Manhua / Little Cherry

A simplified Art Evolution of the titular character. ^note Upper-left is dated very early Turn of the Millennium. Upper-right was primarily used in the mid 2000s. Bottom-right is the TV show design initially used in 2008. Bottom-left design was used in the Childhood Comics magazine during the mid-late 2010s.

Little Cherry is a Chinese media franchise comprising comics and animated adaptations. Active since October 1998, it centers on a young girl called Little Cherry (小樱桃, Xiao Ying Tao) and her family and schoolfriends.

Little Cherry is the chief intellectual property of the Zhengzhou Xoyto Comics Company from the Henan province. (Xoyto is also an English name for the franchise and titular character). It is the brainchild of cartoonist Yang Shangjun, who co-founded the company. ^note A Chinese article about her involvement with Little Cherry from 2007 According to an old summary, the company claimed to be the first private cartoon company in China, and another one (in English) claims the Little Cherry comic books became the most popular in the nation and garnered praise from government leaders. As typical with other comics from China, Little Cherry is obscure in the English-speaking world.

Little Cherry comics are comedy Yonkoma strips that were published in an array of newspapers, magazines, and books, with some long stories sprinkled in. Since 2008, they have been mainly published in the Little Cherry Childhood Comics magazine (小樱桃·童年漫画). Many issues can be previewed here. Speaking of animation, the first released cartoon series comprises Adobe Flash shorts and was released for web viewing in 2003. They can be viewed here (some have English subtitles), and they're generally not family friendly. In 2008, an animated TV series made its debut on CCTV featuring a new character design that many subsequent comics rely on, while few regular characters from the comics were absent. Episodes can be seen on Youku, Bilibili, and other Chinese video sites.

Little Cherry, at least the 2008 animated version, has a negative reputation for allegedly plagiarizing Chibi Maruko-chan for such reasons as similar titles^note Cherry's "Xiao Ying Tao" vs Maruko's "Ying Tao Xiao Wan Zi". A magazine interview with the creator suggests it was a coincidence., characters, and premises, despite the former delving into wacky humor (sometimes like Crayon Shin-chan), original plotlines, and occasional fantasy settings. It's easy to come across web results of Chibi Maruko-chan from searching the name of Little Cherry in Chinese characters.

Web/TV Series

• The 2002 Happy Elf Little Cherry (快乐精灵小樱桃) animated series by Shanghai Animation Film Studio (cancelled)
• The 2003 Flash internet shorts^note Somewhat based on the Humorous Baby Little Cherry (幽默宝贝小樱桃) comic lineup, not to be confused with the novels under that name.
• The 2007 Grandpa Chinese New Year shorts (release status unknown)
• Season One of the television show (小樱桃第一部) (2008)
  • Season Two (小樱桃第二部) (2010); gradually includes fantasy elements
  • Wugang Legend (小樱桃之舞钢传奇) (2011); includes fantasy and Chinese folklore elements
  • Season Three (小樱桃第三部) (2013); this season^note While technically not the third season, they titled it like that. also includes fantasy elements
  • Humorous Collection (小樱桃之幽默宝典最终) (2013); episodes contain skits
• Henan "Sanping" Spirit (河南三平精神) (2012); shorts about the protagonist and friends learning 68 important figures from Henan under a patriotic theme backed by the regional committee of the Communist Party^note Very little of the show has been preserved online, although a comic version was published.
• Little Fireman (小小消防员) (2013); a fire safety show with fantasy elements^note While it reportedly aired on TV, this and Where Are We Going, Dad? have not been widely rereleased online.
• Where Are We Going, Dad? (爸爸去哪儿) (2014); a sixty-minute-long collection of five segments based on a popular reality show of the same name
• Science Popularization in China — Little Cherry Reads Science (科普中国之小樱桃读科学) (2016); science education shorts
  • Science Popularization in China — Little Cherry Sings Science (科普中国之小樱桃唱科学) (2019); ten musical shorts (Youku)
• A revival of the TV animated series also titled Happy Elf Little Cherry (2019); reportedly finished production but apparently unreleased aside for the opening and credits. At this point, any cartoon named Happy Elf Little Cherry couldn't catch a break.

