So... Not many of you know that I'm from the UAE that makes me Emirati (BTW I'm not a foreign expatriate or anything I'm literally Arab) and as someone who draws and animates for fun and sometimes as entertainment for whoever stumbles upon my content (Love ya'll!!!) I wanted to atleast rant about my frustrations with my country, now-- I'm not going to say some stuff about politics or whatnot (If you know, you know) but the very thing I'm going to talk about is how I absolutely DESPISE my country's creativity sector/board/who ever the fuck is incharge of publishing shit.
Now some people might be aware of Emara (This girl)
Now what does she have to do with me hating the creative board? Well allow me to explain...
The show in itself is pretty great! Though the english dub can be a little eh (except for Emara's VA) it has alot of things that relate to many arab folk who grew up watching shows, especially cartoons and anime, the intro even sounds like an arab dub version of an anime- IT SLAPS! Not to mention the designs of Emara and Dhabian themselves, though the former takes the cake for it because she dresses up as an emirati cop (Yes they do dress up like that but without the cape and the sailor moonification). The show in itself could've been used as a representation of my country because it has everything we love and appreciated over the last 50 years... But then we're given THIS
Now you might tell me- "But Froggi, this is for kids." umm no? if you don't know who these are those are dubai expo mascots, there's a clear reason why I despise them. You see these guys were designed and made by Lammtara, the same company that made a show everyone and their grandmother liked a long time ago called "Freej" (It's new season sucks by the way, watched it with the fam and then stopped watching it just at the 4 minute mark). The problem with their design is that they're obviously generic... Look up Emirati boy/girl art and you'll find them EVERYWHERE, the problem is that they're mascots, a mascot should atleast look iconic- the robots atleast have some sort of iconicness but barely the kids because they're that generic. Now I know some people might argue with me that they're trying to represent UAE culture, I understand but at the same time way to make them "Uber-cute" (Making a character "adorable" just so they could be marketable) what's worse is that the very same COMPANY also redesigned a character that was also a staple in our country.
Mind you the guy in the left used to look like this:
And the fact that he now resides on an island and is given a "Girl" is just... No just NO. It's quite obvious they are trying to replicate the smurfs (they're tiny, isolated and have SOME sexual dimorphism). Wanna know what's worse? The girl (Dana) is supposed to be an "Engineer" and yet her design barely shows that she has character, it's obvious that they wanted her to just be "girl" but wanted to give her "depth" by just giving her a role... and by the way she barely ever shows that she does engineering. Now to folks who haven't grown up with Modhesh, the original had a tomboyish (because he was voiced by a woman)voice and nobody cared because Modhesh had vague age, nobody knew if he was a child or an adult... But then you've got the new one and you want to know how he sounds like? A GROWN MAN... it's shown even more clearly that they wanted this to just be "smurfs". Back in the day nobody knew what the hell Modhesh was, he's just a springy creature who has a head that vaguely resembles a sunset/sunrise, and you can tell that he has SOME Mickey Mouse influence in him; mainly the shoes and gloves. But that goes to show you that he's the embodiment of fun... LITERALLY. Nobody's ever told where he came from or whatnot so he's just a benevolent eldritch thing, but then you've got the new Modhesh (again) and as mentioned before, he's just "Smurfs", he lives in an island, looks like he slammed crack cocaine, and now owns a prostitute who "engineers".
Do you see the issue here? The fact that they want them to be "cute" is just far out of left field. The fact that their eyes are just HUMONGUS to the point where there's literally no space for their brains- now I'm not going to go full on biology class in this blog but I will continue to complain... You use these guys to represent our country... And they look like small children, barely any of them look like they have character- and the TV show that you aired and everyone didn't care about or so much as less BAT an eye to (We were waiting for Shabiaat al Cartoon once the expo mascots got their show, which btw it's a pretty funny, Shabiaa that is). Now if there's ever an emirati who's going to see this- what does most of the demographic of this country watches? We all watch tv shows outside of our country, anime and manga is where it's at now. What makes them popular and captivating is the variety they have... Our creative industry LACKS THAT. Now it's okay to represent your country but at the same time what makes it soo bland is that it constantly has to be "Emirati culture this, culture that." and barely anything CREATIVE. As mentioned with Emara the show does handle itself creatively but for some reason some FUCK HEAD upstairs was like "...Eh too kiddy" and yet they looked at the new modhesh and the expo mascots and went "Yeah this will bring us BUCKS." Wanna know what's awful? People outside of my country who are familliar with cartoons know about Emara more than these child-like chucklefucks... Wanna know what's funny about this? The villain in the Expo mascot show looks like Gru and Steve Jobs but olive skinned, I'm not joking- there are no archives of this show so you'll have to take my word for it. THEY CLEARLY WERE NOT THAT CREATIVE... And his evil plan was just "littering" that's it.
Now here's the venting part... As someone who's interested in doing cartoons and comics this begs the question... What happens to folks who want to bring variety in a medium within their own country?... well either we do nothing about it and resort to digital publishing/go to another country and do that (if possible) or manage to change said creativity board (ditto). Now some folks in my country are genuinely creative, they have many ideas and lots and lots of creativity, some even exceed more than I do! So imagine just one day, somebody wants to make a show about something in the UAE within it but it isn't the usual "patriot show", but it's widely beloved worldwide and it just gets turned down/shelved just because it didn't partake in "the message" that nobody even knows, not only is this discouraging but downright not fair. You allow some millionaire junkie to outsource to make these designs, that mind you the people who did this design have no idea what the demographic of this country even LIKES? Hell when this country's own people want to express themselves at a wide range it's just turned down... and for what? You're just stuck here eating slop, mostly the Ipadkids in this country eat up said slop-- and you wonder why people buy imports.
K'ay my rant's over...
