KeldeoKitty
Slacker Musketeer
In retrospect I consider Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat one of the best preschool/PBS Kids shows I’ve seen. It follows a Siamese Cat named Sagwa that lives in a palace in old time China with her family consisting of her mother and father, older brother Dongwa and her younger sister Sheegwa. They act as pets of the royal magistrate and serve as calligraphers. Sagwa’s friend is a bat named Fu-Fu who tends to be clumsy. It’s a slice of life show but with a beautiful atmosphere and great representation of Chinese culture and traditions.
Sagwa was created by Amy Tan a Chinese American author and started as a picture book, the animated series was co-produced by Sesame Workshop that also did Dragon Tales, and Cinegroupe it aired on PBS Kids in 2001 for one season but showed in reruns on PBS stations and Sprout up until 2009.
Notably Sagwa premiered in early September 2001 right before 9/11 and supposedly one of the things that hurt the show was its ratings taking a hit because other networks were doing 9/11 news coverage. But I think also because it centered around a specific culture it was more niche than Arthur or Clifford.
Because of rights issues between PBS, Sesame Workshop, and Cinegroupe, the show hasn’t been rereleased in full capacity. In 2021 Common Sense Media added the first 16 episodes on streaming, however the other 24 episodes haven’t been rereleased. VHS recordings of most of these episodes exist but with varying quality, while 4 segments of the English version are lost. Additionally the few DVDs that exist are out of print and pretty rare.
Sagwa was such a wonderful kids show and I’d especially recommend to those into Chinese culture.
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