Watching a DVD together has become our family entertainment for the past week and what we watch, over and over again, is a local cartoon called BRO' TOWN. This is great. No other country has produced such a seriously hilarious and up-lifting immigrant / minority cartoon filled with contemporary issues. At first I thought it was something like Fat Albert's (Bill Cosby's) but it was not. It's much more in the vein of some Japanese classics such as Osomatsukun or Moretsu ataro (both of our great, incomparably great, Fujio Akastuka), tuned totally into the real-time real-life Auckland setting! You got to watch it to believe it!
And Wikipedia is great. They have an entry called Bro' Town and here is what it says (thank you whoever has written it!). Morningside for life! and Wikipedia for life, too!
(What follows is all quote)
Bro'Town is New Zealand's first adult-targeted animated series. It is set amongst New Zealand's growing Pacific Islander community.
Vale, Valea, Jeff da Maori, Sione and Mack live in the suburb of Morningside and attend the local college, St Sylvester’s, where their principal is a Fa’afafine and the PE teacher is legendary ex-All Black Michael Jones.
Vale and Valea (loosely translates to dumb and dumber) are two brothers, living in a single-parent household with their father Pepelo, a benefit bludging, occasional fork-lift driver with a love of beer, porn and gambling. Vale has a strong social conscience while Valea is more interested in girls, but both brothers believe in having a strong solidarity with their boys.
Sione is Vale and Valea’s best mate and fancies himself as a bit of a ladies man, while he constantly looks for ways to impress the girl of his dreams, sixth former Mila Jizovich.
Jeff da Maori lives with his mum and eight dads in a car shell outside the house. He was brought up in the country by his auntie but then moved to the city ‘for better tv reception and because the thieving colonialists stole our land’.
Rounding out the group is the softly spoken Mac who has definite gay tendencies and a knack for talking his way out of things but does stand behind his word eventually!
Produced by New Zealand company Firehorse Films and funded by New Zealand On Air, Bro'Town was made using three animation studios – two in New Zealand and one in India – and involved over 100 staff.
Each episode took up to six months to make and consists of 16,000 drawings, making it a huge undertaking for all involved.
