Yuru the Amazonian Princess

Welcome Back, Today's subject is a Peruvian PR nightmare brought to life.

Yashim Bahamonde came up with Yuru the Amazonian Princess, a story about a spunky chief's daughter who goes on an Amazonian adventure. Unfortunately, because most of the show's other producers are so money driven, said story was sloppily melting into something so bad that it's been mocked by the majority of Peruvian society to this day. 

To play the devil’s advocate, although the Pisco-born pop star Mayra Goñi is actually alright as an actress (though rather unpleasant to deal with as a person at times, so it’s complicated), it’s unfortunately more likely that she’s still an overused subject for many Peruvian gossip mags, meaning that I don’t think I’ll criticise her and Yashim as downright hard as the money driven producers behind this travesty. 

Since it starred Mayra herself, Yuru the Amazonian Princess is also an indirect influence for various contemporary jungle works, such as the Zelada Brothers’ Ainbo for Tunche and Avi Arad’s alright spin on ERB’s Tarzan and Jane for Netflix. Bear in mind that the nutty show itself starred the same multicultural cast of Peruvians as multiple kinds of terribly executed characters, which is a delight in an ironic way. But the most obvious travesties are just for the show stealers themselves. 

A young Mayra Goñi did her best to portray the titular girl as much as possible, but at the cost of becoming a merely indirect fashion template for the Ainbo movie’s titular character, who is also from a fictional tribe (albeit a different one inspired by Shipibo Conibo river dwellers). A similar change has also happened to the heroine’s own ill-executed family relatives; as they both turn out to deserve something better, since the lack of reasonably good internet research or even a bit of cultural competence was much more embarrassingly common at the time it was made in that country. Do keep in mind that Ubaldo Huamán played Yuru’s chieftain grandpa Wari, whereas Norka Ramirez was acting as Yuru’s mother Nuna. Oscar Lopez Arias was Charly Pino the veterinarian. 

Lucho Cáceres and Christian Ysla were the actors for main baddies Tunche and Culebra, the worst executed Team Rocket Expies imaginable! For 25 episodes, they would’ve been more awesomely villainous, but instead come out as unintentionally cringeworthy. Magdyel Ugaz played Yuru's older friendly rival Maki, who is both Tunche's likely foster daughter and Charly Pino's girlfriend.

The main reason why this show deserves to get mocked both in Peru and outside of it even today, is that it has walked out along with fellow bad telenovelas, so that a sea of crappy reality tv shows could run so fast and then fall down. For people outside of the nation, its entertainment industry is still run by CEOs more corrupt than even Mexico’s own (already messed up) examples, which means that nothing will change much at all until something that shakes the system will come out. 

If not for too many unnecessary rewrites, plus the obvious lack of reliable research in multiple forms (or even an absence of basic cultural competence) and questionable casting choices, the Yuru show would’ve been just ok. However, it’s still a so bad it’s good doozy thanks to all the higher ups who modified it too much and screwed it over before it even aired. 

To play another devil’s advocate, it’s also because the permanent stagflation of Peru’s entertainment industry will still be in more obvious spirals until the super rich people who made fellow Peruvian travesties happen in real time will inevitably retire and then pass away.