Secret World of Santa Claus

On Teletoon (where i live of course) and since this is Christmas Day here, i would like to mention that there was just a Santa Claus marathon just right now on teletoon from 6:00 am to 12:00 pm. Hopefully for those who have Teletoon and it's compainion Teletoon RETRO would know that this cartoon series is seen and shown generally every December every year.

Here's a short summary (or long and medium review) of the series.

Okay, the show is proudced by Marathon Productions of France (i belive it's the same studio that later did Japanese Manga - Imitation garbage like Totally Spies and Team Galaxy, often doing the same show over and over and over, i belive JUST for me that the term and word Anime in general is actually french for animation , not japanese, a better term to refer to THAT JUST for me is Manga, but i'm not here to talk about Japan or anything like that, let's all try to stay on topic please and this show is french actually) and CineGroupe of Canada ( this show, despite what the credits say, is by no means an actual Canada-France co-production, but rather a dubbed imported from France, which is a part of Europe by the way, just like the Jungle Book series they (CineGroupe) handled), the permise of the show is usual, Santa Claus is in his usual daily routine and is always checking (diffent enough, but still in many ways shares some qualites with God JUST as the christmas saying goes) to see if the Boys and Girls were either good or bad, and as usual has his elves (which can change into anything and like as with Santa Claus, share the exact same thing with that of the Angels, which are spiritual beings and as in this show they are spirtual creatures and act exactly as Angels in general) and reindeer help him along with the Polar Bear in this series who is called Balboa.

Anywho, in this series also, there is Gruzzlebeard, whom is the main villan of this series and his appearence seems to be a cross of Wario and Yosemite Sam (the voice and outfit) and also hences his name with the beard, whose sidekick is a troll named Dudley who pretty much acts as a Slave Koopa Troopa to that of Bowser from the Mario series, anyway, their plans roughly concern in ruining the hopes of children by foiling Santa Claus into their traps.
Some episodes concern Santa's Regular routine of children's actions, while some roughly concern just Santa at odds with Gruzzlebeard.

With that said, there are strong ties JUST in my opinion to the Mario series, Mario is red, right and Santa is red as well too, Wario is Yellow and Black (not counting his other appearnces where the black is replaced with Purple) right, So is Gruzzlebeard, and so Gruzzlebeard might just be an Anti-Santa Claus in the same vein that Wario is an Anti-Mario and that Dudley might just represent a Koopa Troopa, and that Gruzzlebeard just might also have ties with Bowser, anyway, back on topic.

Now that i've talked about the whole permise, it's now time to talk about the animation with other things, first of all, this show has two seasons of 13 episodes each, bringing to an overall 26 episodes, and seeing the credits to all epsiodes, all say they were from 1997, now i belive the truth is that is when ONLY the english dubbing took place, i think this show is actually from the early to mid 1990s (i spectulate this is from 1993-1995) , now then, the first season was obiviosly animated and shot on cells (both paper and film) while the second season was digital ink and painted and shot directly on video, besides those things, the diffrences in the actual animation itself were extremely and instantly noticeable as well, due to diffrences in the animation studio.

The animation studio for season one was Studio Han Shin which is obiviosly and defiently from Korea, speaking of which this must've been the original korean name for i think (because i actually don't really know this time for sure), Dong Yang Animation (not much is really known of these other than their credits included the first season of Captain N, several episodes of Batman: TAS and The Mask of the Phantash, which had animation duties split up with Spectrum Animation, whose other credits include Bunch of Munsch, Madeline and the second seasons of Captain N and Bill and Ted), if it's really them, than it would be safe to say that they defiently did the animation, but again, alas this could also be a specific name for Sei Young doing their swan song before biting the dust, who knows, because i sure really don't as of now.

Anyway, moving on, the animation studio for the second season was Morning Sun Animation of Tapei, Tawian (i may be entirely false about it being in Tawain, seeing as of now they are now located in Los Angles, USA, BUT, since not much is actually really known about these guys as well, i'm pretty sure they did originally, they also had a sub studio called Shanghai Morning Sun that did Caillou and Dinobabies), who had been assisting Walt Disney Japan on the backgrounds, layouts and quite possibly some animation on some Disney Japan shows prior, also had credits ranging from Timon and Pumbaa and D'Myna Leagues.

the first season animation and execution was a little too dark, muddy (cell execution has not really stood the test of time, although digital excution wasn't a standard yet, let alone existed yet, referring to the golden age 1920s-1940s of animation) and a little too slow, defiently nothing really that special, but they were often expert on the shading as well, which gives it a few more points.

and speaking of the Second Season animation, the digital excution to me all looks like it was done on MS Paint specficially on Windows 98, seemingly and the animation was a little bit faster than the previous season, but also much more sloppier and really about a few points worse, it's kinda like how some episodes of AoSTH both looked and moved (lots of abused smears inbetween the poses and stuff and rather rushy and sloppy at times, maybe this was once part of TMS' work on that show and most of their work on Sonic was often Digitally executed and shot directly on video, maybe both USAnimation and Shanghai Morning Sun non credited was involved in AOSTH as well, but i will save that much later for a later post, anyways back on topic.)

Wow, i think i've said quite enough now, since this is after all, Christmas Day, lets hear your thoughts and say, espcially on this series.