A waka waka down memory lane: the 1982 Pac-Man cartoon

In the world of the cartoon, Pac-Man is in charge of security for the Power Pellet Forest, the source of all the delicious pellets that allow him to eat the clothes off Ghost Monsters. Said ghosts, given orders by a generic evil mastermind with a pickled egg for a head ("Mezmeron"), are constantly trying to find the location of the forest and defeat Pac-Man. Pac-Man responds by — well, usually by running away. This becomes a theme.

Anyway, within three minutes, the ghosts have chased Pac-Man to the edge of a forest (hmmm!) and are about to eat him or something when ... Ms. Pac-Man arrives! Her name is Pepper! That's adorable! Pepper walks over to a nearby vending machine, gets out some Power Pellets, and then she and Pac-Man eat the Ghost Monsters, even culminating with a Lady and the Tramp-style eat-and-kiss. Except instead of a noodle, they're romantically eating ANOTHER SENTIENT BEING WHO IS ONE OF THE SHOW'S MAIN CHARACTERS.

We're all watching a plan to kill Pac-Man, from the perspective of the architect of his murder.

Mezmeron watched his cohorts re-die via a satellite network and a monitor — which gives him a view of events from overhead. In other words, we already have a canonical justification for the layout of the arcade game screen. We're all watching a plan to kill Pac-Man, from the perspective of the architect of his murder. Every time we play.

The rest of the episode concerns a plot to, uh, float the president's house away, for ... some ... reason, and culminates in Mezmeron being led to a decoy forest, and then eaten by a bunch of Pac-citizens. Meanwhile, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man lead the ghosts to the actual forest, for no discernible reason.

However, even given this show-ending knowledge, the ghosts are still defeated and humiliated. These are some profoundly bumbling ghosts. After all, their plan is to locate the source of Power Pellets, and there are vending machines on sidewalks.

After experiencing this first episode — all of this happens within eleven minutes, by the way — I don't know if I have any more insight into the backstory of Pac-Man. I do know that I must keep watching, if for no other reason than that the spheroid dog Chomp-Chomp hasn't shown up yet.