YMMV / Squirrel and Hedgehog

• Anvilicious: USA bad, DPRK good. It comes with the territory of being a proproganda cartoon.
• Awesome Music: The show does have a decent soundtrack with the jolly main theme "Let's Fortify our Hill", the more somber and pathos-filled "Boy Scouts" and "My Dear Hometown", the latter basically being a Homesickness Hymn.
• Designated Hero: The Flower Hill people. This is more apparent in the first season, where they aren't particularly restrained in killing their enemies.
• Designated Villain: The weasels, mice, and wolves. Yes, they don't like Flower Hill very much and want to destroy and/or enslave it, but otherwise are shown to be dutiful, brave soldiers trying to complete their mission. That, and it's North Korea they hate, so it's easy to see where they're coming from.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lt. Yeou "Fox" Vixen has become a very popular character, despite only appearing in the recent episodes.
• Evil Is Cool: The creators went a little too far in making the wolves impressive. Take a look. A YouTube commenter summed it up pretty well:
  Protip: When attempting to make effective propaganda, having your arch enemy appear as a wolf with glowing eyes, sinister voice and his own laser techno-plane while having your troops look like effeminate squirrels and ducks that constantly cry is not a good idea. Hey, did those wolves just fire laser machineguns?! AWESOME.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Its North Korean people love this show, naturally, but it has a HUGE fandom overseas, especially in the west.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Aesop of Episode 1, which aired in 1977, is that North Koreans could not rely on the Soviet Union to fight alongside them if hostilities flared up into open warfare and that they needed to become strong enough to stand on their own. Fast forward to 1991 (14 years later) and the Soviet Union collapses, replaced by a less reliable ally just as they had predicted.
• Ho Yay: Between Geumsaegi and Juldarami, and between Mulmangcho and his one-eared pal Yelipelip. There's a scene where Yelipelip tickles Mulmangcho in a field of flowers, for goodness' sake!
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The show tries to portray the United States as a nation of ruthless Savage Wolves that are willing to go to any lengths to raze North Korea/Flower Hill and subjugate its innocent people. Americans don't see this as much of an insult, given that the show portrays them as muscular badasses that bench-press jeeps and have ridiculously awesome military hardware. That and they're fighting furry North Korea.
• Narm: Any episode that ends on a solemn note gets undermined by the jolly credits music.
• Older Than They Think:
  • In a way, North Korea took notes from their oppressors during WWII (let's just say there's a fairly good Freudian Excuse for why the Weasels were the Big Bads of the first series) since the concept of taking cute animals and turning them into metaphors to teach kids that it's a-okay if we destroy our enemies was used earlier in Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors.
  • Some, such as ConnerTheWaffle, assume the show to be a ripoff of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). Squirrel and Hedgehog was produced during The '70s, while Sonic was introduced in The '90s.
• Periphery Demographic: As mentioned, the show does have something of a following outside North Korea- for all the wrong reasons.
• Sacred Cow: In North Korea, the show is as famous, iconic and beloved as Mickey Mouse, and pictures of characters are in kindergartens.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: You can't help but feel sorry for the weasels sometimes, especially after seeing some of the violent things the Flower Hill soldiers do to them.
• Values Dissonance: The heavy amounts of graphic violence on top of more graphic violence in a cartoon aimed at kids. Also, y'know, everything else.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show contains loads of graphic violence, including onscreen death, (albeit faked) suicide, and even more onscreen death via a multiple number of ways. This is propaganda aimed at North Korean kids.

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