Why Ginger?

At first sight, the concept of As Told By Ginger looks a bit bland. Centered around a girl in junior high, her friends and family, it has been done before. The strengths are in the way it's worked out. Someone once compiled Ginger's strong points in three words: characters, story lines and clothes. Characters are those like Ginger, Darren and Dodie, evolving and rounded out far beyond the stereotypes you usually find in cartoons and children's series. The story lines refer to the unusual turns that are the trademark of Emily Kapnek's writing, while still never breaking characters.

The clothes part obviously referring to the relatively unique take on the character dresses and the rest of the environment, like the ever changing seasons. Certainly in the latter episodes this widens to excellent atmospheres created by animation, writing and great voice acting (see 'And She Was Gone', 'Heat Lightning' or 'Kiss Today Goodbye'). With all this it's hard to disagree with 'Runissknight' (at tv.com) who stated that it was an insult to call ATBG a cartoon, for all the negative connections. To him only the term 'animated series' was acceptable and I tend to concur.