Showing posts with label adventure time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventure time. Show all posts
This past week I've been catching up on one of my favorite shows for a long time now. Adventure Time started in 2010 on perhaps the best childrens' channel of date, Cartoon Network. This show means so much to so many people, including me. Why is that? Is it the diverse and interesting cast of characters? Wonderful music? Its progressive tones? The utter refusal to be condescending to young viewers? All of the above, unsurprisingly.

Earlier in the year I wrote about the progressive nature of a lot of childrens' cartoons nowadays. When writing that I only briefly mentioned Adventure Time among many others as being mature for their target audience. Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra, Disney's Gravity Falls, and Cartoon Network's Steven Universe. It seems like it all started with Adventure Time. It mentions past same-sex relationships and even seems to deal with sexual identity if you analyze certain characters enough. What does this all mean. Not just that new and upcoming creators are brighter then ever but that they are fundamentally changing up the process in which the audience takes in their creations.

For this example I'm going to, obviously, use Finn from Adventure Time. When the show first started, in 2010, Finn was twelve. Now, 2016, he is 16. Okay, so the aging between the show and the characters aren't entirely one-to-one but that isn't exactly the point. Just think of the implications of having the characters in a show age the same as the audience. First of all, the show grows with its viewers. This means that the themes presented in the show itself can mature with the audience – at least that's the plan. At the start of the show, the plotlines were relatively simple. The Ice King is bad and he steals princesses. Finn and his magical dog Jake need to save them. Rinse and repeat. Right? No. Later in the series they give some backstory to Finn. He was an orphan, abandoned in the woods until Jake's parents saved him. Later still, Marceline the Vampire Queen gets some interesting stories as we learn about her complicated relationship with her father. Somewhere in the between we get some hints at the setting of this show. A post-apocalyptic Earth? Yes, really. The Land of Ooo is actually the aftermath of 1000 years of nuclear fallout. How do we know this for sure? In a Christmas episode where we learn of Ice King's tragic backstory as he witnessed the downfall of civilization and went mad (and immortal) in the process. That's only the beginning. I haven't even gotten into the masterful story craftsmanship that went into Finn's relationship with his father. The minds behind Adventure Time knew their audience and capitalized on the fact that they grow up and used it as an opportunity to keep the show interesting for the same audience that the show was originally crafted for, but older.

This show asks a lot from its audience. To the everyday viewer, every episode might just seem like a fun adventure for the whole family to enjoy. To a more inquisitive viewer, however, one can get a lot out of a single episode of adventure time. When talking about the deepness of this show I like to use the episode "All the Little People," one of my favorites. The episodes starts off with a surprisingly human conversation in which Finn asks whether it would be better to date someone who is exactly like you or your complete opposite and then goes on to ask if BMO and Ice King would make a good couple. Jake is perplexed by the latter but has an intriguing explanation for the former. He answers that love isn't about science and compatibility but that its really random of who will like who or the "pumps-'n'-bumps" as he so eloquently puts it. This sets up the entire theme for the episode. After this short exchange, Magic Man sneaks up and puts magic bag inside Finn's pocket. They discover that in the bag is miniature versions of a lot of citizens of Ooo. Back in the tree house, Finn starts interacting with them by putting them in various situations and spending days upon days just seeing what they will get up to. It turns out, Jake was right. Not only did the little people get into all kinds of strange relationships but the miniature version of Finn starts cheating on every girl that he goes out with. This causes the real Finn to step in and make everything right and, after a miniature dance party, the episode ends. This is a deep episode. It's funny and interesting to young kids but has a deep message that not many shows will dare to do. 

Before Adventure Time not many shows tried to do anything as new as this. In the 80s most cartoons were mostly about selling toys and in the 90s, while a lot of these shows were extremely creative they rarely had any deep morals while being entertaining. The 00's were special to a lot of people for its unique comedy but I believe that right now is when we can truly get excited. This show almost single-handedly changed the landscape of cartoons for years to come. It's been six years since the premiere of the show and, though I don't think anything can beat the Lich arc of a few years ago, it still shows no sign of stopping. Though I'm usually against television shows dragging themselves out until they become dry and uninspired (al a Spongebob) if this show keeps pumping out content like this then I might be okay with getting a few more years of it.



