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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Dia de los Muertos Special Part 1: Mucha Lucha: Meet the Muertos and Banditios De Los Muertos (comissioned by WeirdKev 27)

Hello all you happy calvera's it's Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead! For those unaware, Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrating those we've lost by leaving out a tribute for them, hoping their souls will come back to us. It's a holiday with a rich tradition, a wonderful message.. and of course this being america it's been largely ignored as, to put it in the words of one asshole

Thankfully it has gone up in years, with two major feature films i'll undoubtly be covering the next to days of the dead, but Day of the Dead specials are still lacking with the most recent one being the Casagrandes "Croaked!" which I covered a few years back. It's something I hope makes a come back in the wake of Coco as children's television is how a young me learned this holiday existed and how neat it could be. So to kick off this two part retrospective we're looking at an episode that taught me and Kev, who comissioned that, what dia de los muertos is... and it's sequel that was a waste of my time and his money but I was paid to cover it anyway so let's LUCHAAARANNNN under the cut for the first part of my day of the dead celebration.

Mucha Lucha was a 2002 cartoon on Kids WB! a saturday morning block that was the highlight of my week in those days, having Pokemon (for a while anyway), Yu-Gi-Oh! , and the criminally underated Xiaolin Showdown, which is high on my pile of stuff I want to cover at some point in one form or another. So it's no shock i've seen all three seasons and the movie. The fact the show was replayed a LOT on Cartoon Network.

Mucha Lucha takes place in a world where just about everybody is a luchadore, fighting for honor, tradition, family and donuts. Those who aren't either can still wrestle well enough anyway or are part of a heelish wwf/wcw style wrestling faction. It follows Richochet (The underated as heck Carlos Alazraquai) as he lives his modern life at the FORMOST

WORLD RENNOWN

INTERNATIONAL

SCHOOL

LUCHA!

With his best friend: The borderline heel Flea, played by the equally legendary Candi Milo, and the straight edge Buena Girl, played by future jasper Kimberly Brooks who i'm shocked was part of my childhood but is more than welcome. The show is loose continuityed comedy, being focused more on gags and nonsense than a deep continuity but working well with it. To get around WB's gunshyness about violence, most of the wrestling is done with cool, over the top finishing moves with Buena Girl turning into a bulldozer, Ricochet turning into a pulverizing pinball, and the flea.. well whatever his finisher is we don't know and i'm just peachy with that as i'm scarred for life enough as is.

The show's known for not only being one of the few Latino focused shows of the time, even more notable given neither of the creators are Latino yet both clearly put a lot of research into this and did hire actual mexicans like Gorge Gutierz of El Tigre and Book of Life Fame as part of the crew. So the result is fantastic and still held up suprisingly well.. well at least one ep did but we'll get to that. For now let's LUCHARANNNNNNN! with our first episode

This is the main one I remembered. In fact I didn't recall it's sequel till I looked up one of the characters Wiki entry to see who played them.

This episode taught me about day of the dead and does a good job explaning it from the offset.. after the Flea, acting and smelling more like a rat, frames it as some kind of zombie apocalypse. The School's headmistress explains how it works instead, and this being a cartoon the dead REALLY do come back and visit once a year. Their also treated well, with our main undead being a bit of the jerk, but ultimately just a kid.

Since Ricochet's dog Masked Dog ate his homework...

Not hyperbole this time, but i'm glad as any chane to see this masked good boy is alright with me, Richochet is sattled with showing around the School's vistor, Calvera Muerto. Given the kind of stuff our heroes get into around here i'm suprised it's just one.

At any rate our living dead boy is Calvera Muerto, also played by Kimberly Brooks though you coudln't tell, her range is just that impressive, a play on the spanish words for skeleton and dead, and on him being a calevera. Calevera's are often used in concert with day of the dead and are mexican style skeletons, usually with some cool markings on them.