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Little Cherry provides examples of:

General

• All Just a Dream:
  • One of the flash shorts is a parody of Titanic (1997) which ends after Little Cherry kicks Lazy out of the floating wooden board and he gets eaten by a shark. It's revealed that the kids are watching the actual movie, and Lazy tries to wake Little Cherry, who is crying.
  • In season 2 episode 8, the uncontrollably growing landfill outside the school is from Cherry's dream while she is napping during class.
• Animesque:
  • The comics and animated series liberally borrow visual elements from anime and manga, including Super-Deformed character designs, comical expressions, and effects.
  • An archaeology-themed comic story about the real-life Dahe Village Ruins that was produced circa 2019 features an anime-inspired redesign of Little Cherry.
• Art Evolution: Immensely so, Little Cherry and others have had countless designs through the years, with differing artstyles demonstrated in the same year due to the hiring of multiple artists. Over the first decade of the comic strip's existence (perhaps longer), it was experimenting different features (including "u" "v", or "bean" shaped mouths, or having Eyes Always Shut, "cherry" eyes, Black Bead Eyes, or "bean" eyes for the protagonist). One of the most noticeable stylistic features was her wide head often utilized across the 2000s.
• Asleep in Class:
  • In one of the flash shorts, the protagonist's continuous nap during class drives her teacher Xiao Yang nuts. Once she wakes up, she asks if school's over, fainting Xiao Yang.
  • Lazy falls asleep during a somewhat mundane lecture in the fifth TV episode. Upon waking up, he asks the teacher if water could have multiple uses, despite that it's what was just explained to the students. Lazy, who also left a puddle of saliva, asks how to use it, erupting the class with laughter.
• Blush Sticker: Little Cherry almost always have these. This also applies to some other characters except for most adult males.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Little Cherry has a distinct appearance in her oldest designs (top-left in image) compared with later incarnations, wearing a flower hair band and a "noodle" hairstyle.
• Face Fault: It's not infrequent that the characters collapse to the ground when they hear someone saying a ridiculous thing.
• Gratuitous English: There are spoken or written English phrases like "Hi darling" and "oh my god" used once in a while.
• Shout-Out:
  • The May 2017 magazine cover parodies My Neighbor Totoro.
  • In The Little Match Girl story, there are men wearing costumes of Superman and Batman.
  • In the Butterfly Lovers story, Arale and Gatchan are shown butterfly catching.
  • A Garfield show and sticker are shown, and Tom and Jerry background music is played from a TV, in season 1 episode 22.
  • Tie Nan Hua poses for a picture with Mickey Mouse in season 3 episode 23.
• Toilet Humour: Lazy the Big Eater is often the source of potty-jokes. For instance, he farts inside a monster to free himself in Season 3 episode 9.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: The cast have often been utilized in adaptations of fantastical stories, including but not limited to Journey to the West and Snow White.

