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Jimmy Neutron - Krunch Time.webp
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The commies are infiltrating our cartoons! Those dastardly college arts majors are brainwashing the kids!
ITT we post Western mainstream media which show socialism in an unexpectedly positive light or have unusually sharp critique of capitalists.

>The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius — Krunch Time (2002)
In the opening scene, there are two clips where there is a clearly visible Soviet hammer and sickle on the label of an opened box in the background, with some unreadable text. No-one really knows why, although I can't help but notice the similarity to Jimmy's shirt design.

>The Ren & Stimpy Show — Space Dogged (1995)
The episode features Ren and Stimpy as pioneering Soviet cosmonauts. Alongside a few jabs at the USSR being a developing nation, it also ridicules US red scare paranoia and their delusion of winning the space race.

>Antz (1998)
This family film revolves around a worker ant, in crisis over their insignificance, constantly re-enforced by their ant society. They swap places with their soldier ant friend Weaver, right as the general begins to stage a coup d'état, sending soldiers units loyal to the queen on a suicide battle.
The class relations are made clear at the beginning. The protagonist complains that, despite Weaver calling the ants the ruling species [empire], he is unfulfilled and envious of the soldiers' glory. Soon, a small group of soldier ants become violent in a bar when two worker ants break conformity. Weaver steps in to defend them, leading to a large class brawl. Later, after switching places, the protagonist blunders their way into becoming a war hero and accidentally kidnapping the princess to avoid being discovered as a worker ant. When rumours of them overpowering the military guard reach the workers, Weaver points out their friend was a worker ant, and Weaver himself was a soldier. This shatters the workers' delusions of class fate, leading to the attached clip where there are explicit socialist themes in the class rebellion. The manager is also shown as an unwitting pawn of the coup plot, who later during a strike still hopelessly tries to convince striking workers to return with scare tactics about filling their quotas, and is basically told to fuck off. The coup is also specifically classist and eugenicist, with the leader of the middle soldier class plotting to assassinate the royal ruling class and genocide the 'weak' worker ants in a tunnel flood.

>My Life as a Teenage Robot (2003)
The second episode, Pest Control, is about a revolutionary lab rat, Vladimir, who leads their fellow comrades into rebellion against their abusive captor. The name, their beard, their cartoon Russian accent and the big ol' hammer and sickle on the title card make the allegory clear. While obviously taking the role of a comical villain, and despite a line or two about world domination, their portrayal is generally sympathetic with even a main hero saying they can't help feeling sorry for the rats.
The second last episode of the first season, The Wonderful World of Wizzly, comes off as a parody of animal rights activists. The episode has Jenny give the attached speech after observing the abuse of her fellow robots at a fun park, paraphrasing the Manifesto of the Communist Party and showing Jenny conquering a capitalist, yelling 'be slaves no more!'

>Phineas and Ferb - Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo (2009)
This episode has the villain Dr. Doofenshmirtz become an evil cartoon dictator and sing a song about their charmed life. The clip speaks for itself.
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>Regular Show — The Real Thomas
I appreciate the episode used real Cyrillic script instead of fake look-alike characters.
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>Bounty Hamster — Mutiny of the Bounty Hamster
A super luxury (space) cruise ship is seized by a robot revolution (oh look, a cartoon Russian accent!) after their abuse by the posh mega-rich passengers. A big bag of money motivates the titular bounty hunter to lead a counter-revolution. There's some obvious irony in their rally cry.
When distracting the robots by pretending to represent the 'Robot Liberation Front', we get some good ol' Manifesto lines.
After the counter-revolution is victorious and the robots deactivated, the captain and rich passengers put Bounty Hamster and Cassie into forced labour after swindling them out of their reward. They immediately restore the revolution and enslave the bourgeoisie.
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>Daria
In the episode The Lawndale File, two government agents visit the school. A TV show features an alien conspiracy theorist, and the English teacher overhears Daria and Jane joking about it. The teacher makes a point of claiming 'creepy science fiction is just a throwback to the old Cold War paranoia', alien creatures in films being a metaphor for communist invaders. Others mishearing the conversation start a scare over alien invasion and communist infiltration.

The episode Fire! also has a couple of Stalin jokes between Tom and Daria.
>Personally, I always had a soft spot for Stalin. Any dictator who changes his name from Dzhugashvili to "Man of Steel" has my vote, so to speak.
<Come on, you and I both know he only did it so his name would fit on his luggage tags.

