Monday 25 August 2014

BoJack Horseman Season One - Netflix Goes Animated

It took a while before I first heard about BoJack Horseman, and after I did it took a while for me to hear about it again. The trailer never really got to me, it seemed like just another wacky and absurd cartoon centred around adult themes. But when Netflix first tweeted they had released it, I gave it a go. And I'm glad I did.


It took a couple of episodes before it really took off, but when it did it was kind of amazing. The absurdity of the universe in which the series takes place gets more and more normal as you go on, like a good series would make you feel. You don't get surprised at the uncommon situations that takes place anymore, it just feels like they belong in the world. The show is actually funny, on the surface it doesn't seem like the kind of show I'd normally like, but the dry and matter-of-fact humour mixed in with the obscurity and an everyday life makes it a little bit special.

Though, to be fair, this isn't some unique snowflake of a show. It still follows a lot of the basic tropes of its genres, and some of the plot lines gets kind of annoying and repetitive. Not because they've done them before in the show, but because they've been done so often in other shows similar to it. There's the classic deadline episode, where the characters have to finish a task in far too little time, resulting in "hilarious" consequences. Don't get me wrong, the show doesn't do the tropes badly, they do them just fine, but you've seen it before and it end up taking away from the experience as a whole.

The thing that's perhaps the most interesting and fun about the show is how serial it is. There's a a central theme and plot to the entire season as a whole, but they still manage to make a lot of the episodes somewhat episodic. I think it's become more required these days to set up shows like this, but that's generally reserved for live action television. Animated shows are usually a bit more careful, and tend to stay with their episodic episodes that rather reference past events than set up future ones. But BoJack Horseman does a great job at keeping you interested throughout the season without letting you forget what it's all supposed to lead to.

I'm not a huge fan of the animation style, however. But that's more because of the large trend to have a "lazier" style than before than to do with BoJack Horseman in particular. You can see the different mouth shapes without any real morphing going on, and characters often just glide around on the screen rather than actually move. It's simpler and cheaper to generate that kind of animation, but it's also not as exciting to watch as more vivid frame-to-frame animation that for example early The Simpsons had a lot of. The style doesn't necessarily distract from what's happening, and I like the design/look of the characters. How they dress, how they behave, and how they generally appear, but I think utilising a different animation style would've benefited it more.

Overall it's a rather fun and good show. The characters and fun to watch, the situations are interesting to see unfold, the voices are good, and you actually care about a lot of what's going on. Sure, it might seem like a lot of other current animated shows, but it's still fun and entertaining. If you like shows like Bob's Burgers, Archer, The Simpsons, Futurama, or South Park, you will probably like this. It's worth it to give it a try at the very least, you won't regret it.

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