Looney Tunes turned 96 years old last month, and it’s still able to reinvent itself. After an experiment with Tom and Jerry anime shorts, we’re now getting a kawaii reimagining of the Looney Tunes cast of classic animated characters.
Warner Bros’s Looney Tunes Gokko gives big-headed chibi redesigns to the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil and even Lola Bunny from 1996’s Space Jam.
The announcement with the trailer above, WB Kids promises “Your favorite Looney Tunes, in a way you’ve never seen. Sweeter, cuter, but with the chaos you know and love.”
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Characters have huge heads, rounder shapes, pastel colour palettes and even more exaggerated expressions, but their antics feel very familiar. That they’re still recognisable is testament to the strength of the original character designs (see our character design tips).
Warner Bros Japan has already begun posting the shorts on YouTube. The debut sees the classic ‘rabbit season, duck season’ gag from Chuck Jones’ hunting trilogy, although there’s no Elmer Fudd, before the whole crew end up in bunny ears (very meta as ‘gokko’ is a Japanese suffix meaning ‘playing at’ or ‘make-believe’, referring to role playing or pretending to be someone or something else).
There’s no confirmation of when the next episodes will be posted, so we’ll have to keep an eye on the Warner Bros Japan YouTube channel. But the Looney Tunes spinoff we’re really excited about is still Coyote Vs ACME, the movie Warner Bros didn’t want us to see.
