Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi

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Anything Is Possible!

A short-lived Cartoon Network original series based on the Real Life J-Pop group PUFFY (called Puffy AmiYumi in the States to avoid offending a certain trigger-happy rapper) previously known in America for providing the theme for Teen Titans.

Produced for television by Sam Register with the help of former Jellyfish member Andy Sturmer, who had previously worked with the real duo. Animation was done with Flash by Renegade Animation in California, making it the only show at the time to have been fully animated in the US (thus making their choice of characters quite ironic), with characters designed by famed Canadian artist Lynne Naylor which got the show nominated for the coveted Annie Award. The series follows the two best friends/musicians and their manager Kaz as they travel around the on their world tour with a number of nutty adventures along the way.

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Tropes used in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi include:

• Adorkable: Ami's pen pal.
• A Good Old-Fashioned Paint-Watching: Is an actual Spectator Sport in this show.
• A Simple Plan: Isn't it always...
• Alien Abduction: "Spaced Out"
• All Just a Dream: "Yumi Goes Solo"
• A Load of Bull: Ole
• Animated Series
• An Aesop
• Animesque: Not surprising for a show featuring J-Pop stars.
• Anime Accent Absence: Ami, Yumi and Julie. Subverted with Kaz and Atchan. There is the occasional use of honorifics, though.
• Asian Airhead: Ami.
• Aside Glance: A few, mostly by Yumi.
• Band Toon
• Balloon Belly: The girls, after their chocolate binge in Taffy Trouble and after eating all the sushi in Rock N Roe
  • This trope is used nearly every time Ami and/or Yumi overeat. The only time it was averted was, oddly, the episode where Yumi is competing in hot dog eating contests.
    • You'd be surprised how relatively slim many competitors look.
• The Beatles: One episode features a homage to Yellow Submarine.
• Between My Legs: Of Ami in Ninjcompoop and Neat Freak.
• Bifauxnen: Many viewers who have never heard of Puffy Amiyumi before thought Yumi is a bishie goth.
• Big Eater: Kaz and Yumi in the cartoon. Ami and Yumi in the opening skits.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Tour Bus. Lampshaded when Kaz tried to sell it with a claim of it having "thousands of rooms, some even we don't know about!".
• Bilingual Bonus: Japanese honorifics, and, on occasion, words and phrases, pop up every now and then.
• Biological Mashup The Alien Bananas turn Kaz into a literal Chicken-Man.
• Bland-Name Product: Stu-Pi-Doh Cards
• Blind Without'Em: Kaz
• Brain In a Jar: Kaz's head is preserved in a jar in the Year 3000. God only knows why.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall
• Candid Camera Prank: "Puffylicious"
• The Cat Came Back: "Yumi Saves Kaz"
• Celebrity Toons
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: Taffy Trouble.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Atchan.
  • "Here's my card...oh wait. Stand back! I'll give you the card in lightning speed! NGINGINGINGING!"
• Collectible Card Game: Stu-Pi-Doh, an obvious spoof.
• Comic Book Adaptation: All by DC Comics--3 regular issues and six appearances in Cartoon Network Block Party.
• Commedia Dell Arte Troupe: On a few occausions.
• Consolation World Record: "Record Breakers"
• Corey Burton: Voiced just about every other guest character.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive Edwin Blair
• Cowardly Sidekick: Kaz fits the bill on most occasions.
• Creator Provincialism: It's a show about a Japanese pop duo. Or so we're lead to believe. The characters themselves say and do things easily identifiable with American Culture as all the writers and animators are from North America. They attempt to remind Ami and Yumi are from Japan by having them speak in Gratuitous Japanese, use chopsticks to eat, obsess over sushi, and spend yen (even though there doesn't seem to be any rate of conversion...) but after all We All Live in America.
• Cute Little Fangs: Yumi.
