Sunday 23 December 2012

Adventure Time (But only Season One)


Adventure Time with Finn and Jake (But only Season One)


The Premise

Adventure Time is a western cartoon series created by a guy named Pendleton Ward, about a young human boy named Finn the Human and his best friend Jake the Dog, as the opening theme tune exposits. Like My Little Pony, Adventure Time is another cartoon aimed at a younger audience that captured the hearts and minds of the internet's collective mental age and went viral. Lots of people I've seen on the internet have become hugely infatuated with its characters, plots and general themes. Citing excellent character development, dark and mature themes and surreal character designs etc.

But what did I think of it? I thought it was ok, sometimes good, sometimes adequate, and the reason behind not liking it much much more, I suspect, is because most of the things people like about this series only come about during the very later seasons, I've read that the stories take a dark and dramatic turn in later seasons, with complex and realistic character motivations, but I'm not there yet, I'm still watching the earlier episodes where everything is a relatively straightforward children's cartoon besides a few mature jokes that slipped past the censors, which, considering most modern cartoons, would've been edgier to not put those jokes in.

The series seems ok at the moment, but honestly the only reason I've watched as far as the end of the first season is this upcoming dramatic turn I've heard so much about, it's cute, kind of unique and ultimately harmless but it's just not drawing me in. And what's more, the eventual dramatic turn and dynamic characters shouldn't take so long to kick in, because when I was like 5 years old, I watched Toy Story, and ever since then, and indeed countless years before then, stories that contain greatly written characters and mix lighthearted adventures with dramatic and even dark turns have always been the RULE rather than the exception in a good animated product. And I don't think that should be this series' only selling point, because I think that would be selling it short, it's not some bold new innovation, it's a fine example of how cartoons have always been evolving.

Like I said earlier, the series is ok, not bad by any stretch, which is why I'm going to say what DOES work. One of the things that struck me earliest is the fact that this, admittedly, is one of the only cartoons in ages has an actual child actor to voice somebody who's meant to be 12 years old (Finn the Human), this is what makes me look forward to the series' eventual dramatic turn, because I skipped ahead into a series 4 episode and the kid (Jeremy Shada I think his name is.) had a noticeably deeper voice that suits his growth in character and makes him a lot more believable, something I can't remember liking since I ploughed through Dragon Ball and took note of Goku's slowly deepening voice. The rest of the voices are ok. John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender in Futurama, voices Jake the Dog, which I noticed without having to look at the credits, he's the more distinctive of the voices besides Finn because he can be recognised quite easily in whatever he's in.

The Art


I also like some, but not all of the character designs. I think Finn the Human's design in particular is very inspired, especially with his iconic hat/balaclava/skinned bear thing. I also like the jointless limbs in all of the characters, it makes the Animation seem more free flowing and malleble and removes unnecessary complications. I think the best artistic choice though is the faces, Finn in particular has a very expressive face considering it's just two dots and a line, the lip syncing and the expressions he shows are also very unique and expressive, the exaggerations of certain emotions brings to mind Spongebob Squarepants or Arin 'Egoraptor' Hanson's 'Awesome Series' on Youtube. And as mentioned earlier, his voice actor really helps make him more believable, I think everything about his design is just top notch.


The other character designs however seem less interesting to me. All of the other characters are none-human, and generally just anthropomorphised inanimate objects, still with the same kind of face as Finn, but without a voice matching the face that sells it. Though this only applies to some characters, there ARE several characters who have designs that match their voices, such as the Lumpy Space Princess.

One last thing on the art that also pleases me is the fact that they reintroduced the Looney Tunes styled painted Title Cards to introduce the episodes, I always think those are a nice touch and it's a shame more cartoons didn't follow suit besides this one and Batman: TAS.

I do have one irk about the art however, and it's the fact that the lineart is all thin, this is almost certainly just a personal gripe but I've gotten very used to cartoons in recent days that have varying outline thicknesses depending of the various masses of the characters body parts. I dunno, it makes it seem like the characters have more depth to me.