Comics

• Babysitting Episode: A plotline in Happy Elf Little Cherry has the protagonist watching over her young cousin Juanjuan, who becomes a huge burden to her.
• Bait-and-Switch: A recurring sort of humor in the comic strip. For example, Cherry tells classmates how she got 100 percent on her classwork by merely writing the score on it.
• Behemoth Battle: The climax of the Little Cherry House Elf story has Yoyo sacrificing its power to transform into a humongous shelled dragon to counter a Dashan Chemical officer's excavator, which became a living monster thanks to the magical wishful bag stolen from Yoyo.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the Little Cherry House Elf story, Cherry and allies are surrounded by the Dashan Chemical goons but are spared at the moment by her parents and Lazy's dad, who all came through a door and enter a Big Ball of Violence with the foes. Without Yingnan's precedent escape from the facility to call in the parents, the kids and Yoyo would have been deeply imperiled.
• The Chosen Many: In the Eight Immortals story, the elderly sage Popo Long declares Cherry, her six friends, and Xiao Yang to be the eight immortals who will save the world from the Horned Dragon God and the sirens. Wanting her students to avoid this conflict, Xiao Yang assaults Long and her students fight General Shen, until Ningsha tearfully calls for ending the clash and focusing on their common enemy.
• Chucking Chalk: Xiao Yang furiously throws chalk pieces at her sleeping students. In one strip, Lazy remarks that she's becoming more accurate and concludes with her idea to make extra money throwing knives for the circus.
• Cranial Eruption: Occasionally in the Little Cherry House Elf story, the characters temporarily accumulate lumps from hurting each other, like Lazy banging his head on the archaeologist.
• Creator Cameo: Near the end of the Little Cherry House Elf story, the protagonist's room is shown to have a poster of 19Van, the story's writer and artist.
• Don't Try This at Home: In a 2005 long story, Little Cherry demonstrates her ballet skills to Lazy by jumping over a guardrail. The panel has a bubble saying it is extremely dangerous and should not be imitated, not to mention Lazy immediately attempting and getting stuck on the guardrail.
• Fractured Fairy Tale:
  • One of the Happy Elf Little Cherry stories is an adaptation of Snow White where Cherry (Snow White) becomes hungry and eats many poisoned apples offered by Xiao Yang (the Evil Queen/Witch). Lazy (the Prince) is rather unhygienic and nearly kisses Cherry, only for her to wake up and forcefully resist him, who loses his wig too. Xiao Yang reverts as the Evil Queen and expresses outrage for failing to thwart the girl, while her minion Xiaonan begs for the magic mirror as compensation. Concluding with a royal wedding between Cherry and Lazy, the story turns out to be Lazy's script for a school play, of which the other actors respond by drooling unenthusiastically.
  • In a story about a play rehearsal for The Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf (played by Erdou and Xiaonan) pursuits the pigs (Lazy, Cherry, and Xiaoxue) and asks how to find Red Riding Hood.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: One older strip has an insecure Cherry asking Lazy to pull a "bitter meat scheme"^note ku rou ji or "苦肉计", one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, so he conducts it by apologetically punching her.
• Hollywood Prehistory: One older story has a prehistoric setting where the characters live in tribes and have dinosaur and wooly mammoth companions. Here, Little Cherry is a sculptor in her tribe who doesn't replicate the cannibalistic Lazy's likeness to be more muscular than he really looks. To add salt to the wound, Lazy also gets stomped by her pet dinosaur. In retribution, Lazy's dad kidnaps Cherry's tribe for failing to hand over the missing girl. Once Cherry returns to her village with a flying pterosaur, a lonely man reveals her their tribe's kidnapping and the blackmail message left by Lazy's dad, prompting her to confront the cannibalistic chieftain at his cave lair. The story received a heavily compressed Flash adaptation covering the first scene, which goes up to the arrival of Lazy's dad, and changes Cherry's hairstyle to pigtails.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: In one Happy Elf Little Cherry story, when Cherry and friends finally earn ten yuan from their shoeshine gig, a taxman immediately approaches them for their share of taxes, so the kids fork over the ten yuan. Subsequently, other adults demand the kids to pay fees for train station management, city construction, etc., and chase the hell out of them.
• Invisibility Cloak: In the Little Cherry House Elf story, Yoyo hides Cherry and friends inside the Dashan Chemical company building by giving them magical yellow leaves that grant invisibility. However, shortly after Cherry left to alert authorities, Yingnan carelessly loses his leaf and gets detected by a security camera. Once he, Lazy, and Dapan have been captured, he remembers to wear it again and flees the building solo to gather Cherry's parents and Lazy's dad before rescuing the others.
• Literal-Minded: In one strip, Little Cherry learns that to become an excellent cartoonist is to go deep in life and experience it. She demonstrates this by inspecting a leaf under a microscope until she gets frightened by the bugs she just glanced.
• Moses in the Bulrushes: In the 2004 Eight Immortals story, Ningsha is a dragon-transforming girl sent away inside a big egg by her mother due to a war in their underwater kingdom. Little Cherry finds the egg on a beach in Hainan and could find no use of it, until it finally hatches in her room and she meets Ningsha there.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The third act of the Eight Immortals story involves Cherry and friends confronting the Big Bad with Powered Armor suits in battle sequences that don't look unusual for a Shounen manga.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: In the first installment of the Little Cherry House Elf story arc, Lazy goes after a squirrel that had hurt him. After going through a bush, he faces a gigantic squirrel, which throws him in the next panel.
• Teacher/Parent Romance: A rare 2003-published story highlights Xiao Yang being pursued by a group of romantic suitors, going as far to kick one out of her home. To spare her teacher from such annoyances, Cherry suggests that she needs a fake boyfriend and brings her dad the following day. Her dad begins admiring Xiao Yang, who holds his arm while revealing to the reader she has never held a boy's hands. The romantic suitors confront the couple due to their frail signs of affection, so following Cherry's advice, they're on their way towards their first kiss. Until it's thwarted by Cherry's mom, who catches her husband's infidelity, cries that she "can't live anymore," and attempts to flee tearfully. Xiao Yang follows suit while sprinting from the swarm of suitors.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: One of the stories in the January 2010 issue has Cherry being obsessed with a rockstar named Xiao Chou^note Chinese for "clown" whom she thinks is a man. When they randomly meet in an alley, Xiao Chou reveals herself to be a woman who is tired of identifying as a man and has been forced to sing and act, while admitting she's not "pretty" as a girl. As Xiao Chou expresses her relief to be whom she wishes, Cherry instantly flees and regrets liking Xiao Chou.