• Day in The Limelight: Minor Characters like Harmony and The Talent Suckers received their own episodes. Kaz and the cats frequently had their own Tom and Jerry inspired shorts that were devoid of Ami and Yumi's presence.
• The Danza: In one episode, King Chad is dating an Emotionless Girl named Janice, who is voiced by Janice Kawaye, Ami's seiyuu. Of course, the REAL Janice is a pretty nice lady, according to the producers.
• Deadpan Snarker: Yumi.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Almost the entire plot of one of the episodes is Ami and Yumi tripping off cheap, bad sushi.
• Don't Try This At Home: at the end of one of the episodes, the flash-animated Ami and Yumi warns kids that to much sushi is hazardous to your health
• Drunk with Power: Wall in "Uninvited".
• Dug in Deeper: "Song Sung Bad"
• Dumb Muscle: "Wall"
• Early-Bird Cameo: Recurring characters Jang Keng and Tekirai had a cameo in the intro.
• Everything's Better with Chickens: Averted with the sheriff of Dusty Gulch.
• Cute Kitten:
• Everything Is Online: "Home Insecurity," where Yumi's crazed security AI brings everything on the bus, including the fridge, toilet, toaster and her guitar, to life to kill her.
• Evil Twin: Complete with beards.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "The Talent Suckers" (in more ways than one)
• Expressive Shirt: The Skull on Yumi's T-Shirt shifts expression to match her own.
• Extreme Omnivore: Yumi. Her competition in an eating contest tried to sabotage her by dumping a bag of metal horseshoes into her designated lot of food the night before. It didn't work. In another episode she expresses the desire to eat the aliens that abducted the band (although they were giant bananas so that one could be excused).
• Eyedscreen: Used during the showdown in "In the Cards"
• Fable Remake: "The Golden Fleas" is loosely based on The Odyssey.
• First-Name Basis: Or last name if you place surnames first. The duo and their manager are only known by their given names. It was highlightened when Ami and Yumi tried to visit Kaz at the hospital and the receptionist asked for his surname. Neither Ami nor Yumi knew it.
• Flashback Twist
• Friend to All Living Things: Ami
• "Gift of the Magi" Plot: ("Collect All 5")
• God Guise: "Kaz Almighty"
• Gonk: A lot of secondary male characters share the quote.
• Goth: Yumi, though she is more of the "I Love MCR" than the "I Recite Deep Depressing Poetry" variety.
• Gotta Catch Them All: "Collect All 5"
• Grand Theft Me: "Ami Goes Bad"
• Gratuitous Japanese: When astonished, the girls will often say something in Japanese. Background songs are also frequently in Japanese.
• Greed: Kaz's defining attribute.
• Groupie Brigade
• Hair Colors: Pink-haired Ami and blue-haired Yumi.
• Heterosexual Life Partners: Ami and Yumi are pretty close for "best friends", but this is a kid's show.
  • The production team's (now 404'd) blog once had a post featuring a drawing of the girls in a distinctly non-heterosexual passionate embrace. This was said to be inspired by the real-life Puffy's amused reaction to the show, something to the extent of "Why are they writing us as gay?". Of course, it also had a series of drawings involving Ami falling victim to an Alien chestburster which Yumi then dispatched with a knife, so it was quite clearly not a network-approved source of series information.
  • This was actually toned down after season one, with the girls not hugging nearly as much, but the hints are still there, such as the two of them growing old together in the episode set in the future and each with a life dream list including starting a band with each other.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Janice Kawaye as Ami, Grey DeLisle as Yumi, and Keone Young as Kaz.
• Hilarity Ensues
• Hollywood Atlas
• Horrible Camping Trip: "Camping Caper"
• Human Mail: Kaz attempts this to get back into the tour bus when the cats, Jeng Kang and Tekirai, lock him out. Kaz gets mailed to a bunch of other places courtesy of the cats until the package eventually returns.
• Hurricane of Puns: Used and abused frequently. Most heavily in "Rock and Roe".
• Hypno Fool: The episode "Hypno-Kaz" was based on this trope.
• Hypocritical Humor: "Manga Madness"

