HHPAY Pilot episode

You thought I was done with reviewing Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi? Think again! There is another piece of media from this series I want to review. That is the original pilot episode for the series that premiered in 2003.

0. Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi.
Storyboard by: Scott O'Brien and Mike Giaimo.
Aired: 22 April 2003.
Released online: 5 April 2018.

Puffy AmiYumi move out from Japan to unintentionally discover the weirdness of America.

As the synopsis implies, Ami and Yumi are going to America to sightsee.

Strange that Yumi would find America boring.

As it turns out, Ami and Yumi do speak perfect Japanese.

This here is a parody of King Kong, yet Ami and Yumi call him a monkey.

As it turns out, the gorilla is a fan of the 2 girls.

So this is where the idea of Ami being a cheerleader came from. She wanted to be one.

And this explains why Yumi's so good at fighting. What she's doing to these football players.

So much American food.

But the girls decided to go to Speedy Buy to make their wraps.

Now they're going to have some Slurpees.

But the problem is, the Slurpees are ultra cold. Brainfreeze!

As it turns out, the clerk who runs the Speedy Buy is a fan of these 2 girls, and he's invited them to their high school prom. And they're going through weird prom outfits.

Yumi is no High School Queen!

But everywhere else the girls go, there is an angry mob chasing them every time.

Lucky they went to Florida, because now the police car is stuck in the Everglades.

Well, it was a fun adventure in America, but now it's time to go back to Japan.


What you may notice about this pilot is that Ami wasn't voiced by Janice Kawaye, and Yumi wasn't voiced by Grey Delisle, but rather Japanese voice actresses, explaining their perfect Japanese accents.

As it turns out, this show was originally going to be about Ami and Yumi moving out of Japan to see how weird the USA can be.

And you may notice that in some scenes, Ami's hair is in the style she had as a kid, explaining why it looked that way.

If you look at the animation, you can see it was hand drawn, but they used Flash animation for the final show because of how expensive it is to do hand drawn.

And also, the girls were wearing outfits resembling Japanese Fruits outfits, but they changed that in the final show due to how expensive that was.

If you're interested in watching this pilot, it's been uploaded to Vimeo by Lincar Rox, with permission by Darrell Van Critters. Go here if you want to watch it. 

But to sum up my thoughts about this pilot, I thought it was.....good. Weird in a way, even weirder than the final show. I liked the gorilla being a fan of the girls, and the clerk at Speedy Buy being a fan of them. And Ami being a cheerleader actually.....did fit her style.

My rating: 8.5/10.