Flash Animation

• Compressed Adaptation: The "Primitive Tribe" short adapts from the first scene of the manhua version (found in the Pineapple volume of the fruits book series). The flash short omits the remainder of the story where Lazy's dad demands Cherry's tribe to hand her over, his kidnapping of the tribe when they failed so, and Cherry's mission to rescue her clan from his lair.
• Frankenstein's Monster: There is a blue one in The Little Match Girl adaptation. The cover of one comic volume has him with a natural human skin color.

TV Show

• Adaptation Deviation:
  • Season 1 Episode 16 adapts from a 2005 comic story concerning Little Cherry and Lazy going to school and the former jumps a road guardrail, a news crew interviews her for that unsafe act, and the kids are on a bus ride as she collects fares to make up her lost money change. Notably, the TV version has a new intro and ending, and Pi Da Gua is substituted for Lazy as her companion.
  • The episode with Ah Lun's concert is loosely based on a Happy Elf Little Cherry story about a Nicholas Tse concert, where the kids do embarrassing things on him like exposing his green star boxers (a moment absent in the episode).
  • Season 1 Episode 25 is also based on a mid 2000s long story, one in which Cherry brings her friends to a restaurant. However, the motive in the comic version is for Cherry to prove she isn't a "platypus" (or as Lazy puts it, someone who constantly takes advantage of free food without being generous at all), whereas in the TV version she won a writing contest and had promised to treat her friends if she landed in the top three. Also, the TV version has Lazy, not Cherry, coming across the counterfeit 50 yuan (100 yuan in the comics) for their meals.
• Audio Adaptation: A radio version of the TV series began airing on a Zhengzhou station in the summer of 2012.
• Baseball Episode: Episode 18 has the class playing a soccer game due to being extra allotted time for physical activities in response to the 2008 Summer Olympics' conclusion. Especially highlighting Lazy's passion to be a goalkeeper.
• Blackmail: In episode 19 (literally titled "Blackmail Incident"), Little Cherry and her friends lack enough money to buy baby jellyfish at the market. Pi Da Gua promises to buy them the jellyfish the following day and backs his promise with a letter. On the next day, Xiaoli becomes jealous from her unawareness of Pi Da Gua's plan and enters a fiery argument with Cherry. The teacher, who had learned of the letter from Pi Da Gua's mother, arrives and warns Cherry and Xiaoli of the unlawful scheme, and scolds Pi Da Gua for not exposing it.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The protagonist introduces herself to the viewer at the start of the first episode.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: In Season 2 episode 19, Cherry wants her friends Lazy and Tie Nan Hua to keep her new pet Pupu a secret, since they unexpectedly visited her room to look for the magical being that made Cherry acting weird lately. At the ending, all her classmates are outside her home wanting to see Pupu conclusively because Lazy and Tie Nan Hua have spilled the beans.
• Christmas Episode: The finale for season 2 has Cherry looking for someone who could observe Christmas for her and eventually asks her grandpa to be her Santa Claus.
• Clingy MacGuffin: Cherry has trouble parting ways with a box containing ancient bacteria from the deep Arctic that she had bought for a class assignment in season 2 episode 5. When a thief steals it, he accidentally retreats onto an Arctic research vessel.
• Company Cameo: The badges required to be worn by the students in episode 8 display the Zhengzhou Xoyto Comics Company logo.
• Company Cross References: Older comic art of Little Cherry occasionally appear in the TV show, such as on bottle packaging (the bottle being also a real product) and a stamp. The Childhood Comics magazine also makes an appearance in episode 2.
• Continuity Nod: In season 2 episode 7, prior to the debate competition, Lazy reminds Cherry not to make the mistakes she fell for while opening their Children's Day show act from season 1 episode 10.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The song played at Ah Lun's concert is also the show's theme tune. Little Cherry could not sing it in tune because she was nervous to be onstage with her idol.
