Adventure Time

While DS is at camp and the Old Man is driving down  to Tampa to see Black Sabbath, I'm left home pondering the existence of the animated universe.  Not to say I don't mind being alone - I'm on vacation and being on vacation from everything and everyone is pretty crucial, I'm realizing.  While I ache for my family, I also know that I need this time to myself.  'Nuf said.

It's about time I finally got around to writing about Adventure Time.  I realize that, as DS grows up, our tastes will diverge but for right now I feel somewhat vindicated for putting my foot down about watching vapid cartoons that had no redeeming quality (if you want a short list of those cartoons, message me - I'm not going to be judged for my opinions of what passes for children-oriented animated fare).  Even as I've recounted in the past that I've made some bad parenting decisions, I still feel at least like I steered the debate  to "why is this cartoon valuable to watch?" rather than "you can only watch cartoons I deem to be okay."  But out of it comes an appreciation of animation that is entertaining and trying at least to say something.  Adventure Time is one of those cartoons.

But while it's entertaining, Adventure Time is also pretty dark.  It's one of those cartoons that I saw a couple of minutes of and decided it was ground-breaking enough in its content that it would make up for the simplistic artistic style.  But the simplistic style is also a mask; the latest episodes tell more of the back story behind Ice King and Marceline, and the story of the world that became the Land of Ooo - I would write about the specific episode, but why rehash a good summary already with my own confused, theoretical take - and the story is pretty harrowing, but with the stylized character design, it seems less heinous, somehow.

If one were to look at the more recent dystopian worlds, they usually involve some kind of huge catastrophic upheavel; in Hunger Games, it appears to be the punishment of proles who dared war against the rich; in Adventure Time, it is the apocalyptic nature of the world inhabited by Ice King and Marceline a millenium ago.  So, is Ooo, then, a utopia?  No way!  Dystopia does not beget utopia, it only begets more of the same.  It negates itself, which is why Ooo is so non-descript (how many candy kingdoms have we seen rise and fall, my friends?) - Princess Bubblegum and the rest of the inhabitants of Ooo are mutants, facsimiles of humans, anthropomorphized objects that recall a past that is so far removed from the present as to not really exist at all.  This is the woo-hoo point where conspiracy theories dwell; DS watched the series Bravest Warriors and apparently there is a similarity to Finn in two of the characters so Finn is their offspring.  I don't understand!  But I just started watching Bravest Warriors - so far not as good as Adventure Time but I'm willing to give it a chance.

Anyway, so what?  It is not unheard of for a writer to string together different parts of the same universe and call the thing a narrative.  It would not surprise me that Adventure Time's creator, Pendleton Ward, has super-seriously thought the narrative through; it's just a matter of whether he can keep the show on the air long enough to unfold more of the story.

Swiped the photo for this post from Comics Alliance and their lovely selection of AT covers.

"What are you watching, Mommy?"

The last episode of Bleach.  Never thought I'd see the end of this anime, for realz.  I started watching it via Netflix in 2008 or so.  I never even considered introducing it to DJ because it's really for older teens, and as far as I know he didn't seem interested, anyway, but the night before last I was watching the very last episode, was halfway through and DJ walks in and says, "what's that?"  I explained and he decided to watch the last episode.  I said, "are you sure you want to start with the last episode?  Don't you want to see the earlier stuff first?"  But he was all whatever so, whatever.  He hasn't been clamoring to watch any more of it, probably testament to how boring the final season was.  Oh well, it's something he'll probably get into in a few years.

The show we've been watching avidly, though, and this is one of those Bad Parenting Anime Moments, is Gintama, based on the manga by Hideaki Sorachi.  It's a gag manga, and the anime follows the manga pretty faithfully.  I like how it takes place in an alternative Edo (the continual return to Edo in Japanese media has been an interest of mine), where aliens come to earth and take a liking to Japan and so they settle there.  The samurai fight back but are overpowered by the alien technology, and now samurai have been discredited and restricted from having real swords.  So Gintama, a former freedom fighter against the aliens, is an odd jobs samurai who is helped by an alien girl named Kagura and a student samurai, Shinpachi.  DJ is still wrapping his head around the aliens in Japan and the fact that Kagura is an alien yet Gintama is okay with her, but he loves the overall story.

The show's for older teens and adults, kind of like Bleach, and there is actually more adult situational stuff than I'm comfortable with.  But I can't help it, it is a funny show and even though some of the humor is geared towards 10 year-old minds, it's not something 10 year-olds should probably watch.  Maybe I'm being too much of a prude, but that's kind of a moot point, anyway.