Monday, July 04, 2016
SPOILERS FOR Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Gravity Falls

I’ve noticed a very good trend that has been sweeping the world of American 2D animation. Characters now are just more varied than five or even ten years ago. When you take a step back this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The kids who watched the cartoons of the nineties, which were taking their own leaps in technology and inclusiveness, are now old enough to get into the animation field themselves and make a difference based on the world that they have lived in. That world, our world, is more accepting of the LGBT community, other religions, races, and of a diverse community. The first show that I can remember that became diverse was Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. The setting of this show is a fictional universe based on the culture of various Asian countries, mostly China. Though my five-year-old self didn’t realize it, I was learning about a culture that I had never encountered up to that point in my life. It has story arcs, characters, and locations taken straight out of ancient Chinese and Japanese lore. Compare this to Xiaolin Showdown which aired around the same time. This show can only be described as well… racist. The Chinese characters speak broken English, have yellow skin, and slanted eyes. It might have been funny to older parents watching with their kids in the early 2000’s but now it is just appalling. Avatar, however, treats their characters of differing races with respect. For example, the Northern and Southern water tribes are based on the Natives of colder climates such as Alaska. Even their cultures take inspiration from both those Natives and of the Chinese lore surrounding the entire series. The Earth kingdom is reminiscent of ancient China while the Fire Nation is taken straight out of Japan. The Air Nomads are even based on Buddhist Monks. A much younger me didn’t realize it that a show that I love so much to this day was teaching me of cultures all around the world.

This show is still hailed to be one of Nickelodeon’s best shows they’ve ever aired.
In 2012 Avatar: The Legend of Korra aired. Being the sequel to Avatar gave the fans what they have wanted for a long time: more of this great world that they had come to love. Something was different this time. The scenic Chinese-inspired landscapes were replaced with bustling city streets reminiscent of New York City. Some fans were upset, some were indifferent. I saw this as something amazing. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, all of the cultures were separated by oceans or walls. In The Legend of Korra, however, all of those cultures merged into the melting pot of New York, named Republic City in the show. Because of this, the plot became much more political and adult that opened a lot of people’s eyes. It didn’t explore its new diversity too much until the very last episode. The last five minutes of the series finale, Korra, our main character, and Asami, our main character’s best friend, are hinted at to being gay. Because Nick has very strict guidelines as to what their shows can show, whether the two characters were in fact in a relationship was really up to interpretation, at least until about a month after the release of the finale. The two creators of the show went to Tumblr and confessed that Korra and Asami were in fact in a relationship. I could be wrong, but from what I’ve heard this is the first American animated show made for kids to have a lesbian relationship. And then came Adventure Time.

Adventure Time is an entirely different beast of a show. Though it has an overarching plot, the focus is on its episodic based comedy. And it is hilarious. The show does know when to get serious. The two female characters of Marceline and Princess Bubblegum have been hinted many times in the past of having a past relationship; mostly through song. After years of fan speculation, at a Q&A panel for the show, the voice actor of Princess Bubblegum finally stated that her character and Marceline had once dated. Again, this is a kid’s show. Cartoon Network continued to show its diversity in the fairly new We Bare Bears. The show is simple enough. A group of bear brothers go out and do human things because they can. It’s a comedy so I didn’t expect much of it. There is one passive character, however, that did peak my interest. This character, to put it bluntly, is Muslim. In our Islamaphobic country this caught me entirely by surprise. She isn’t even main character. Rather, she is just in the background in some scenes and nobody pays mind to her. Not in a ‘I’m scared so I’m not going to talk to her’ sense but more of a ‘she’s a human being so I should respect her as such’ kind of a way. This, at least to me living on the boarder of the North and the South, is awesome! A show that doesn’t care what their characters’ race, religion, or sexuality is. Again, this is a kid’s show. Finally, Steven Universe. Don’t mind that this show is great and kids and adults can enjoy just fine. The diversity in this is off the charts. In this show, all the super-powered aliens known as gems are women. Not just this, but they also have relationships with other gems. Therefore, not only does this show support an almost entirely female cast, but all of those women are also gay… kind of. The show does say that because the gems can shapeshift, they can choose whatever form they want. That doesn’t matter. The creator, Rebecca Sugar, is trying to say ‘who cares that the characters are women; have, what we would see as, gay relationships; and are of varying races’. The important thing is that they are people first. The latest of this great trend is in Disney’s Gravity Falls where two male police officers have been hinted at in the past to be in a relationship. At the series finale, however, it was more or less confirmed by the show itself and later confirmed by the show’s creator, Alex Hirsch, and Disney.

I love that I live in a time where not only the shows made for adult audiences are getting a treatment of diversity. Shows like Avatar, The Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, We Bare Bears, Gravity Falls, and Adventure Time are all shows made for kids that are respectfully diverse to all kinds of people. These shows are teaching kids to be more open to those who aren't necessarily the majority. That is awesome.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
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