• Dream Episode: Season 2 episode 6 has Cherry, Lazy, Tie Nan Hua, and Wang Shuai try a machine that lets their users fall sleep and create and share dreams. Cherry's is set on a tropical beach and has Lazy serving fruit to her. When she travels to her friends' own dreams, something bad happens to the dream's creator and they each scapegoat Cherry for the mishaps.
• Dream Reality Check: In episode 12, Little Cherry does a rather painful pinch to herself a moment after her idol chose her to be onstage.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: Cherry does this to Xiaonan in response to his plan to record accounts in his diary in episode 20.
• Gave Up Too Soon: In season 2 episode 4, Kexin, Yingnan, Tie Nan Hua, and Xiaoli team up to save the garden snails from being forced to race by the other classmates. Once the racing group leaves and Lazy lets the other group deal with the snails, the snail-protecting group quits their mission because Xiaoli is disgusted with the snails, Tie Nan Hua and Yingnan want to protect "cute" animals like dogs and cats, and Kexin couldn't help the snails alone. The snails begin to talk about evacuating the garden.
• Gender Bender: In Season 3 episode 25, Little Cherry makes a wish to her pet fairy Pupu to become a boy and to turn boys into girls for a day. The spell makes everyone gender swapped while at the same time their voices are the same.
• Girls vs. Boys Plot: In Season 2 episode 24, the students become concerned when their coach assigns the boys to run 1,000 meters and the girls to run 500 meters. Cherry objects this, and when the coach lets everyone run 1,000 meters, Wang Shuai asks to have the boys run 2,000 meters because they are "strong". The two classmates quarrel, leading to the coach to feel unwell and leave Wang Shuai to administer the class. Eventually, the kids organize their own activities, and the girls keep prevailing in them partly because Xiaoxue and Xiaoli have designed ludicrous challenges that let themselves win. Adding salt to this is that once the coach returns for a football game, he plays for the girls' team and paves their way to victory. At the ending in class, Lazy objects (in a similar light to Cherry at the beginning) to his failing exam score because he believes the disparity between his and Cherry's scores constitutes gender inequality.
• Late for School:
  • One of Cherry's most troubling habits is her late arrival to school, often due to staying in bed late. One episode has the Class Representative tasked to visit her home and help remedy this.
  • In episode 16, the alternate route Little Cherry and Pi Da Gua took to school wasn't exactly the best one, due to their encountering a news crew and Cherry needing to recoup her missing bus fare change.
• Littering Is No Big Deal: Averted in season 2 episode 8. Having no luck finding a trash can and since she consulted her Good Angel, Bad Angel pairing, Cherry decides to dump her tainted bread outside school and starts regretting it. Unfortunately, she drops her drink and other people begin to litter at that spot, and running out of time to be at class, she exits the scene and worries about the situation constantly. The school suddenly hosts a landfill, with students having to climb walls and Vine Swing to access inside, and the principal and a TV news crew look really confused with the whole predicament. The landfill is from Cherry's dream when she napped during classtime, and her tackling of the littered spot earns her a commendation from the principal.
• Look Both Ways: In episode 50 of Humorous Collection, one of the skits involves Little Cherry getting struck by a cranky man's van. He goes to her and encourages her to visit the hospital instead of school. He then becomes amazed by her persistence to move forward to school and summons a TV crew to the scene to Little Cherry's annoyance.
• Lost at Sea: Cherry and friends ride on her inflatable house out in the sea in Season 2 episode 21. Because it lacks a sail or motor, they couldn't propel it back to the shore, and using the oars themselves accomplishes nothing. Luckily, Cherry learns from her pet Pupu to cut the inflatable so it can be lighter, thus making it easily navigable with the oars.
