Cartoon Corner: Adventure Time

Welcome to Cartoon Corner, the new weekly column where we explore the wonderful world of animation! (Not anime. We have a separate club for that.) Each week I’ll be doing either a review of a currently airing show, or a retrospective on something more nostalgic. So, word counts are tight here, let’s start with an obvious one!

Adventure Time! (Come on, grab your friends!) Adventure Time really is an ideal show to start this column with, as it’s a perfect example of a Cartoon Network kids’ show reaching many people outside its target audience on the basis of it being just damn good. At first it might be hard to see why – the show starts off rather unassumingly, dropping you without fanfare into the world of Ooo, and introducing you to Finn (the human) and Jake (the dog… who can stretch his body into limitless forms). More characters are introduced as time goes on, however, and each one leaves an impression in their own unique way. Early episodes are seemingly simple, but each one holds surprises and defies expectations. As the show progresses, though, it becomes clearer that it’s really something special. The surrealist humour leads to countless memorable scenes and episodes, and the show swings between diabetes-inducing saccharine and horrifying terror with hilarious abruptness. Eventually you learn more about the history of the magical world they inhabit, and the shocking truth of Ooo’s history casts the entire series in a whole new, bleak light, yet the overall tone of the show defiantly remains the same. Personally, I think that the best part of the show is how wonderfully it shows Finn growing up. Like Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, he is voiced by an actual kid (Jeremy Shada), whose voice breaks during the show, and it really adds an extra dimension to the notion of Finn maturing as time goes on. He experiences love, loss, pain and joy in ways that feel very organic and real for a person of his age, and most importantly, we see him growing up. Adventure Time isn’t my favourite cartoon of all time, but I completely understand how it gathered such a large fanbase, why it’s always a hugely popular cosplay choice at conventions and how it has kept running for 145 episodes (and counting). Simply put, it’s a smartly written, charming, light-hearted, yet often emotionally heavy adventure that I strongly recommend you make time for. (See what I did there?) Each one is about ten minutes long, so they’re perfect revision breaks for that holiday studying we’re all definitely going to do… Next time, a nostalgia trip: he’s gotta get back, back to the past, Samurai Jack!