Insektors

Please note that there are two significantly different dubs of this program from the original French. In this article names and references to the more faithful US dub are before the / and the UK dub after it.

File:180px-Frogbucket.jpg

They may not know how to laugh, but the Yuks/Kruds sure build a fine war-frog.

I hope that hurt, and not just slightly. Now time for home and cheesy toasties. Captain Roderick Drumsturdy

Insektors was a 1994 CGI TV series (actually the first TV series to be fully CGI) about a conflict between two different tribes of anthropomorphic insects. The tribes are the Joyces/Verigreens, who are brightly coloured and airborne, and the Yuks/Kruds, who are fixated on keeping their furnaces burning to survive. It was made by a small french studio called Fantome, and it recieved the 1994 of the "Children and Young People" Emmy award.

There are two different English-language dubs; an American one and a British one. The American dub is far more faithful to the original scripts, but has been criticized for treating its audience like morons unable to understand subtle dialogue. The UK dub, on the other hand, changed some names, dialogue, and characterization to make a more comedic tone. A good example of the stylistic difference is that in the French and American version the frog mechs are called "Koa the Frog" or "Koas", while in the British dub that is translated to "Stereoscopic Hydrolic Amphibious Personnel Relocation Units" or for short, 'Frogbuckets'.

Although the two sides are at war, all the weapons are non-lethal. The Joyces/Verigreens fire globs of colour to make their enemies laugh and dance, while the Yuk/Krud weapons fire darker globs that the American dub identifies as "coal juice". Either way, combatants are taken out of action until restored at their base.

An recurring theme is that the Yuk/Krud way of life is ultimately futile, as they get their fuel from chopping down flowers (they are the size of trees relative to the cast) which will eventually run out.

While more or less the same tropes are used in each adaptation, their execution differs regularly.

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• Accent Adaptation:Mostly for regions of America/The UK. More noticeable and varied in the UK dub. They made Wasabi Japanese.
• Amazon Brigade: The Dragonflys who act as colour bombers (and apparently the entire Joyce/Verigreen army).
• Deadpan Snarker: Teknocratus in the US dub, the royal herald (and much more so) in the UK dub.
• Evil Prince: Inverted in Acylius/Maximillian.
• Green Aesop: Good guys spend their time cultivating flowers, playing music (which aside from General Lukanus/Wasabi's terrible percussion the bad guys hate) and enjoying life. Bad guys spend their time logging forests and being depressed. Due to the overall plot and believability of how the Yuks/Kruds adopted this stance however it avoids being Anvilicious.
• Faceless Goons: Both sides, probably as a time and cost saving measure. Unless you have a name you are a small beetle if a Yuk/Krud and a bee is a Joyce/Verigreen.
• Five-Bad Band:
  • Big Bad Queen Bakrakra/Catheter's Prime Minister Lord Krabo/ Draffsack. Mostly avoids Villain Decay on the very reasonable grounds that his agents are the ones who mess up, not him.
  • The Dragon Commander of the Yuk/Krud army General Lukanus/Wasabi
  • Evil Genius Her Majesty's chief engineer Teknocratus/Synapse
  • The Brute General Krabouic/Captain Roderick Drumsturdy with his own Dragon General Kaboche/Corporal Stanley Greeb
  • The Load Corporal Kretinus/Fugg. Why, in a dystopian absolute monarchy, does he still have a job?
• Five-Man Band: The roles change a bit story by story.
• Fridge Logic: In one episode all the important Joyces/Verigreens attend a music festeval/go to band practice at most five minutes stroll from the Yuk/Krud border. Remember guys Location, Location, Location!
• Greek Chorus: The Guards/Methane Brothers
• Humongous Mecha: The Yuk/Kruds Koa the Frog/Sterioscopic Hydrolic Amphibious Personal Relocation Unit(AKA Frog Bucket).
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Yuks/Kruds, also Fulgor/Flynn in some episodes.
• Mordor: the Yuk/Krub hive.
• Mundane Utility: The Joyce/Verigreen hero's weapon is a guitar that shoots colour, meaning that when payed it provides its own fireworks. Most of the big Yuk/Krud weapons where in fact designed as logging equipment.
• Nightmare Fuel: In the UK dub, Queen Catheter retains her regal attitude and lack of patience from the US version, but now has a seriously creepy whispering voice with a metallic edge.
• Strange Bedfellows (One dual-parter episode involved the two sides teaming up to destroy an asteroid that would cause The End of the World as We Know It)
• Techno Babble: Teknocratus does a bit of this but for Synapse it is his primary mode of communication (See Humongous Mecha).
• The Napoleon: Lord Krabo.