Miguzi
Miguzi was a programming block from Cartoon Network that ran on the weekday after-school slot from 2004 to 2007, when it died ingloriously and was briefly replaced by Master Control. Created by Cartoon Network’s Williams Street division, the folks that brought us Toonami and Adult Swim, it was created to be a lighter-toned successor to Toonami (while Toonami itself was reconfigured to a Saturday night block), running action shows from America, France, and Japan.
The animated hostess here was Erin, a young CGI girl with black hair and a yellow jumpsuit who, at the start of the block, was transported underwater and into a sunken alien spaceship by an enormous red fish. There, she chills out and watches the shows along with a group of mutant sea creatures and robots, none of whom speaks but all of whom have rudimentary personalities.
The block began as a sort of Replacement Scrappy, having been brought in to appease the kids after Toonami was booted off the time slot and moved to Saturday nights, where it kept on going for a year or two before its heartwarming finale. Although it was originally not very popular, especially with longtime Cartoon Network fans, Miguzi grew on viewers soon enough, especially because it ran popular shows like Teen Titans and Yu-Gi-Oh! as well as having introduced new "classics" such as Code Lyoko and Totally Spies!
Miguzi was notorious for changing its programming at any moment's notice. Here are some of the shows they ran.
- Code Lyoko
- Codename: Kids Next Door
- One Piece
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003
- Teen Titans
- Totally Spies!
- Winx Club
- Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Zatch Bell
- All CGI Cartoon
- Ascended Fanboy: The kid who created Yoke, having won the Make a Monsterpiece mail-in contest.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Erin who, in the final days of the program, mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The opening which featured her coming to the ship to play with her friends was changed to just the aliens spelling out the word "Miguzi".
- Five-Man Band: Erin and her monster friends, though their roles in the group dynamic often overlap.
- Erin -- Tagalong Kid
- Big Stalks -- The Big Guy
- Curly -- The Smart Guy
- Flip
- Yoke -- The Sixth Ranger
- Lighter and Softer: This was sort of your little brother's (or sister's) Toonami, although rich in periphery demographics.
- Screwed by the Network: A year and a half before Toonami had the same fate.
- Under the Sea
- Unfazed Everyman: Erin