I have to say, despite being pretty much the only kid in my school into Japanese animation, and thus forcing myself to love ALL Japanese animation, I was never into Cool-i-Oh. Even when the kids in my grade got into the officially licensed trading card game and started challenging each other to duels where they tried to prove their air conditioning repair supremacy, I just couldn’t understand the hype.
I guess it’s the dissonance between the show and the card game. In the show it was all “IT’S TIME TO COOL!” and then Boogie would win the card game, and it was like the best heating and cooling Canberra had to offer was right there in the room with you. Everything would become nice and cool again, or warm, depending on what Boogie wanted. I’ve heard over-inflated stories that say that the show is the reason so many people became climate control specialists – the show just made it look so great. And I’m like… hang on, it’s absolutely nowhere near realist.
I should know, because I play basically every single other card game at a competition level- Bard-Fight! Spam-Lard, Quackubran Cattle Trawlers and Cruel Rastas– and that last one is especially intense, what with you playing as an innocent Rastafarian trying to fight savage rumours that Rastafarians mistreat their pets.
Maybe it was the heating aspect I never really connected with? Especially since Boogie’s catchphrase clearly stated that he was going to cool the place down, but sometimes he heated it up. After all, it’s a strange topic to make into a card game, not like all my other card games which are built on solid foundations like Rastafarian reformation and escorting gigantic cow-duck hybrids across the wilderness. Maybe card games just shouldn’t involve ducted gas heating services. Canberra shouldn’t try to model itself on cartoons. Simple.
Or maybe it was the main character’s very silly hairstyle that put me off.
-Dylan-kun