Cal is nice enough, but like any 8 year old just wants to sit around and play video games. Having two nephews and having been that 8 year old, I can releate. So while Ricochet is bored, it's no problem.. till Calevera decides he dosen't want to leave despite the day being over and the guy having already shouted "choke on them choke on them!" So our heroes try to figure out how to get rid of this squatter since Ric's parents aren't home this episode. Traditional masks don't work since Cal's a postmodren calavera and has seen all three screams. Including the greatest horror they have to offer

youtube

This is nothing to Cal but all the payback to So Ric is forced to do what all wrestlers do when they have something important on the line: bet it on a match, which ends up being a looser leaves town match: Cal looses he goes home and stops eating Ric's doritos. He wins and Ric goes in his place. This is somehow not the highest stakes wrestling match i've ever seen. There's no child's custody papers on a poll or someone's mother on a forklift. it's just life and death.

Ric thinks he has it in the bag but with his intro having established Cal is a big fan of his.. that also means he has a counter set up.. specitcially turning a pinata in his head into a counter pulverizing pinball. So our heroes have to get creative. They remember chekov's lecture I forgot to mention: that once a spirit is full they have to go. So Buena Girl shoves a sweet bread in the console...

And it does, with Ric finishing him off with a refreshing glass of lemonade. Cal leaves swearing he'll be back, our heros win and the episode closes out Meet The Muertos is a decent ride. It dosen't have a ton of jokes but the central one of a Calevera just deciding to spend it's day playing video games, which fits for what's an 8-10 year old child, is charming , it gets dia de los muertos as right as I can tell as a white idiot, and the final match is clever and engaging and stuck in my brain for quite some time. There's a reason this episode stuck. It's a decent episode in a fairly decent show... thanks for... oh right... .we have something else to cover don't we.

Now I want to go on record here. Both episodes were my idea as Kev wanted to save some money and just do episodes and remembered the first one from as a kid. This one we'd both forgot.. till it was brought up again. There's a good reason to that. While i've seen MUCH worse in my time as reviewer, not even last month I had to deal with..t his

That was a 2018 comic talking about periods. So to quote my faviorie pengy..

I did this to myself and I have no one to blame but myself. I got PAID for doing this for myself but at what cost? AT WHAT COST...metaphorically we'll never know but in actuality.. 2.50.

This one is kind of dumb.. and not in the fun way the series can be like say, having disco stu be one of the teachers in all but name. No I mean this is about a horde of candy bandits who stalk the flea for no reason other than he won't give them his candy even though there are other towns to raid. Oh and in case you feel bad for the Flea he took the candy from children.

So Ric and Buena get suddenly thrust into the underworld because suddenly the veil is thin between worlds on Dia De Los Muertos which wasn't mentioned as a thing last time.

So our heroes run into Calevera again , though this time it's all cool and he's willing to help them for no reaosn. And he dosen't betray them or anything he's just helping them

He's just a diffrent character now. Speaking of diffrent let's talk about the elephant in the room: This episode's from season 3... and during season 3 they switched from Carlos to Jason. As a kid I took it maturely. He's an artists rendering

Yeah look I love Jason. He's great at playing Max, does swell in other rolls, I like him a lot. But he was an AWFUL choice for this. I don't begrudge the creators for needing to replace Carlos: he apparently got too busy with Reno 911 and had to bow out. It happens. Voice actor changes are common. But Jason was an awful choice, making no attempt to sound like Carlos, and sounding all too lifeless in the roll. He tries.. but he just dosen't have the energy that made Carlos work as Ricochet. The fact they replaced a latino person with a white guy, one of the few actually latino voice actors in the show, does not help. I can't blame Jason for taking the check , he was just an utterly awful fit for the roll, being far too plain and straigh tlaced to fit the roll.

So the bandits end up liking Flea so he joins them. So now we know who all the bad guys are. Our heroes wnat the Flea back for reasons only known to the writers, and succesfully kidnap him, having a timer to get back before their trapped here forever. THey then fight the banditos of course, win, and the flea gets a stomach ache but learns nothing else. This episode is bad and it should feel bad. Even with that thing I sure did have to cover because of my own stupid ass finding it, I highly recommend this show. It was the first to use flash primarily , and while a bhit rough around the edges it has great character design, is fun to watch and worth checking out. Hopefully it'll stream on some service eventually though for now you can get it through amazon and apple. So see you in a bit for the next part and happy dia de los muertos.

#day of the dead #dia de los muertos #mucha lucha #ricochet #the flea #buena girl #calavera #Youtube

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