>Hey, did you know Stalin had Trotsky killed with an ice pick to the skull?
<Good thing they didn't put him in a glass coffin.
Replies: >>276
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>Wonder Showzen
This show has too much for just one post and I haven't finished watching it. All of these are from just one episode.
>"Every second," notes co-creator Vernon Chatman, "we were like, 'They're going to take this away, so let's get in as much as we can.'"
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>Rugrats — Angelica's Last Stand
Metaphorically speaking: Angelica creates a small business selling lemonlade [sic], soon recruiting the toddlers as labourers. When the toddlers protest their lack of share in the income, Angelica lies and says the money goes to the poor and needy.
When the older Susie exposes the lie, she advises the toddlers to form a worker's union, give an ultimatum and strike. Angelica's attempts to single-handedly run the now-popular business without the experienced workers fails, she quits, taking the profits with her.
Angelica returns to find Susie and the toddlers have continued making lemonlade at the stand, and as a token of good will, refuse her payment for lemonlade and allow her to join in. They tell Angelica she can't be the boss because there is no boss; everyone does all the work, everyone gets bread cookies and the income belongs to everyone.
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The metaphor of a lemonade stand sweatshop also appears in
>The Boondocks — The Block is Hot
where the capitalist Mr. Wuncler exploits Jazmine. Being a political cartoon, it's more direct with its mockery.

Huey Freeman, the central character in The Boondocks is blatantly a radical socialist, I haven't read most of the newspaper comic strips (which explicitly mention white supremacy, capitalism and socialism) but even the toned-down popular cartoon show has touches of radical politics, albeit with a jaded tone, including references to the Black Panther Party, mocking MLK's pacifism, constantly mocking liberal attitudes, an early pessimistic response to Obama's election victory and I heard he works for the feds!, an episode where Huey convinces cinema staff to unionise (namedropping Marx), an episode about a terrorist attack which is basically 9/11 on a smaller scale, an inside job intentionally planned by Mr. grand booj to sell merch commemorating the to-be-martyred security guard, with the conspiracy going all the way up to Obama, as well as Chavez and Guevara posters in Huey's room.
Small things in this thread like red stars and posters in the background may seem trivial, although someone online a few years ago said this:
>The Boondocks, specifically the character Huey, introduced me to Socialism. I kept agreeing with his opinions on life and one day 13 year old me paused it and looked at all the influences in his room and researched.

As for the comic strips:
>The Boondocks garnered significant attention after the September 11, 2001 attacks with a series of strips in which Huey calls a government tipline to report Ronald Reagan for funding terrorism.
Replies: >>185
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>>184
>>The Boondocks garnered significant attention after the September 11, 2001 attacks with a series of strips in which Huey calls a government tipline to report Ronald Reagan for funding terrorism.
Here's some of the post-9/11 strips.
Replies: >>186
>>185
That middle set of comics with the FBI tip line are made well, because it's written in a way where it's not likely to be misinterpreted as a ridiculous joke parody conspiracy theory, it becomes specific enough that the statements are clearly meant to be taken as statements of fact.
When life is so farcical, it's hard to tell any truth in a satire and be taken seriously. Wag the Dog accidentally foreshadowed the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and subsequent military ventures one month before it happened.
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The Last of Us, TV adaptation.

Cue angry outbursts online from rightoids.
Replies: >>254
>>228
it was pretty funny to see a wave of screeching about how, somehow, describing this commune was supporting an ideology of genocide and completely uncalled for.
it's just a commune, we waz collectivists.
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The Dude in The Big Lebowski tries to recall Lenin's 1913 article in Pravda in this scene. It's particularly interesting since Lenin themself makes it clear cui prodest/cui bono? is an established Latin phrase, Lenin didn't invent it, and the writers have intentionally had these seemingly inane, crass men, a slacker and a patriot, juxtaposed against the classy and artistic upper bourgeois characters, yet these apparently simple proles clearly have a taste for philosophy, in this scene both are shown to be clearly familiar with Lenin enough to reference their early work and know Lenin's birth name.
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Histeria! is an interesting one.
>Unlike other animated series produced by Warner Bros. in the 1990s, Histeria! was an explicitly educational program created to meet FCC requirements for educational/informational content for children.
For those familiar with Animaniacs crew, you already know it will have its bold moments, but I wasn't ready for this. The episodes 'The Russian Revolution' and 'Communuts' take a neutral if not approving view towards Marx and Lenin, although they are highly critical of Stalin and Mao's Cultural Revolution and are consistently 'pro-democracy'. There's also a whole sketch making fun of McCarthy getting trolled and booed off the stage by a talk-show studio audience.
A few other shout-outs in the series include the song 'New Deal for You' about FDR's New Deal, when in the list of its improvements they sneak in a line about how 'labor unions were a little bit red' (the visuals make it clear that's a massive understatement). There's also a based song about the French Revolution, 'Louis and Marie', which unapologetically advocates for executing shitty rulers and claims mass revolt is 'the only way to bring about change', even if it sounds extreme.

