44 Cats

After seeing an ad of the show a few days ago, I looked for its Wikipedia page to learn more about it. Upon briefly reading about it on Wikipedia, I found out that 44 Cats is a hit show in Italy that somehow made its way to other countries, including the U.S.

When I watched a half-minute clip of the Italian version, I find it decent. The graphics are very colorful, and the voices perfectly fit the characters.

But upon seeing some clips of the English version which will air really soon, I can't say that I feel the same way about that one. The colorful graphics are retained, but the voices of Lampo and Meatball (and some other male characters) are too feminine. I don't know why but the English dub is a complete travesty of a great Italian series.

With this, I'm sticking with the Italian version.

I remember reading articles on NickALive! about the show (since that site also talks about international Nickelodeon news), but I doubted that it would come to Nickelodeon USA. Surprise, surprise, it did! Nickelodeon heavily relies on SpongeBob and The Loud House at the moment for their animated lineup. Rise of the TMNT is excellent, Welcome to the Wayne was good while it lasted (it was shafted to Nicktoons and cancelled), but RBUK and Alvin and the Chipmunks are very weak. So how does this show hold up?

Well, it's incredibly dull. The stories aren't very interesting. There was an episode that seemed cool that involved space travel, but it was executed poorly. I think the main problem is that the episodes have wonky pacing, and that makes them boring to watch.

The characters are also stereotypical. The generic leader, the generic girl, the generic young one, and the generic fat comic relief (because "fat people are funny haha"). The side characters aren't much better. In fact, everyone's limited to one trait.

The voice acting is also very bad. I get that it's dubbed, but the voices still don't sit right with me. So yes, this show is very bland and forgettable. You're better off watching Lego City Adventures.

My daughter and I have been watching this show on Netflix. It's beautifully animated and the different scenarios the cats get into are funny. All of the characters are cute and have their own personalities. They also have funny names like Milady and Meatball. I highly recommend this series for young kids like toddlers. My two year old absolutely loves this series and honestly I like it too.

44 Cats is originally an Italian children's show which was picked up by Viacom and dubbed into English and shown on Nickelodeon in the US. Now it's made it's way back across the Atlantic over here to the UK. This has been shown on the channel POP for about the past two weeks. I like cats and children's shows so I watched it. And it was good. The animation was bright and colourful and the quality of the CGI was pretty standard for an animated children's show. The storylines, while not the greatest, were entertaining, if a little weird at times. But then again, most children's shows have strange plots. But if you're a small child, you'll find it entertaining. Now we move on to the main part of any show, the acting! Now, I have only seen the English dub so I can only comment on the English voices. When looking at the cast for this I was most surprised to see that most of the voice actors were also in the Pokemon Anime (Pokemon fan here) I was more surprised to see that the reviews on here at the time of writing this thought that the voice acting was bad as the actors are generally good in Pokemon. I thought the voice acting was good, but the problem was that the voices didn't fit the characters as one reviewer said. They sounded exactly like their characters in Pokemon. For example, Lampo, voiced by Sarah Natochenny, who also voices Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, and has done since 2006. She is just doing her 'Ash' voice for Lampo. Another example are the characters Neko and Zoe are voiced by Alyson Leigh Rosenfield, who voices Sophocles (From Pokemon: Sun and Moon series) and Bonnie (From Pokemon: XY series) respectively. Neko sounds like Sophocles and Zoe sounds like Bonnie. Yes, it may seem I'm nitpicking here, as I'm sure a large amount of the target audience for this haven't watched Pokemon. But honestly it kind of distracts from the show itself, when most of the characters sound like they're in the wrong show. I kept expecting Lampo to suddenly say 'Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!' It doesn't help that both Lampo and Ash wear baseball caps.

English voice dub aside, the rest of the show is good and would probably entertain children for a bit. But if you've watched Pokemon, you may enjoy it a little less.

I would not call this really preschool friendly. I'd like some guise of education behind the cartoons my kids watch at breakfast. Is there a fad I'm missing? Weird show. Weird voice actors, awkward characters, and silly storyline.