Conclusion

Run of the mill but harmless plots, settings and characters, enjoyable art and Animation. I don't think that it will light anybody's world on fire over the age of the target audience and hasn't gotten ahold of the hype. If you're like me, overage and paying close attention to the hype, well I'm just waiting for it to surprise me.

I'll return to this series at a later date and see if there is some truth to the hype that I haven't encountered yet.

Monday 6 February 2012

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

The Premise

I started watching Haruhi Suzumiya first out of boredom, then out of intrigue, then finally out of interest. It took a while for me to realize I kind of liked it, but it was worth it up until that point.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, I'd like to say, is a slice of life kind of Anime (I.E, a series based around the amusing lives of High Schoolers.), but I'm not sure it even counts as that, the story goes to too many places to be considered a slice of anybody's life. The story chronicles the life of a seemingly ordinary high school student named Kyon, if that shockingly generic summation leads you to believe that this Anime is yet another generic high school anime, you'd be quite wrong, as Kyon, unlike a lot of protagonists, is not a loveable idiot or a shrinking violet kind of nerd, instead he's a sarcastic, 'seen it all' kind of character, whose morbid curiosity with the eccentricities of fellow classmate Haruhi Suzumiya leads Kyon to becoming friends with her.



After their meeting, Kyon learns of Haruhi's goal in life, to befriend an alien, a time traveller and/or a psychic and hang out with them, of course, none of these exist as far as either of them know, but Kyon nonetheless inspires Haruhi to form a school club around her obcession. After gathering three students for their club, the main cast is assembled.

What I like about the cast is that they're not merely generic Anime character archetypes, they're several generic Anime character archetypes, making them oddly distinct. All of them have their obvious tells, but also have completely different tells. I wish I could be more specific with this, but I had nothing spoiled when I watched this anime, so I'm trying to keep that to a minimum, because it'll certainly improve the experience.

What I can tell you though, is that all 13 episodes are all full of colour, character and warmth, yet in parts with a surprising amount of realism, along with a few twists that I myself barely believed when I was watching it, along with an ending I totally expected, but was definitely satisfying.

When I first attempted to discern which Anime I would write about, my choice was either this or Lucky Star, both are similar genres, have similar setups and even similar characters (I suspect because they were both done by Kyoto Animation.), but I decided to talk about this one because if I were to talk about Lucky Star in full, I'd mostly be talking about how the art's a nice change, the characters are funny, but there's no real shockers in it, whereas Haruhi has all that and much more. Lucky Star has a more laid back story where not much of anything goes on, which can be better for some viewers, but not for others. I personally like both, but I like a good story which is why Haruhi wins for me

The Art
Quite unusually, the art is pretty detailed for such a short and lower profile anime, the bright colours and lighting are what makes the world of this series come alive. If this series had a dark, grim tone to it, the visual aesthetic would be rather distracting for me, but the look goes with the tone of the characters and story, that is to say, not a bad bone in either. The animation is always something I rarely have much diverse criticism for when it comes to Anime, lots of shots where the only animation is the lip flaps on the speaking character, and the occasional fluid and dynamic shot, though in fairness, there are more of those than I expected, which is definitely a point in its favour.

One thing I did want to talk about with the art though, is the fact that there's art at all. If you were to recount the introductory episode to somebody without telling them it was an anime, they might think that, besides the Generic Anime Cliche characters, there's little reason for it to not be live action, as everything that happens could quite reasonably be filmed. But that isn't the case at all, the animation and the art, neither more than the other, help add to the surreality of the series, despite it's seemingly ordinary setup, and as I said before the way everything looks helps it to come to life much more than if it were literally live action. It kind of reminds me of Simon Pegg's TV series Spaced, I always felt that would've been improved it it were animated, you may not get this but watching Haruhi Suzumiya I definitely get some cartoony, Spaced vibes from this series.

Conclusion
If you're looking for a new Anime to get into, look no further, my one critique I can think of of this Anime is that it's definitely not for people who've never watched other Animes, it's length and Japanese-y tone make it more of a series you'd watch in between other series. But, I doubt that wouldn't be a problem since most people who have heard enough about it to watch it are no doubt well travelled in that area.