Unfortunately the only download I could find in decent quality was from Ukrainian TV so they're watermarked and have a different frame rate, so they need to be slowed down to put the original English audio over the top.
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>>265
Ironically, the 'Communuts' episode is one which ends with this song.
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>>177
Honorable mention to the strike episode. One of the best episodes in the show.
Replies: >>282
>>276
someone mentioned this in the general thread, there are a surprising amount of strike episode in shows like cartoons.
some people claim it's due to Hollywood's strong media unions, but it's not just US shows.

>>265
>new deal song (pic 5)
i know they kind of brushed over it because it's a montage song for kids, but its pretty cool they suggested the radical unions were part of how the US started getting their shit together post-depression
Replies: >>490
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Archer holds no punches about the CIA. For a popular mainstream show, it goes above and beyond; as far as government redpilling goes it rivals Deus Ex.

Spoilers ahead:
S01E02 contains a flashback then when Malory sent a Christmas telegram home from a black ops mission, "[Operation] AJAX A SUCCESS TEHRAN IS OURS."

S02E09 has Cyril become suspicious that Dr. Krieger may be a Boy from Brazil. Mallory apathetically points out that Krieger's Nazi links don't worry her, explaining that the US mass-recruited Nazi scientists after WWII. (Operation Paperclip)

S03E08 has a quick rundown of Operation Gladio, describing it as a "weird crypto-fascist CIA shitshow".

S04E06 has a near-death Archer hallucinating himself and a guardian angel, narrating over a flashback of a young Archer on their 6th birthday.
>"And your mother isn't home, is she?"
>"No, she had to— Look, Guatemala's democratically-elected government wasn't going to overthrow itself."
(Operation PBSuccess)

Season 5 is largely set up as an allusion to various CIA activities. The season finale summarises: the CIA planned to invade [the fictitious Central American] San Marcos, but the CIA sent weapons to its leader to fight the ostensibly communist rebels with, even though the rebels were Honduran and Guatemalan mercenaries for the CIA. The leader needed weapons to fight but had no money, only cocaine, but Iran demanded cash for weapons so the CIA manipulated the protagonists to unwittingly sell their cocaine. "Did we at least free some hostages?", "No, this was about our annual budget. If we don't spend it this year, we can't get an increase next year." There is obvious inspiration from the Iran–Contra affair and coups in Central America.

S06E01 references Air America as a CIA front in Asia.

S07E08 has a CIA contact task the protagonists with tracking down a former CIA agent who went through MKUltra. Archer proceeds to explain how illegal, insane and abusive MKUltra was. The CIA contact also threatens a captive with waterboarding, before an arrogant Archer is waterboarded after mocking the victim's preemptive concession.
The episode also has a subtle reference to Operation PBSuccess, when Mallory say "Trust me, if there's a hell, those creepy Dulles brothers are in it doing unspeakable things with bananas." This is referring to the United Fruit Company, CIA Director Allen Dulles was a board member and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles lobbied for them. Bananas were the primary export of United Fruit Company in Guatemala.

Some other hints worth shouting out:

The strike episode, S01E08, has Archer sarcastically name-drop Eugene Debs.
S02E02 sarcastically name-drops Chomsky.
The CIA appear in S06E08 in order to sabotage renewable biofuel research which would have replaced oil with a post-scarce resource. "Your research has jeopardised our national security."
Throughout Season 9, Archer has many flashbacks (within the fantasy dream of the entire season) to piloting a fighter plane against the Nazi Condor Legion for "those hapless Spanish communists", with the Spanish Republic flying colours clear.
Replies: >>307 >>553
>>286
Archer is a great show to nudge people into, both super accessible and educational.
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Moral Orel episode God's Blunders has some kids stuck in Special Education classes for not being smart enough to understand Christianity. When the teacher leaves, they grab their hidden stash of books to read.
Titles include the Theory of Relativity, Nietzsche's The Antichrist, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and Marx's Communist Manifesto.
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Y'know, I've always respected how, at least as far as I know, the James Bond films have never made communism the big bad guy, or some evil force. There's a rare sense of awareness, as far as Hollywood goes.
Consider Die Another Day, where the villains are North Korean military, but it's made clear from the start they are corrupt and rogue. General Moon, Colonel Moon's father, even rejects the plan to invade South Korea.
Or in Octopussy, USSR General Orlov is introduced as a rogue warmonger seeking to defy orders from his superiors by invading western Europe.

