Baby Felix

As I stand in the shadows in the valley of niche, I shall fear no mediocrity.

Felix The Cat is weirdly popular in Japan, mostly due to some earlier silent films and the Joe Oriolo cartoon being broadcast there at some point, so this isn't the weirdest thing in the world. Basically after the 60s cartoon, Joe Oriolo's son Don took over the Felix using the characters / liberties that Joe made, produced a horrendous movie in '87 with Hungarian animators and no budget, then made another short-lived cartoon in the 90s, leading up to this in the year of our lord Y2K. Felix had a ... bit of a surge in popularity in the 2000s especially so a Japan-centred anime makes sense. From there, we got one more (also terrible) Christmas movie and that's all the cat wrote. Dreamworks bought the Felix IP recently, expressly for merchandising in... Japan! They've since removed him from their website and clearly aren't using the IP much. The original silent shorts are now in public domain, so maybe you can make a better Felix yourself!

As far as I can tell, the Japanese version consists of 4 minute episodes as per the database. But in the US they merged several episodes into one 22 minute episode, inbetween musical numbers with recycled animation. Don Oriolo voices adult Felix in the English dub which is about as interesting as that gets, he's terrible but you've gotta love the guy. It's mainly Felix and his teletubby friends, but there's also cameos from poindexter and co every once in a while. Content wise, it's pretty standard, some stories seem to continue on but most are just one-offs.

Some of the animation was done by Radix which is what initially brought it to my attention, it's a little wild that the same studio that animated Haibane Renmei and Nazca also found time for this incredibly niche childrens cartoon (They also did Wonder Bebil-kun which is alot better but hard to find). SMEC in China also animated some of the episodes, seems to be a 50/50 split. SMEC went onto animate Felix Saves Christmas (which is where Felix's media trail dies), which is a shame; alot of their episodes are noticeably off-model and wonky compared to Radix's.

Overall there's not a whole lot to say, it's basically just Felix the cat for a younger audience, the production is what really interested me. I can't say anyone who isn't a massive fan of Felix the Cat and weird millennium era animation production will get much out of this one.