Miracle Star is a Chinese animated series made to promote a Chinese brand of goat milk also called Miracle Star, which is manufactured by the company Sanyuan Foods. It stars an anthropomorphic goat boy named Kiki, who owns a talking pet frog named Gua Gua.
The episodes are notorious for being a blatant bootleg of The Amazing World of Gumball, right down to it copying its character designs, animation style, and even several scenes from the show. This has not gone unnoticed by the crew behind Gumball, who eventually made an episode called "The Copycats" to serve as their unabashed Take That! towards Miracle Star.
Compare The Legend of Lucky Pie, a similar Chinese knock-off of Adventure Time (albeit Patreon-funded by its crew and not meant to promote any product like this show).
Miracle Star provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: There's no equivalent to Anais here due to China having a one-child limitnote at the time this show was produced (which wouldn't count the Darwin equivalent since he's adopted).
- Animate Inanimate Object: Much like the show it's ripping off, there are several characters who are sentient versions of normally inanimate objects, such as sentient loaves of bread.
- Big Eater: One episode was about Kiki preparing to participate in an eating competition by eating as much as he can, turning into one of these in the process. The episode itself is called Big Eater when translated into English.
- Cast of Expies: Or in this case, considering the amount of copied material we're dealing with, a Cast of Captain Ersatzes. All of the characters are copied from Gumball somehow, with Kiki and his family being the most blatant examples. Plus, Hector's knockoff is a blue furry monster with purple spots, and Bobert's knockoff has a design similar to that of Bender.
- Merchandise-Driven: The merchandise in this case being goat milk, hence why Kiki and his family are goats.
- The Mockbuster: Has absolutely nothing to do with a certain Western cartoon about a blue anthropomorphic cat and his talking pet goldfish turned adoptive brother.
- Paper People: The school principal is a paper man.
- Token Human: Kiki's teacher is the only human character in the series.