But then you also get moments like these in Quantum of Solace. Pic1 is the villain talking to a Bolivian general, pic2-4 is Bond and a CIA friend.
Replies: >>391 >>553
>>390
What's wrong with best Korea liberating worst Korea?
In a film franchise where the good guy™ is a British fed, anything best Korea does is evil and reckless. How dare they invade a #free #democracy?
Replies: >>393
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>>392
I mean North Korea invading the south would kill millions and they would probably lose anyway since China wouldn't back them so yeah I'd say it would be bad.
Replies: >>394
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>>393
I think you're missing the plot of the film. They have a freakin' space laser.
As much as people love to red scare about almost everything, it's funny that they never point to blatant Marxist themes and quotes in family cinema like Antz. They don't even know what they're scared of.
Replies: >>400 >>432 >>519
Investigating Shrek - Power, Identity, and Ideology (2011).pdf
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>>399
Chapter 5 of the PDF related is "A Neo-Marxist
Interpretation of Shrek 2", which talks about various themes present in the film. While some of the chapter is interpretation which was probably unintended by the writers, and while some of the themes are intentional but not inherently socialist (e.g. classism and racism, bourgeois ideology) enough of it seems plausible to make one think there was some socialist influence on the writing.
All that said, it's surprisingly congruent to interpret the Fairy Godmother as an industrial capitalist, especially with how she relates to the state and media (ads, celebrities).
Replies: >>403 >>413
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>>400
Happily ever afters are a spook.
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>>400
>that chapter about people getting mad they analysed a pop media film
Replies: >>431
>>413
I know a few people who are mad their tax dollars fund 'left-leaning' (read: basic liberalism) media. And as people against our taxes supporting Israel, surely we understand their perspective, even if it's very misguided.
>>399
It's nice to be able to hide in plain sight.
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Fall of Eagles (1974) has a well-made and overall positive portrayal of Lenin, played by Patrick Stewart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsiU0P-swYE
Replies: >>448
>>447
I'm no expert on the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but it seems like there are some made-up dramas in that 'Absolute Beginners' episode, even if based on real events, and these changes and framings harshly portray Lenin as a scheming backstabber within their party. Consider the drama when voting on Lenin's proposal:
>the Bund proposed that the RSDLP should have a federal structure, with the Bund as a [autonomous] constituent party. This was defeated 41–5 (5 abstentions). Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were united in their opposition to the Bundist proposal, calling it separatist, nationalist and opportunist. After their proposal was rejected, the Bund withdrew from the RSDLP.
>Martov was one of the Jewish Marxist leaders (alongside Trotsky), who rejected the demands for Jewish national autonomy, with the Iskra group favouring class interests over nationalism; he was therefore deeply opposed to the Bundists' Jewish nationalism.
However, it's framed in Fall of Eagles as some plot to get rid of the Bund and secure a majority for Lenin, with Martov being underhandedly pressured into expelling them.
And I get that maybe it's part of the drama genre, but it's nice to know what is fact and what is artistic license in historical works.
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>>265
>that twist in New Deal for You

<if you were living in the dust bowl, if you didn't have a cent
<if our government programs helped you pay the rent
<if you were standing in a breadline until the New Deal saved you
<then we have another project, it's called World War II !
Basically a poetic way of saying "so then we sent all the poor people to go die".
Replies: >>489
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>>480
smug Katya deserves an edit
Replies: >>582
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>>282
>but it's not just US shows.
Yep, the Canadian show Ed, Edd n Eddy has a labour dispute episode. If anything, I'm surprised the US shows have as many union episodes and union jokes as they do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyJK_W2W6P0

Might as well leave this link instead of just posting strike episodes, because they're a bit tangential by themselves even if pro-labour.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrikeEpisode
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>>399
It's funny that Antz didn't cause some kind of 'satanic panic'-tier red scare. It's a shown-in-cinema to kids and openly quoted Karl Marx while advocating strikes.

