El Chavo Animado (seasons 3-7)

El Chavo Animado (seasons 3-7)
"Se me chispoteó." you sure did Chavo
Genre: "Comedy" Running Time: 22 minutes Country: Mexico Release Date: October 21, 2006 - June 6, 2014 Network(s): Cartoon Network Canal 5 Created by: Roberto Gómez Fernández Distributed by: Televisa Starring: Jesús Guzmán Sebastián Llapur Mario Castañeda Erica Edwards Moisés Suárez Aldana Erika Mireles Maggie Vera Leonardo García Julieta Rivera Seasons: 7 Episodes: 134 Previous show: El Chavo del Ocho Next show: Historias del Ocho

El Chavo Animado (El Chavo: The Animated Series in English) is a Mexican animated series based on the live action TV series El Chavo del Ocho, created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños for Canal 5 and Cartoon Network's Latin American feed.

After several years of successful reruns of the original series, on October 21, 2006 Televisa launched in Mexico and the rest of Latin America an animated version of the program by Ánima Estudios to capitalize on the original series' popularity.

El Chavo Animado also aired in English via Kabillion's on-demand service in North America.

Malas Cualidades (Bad Qualities)

NOTE: This will be talking about the show as a whole.

1. Characters like Quico, Ñoño, Doña Florinda, and others have their traits flanderized. Especially the show's own butt-monkey Don Ramón.
   • El Chavo, while still likable for the most part, became much more stupid and dumber, to the point of being more annoying than funny.
   • Quico became a much more mean, selfish and rude boy who treats his friends worse than he used to treat in the original series and is almost never punished.
   • Doña Clotilde became much more obsessive for Don Ramón, to the point that she can give Amy Rose's incarnation from Sonic X a run for her money.
   • To cover La Chilindrina's absence from the series, Ñoño was completely rewritten from being a clever and good-hearted boy that is a butt-monkey of jokes about his weight to being a jerk and naughty boy who causes problems for fun. Most of his action in the cartoon are completely out of character and things his live-action counterpart would have never done.
   • Also due to the absence of La Chilindrina, Don Ramón, while likable for the most part, changed from a angry father who struggles to get a job to support his daughter to become a man who lives alone and acts much more lazy with less motivation to want to get a job.
   • Doña Florinda has become a much more aggressive and mean woman than in the original, to the point of never showing her gentle side with Don Ramón as she used to do in a few episodes of the original series.
   • Jaimnito has become a annoying character who often makes unnecessary quotes about his hometown Tangamandapio much more than he used to do in the live-action series, to the point that the characters always ask him to stop talking. This being a terrible attempt of the producers to make a running gag with the character and make his more unique.
   • Godínez, while still likable, has a much more insignificant role in this series than in the original live-action series ever the infamous sketch series aired from 1980 to 1992, including being purposefully avoided in seasons 3-7 as a filler character in a way that it ends if it ends up becoming a forced running gag, for example:
     • In the episode Two Musketeers and El Chavo Godínez leaves Ñoño and Quico at the moment when they will start to fight running out of the village and not returning.
       • In Space Voyage Godínez appears only once in the middle of the line, being in a very distant position from the rest of of the characters and not interacting with them.
2. There are a lot of mediocre or bad episodes, such as:
   • El Chavo y el lobo
   • El repartidor de pizzas
   • El huevo fresco
   • ¡Qué Bonita Navidad! (arguably the worst episode)
   • Teatro en la vecindad
   • Viaje en avión
   • El valor de la amistad
   • Una montaña altisisisísima
   • Vuela, Chavo
   • Por si las moscas
   • Visita al zoológico (Possibly where it started the actual downfall of the show)
   • Un buen recado
   • El libro mágico
   • La fábrica de juguetes
   • La planta del Chavo
   • Un festival de ambiente
   • La serenata
   • Por arte de magia
   • La máquina del tiempo
   • Hipnosis aguda (Being just a "El Chavo hipnotista" copypaste)
   • La grua de Don Ramon
   • Un amigo robot
   • Vámonos de vacaciones
   • Historias de amor (Which ended the show on a sour note)
3. Many of the original running gags in the series, such as the slapstick humor in which the characters punching, slapping and kicking each other have been diminished until completely removed.
   • The reason this happened was probably because aging times and trying to aim at a younger audience ended up reducing or removing physical violence from the original 70s show, however there are times where you can see people hitting each other or times where Don Ramón gets hurt, which is hypocrisy.
4. With the reduction of slapstick comedy the series started to choose to insert more and more into a generic nonsense cartoon comedy with an exaggerated use of cartoon violence that does not match the humor style of Chespirito's creations. To cut a long story short, they put fantastic and illogical humor for the real life that as already said, does not match for a remake of a live action series. Examples are a rabbit that fulfills magic wishes, the characters traveling to space, Doña Florinda fighting with a boxer and a tiger, the characters traveling through time, a roller coaster that reaches into space and we can keep counting all day.
5. Some of the new episodes have bad scripts that often contain bad morals, for example: the episode of the Season 3 El Chavo y el Lobo teaches that wolves are evil creatures that devour and kill children, the episode also ends on a cliffhanger without showing the wolf's fate after it got stuck on the clothesline.
6. The character designs of some of the new characters are very unoriginal, for example: the episode of the Season 4 Aventura Submarina features a trio of mermaids whose leader looks like a Ariel rip-off from Disney's The Little Mermaid, the king of these mermaids also looks like a King Triton rip-off.
7. Chavo and Quico's voices on Brazilian Portuguese dub are a bit annoying.
8. The show lasts 22 minutes. But in many episodes, 11 minutes are just filler and the other 11 minutes are the ones that really matter in the episode.
9. Since the third season, it seems more like a preschool show than an animated adaptation from a live action show.
10. The seventh season was the laziest one, having only seven episodes in total and the ending don't provided practically nothing to the show.
11. Although the animation improved a lot since third season, it unfortunately declined again in sixth season as it feels less fluid.
12. They go so far as to include fantasy, which does not fit at all with an animated adaptation of a live-action. In episodes like El valor de la amistad or El libro mágico.
13. Sometimes they recycle sound effects.

