Alright, I’ve been revisiting a show that I watched during my childhood days and I know that it has a PE thanks to a TV Tropes user called Beast and I was rather surprised by it. However, I also re-watch the show for nostalgia purposes too. With the permission of User:BigBadSquid, I am allowed to do this proposal and I truly have a passion for this. That and hopefully I won’t overplay any things that happened in this proposal because I don’t want to go that route and ended up causing something like what happened with Agent Trout PE proposal’s fiasco.
Anyways, after watching the important episodes of the candidate in question he’s in, I’m gonna say that I think I’m going to propose this candidate and at the very least, analyze him from my point of view. Regardless, this will be a rather tricky proposal I will have to admit given the medium he’s in and the characterization that he has. Who is this candidate in question? Well let’s find out!
What’s The Work[]
Ah yes, today we'll be looking at Babar. Babar is essentially a kid’s animated TV series created by Nelvana Productions that ran from 1989-91 based on the 1930s book of the same name. The story tells us about the titular anthropomorphic elephant who is now the king of the city called Celesteville who mostly spends his time recounting his own life story towards his own offsprings and teaching them morals along the way. It was a pretty good show and I absolutely recommend it.
Anyways, yes, of all this show, it actually has a PE candidate that I will be discussing and hey! Anything is possible haha. Now, this candidate in question actually plays an important role in Babar’s childhood and appears in the first five episodes of the series. Who is this candidate in question? Well let’s find out.
Who is He/What has He Done[]
Now then, the candidate in question that I’ll be discussing today is the unnamed hunter. The hunter is well...Your bang average hunter with a motivation to hunt animals in the wild. Most of the time, he spends his role as a silent antagonist. However, it is made clear that he is motivated on hunting animals solely for satiating his own greed. Anyways, he is first introduced by making several weird sounds in the jungle that threw the hordes of elephants into a state of panic and when he made his appearance? Babar’s mother then warns all of the elephants to evacuate.
Predictably, all of the animals including the hordes of elephants were evacuating from the Jungle in order to avoid getting captured by The Hunter. Unfortunately however, Babar’s mother was wounded by The Hunter with his gunshot which caused her to retaliate and fight against The Hunter to defend his son and the rest of the elephants. However, she succumbed to her wounds at the end much to Babar’s shock. Attempting to attack and capture the hordes of the elephants again, fortunately Babar manages to defeat the hunter to avenge his dead mother. However, this resulted in Babar getting strayed from the crowd and went into the city. Fortunately despite the tumultuous time that he had in the city for the first time, he was adopted by a kind old lady and became ingrained into human society perfectly while making new friends along the way.
As Babar enjoys his life in the city, Babar then meets his childhood friends again, Celeste and Arthur, who managed to find out Babar that he was in the city as the latter warned him that The Hunter attempts to attack and capture the hordes of elephants again which resulted on Babar coming to the jungle to rescue them.
As the elephants attempt to do a stampede towards the hunter and his accomplices who try to hunt them, Babar warns the hordes of elephants that the stampede will be doomed to fail due to The Hunter’s numbers. However, the elephants ignored his warning and decided to do a stampede towards the hunter and his accomplices which resulted in them getting captured. The Hunter and his accomplices intend to bring them into a circus or the zoo or at the very least, take their ivories. He was then thwarted by Babar again.
His last appearance, I think is where he hits the mark here. Knowing that animals are sapient beings and already built civilizations, he attempts to attack their settlement again alongside his accomplices with the rhinos being the first one that they capture. When the elephants attempted to surrender by waving a white flag, after seeing Babar, he then shot the white flag due to his petty grudge against Babar after he defeated them in the first episode.
As the elephant hordes attempt to save the rhinos from the hunter’s hideout to defeat hunter and his accomplices, the latter were busy defeating the turtle troops that tried to attack him. Eventually, this all culminates with the Hunter attempting to burn the jungle at the end of the day which would kill all the animals in there. Fortunately, all of the animals work together to repel the fire and in the end, while all of his accomplices ran away due to the fire that happened in the hideout, the Hunter then breaks his silence and then vows himself to destroy all of the animals in the jungle before meeting his death in the fire.
Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors[]
Alright, this is where it gets interesting. Let’s talk about his first mitigating factors that he had. First, his characterization: Now, yes, I’m not gonna downplay he mostly spends his time as a Silent Antagonist up until his defeat where he ended up ranting that he will destroy the animals. The Hunter himself has only two lines in the last episodes he’s appeared in: Where he orders his troops to attack the animals and where he rants that he will destroy all of the animals once and for all before meeting his doom.
Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this will make him a Generic Doomsday Villain. But here’s the thing, we actually see some of his gestures and how he operates, indicating that he's developed at least a bit of a personality. Him shooting the surrender flag after seeing Babar again in anger considered he defeated him in the first place and according to one of the elephants that the Hunter will sell all of them to the zoo or circus or at the very least taking their ivories to satiate his greed just prove that he does have a bit of a motivation even if it’s not the richest characterization out there.
Now, another thing that I want to bring up is how he is aware that animals are truly sapient beings. You’d be forgiven if he’s just a generic hunter doing his own job and seemingly isn't aware that animals are truly sapient beings. However, the series blatantly makes it clear that humans are truly aware that animals are sapient beings. Case in point, The Madam that adopts Babar is capable on understanding Babar being the biggest examples and some episodes like “The Phantom” and “City Steps” literally enforces the ideas that humans being aware that animals are sapient beings with the former showing that Babar has no issues making human friends while some of them are capable on understanding what Babar has saying.
Now where this factor comes to play and how is this important for The Hunter to qualify you may ask? Well, despite his seemingly flat characterization, we actually see that The Hunter is actually aware that the animals are sapient beings. The scene where he shoots the peace sign where the elephants attempt to surrender peacefully because of his grudge against Babar while also noticing the elephants also wearing human clothes literally establishes that the Hunter knows that the animals are sapient and he continues to hunt them anyways.
Aside from that, zilch. The Hunter is just motivated purely to satiate his own greed and has no compunctions hurting any animals along the way so yeah…
Heinous Standard[]
Yes, Babar is a kid show and I’m not going to downplay it and for PE to exist in a kid show, there can be some limitations of the atrocities that you need to show (Sure, we have kids show with PEs but hey! Some kids shows can push their envelope too btw...Hello Lab Rats!). I think even then, The Hunter just passes the standard that Babar had set...We also see the death of Babar’s mother onscreen so that’s something to consider.
Last time I checked, sure, the rhinos, Rataxes does cause a destruction in some episodes but compared to The Hunter, they are mostly a saturday morning cartoon villainy and aren’t played seriously that much (Don’t worry, I personally found Rataxes to be enjoyable myself, even more enjoyable than The Hunter despite saying that they are a saturday morning cartoon villainy). Again, you’d be forgiven that you found The Hunter to be a generic standard poacher but given that he is aware that animals are sapient and how he attempts to hunts the animals to satiate his own greed and it all culminates with The Hunter attempting to burn the jungle as a last resort with him ranting that he will destroy all of the animals before meeting his doom? I think he’s just pushed over.
Again, clearly for a starter villain, he annihilated the heinous standard for his own series. Nobody else even comes close. If there’s one thing I want to say with The Hunter, he can be compared with Man from Bambi as both killed the protagonist’s mother and it all culminates with them trying to burn the forest. But unlike Man from Bambi, this one is a lot more aware that animals are sapient beings so there’s that.
Final Verdict[]
I’ll be honest that I could go either way on this one and I’m not going to overplay his crimes of course. Doing this just to analyze if he truly makes it or not and I don’t really mind if he doesn’t go up as you’d be forgiven if you feel iffy on the characterization points or you only find him to be a bog-standard hunter as sometimes, kids shows are treated with extra scrutiny when it comes for PE proposals. At the end, I’ll let you guys decide on his inclusion on this one.