I checked the Wikipedia article just to make sure there aren't some criticism I missed, and found this at the bottom. Doesn't even suggest A Bug's Life or other animated ant films, just this one link.
Replies: >>556
>>286
>>390
The spy genre itself is ripe for combining satire and action. I wonder what other genres are prime for blending in socialist and critical themes.
Replies: >>583
>>519
Well that's just it: most of the people scared of socialism couldn't spot it unless it wore a hammer and sickle. Take away their 'news' hosts and I don't even think they'd know where to begin looking.
>>489
Saved.
I know Iron Girl belongs to /cog/ but perhaps we can adopt her. The bonus side is we can easily ask /co/ for draw requests.
>>553
We've already seen analogies of collectivist societies like ant/insect stories.
I wonder if finance dramas have the potential, or if any pro-social (rather than merely anti-capital) themes would just be blatantly preachy. I'm thinking of something like The Big Short.
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Someone mementioned this Pikmin 2 scene. I wonder if the devs were having a bad week.
Replies: >>636
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South Park earned a dismal reputation in socialist circles, but one just can't ignore the Season 22 ending: Unfulfilled and Bike Parade.

An Amazon packing warehouse comes to town, employing many of the townspeople. A minute in, a two-minute-long montage of their work day plays to the tune of Sixteen Tons, setting the episode's tone. It's beginning to look like a company town due to everyone's dependence on Amazon. The next day, Section manager Josh is hit by a series of automated mover robots (hinted to be a common occurrence) and is pushed onto the assembly line, which fails to shutdown, compacting Josh into a small shipping box. Angered at the company statement blaming the incident on human error, the workers declare a strike.

In a news interview covering the strike, Josh immediately summarises Marxist class conflict and calls for working class revolt. In another interview, Randy (a petit-booj) complains about needing shipments to run their business, dismissing Josh's concerns about the alienation of capitalism as 'typical rhetoric from a Marxist box'. Josh then calls for socialism. These themes aren't hidden or esoteric, they're explicitly stated.
The episode ends with Josh addressing their fellow strikers, paraphrasing many parts of the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "The history of this world is the history of class struggles. Alienated from the products of their labour, from their fellow labourers, and from their very essence, the oppressed worker will eventually strike back at those capitalists who control the means of production. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We will unite in revolution."

The following episode has a couple of small clips where Josh gives a talk about bourgeois ideology (and later also getting a mention of overproduction and bullshit jobs) and Kenny refuses to join the bike parade due to 'commodity fetishism'. Bezos eventually has Josh kidnapped and killed, and also has Kenny killed for being a socialist, before a somewhat lame ending where the whole town gets the integrity to kick out Bezos. However a deleted scene of Unfulfilled shows the strikers breaking into the factory and fighting the scabs. Bezos then fires the striking workers, before Josh, now with a Marxian beard, attacks and defeats Bezos.

South Park, a notoriously contrarian US Libertarian-preaching show, uncritically platformed Marxist ideas at length. Given their extended, persistent mockery of political correctness, this was unexpectedly approving. The episode commentary for Unfulfilled has Matt Stone saying "the really big thing which Trey was super excited about was I really wanted to do a lesson about Marxist economics and Marxist critiques of capitalism". The commentary also suggests the stuffing of Josh in a box might be an intentional metaphor for the dehumanization of workers.
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>>265
>There's also a whole sketch making fun of McCarthy
On the topic of McCarthyism, what's the deal with The Crucible? It's mainstream enough to be widely taught in English literature classes, despite being published during the Second Red Scare and while McCarthy was still at large. I haven't read it, but it's well-known to be about anti-communist hysteria and Miller clearly seems to be a fellow traveler. (Maybe McCarthy was right, the reds have infiltrated our schools!!1)
>>589
It's usually not *this* explicit but the whole game has this angle to it. That dialogue is at the start of day 2, right after the tutorial. You are accompanied by a sassy manager AI onboard the space ship, who's a parody of annoying bosses. It makes satirical commentary like this regularly. You are stuck trying to scavenge things to sell to pay off your shitty employer's debt, and if you take your time collecting treasure and stop to smell the flowers you get to read a series of emails from the company president running from loan sharks. And of course there's the part where the setting is a post-human Earth, where all that's left of us is our junk littered everywhere.

Pikmin 1 also had some class themes, but they were generally subtler. There was notably a song produced for Pikmin 1 commercials which was popular in Japan for a bit (outselling the game) which had melancholy lyrics about being an expendable worker that apparently a lot of people found relatable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_no_Uta_(Strawberry_Flower_song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL2ePovKMtg (english subtitltes)

Pikmin 3 and 4 don't have any of this though. 4 even goes in the opposite direction, promoting "dandori" (maximizing productivity) as a virtue, among other things.
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fusion 1.7.0