Buenas Cualidades (Good Qualities)

1. The first two seasons are actually decent since they are based on episodes of the original series.
2. The animation is an improvement over the first two seasons and got better and smoother in later episodes, although it is still very simple.
3. Sometimes the generic cartoon comedy, although it still doesn't match El Chavo del Ocho's style of humor, manages to be as funny as the slapstick comedy from the original series.
4. There are still a handful of really good/decent episodes, such as:
   • Historias de vecindad
   • Las goteras
   • La vecindad en venta
   • No te vayas, Ñoño
   • ¡Aquí espantan!
   • Todo por un pastel (which started the third season on a high note)
   • El partido de fútbol
   • Quico se manchó (arguably the most decent episode of the seventh season)
5. Aside from a few voices, the Spanish original and Portuguese dubs have still quite good voice acting.
6. The original Spanish version is still faithful to the live-action series if we refer to the acting and voices.
   • The Brazilian Portuguese dub also respects the adaptations of the original series.
7. The Brazilian Portuguese is decent and kinda better than the original Spanish dub.
8. Season 3 is the least bad of the five, as the episodes are still alright, but that is not saying much
9. The soundtrack is ok. Each season also has its own opening, and all of them are actually creative. Also, the opening theme is admittedly catchy.
10. Its sister show El Chapulin Colorado Animado fixed several of the issues in this show, making it a much better show.
11. Señor Barriga, Professor Jirafales, Popis, Paty, Godínez (despite being insignificant), Don Ramón and Chavo himself (despite the latter two having been flanderized) are still likable characters.
    • Señor Barriga and Profesor Jirafales were the only characters who did not changed at all.
    • Although Popis did change, she ironically became much more likable than her live-action counterpart (which was okay, but sometimes annoying). Same goes to Paty, who was given much more screentime and development.
    • Ñoño, Doña Clotilde, Quico and Doña Florinda do have a few instances were they are likable.
    • To be fair, they did well to pick Ñoño to replace La Chilindrina, as he was the character on the show with a smarter personality more like hers, although he wasn't a troublemaker. It's also interesting to see Ñoño as Chavo's best friend, since his live-action counterpart is one of the few kids that treat Chavo nicely, but it probably would have worked better if he had his own personality like in the original series instead of just a replacement for La Chilindrina.

Trivia

• It is the first Chespirito program to be dubbed in English, which is unique since a lot of Chespirito programs were never dubbed in English.
• It has a pilot where it includes Chilindrina and there are rumors that this was the first animated series and that it is now lost media.
• As of June 2022, Chilindrina is now allowed to appear on official products of the franchise, due to the character's copyright is lifted. This means that, in case this show is revived or there is another animated series, La Chilindrina can make an appearance in them.

Episodes with Their Own Pages

• Chavo and the Wolf
• The Witch's Den
• The Grand Prix of the Neighborhood
• Mr. Raymond's Pizza Delivery
• Fresh Egg
• That Nice Christmas!
• Theater in the Neighborhood
• Plane Travel
• Friendship Vale
• A Mountain Very Very Very Very Higher
• Fly, Chavo
• Just in Case
• Let's go to the Circus

Comments

Loading comments...