Cartoon Sushi 1-Disc Box Set DVD

Cartoon Sushi is the late-90s MTV animated anthology that picked up where MTV's earlier short-form animation programs left off, packing each half-hour with a rotating menu of independent shorts, recurring serials, and one-off experiments. The show ran on MTV across 1997 and 1998, with 11 episodes that pulled in work from a wide range of independent animators, including pieces by Bill Plympton and other established short-form names alongside newer experimental shorts.

What stands out is the show's commitment to variety. Each episode is a deliberate grab-bag of tones, from outright gross-out comedy to surreal silent shorts to faux-documentary segments to one-line sight gags, with running characters like Robin, Ultracity 6060, and Nanna and Lil' Puss Puss returning to anchor the chaos. The animation styles are intentionally inconsistent, since the whole point of the program is to surface short pieces from very different filmmakers, and the framing keeps the rhythm tight enough to never linger when a segment is not working.

It belongs to a very specific late-90s MTV neighborhood of adult-leaning animation programs, the same family of sometimes-rude, sometimes-experimental late-night blocks that defined MTV's relationship to the form. For viewers who tracked MTV animation across that era, Cartoon Sushi is the deeper, less-syndicated cousin to the network's better-known animated anthologies.

Highlights in the set include "Ultracity 6060," "Howie Hurls," "Robin," "Sex & Violence by Bill Plympton," "Espresso Depresso," and the Stick Figure Theatre segments, a strong cross-section of the recurring serials and standout independent shorts. This 1-DVD collection holds 11 episodes from the run, the only sensible home for an MTV oddity that has never had a proper streaming archive.