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Behind every success story, marketers and journalists—among others—usually explore presumed hidden causes, the so-called “secrets to success,” as if no successful venture were able to expose its reasons and qualities in a clear, apparent fashion. The successof Fishtronaut, a brainchild of independent production company TV PinGuim, is no mystery, nor is it the result of fortuitous opportunism, like so many management cases, or [soccer striker] Romário’s goals in his heyday. The striker’s mention here is not gratuitous. After all, if soccer is art, art is not soccer, and the boastful accounts of the Fishtronaut’s international success only serve the purpose of obscuring the elements that made the cartoon what it is and do not prompt reflection in a way as to enable the creation of other similar cases. It is much like what takes place whenever a Brazilian film is on the verge of winning an Oscar; the qualities or shortcomings of the work at hand do not matter, the press and the public “root” for the national product as if it were a World Cup final, rather than an election of competencies, the Hollywood Academy of Arts and Science’s definition notwithstanding.

Fishtronaut achieved the feat of being a show of universal reach by discussing its own village, even if this village is not precisely limited to Brazil. The cartoon takes place in an undefined forest universe in which elements/animals from all over the worldand imaginary ones coexist side by side. Which makes perfect sense for the target audience of children aged four to seven, whose notion of geography is devoid of any strictness or spatial precision. However, if the issue of space seems reduced and resolved downto its most effective simplicity, characters are built with a subtlety which, regarded paradigmatically, helps explain the empathy with which the show was received in countries and cultures as different as Brazil (and Latin America), Turkey (and the Middle Eastin general, via the Al-Jazeera Children’s Channel), Canada, and the former Yugoslavia.

The title character is a secret agent for the Secret Environmental Agency. His friends comprise a mix of identity projections that speak to the sensibilities of children anywhere in the planet. Marina, the girl, offers children the safety of an immediate identification; in the time axis, Marina represents the present. Zeek, the monkey, in turn, is reminiscent of our primate past, our closest link to nature, or to a near precultural state of nature (after all, Zeek has the gift of language, therefore he cannot be all that distant). With its simple lines, the Fishtronaut embodies an infantile, stylized projection of future; an anthropoid fish dressed as an astronaut (even though the “naut” in Fishtronaut means “traveller,” which is faithful to the Greek term), who uses fantastic, quasi-magical equipment, were it not for the scientific aura that surrounds it. The simplicity of the lines does no harm to the empathic depiction that brings the Fishtronaut closer to children’s projections. The sheer arrangement of uniform and equipment (gadgets, toys, weapons) exerts a very strong attraction on children, and the astronaut is another avatar of this multifaceted figure that also reflects itself in the figures of the fireman, the policeman, the soldier, and even the pirate.

The simple, affectation-free cartoon comprises much more complex elements of identification that would, however, not suffice if they were not linked to an also complex content that can be translated into the language of children. In this case, it is the environmentalist notions that have become the dominant ideology in the West in the beginning of this century, their scientific foundations notwithstanding. Environmental awareness does not mean hugging trees and displaying emotion towards animals of all sizes anymore; such awareness unfolds vertically and horizontally in social relations, habits, andlifestyles. The way in which we dispose of trash, choose our food (provided that we have the luxury of choosing, of course), our consumption patterns, and even the social medium we wish more and more to raise our children in tend to follow eco-sustainable parameters that the Western consensus now seeks to export to more refractory nations. And that does not concern only the current major environmental villains, such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which are regarded as economic successes butare ecological Neanderthals. Japan, Iceland, and Norway, for instance, are the heavyweights of the international whale-hunting lobby. In Canada, the seasonal slaughtering ofseals in order to supply the skin industry makes for a display of cruelty whose scenes have an impact similar to the already archetypical images of the Holocaust. The growingof genetically altered plants and foods is also an invention of large Western agro-industrial conglomerates. Developing countries end up importing both the antienvironmental practices of big transnational corporations and the Green ideals, including countries whose indigenous environmental movements enjoy relative prestige, such as India.

