Why Sagwa's Better than Sesame Street

Virginia Heffernan: “The show is uneven, and though the non-Tan scripts do slightly drag, the art may be its real defect. Unlike uneducational cartoons like South Park or The Powerpuff Girls, Sagwa lacks a clear design sense. Its cartoon universe is stilted. PBS may be trying to avoid campy chinoiserie, but it has gone too heavy on the light touch. The magistrate's throne room, for example, did not have to be so spare; it could have been more exciting, more opulently colored, with a hint of the intricacy of Chinese patterns. For that matter, PBS might even have risked gongs and gilt. Visual clich�s are at the heart of cartoons, after all. Don't animated prisoners still wear stripes?”

From a generally positive review of the show Sagwa on PBS. Note the Asiaphillic reference to a Japanese product (Hello Kitty) in the title.