Ami: "Thank Goodness we're back in Japan, we can catch up on all the manga and anime we've missed." Yumi: "Tell me about it. American cartoons are terrible! ... Oops. Just kidding.

• Idol Singer: Lampshaded in the comic story "Superstar Kaz" (Cartoon Network Block Party #24).
• Incredible Shrinking Man: "Small Stuff"
• In Name Only: The title of the show is really the only thing that has anything to do with the band.
• Jeopardy Thinking Music
• Jerkass: Kaz.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold, in fact. Personality-wise, he's a lot like Mr. Krabs, when you think of it.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only eight episodes (seven from season one, one from season two) were ever released in English. The entire series was released on DVD in 2009...but only in Japan.
• Lampshade Hanging: Frequently by the ever snarky Yumi:

"Another chase scene? I thought we were a rock band."

• • "Allergic" were Ami is suddenly allergic to Yumi. Kaz references how this plot was used on Gilligan's Island.
• Large Ham: Many of the "Corey Burton-voiced" characters in the show.
• Lawful Stupid: Wall.
• Limited Wardrobe
• Lisa Needs Braces: Yumi in "Scowlitis" - except these braces, projected to make her smile, are impractical (highly magnetic and work just like lightning rods), deform her so her smile is half-Stepford, half-Slasher, eventually put her in a depression due to these... And become a sensation with fans.
• Lightning Can Do Anything
• Logic Bomb: Causes Yumi's computer to go on a rampage.
• Loony Fan: Harmony
• Lost Him in a Card Game: "Bad Manager", Kaz bets Ami and Yumi in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
• Magic Feather: "The Legend of Mei Pie"
• Magnificent Moustaches of Mexico: "Ole"
• Mascot Mook: There was later Jang Keng and Tekirai plush toys.
• Meat-O-Vision: "Tsunami Yumi". While lost at sea, Ami imagines Yumi as a giant sushi roll.
• Mirror Universe: Full of evil twins with evil beards.
• Money Fetish: Kaz
• Mukokuseki
• Mushroom Samba: Complete with an And Knowing Is Half the Battle ending.
• My Nayme Is: Ami (Ah-Me) is often mispronounced as Amy (A-Me) in promotions and discussion.
• Neat Freak: Ami displays such an attribute once, then never again in the appropriately named "Neat Freak".
• Negative Continuity: In the first episode it's stated that Yumi has been petrified of squirrels since age 5. In season 2 not only can she fluently speak squirrel but she was also President of the Squirrel fan club. As a whole there's not much tying these episodes together.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Chad.
• Ninja: A magazine survey tells Yumi that "Ninja" is her destined career choice in "Ninjcompoop"
• No Dialogue Episode: "Ikkakuju"
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: The Unicorn
• Not Quite Starring: The real Puffy Ami Yumi only appeared in live action opening sequences that make it clear that their accents would be too thick to understand for an native English-speaker anyway.
• Odd Couple
• Odango Hair: Ami has these to complement her wavy pink hair.
• One Million BC: "Puffy BC"
• Our Founder: in Ami Yumi 3000, when all of civilization is based on Puffy music, there's an enormous statue of the girls back-to-back in a signature pose in the middle of the futuristic city. (the Yumi statue's head has a wormhole over it)
• Our Vampires Are Different: The "Talent Suckers" suck not blood but talent.
  • Kaz might beg to disagree...
• Oven Logic: "Puffylicious". Amusingly, the souffle came out all right, but the oven itself melted.
• Packed Hero: The example in the description is used quite literally with Ami in the cereal factory in "Collect All 5".
• Paper-Thin Disguise
• Parody Episode: Doubled up "Willy Wonka" with that famous "I Love Lucy" episode in a New Job Episode.
• Pigeonholed Voice Actor
• Power of Friendship
• Power of Rock
  • Power of Rock and Power of Friendship were used alternatively, if Rock solved the problem in the last short, Friendship would the problem this time.
• Quintessential British Gentlewomen: The opening sketch for "Fan Clubs" features Ami and Yumi sitting at a table in fine dress drinking tea and biscuits, dubbed with British accents with a sophisticated style of speech while an autoharp plays in the background.
  • "Hello! We are tall, British rock star ladies!"
• Recurring Character: The duo's cats, Jang Keng and Tekirai.
• Recursive Canon: Animated Ami and Yumi see their live action counterparts on TV and don't recognize who they are in "Sitcom Yumi". A poster of the real duo also appears in "In Harmony's Way".
  • "These guys rock!"
• Refuge in Audacity: "Anything is possible", indeed!
• Remember the New Guy?: Julie
• Repurposed Pop Song: Songs by the duo are placed into various sections of the show. If you can understand Japanese, the placements of the song will seem rather strange.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The 2 cats.
• Ring Ring CRUNCH: "Save the Farm" shows us just how much Yumi doesn't like getting up early.