Within this context, the dissemination of Fishtronaut throughout emerging countries managed to accomplish a feat that Brazilian diplomacy had been attempting, with great difficulty, since the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, namely, to establish closereconomic, political, and cultural ties with Asia and Africa, free from the mediationofthe United States and Europe. In the television business world, such success was usually limited to soap operas. These, however, have not significantly paved the way to Brazilian audiovisual production around the world, as they are products designed specifically for the domestic market, and the exports of which ensure their producers—mostly theRede Globo network—no more than fringe gains, and do not encourage the development of programs and a production structure geared towards the international market. The Fishtronaut, however, is a distinct phenomenon altogether.

First of all, it is an independent production that has managed to cross national borders not only due to the creativity of its authors. As a member of the Brazilian Independent Producers Association, TV PinGuim was able to take advantage of incentives granted by the Ministry of Culture, which subsidizes the participation of independent companies, especially animation- and documentary-oriented ones, at the leading international television fairs (Mipcom, MipTV, RealScreen, Kidscreen). Such policy was decisive for Brazilian production companies to appear on the radar of major foreign distributors, broadcasters, and coproducers, and the animation sector has been one of the stars. This is actually a considerable achievement, given the technical requirements and high budgets required by cartoon production. Companies such as 2DLab (Rio de Janeiro) and Lightstar Studios (Santos) are capable of both producing original creations and providing competitive animation services for advertising, TV, and cinema on the international market. Brazil is starting to look appealing even to Brazilians who have worked for years in leading foreign production companies such as Disney or DreamWorks.

In order to try and understand the Fishtronaut phenomenon, however, it is worth analyzing its penetration into the Arab world, by means of the Al-Jazeera Children’s Channel (JCC). Different than the other Jazeera channels (news channels in Arabic and English, sports, documentaries, films, etc.), JCC is an enterprise of the Qatari emir’s wife, andis headquartered in a foundation linked to the Doha university.

This means that the company’s primary goal is not profit, much less is it to air cheap shows in order to sell toy merchandising packages. The programming director is a Tunisian with vast experience in Europe, Fayçal Hassairi, and his assistant is a Moroccan-American former director, Khalil Benkirane. Possessing vast knowledge of the various Muslim cultures (and whose teams are a bona fide foreign legion from different Arab countries), from Morocco to Indonesia, as well as of European and North American audiovisualstandards, Hassairi and Benkirane believe that any noticeable behavioral change, especially concerning environmental awareness, should start by the children. Preaching to this generation of adults is useless; they will at best become aware through their children, hence the importance that the Qatari royal family ascribes to its children’s channel. However, the simple importing of European or North American shows does not work in the twenty-two countries in which JCC operates. A similar problem is faced by other children’s channels in developing countries. And it is in this vacuum that Fishtronaut has found its perfect pitch.

The international broadcasting of Fishtronaut is an important door for Brazilian audiovisual production, even though in itself, the experience of TV PinGuim does not remove the mountain of obstacles preventing Brazil from having a larger share of the huge flow of transnational coproductions. Cable TV has prevailed, imposing a business model inwhich the funding of each program is split among several partners, according to interests set by media and territory rights. Production is outsourced, and the grid is set by niches, no longer targeting large masses of people. This poses a huge challenge to producers. If, on the one hand, independent producers face a growing demand, the basic quality requirements call for a clear understanding of the idioms, languages, practices, and customs of different markets.

Such is the main bottleneck faced in Brazil: the country is still crawling when it comes to becoming inserted in the flows of ideas, and the reasons for that lie, among somany other factors, mostly in the deteriorated conditions of the educational system, way beyond the scope of this short essay. But the Fishtronaut was not born out of some great idea some afternoon while drinking beer in the garage. The cartoon is the result ofa long creative maturation process by the duo Celia Catunda and Kiko Mistrorigo, to whom the flow of ideas, no matter which is the medium, language, or territory, has been their key concern for at least two decades. This is the sort of creator that is going to define the quality of Brazilian presence worldwide, and, if they are lucky, in Brazil as well.