Absee...

I was driving to work the other morning and out of nowhere this old beat up Toyota Corolla cuts me off… Now this being Bahrain the first thing you’d normally experience is a sudden rush of road rage where you want reach to the back seat pull out that sawed off shotgun you save for occasions like this and put a huge dent in the guy’s head.. but today something was different.. I noticed a sticker on the back window of the car... It was just a regular sticker of a guy with his hair tied at the top of his head. It took me a couple of seconds to register that the sticker was none other than “Absee” from the greatest cartoon of my childhood: “Adnan Wa Leena”
Here’s my famous bridging the cultural gap trick watch this: “Adnan Wa Leena,” literally translated is Adnan and Leena.. The rest of the world know him as FUTURE BOY CONAN, how cool was that?? This is one of the coolest cartoon series’ to come out of Japan… Wonderfully created from the imagination of Miyazaki (the genius that brought the world Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away naming a few) Anyways the story is based on Earth after the third world war, a new world order has taken over and they want everyone to reform to their ways. There’s only one hitch, there’s a small group of islands that have resisted and the story takes many different turns that I can’t remember. Anyways the main character is the boy Adnan (Conan) his girl Leena and his best friend Absee the hippie (I think).. Absee was definitely the coolest, hair tied in a topknot, smoker, obnoxious, and brave…
Absee represented everything you wanted to be… first of all he had no parents, and when you were 6, that was the coolest thing in the world. You never saw Absee taking a bath, unless he was diving into the sea to go spear fishing or something totally cool like that.. He was tough enough to beat the living daylights out of those bad soldiers, but still not brave enough to lead the front line… I even remember one episode where he was rolling some “tobacco-like” substance and smoking it… can you say non-conformist?
I’m not saying that this was a quality cartoon that instilled good morals and gave off a meaningful message to the kids. But this was a cartoon that defined my childhood and brought a human element to the tv… there were no falling anvils, no ACME rockets, no talking animals, no martians nothing.. Just a bunch of kids living in a community that was trying to resist takeover by a Nuclear - Power Hungry World Order that’s hell bent on domination and its Commander, that’s all…
I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I think what I’m trying to say is where are the cartoons of yesteryear? We didn’t have any toned down violence… No, we had hardcore skull crushing – jaw breaking action.. And if there wasn’t any action you can be damn sure that there was a lot of bright lights flashing… Cartoons today are just losing their battle to computer animations, over controlling parents, and bad production… I mean every cartoon I can remember as a kid had a fantastic well thought out story.. today’s junk is all about morals and about keeping the environment clean and making cartoons fun and educational.. Bullshit….Bring back the great stories and the excellent animation…. And if anyone knows where I can find an Absee sticker.. please let me know..