Angela Anaconda: Classic Cartoon of the 1990s that You May Have Missed

Angela Anaconda was one of the great daytime cartoons of the 1990s and it looks even better in retrospect when compared to the dreck that passes for creative animation today. The most immediately apparent difference between Angela Anaconda and other cartoons was its look. It featured ultra-realistic faces made with a kind of cut-out animation style featured on South Park. The show centered around a young elementary school student with the unusual name of Angela Anaconda and her friends as they fended off the rich Nanette Manoir. In a way, Angela Anaconda set itself apart from other cartoons not only by virtue of the way it looked, but also because at heart it contained very definite socialist critiques of the struggle between the classes. Nanette Manoir was a young rich girl with pretensions toward class superiority who got away with murder while the persistently middle class Angela Anaconda was always being blamed. Almost every episode boiled down to a struggle between Angela Anaconda and Nanette Manoir.

Which isn’t to say it was propaganda. It was anything but, in fact. What was Angela Anaconda? It was a hilarious show that featured a cute if kind of funny looking girl who was smart and affable and best friends with a pudgy girl named Gina Lash who was in turn adored and admired by sensitive Gordie Rhinehart. And then there was Johnny Abatti, whose affections were constantly being fought over by Angela and Nanette Manoir, though we all knew whom Johnny really loved. My kids and I have a favorite Johnny Abatti moment. At one point there was a discussion of the kind that you might really hear inside an elementary school classroom about what baloney is exactly. Upon hearing that baloney is considered a meat Johnny Abatti replies: “Baloney’s a meat? I thought it was a flavor.” We haven’t actually seen that episode in at least five or six years, but that line will stick with us forever.