Tag Archive for animation

What’s Changed: Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1

Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 is the new Adult Swim series from the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Actually, it’s the same show with a new name. Meatwad, Frylock, and Master Shake are back to solve crimes and fail miserably.

If you know anything about Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you know the crime-solving aspect introduced in the pilot was very rarely picked up on again. I can think of one other episode (the leprechauns scamming people out of their belongings) that involved an actual investigation. The rest of the time, random things happened to talking food products. It’s funny because of the absurdity.

Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1, if the creators stay with the premise, takes place nine years in the future. Master Shake freezes himself in the hopes of waking up to a world of bountiful crimes to solve for all detective levels. Instead, he wakes up to a world where everyone is on the honor’s system. If you do something bad, you’re vaporized.

I don’t think the practically perfect in every way world or the time traveling will be canon. What does seem to be a permanent change is the quality of animation. The series has never looked this good before. There are textures and lighting effects that other animated shows have used for years while Aqua Teen Hunger Force stuck to flat graphics and spliced in explosions.

If Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 is just a better animated version of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, it should be a good show. May it run for another hundred episodes.

You can watch the two-part series/season premiere at the Adult Swim website.

Franchise, Franchise, Franchise: Yugioh’s 4th Series is Coming

I joke with some of my friends that I only watch the anime designed to sell me a product directly. I’m talking shows like Pokemon (video games), Naruto (action figures, video games), and Yugioh (card game, video games). There’s comfort in knowing when you’re being advertised to directly and these shows make it no secret that they only exist to sell merchandise. I can respect that.

The worst offender has to be Yugioh, which is based off a manga series about a trading card game. So it’s a comic about a trading card game that became a TV show produced by the company who produced the actual trading card game. If you watch any episode of this franchise, you’re going to see at least one commercial for a Yugioh product. Shoot, almost every card used in the game is a commercial for a Yugioh product since most of them are available to play in the real trading card game.

Get ready to be tempted to open up your wallets for an assortment of glossy cardboard and Nintendo games because Yugioh is entering its fourth original television series. The first series was an introduction to the game through the similarly named Yugi character. The second series, DX, was about a school for dueling and eventually some bizarre dark underground of dueling. The third series, 5D’s, introduced motorcycle dueling. I wish I was joking. The characters used tricked out motorcycles to race and duel at the same time.

Now we’re entering Yugioh Zexal, which is actually a pretty decent direction for the show. There’s a new dueling device (isn’t there always?)–an eyepiece that lets the duelist see the 3D holographic dueling arena anywhere they go–and a new spiky-haired protagonist, Yuma. Yuma is the worst duelist in his school (aren’t they always?). He has one funny friend and one girl friend who is not his girlfriend. He has an elderly guardian–his grandmother–and a smart sometimes mentor–his sister.

The twist that actually elevates this a little higher than the usual “buy more product” theme is the introduction of Astral. Astral is a ghostly presence whose memories have been split into 99 specialty number cards (hmm…kind of sounds like that short run Scooby Doo series, or that mediocre horror series, only those were about capturing ghosts and demons). Only in defeating the controllers of these 99 cards can he regain his actual form and purpose. He is forced into a partnership with Yuma and together they stumble into these duels.

There’s a level of absurdity to this Zexal series that has been missing from the other three series of Yugioh. The players still take the game very seriously, but a wise-cracking quasi-ghost and an evil conspiracy of numbers means the usual dark underbelly of the game–cults trying to raise the ancient Egyptian monsters and/or specific legendary dragons–cannot become as deathly serious as it usually does. So help me, if it turns out that there’s an ancient mob of duelists fighting to keep the 99 cards separate, the show will actually become campier and more entertaining. Nothing shy of killing off Astral after Yuma loses too many duels could sink this show’s bizarre entertainment factor.

How serious can you take a cartoon where the lead character has a bright pink stripe in his hair and shouts at everything? Somehow, bumbling fool Joey Wheeler from the original series sent his past self into the distant future before he learned the basic mechanics of the game. The latest series might actually put Yugioh: The Abridged Series out of commission without anymore threats of lawsuits. It’s impossible to lampoon a show that has become a campy parody of its own faults. Sell those cards while you can, Konami, because I have a feeling this new series isn’t going to win you many big-spending converts.

Instant Watch: Heartfelt and Honest Portrayals of Mental Health

Can you believe this post was originally going to be about foreign prestige animation? It’s true. I had a whole slew of adult, experimental, and critically acclaimed animated films not made in America all set up in my queue to talk about in the context of one token foreign and/or art animated feature at the Oscars.

Then I saw Mary and Max and connected it to a much more intriguing theme.

Mental health is an issue that often gets slighted in American discourse. If someone is crazy in fiction, they’re locked up in the attic or shipped away to an abusive asylum where they plot to escape. People get up in arms that the narrative films are exploitative and the documentary films are practically canonizing the sick as a greater “other” to be dealt with. It’s discouraging to say the least.

Thankfully, services like Netflix exist where we can find a wide range of films with different perspectives on the issue. I like to call this trio of films Heartfelt and Honest Portrayals of Mental Health. Some are great, some are off-putting, but all are sensitive and realistic without being exploitive or coddling of their subject.

Film Review: Rango (2011)

Rango is one of the most bizarre and stylish animated films to be made in America in many years. Part existential ruminations on identity and theater, part absurd humor, part alienation effect through constant suggestion of death directly to the audience, and part Western, Rango manages to meld many disparate elements into a stylish film that just lands close enough to being a cohesive story to count.

Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp) is a chameleon with an identity crisis. In the opening scene, he is putting on an original production of a hybrid Shakespearean tragedy with a headless Barbie doll, a wind up mechanical fish, a plastic palm tree, and a dead bug. He views himself as the hero, though decides after an argument with the tree (that’s all in his head as the non-living things are not anthropomorphized here) that he needs an ironic turn of events to create conflict. Cue his terrarium flying out of his owner’s car without the family noticing anything went wrong with their packing job.