OH. MY. GLOB. We are entering a golden age of television, my friends. An age of peace, acceptance and tolerance, an age where a man or a woman can admit to watching 4 hours of cartoons on a Saturday night and not be judged.
With that in mind, I’m here to tell you about one of the most amazing shows on television now: Adventure Time. I could tell you the premise behind it, but to be honest, saying that you really have to watch this show about a boy and his magical dog/brother who go on adventures across the Land of Ooo doesn’t really even begin to sell it…
I hope that most of you are of the right age to remember the best days of Cartoon Network, when The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Lab really redefined animation as an acceptable medium for great TV. Cartoon Network is now going through what I would identify as a second great era. It’s had a lot of hit-and-miss, forgettable stuff over the past decade, but with the introduction of its new flagship shows, including Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and (bear with me) My Little Pony, we are seeing the advent of some bloody fantastic animation.
Never mind that it seems a little twee at first sight; there are some comedy gems within Adventure Time‘s slightly bizarre scriptwriting, and I will unashamedly say that I love what Pendleton Ward, the series creator, has done. Adventure Time may not have as many big-name animators, but that doesn’t impact on the show in the slightest – each episode is as quirky and incredible as ever.
The show has gained somewhat of a cult following, including Father Ted and Black Books writer, Graham Linehan, who aptly describes Adventure Time as “golden-age Simpsons amazing”. It’s really not too much of a leap to say that Adventure Time has helped reinvent animation. It has brought it to the masses rather than just appealing to snot-nosed children high on e-numbers on a Saturday morning, much in the same way as Pixar made seeing an animated film acceptable for the parents as much as the kids. Take the overarching plot of Adventure Time as an example: you could take it at face value, and admire the brightly coloured Candy Kingdom and its sugary-sweet citizens, or you could dig a little deeper and find out that the entire thing is based on post-apocalyptic Earth after a nuclear holocaust. How fantastic is that?
If I haven’t managed to convince you with my hipster animation rant, then let me leave you with a few simpler reasons to watch Adventure Time: the voice acting includes the guys behind Bender from Futurama and Spongebob Squarepants; one of the characters is a flying rainbow unicorn that can only speak in Korean; and it has recently been voted as one of the 25 best animated TV series of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
For whatever the reason, you must watch Adventure Time as soon as possible, though particularly so you can find out why everyone who’s ever watched it read this entire article in the voice of Lumpy Space Princess.
Kate Gray
exeposedev 