.
- Marc and Ting, who are the "product advertising" guys, and the only "product advertising" guys ever in the show, which sounds pretty generic.
  - Not to mention, Ting has an unfortunate design looking like Asian caricatures. Their names are also play-on-words of "marketing".
- Who could even forget the antagonist, Debilouman himsel? He is considered a horrible professor and a pathetic villain as he frequently thinks he can get his plans executed perfectly despite his lack of common sense but ends up falling in some sort of way. Even his partner Modchi can confirm that he is better than him, even though he’s not a great character himself; his sarcasm can be annoying at times.
Speaking of characters, some of them aren't expanded beyond on at least a few traits. Stan Ookie especially, because while he is one of the tolerable characters, he's just a recurring character who can't show the most of his personality.
There’s even an episode called “In Memory of Bunny” where Bunny literally fakes his own death. Enough said.
- What’s even worse is that it happens again in “Hypochondriac”.
It has a handful of bad/mediocre/average episodes, such as "Cold Turkey", “The Dispense-Sense 9000”, and "In Memory of Bunny".
Some of the humor is just plain unfunny, bland, and confusing, centering on adult jokes at all. We also have occasional gross-out humor.
- Speaking of adult jokes, most of them are unfittingly inappropriate for a kids’ show. It can be so risqué, the entire show no longer becomes a kids’ show, despite being one.
  - For an infamous example, there was a pole dancing scene at the end of "The Dispense-Sense 9000".
  - In that same episode, Charlotte sexually harasses and flirts with Bunny, saying that she hopes that he “doesn’t come to her room in the middle of the night by accident”, making Candy extremely furious. She then admits that she was “joking”.
  - There are also instances of sexual images, especially coming from Charlotte. It appears in “Text Message Madness” and “Stan’s Perfect Match”.
  - The show also uses slight profanity, like the words “sexy” and “crap”. The latter word can even be heard in Bunny’s catchphrase “Holy crap-olah!”.
    - The former word was even used in the very beginning of “Polterabbitgest”.
  - In “The D-Fixitup”, Bunny said a certain line after Stan was instructing him for plumbing, which was “What the H, E, double-L are you talking about?”. We all should know what that means...
  - In “Community Service”, the call number for a phone-in of which consequences Bunny gets for going over the speed limit was literally 666.
  - In “Hypochondriac”, we get a disturbing shot at Bunny being dead fakely with gore and blood everywhere. We’re not joking.
  - The most infamous example of this has to be “Think Extinct”, which mostly showed Candy teaching Bunny and Jean-François about sex education and birth. It also made Jean-François so terrified that he hides in the bathtub, complete with shock and horror. Not helping is that the episode also briefly showed Candy threatening to shoot Bunny.
- There's also a running gag where Candy breaks the fourth wall; yet she gives off unfortunate notes such as how men are the reason women turn into nags in "Carrots Are a Girl’s Best Friend", comparing addicts to children and treating them with "tough love" as she had a whip in her hand in "Cold Turkey", and also technically said pet abuse is okay in "Free Potchi".
- Modchi also broke the fourth wall, several times. It’s in the episode “OnYooo”.
They reuse a lot of scenes in many episodes. For example, the infamous pole-dancing scene from "The Dispense-Sense 9000" was reused twice in "Raucous Caucus" and "Heavenly Scent" respectively.
The theme song, which is sung by the same woman in the English version, sounds stupidly indecipherable. The singer also sounds like a poor man's Cooking Mama.
- Speaking of which, like most shows, it also lazily uses episode footage as well.
- The theme song’s tune doesn’t even match the actual show itself; it sounds Hawaiian and too heartwarming compared to the show’s mean-spirited and action-packed tone.
- Misleading lyrics: The opening theme song made us think Bunny Maloney is the "lovely bunny" and "charming rabbit" when he’s an unlikable jerk in the actual episodes according to the plot itself.
Jean-Francois, who can only speak his name (similar to Pokémon talk), can also be pretty annoying and useless sometimes, though he’s still likable compared to the rest.
The risqué humor didn't help because this show was based on a more mature pilot simply titled "The Attack of the Giant Red Octopus".

Lovely and Charming Qualities

The writing is decent.
- It can be funny sometimes.
The soundtrack is seemingly good.
The theme song is catchy, despite the lyrics.
The character designs are quite cute and decent, even if they're very simple-looking.
The lighting at times can also look cool.
The CGI animation with cel-shading is mostly good. The background designs are also arguably a little complex, but decent.
Some awesome action scenes.
The voice acting is decent in both English and French. Props to the fact that MoonScoop has its English dub being cast with British people.
At least it isn't as bad as the said-original pilot.
Stan Ookie and Jean-Francois are likable characters.

Reception

It has a score of 7.4/10 on IMDb.

Gallery

And to think this is from a kids' show...
How did they let this slide?

Trivia

After five years of development hell starting from October 2004 when Bunny Maloney was originally supposed to premiere on television, the series finally premiered on March 29, 2009 on France 2 and Canal+ Family in France. The series also premiered on Kix (now Pop Max) in July 2009 in the United Kingdom.

Videos

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