• Rock-Paper-Scissors: Their High-Stakes games are Serious Business
• Roger Rabbit Effect: in Sitcomi Yumi, the live-action Ami and Yumi sit on a couch with the animated Kaz, while the animated versions of the girls wonder who those two women are, and who would want to watch them.
• Rushmore Refacement: "Truth or Dare"
• Saving the Orphanage: "Save The Farm"
• Screen Projected Thought Machine: Used by the Banana Aliens in "Spaced Out"
• Screwed by the Network: And how.
• Serious Business: "BUNNY HUUUGLLLLES!!!"
• Sitcom: Sitcom plots were used often. Sitcom Tropes were parodied in "Sitcom Yumi".
  • Banana Peel
  • Catch Phrase "Talking don't pay the rent. Neh."
  • Drop-In Character
  • The Other Darrin: No one noticed when Kaz was replaced by a water cooler.
  • Fantastic Comedy
  • Retool: An unseen producer keeps trying change "reality" so as to better please an audience.
  • Studio Audience
• Skirt Over Slacks: Yumi wears a skirt over her shorts.
• Shout-Out: Many references to pop culture plus the word "Renegade" is seen throughout as a reference to Renegade Animation Studios.
  • "Manga Madness II" had an Expy of Robot from Lost in Space show up, with the bad guy even using one of Dr. Smith's quotes.
  • Read again the first part of the Our Founder entry above. Does that ring a bell?
• Snowball Lie: "Fan Clubs", "Granny"
• Spinoff Babies: The Mini-Puffs, although technically the show itself is an example.
• Spiritual Successor: Compared to the format of pre-The Flintstones era of cartoons with the format of three shorts framed by a live action segment.
• Strapped to An Operating Table: the girls and Kaz find themselves in this situation (and have their brains probed by intelligent bananas from space) in the episode "Spaced Out!"
• Stage Magician: "The Amazing Kaz-Am"
• Staring Contest
• The Stinger: "Bye-Bye-Boo!"
• Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: Yumi.
• Sugar Bowl: Ami dreams of living in one of these many times.
• Superhero:
• Swallow the Key: Ami in "Arbor Day".
• Take That: Dose any of following episodes remind of some from other shows?
  • Ole-Rodeo CatDog
  • Yumi Saves Kaz-Arnold Saves Sid
  • Uninvited-Mummy's Boy and Snow Biz.
• Terrible Trio: The Burlap Boys.
• Three Shorts
• They Fight Crime: They did in one episode and quit this occupation after their fellow heroes kept letting the bad guys go free.
• Those Two Guys: Jang Keng and Tekirai.
• Time Travel: "Disco Capers", Kaz possess a time machine that takes them back to The Seventies were they introduce the disco-induced natives to A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll".
  • You Fail History Forever, when you remember that rock was introduced in The Fifties, and became more what it's like today in the 1970s, what with the ever-growing branching into prog, glam, hard, plus the first bands of heavy metal.
• Tim Taylor Technology: Yumi continues to give her amp exponential power until it causes a fuse to blow.
• Title Theme Tune
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Ami loves the colour pink, cute cuddly animals and likes girly things like makeup. Yumi is pretty much the opposite.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Citizens of Dusty Gulch in "Showdown". They would rely on a chicken to protect them.
• Too Soon: The episode "Tsunami Yumi" was never aired due to issues to the then recent Indian Ocean Tsunami.
  • The real Puffy Ami Yumi appeared in an awareness ad for the tsunami.
• Training Montage: Spoofed in "Ninjcompoop" were Yumi's skill do not improve with training. Set to one of the band's song ironically enough.
  • It happened again in "Chow Down", an episode where Yumi had to win an eating contest against the reigning champion, Sauerkraut Malone. It literally spoofed Rocky by showing Yumi training against frozen sides of beef in a meat locker, just like Rocky Balboa did... but instead of punching them, she had to eat them. All of them. The girl has an appetite.
• True Companions: Ami and Yumi are as close as best friends can be, and for all his jerkiness Kaz does have his moments few and far between, even going so far as to refer to himself as their "dysfunctional father figure".
• Uncatty Resemblance: Domo looks just like Kaz.

Kaz: "Really? I don't see it."

• Unreadable Disclaimer: Kaz's contract is filled with lengthy subsections and loopholes that are a subject of many of the escapades the duo find themselves in but the real kicker is a section hidden under a flap and written in Russian saying that he reserves the right to sell the band.
• Vague Age
• Walking the Earth: Or rather, touring the Earth.
• When You Snatch the Pebble: Parodied in "Ninjcompoop".
• We Want Our Jerk Back: "Bad Manager".
• Wolf Man: "Were-Kaz"
  • In an issue of Cartoon Network Block Party (DC Comics) Kaz turns into something akin to the Tazmanian Devil after eating a glob of wasabi.
• Wonderful Life: Played Straight in "Yumi Goes Solo"
• X Meets Y: Space Goofs meets Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Ami.