Perfect Hair Forever

Perfect Hair Forever is an American comedy animated television series on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim. The series is a parody of several of anime clichés that revolves around a young boy named Gerald Bald Z on his quest to find perfect hair. Perfect Hair Forever premiered with "Perfect Hair Forever" on November 7, 2004, and ended with "Return to Balding Victory" on April 1, 2007; with a total of seven episodes. An eighth episode aired unannounced on April 1, 2014 as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools Day stunt.

Premise
Perfect Hair Forever is a parody of stereotypical anime clichés combined with Williams Street's now well-established style of absurdist humor first developed in series such as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021. The series blends frenetic visual montages and anime subculture references.

The series concerns a young boy named Gerald who is on a quest to find the perfect hair to remedy his premature baldness. He is joined on his wanderings by an array of strange companions. Gerald is opposed by the evil Coiffio and his minions for reasons which are never stated in the series.

Production
Perfect Hair Forever employs an ongoing serial format, a style that had been uncommon to previous Williams Street projects, due to their lack of emphasis on continuity. Each episode of the series featured different opening sequence music and visuals. The style and music of the end credits also varied from episode to episode.

Following the first six episodes, members of the Perfect Hair Forever creative team posted on the official Adult Swim message board that they weren't interested in continuing the show to a second season, and at the Adult Swim panel at Comic-Con 2006, the cancellation of the series was announced.

Space Ghost appears in every episode, either as a character with an actual role, or in the background.

In addition to various references to other anime series, Perfect Hair Forever has included several visual references to other Adult Swim shows. For example pictures of Mouse Fitzgerald of 12 Oz. Mouse and Skillet are found in episodes 5 and 6. Images of Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force are visible at various points in the series. References of "Clown Planet" from Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Clowning" are seen throughout the series.

In October 2006, Adultswim.com confirmed that Perfect Hair Forever was back in production with 16 episodes to be aired on its online streaming network "The Fix." However, this was apparently incorrect, since after episode seven aired, the series was never continued.

Episode 7 was aired April 1, 2007, as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fool's Day joke. It is also available on Adult Swim's "The Fix" website. In 2007 the Japanese noise rock band Melt-Banana recorded the song "Hair-Cat (Cause the Wolf Is a Cat!)" for Perfect Hair Forever.

Broadcast history
The Perfect Hair Forever pilot first aired on November 7, 2004, in the time slot that had been advertised as the premiere of the Squidbillies pilot. Unknown to the audience at the time, the existing Squidbillies pilot had fallen behind and wasn't ready to air. Williams Street continued advertising the Squidbillies premiere up to and including the bump directly preceding the show, which talked about wanting to make the show "perfect" for you and your "hair" "forever", revealing the title "Perfect Hair Forever." The night's confusion continued when, instead of seeing the opening titles for Squidbillies, viewers were confronted with a title card for an episode of Space Ghost called "Perfect Hair Forever", thus starting the pilot episode.

After the ending credits ran, a bumper card appeared, apologizing for the apparent scheduling mixup only for it to fade out to a fake "Technical Difficulties" card featuring a selection of Perfect Hair Forever characters. This was shown on screen for several seconds, accompanied by typical music before the card faded to static whilst the Action Hot Dog's "Do da la la la la!" echoed. The card returned and the music was replaced with a techno remix of Action Hot Dog's chant.

The first season of Perfect Hair Forever premiered on Sunday, November 27, 2004 at 12:30 AM Eastern Standard Time with the airing of the second episode. The pilot re-aired on November 20, 2005, though without the Anime Talk Show discussion spoof.

Season 2 was supposed to contain 16 episodes, and was planned to premiere online on Adult Swim Video. On May 22, 2007, "Return to Balding Victory" debuted on Adult Swim Video, officially ending the series. This episode had already aired on television on April 1, 2007, as part of Adult Swim's April Fool's Joke. This joke spanned the entire block, beginning with this episode and then airing all of season one in reverse order and in the style of old VHS fansubs, complete with Engrish subtitles on most episodes. Occasionally, instead of the Engrish subtitles, transcripts from other Adult Swim shows were presented instead. It replaced scheduled premieres of Bleach, Blood+, and Eureka Seven. The prank was hinted at though, as the schedule listed the same episodes that were to be shown that weekend for the next weekend ahead of time.

