Video Brinquedo have been branded The Asylum of animation for good reason. Their output is consistently awful (though there is something compulsive about their bad quality, hence the curiosity value in keeping watching them), with the exact same flaws in everything they've done so far with no improvement whatsoever. Nothing of theirs is worthwhile though some are more intelligence-insulting than others.
Although not a fluent Spanish speaker, Spain is tied with France as my and my family's most visited country and the language is beautiful, fiery and fascinating. So of course, finding a way of teaching Spanish and introducing it to younger audiences is always more than welcome. However, it could have been done far better than it was in 'Juan Ensina Espanhol' which turned out to be a waste of time. It could have been a real opportunity for Video Brinquedo to really step up and while nowhere near their worst (in fact it's one of their least bad which is saying nothing), being not as bad as 'Ratatoing', 'The Little Panda Fighter', 'Up in the Air: Balloon to the Rescue', 'Little and Big Monsters' and 'The Little Cars' franchise, it is a long way from a step down.
'Juan Ensina Espanhol' is hideously animated for starters. It honestly looks like it was made in a few minutes if that. Again it is filled with forced character designs, incredibly flat colours(even badly coloured crayon pictures have more refinement) and backgrounds that are lacking in any kind of fluidity coming across as static and simplistic instead. The music also sounds cheap and more suited to a low budget video game or a slots game, also never fitting and completely disconnected.
The writing once again is appalling, and doesn't even have unintentional humour value, with clunky and draggy exposition and nonsense and irrelevant chatter. Very rarely does it entertain or teach, adults familiar with the language are very likely to learn nothing new from what they already know and being aimed at kids and younger audiences they are better off learning Spanish in a class or school club that teach it. Adults will find it too juvenile and even kids will feel like it went well overboard trying to dumb down to them.
It is virtually plot-less, little more than an excuse to string words and sentences together with nothing fun or informative, and the adventures the characters embark on are incredibly tedious rather than exciting. Pacing is so dull often that the under 40 minute length feels longer.
Characters are bland and irritating, and there is no better news summing up the ear-grating and phoned-in voice acting.
Summing up, may be one of the least bad of Video Brinquedo's consistently dubious output but it is still terribly tedious viewing and frankly there are better ways of learning such a lovely language. 1/10 Bethany Cox