• Narrator: An offscreen male narrator usually points the episode's morals or a pivotal event, including blunders Cherry is about to make.
• Negative Continuity: While Cherry and friends quit being fans of Ah Lun in episode 12, that doesn't stop them from adoring him in successive episodes.
• Never Win the Lottery: In episode 25, Cherry's dad had bought lottery tickets in hope of winning the jackpot. While he believed to have won according to the TV announcement, in the line, he learns he's only entitled to receive two bottles of soap rather than the ultimate prize and has to share the disappointing news with his wife, who's already looking forward to moving into a fancy home.
• Pet Contest Episode: In Season 2 episode 20, Cherry and friends bring their pets to a contest. Some of the pets, including Cherry's jellyfish fairy Pupu and Wang Shuai's remote controlled dog, are rather bizarre and have to compete through fighting or display of talent. In the last round, the aforementioned pets ascend high in the air until the robot dog runs out of battery. Pupu rescues it in time and wins the contest.
• Playing Sick: In episode 4, Little Cherry and two of friends tell their classmate Wang Shuai of their supposed illnesses preventing them from attending school. With the teacher curious with the mass absences, Wang Shuai visits the former's home and catches them playing makeup, learning that the girls commit this scheme to protect a heather flower that was rumored to make Xiaonan sick.
• Science Fair: In episode 5, in response to a sandstorm traced to climate change, the teacher announces an environmental crafts project for his class. The protagonist, who lacks enough time when she remembers the assignment during her break, creates a ball out of plasticine and couldn't make it as intriguing as her classmates. In the last minute, she labels it an overexploited Earth and, against her expectations, earns a special honor because it contains a recycled material.
• Secret Diary: In episode 20, the students are assigned to keep and record their personal diaries. Cherry, who could not decide what to write, is gifted a blank diary from her mother that was given from her husband during their youth. Back in class, Cherry realizes she had left the diary on her bed. Lazy peeks at Xiaoli's peculiar-looking diary and discovers that she had written a science fiction story. However, an indignant Xiaoli suddenly retrieves it from him, stressing the importance for Cherry to hide hers from her parents.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In season 2 episode 17, Lazy was going to take a picture of his chicken wrap until it is snatched by quick-witted pig. Cherry, who listened to her woeful friend on a bench, reveals a bandage-like "regret sticker" that transports the user back to the moment they made an error. Lazy uses two of the stickers and fails to prevent the pig from damaging his phone or stealing the chicken wrap. Lazy desires the last sticker, but Cherry, who is down to one sticker, refuses to help and runs from him. While Cherry hides herself, Lazy shares the fact she possesses the sticker to Wang Shuai, eventually making everyone, including the military, aware of its existence and locate Cherry. After being caught in a fight by some adults, Cherry applies the last sticker on herself to prevent a global catastrophe, warping back to the park bench with Lazy. Only this time, when she hears of Lazy's mishap, she's devoid of the stickers, blames him and sobs.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: The cup noodles Cherry and her father have in Season 2 episode 3 taste rather bland. Outspokenly upset, Cherry notes that this brand, Mi Shuaifu (米帅傅), is a knockoff of Mi Shifu (米师傅, or Master Mi), down to the packaging art.
• Vacation Episode: Episode 7 becomes one when Little Cherry's mother, who had turned down her daughter pleading to travel, changes her mind and the family departs to see the waterfalls of Shiren Mountain. They end up staying in a high-end hotel room with the view of a waterfall, but the price tag convinces the mother to have her family remain in the room all day, to her daughter's disappointment.

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