Seven years after the series conclusion, an eighth episode was produced and aired unannounced on April 1, 2014, as part of Adult Swim's 2014 April Fools Stunt. Two versions of this episode, "Muscular Distraction - A" and "Muscular Distraction - B," exist and were aired at 12:00 AM and 12:15 AM respectively.

Characters

 * Gerald Bald Z (Kim Manning) – The main protagonist of the story, Gerald is a young boy suffering from extremely premature hair loss. Because of this, he goes off on a journey to acquire "Perfect Hair Forever" (a reference to the golden Super Saiyan hair, found in Dragon Ball Z, which also lends Gerald his name). He is portrayed as a sometimes melancholy, yet optimistic young lad who believes that his goal is possible.


 * Uncle Grandfather (Matt Maiellaro) – Described by producer Matt Harrigan as a "bald, pot-bellied, dirty old man," Uncle Grandfather is Gerald's father figure of sorts. He spends almost all of his time snacking, watching Brenda put on lewd displays, or reading pornography. He also exhibits a stereotypical Asian speech impediment, where he pronounces English 'r' sounds as 'l' sounds. He is a parody of Master Roshi.


 * Brenda – A silent girl in an outfit spoofing those of anime females. She is also the only character who never speaks. Her only means of dialogue is a non-English language and she is kept by Uncle Grandfather to bring him trays of hamburgers and satisfy his lewd needs.


 * Action Hotdog (Will Armstrong) – The first character to join Gerald's journey. Action Hotdog is a hot dog which flies around and is only capable of uttering the words "Doo da la-la-la-la-la-la la la-la-laaaaa-la-la!".


 * Norman Douglas (Nick Ingkatanuwat) – A talking tree, also known as the Inappropriate Comedy Tree. Originally an agent of Coiffio, his task was to follow Gerald and watch him. The character talks loudly and shares the same facial animations as Terry/Twisty.


 * Terry/Twisty (C. Martin Croker) – A sapient tornado that appears to suffer from dissociative identity disorder. When he is Terry his eyes are blue and he seems nice and kind and when he is Twisty his eyes are red and he is violent (particularly towards Norman Douglas).


 * Coiffio (Dave Willis) – The main villain of the series, Coiffio is a self-centered old man with an enormous, multi-colored "coif" atop his head, who otherwise looks like a more fit version of Uncle Grandfather with a slightly different beard. He speaks in an odd, indeterminable accent, and possesses a unique censor sound, wherein all his uses of the word "fuck" are censored by the sound of Coiffio yelling "EFF!"


 * Catman (Dennis Moloney) – A grumpy, fat man in a cat suit who is Coiffio's main henchman. Catman lives in a large, litterbox-shaped house, and is shown working at a convenience store in several episodes.


 * Young Man (C. Martin Croker) – A young, enthusiastic man in a bright purple suit that claims to be from the "Ministry of Planning" and calls himself the "King of All Animals".


 * Sherman (MF Doom) - A giraffe that travels primarily with Young Man and his other Animals.


 * Rod: the Anime God (Matt Maiellaro) – An entity made of fire, who calls himself the god of anime. Rod is introduced early in the series, and pops in at seemingly random intervals. Rod is the focus of a secondary plot in the series involving Coffio attempting to sell him a house.


 * Space Ghost (George Lowe) - Makes a number of random appearances throughout the show.

Home release
On October 27, 2009, Adult Swim and distributor Warner Home Video released Adult Swim in a Box, a seven disc DVD box set of a variety of different Adult Swim shows, the pilot episode of Perfect Hair Forever is featured on this box set on a special DVD along with Welcome to Eltingville, Korgoth of Barbaria, Totally for Teens, and Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge. In June 2010, the bonus DVD, from Adult Swim in a Box, was made available for separate purchase through the store on the Adult Swim website.

The entire first season was released on iTunes. The entire series has been made available for free streaming on the Adult Swim website.