Kuang Kuang

Kuang Kuang is an impish-looking little boy with pointy ears and a permanent nosebleed. He goes to an ordinary school, has an ordinary friend (a sweet little girl named Xiao Hong), and has ordinary hopes and dreams. And the world wants to brutalize him for it.

The plots of Kuang Kuang episodes vary widely, and appear to have no continuity with each other, but no matter what the situation, Kuang Kuang will suffer. Authority figures will hurt him physically and emotionally to keep him from violating the status quo. His fellow students will turn on him rather than join his fate. But no matter what happens to him, he'll refuse to give in, struggling until his last breath (sometimes literally.)

Did we mention this show is made in China? Any resemblance to current Chinese politics is entirely coincidental, but episodes posted to Chinese web sites tend to vanish one by one within a few hours of appearing (though not until they've already been seen by a million or more viewers.) They survive on Western sites such as Youtube, though as of this writing, no one account has all the episodes.

The first episode, to get you started. (Some later episodes are NSFW for violence.)


 * All Balloons Have Helium: Kuang Kuang can make a latex condom float just by blowing air into it. In the end of "The 38th Parallel",
 * The Blank: In the first episode, students are marched one by one into a machine that turns them into this. Kuang Kuang is the only one who escapes.
 * Bucket Booby Trap: The entire class except for Kuang Kuang laughs when Xiao Hong falls for this. Kuang Kuang throws the bucket out the window (and it of course hits a teacher, who beats him up.)
 * Cheerful Child: Kuang Kuang and Xiao Hong, in different ways. Xiao Hong is a model student, always following the rules, and she's usually happy with her lot. Kuang Kuang is a force of chaos, but he loves what he does, and he usually doesn't hurt anyone. (Not nearly as badly as they hurt him, anyways.)
 * Determinator: Kuang Kuang once tried to smash down a barbed-wire fence with his head.
 * Due to the Dead: Played for laughs in the first episode. Kuang Kuang falls unconscious, and the chicken closes his eyes as if he's dead. He wakes for a moment, and opens them again, and the chicken closes them again. (The ending shows him in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, so he must have eventually lost too much blood.)
 * Everything's Better with Chickens: One's introduced in the first episode, having been left on the teacher's desk for an unknown reason, and it serves as the catalyst for the first time Kuang Kuang is beaten and thrown out a window. It's since become the Series Mascot, often defending Kuang Kuang when he's too badly hurt to defend himself.
 * Fartillery: The headmistress uses it as a Finishing Move. She also tends to let it off accidentally, but after the first episode, even Kuang Kuang learns better than to laugh when she does.
 * Girls Have Cooties: In "The 38th Parallel," most of the class starts buying into the idea that boys and girls should be separate, and the teachers begin to enforce it as another way to control their students. Kuang Kuang and Xiao Hong don't like the rule, but Xiao Hong insists that it has to be followed to avoid trouble.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Teachers often beat students with rulers and protractors.
 * Iron Butt Monkey: Kuang Kuang can take a lot of punishment before he actually dies. (It's worth noting that Xiao Hong does not have this status, which works well for her most of the time, but means she can get badly hurt when the story takes a turn for the dramatic.)
 * More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: Characters normally have standard teeth, but when they get really angry, their teeth form a massive circle of points like the mouth of a biting parasite. (In the first episode, Kuang Kuang spins them like a drill to tunnel through the ground.)
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: There are a lot of scenes in which Kuang Kuang is lying on the ground while a group of larger people (usually authority figures) beat the living hell out of him, with realistic or slightly excessive blood loss.
 * Not a Morning Person: Kuang Kuang, in contrast to Xiao Hong.
 * Sadist Teacher: All of them.
 * Sickly Green Glow: Bad guys usually get this in their eyes when they go into a rage, although red sometimes appears instead.
 * Visual Innuendo: The first time Kuang Kuang blows air into a condom looks a lot more obscene than it ultimately turns out to be.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Slight violations of trivial rules can get epic depictions when Kuang Kuang is likely to be brutalized for violating them.