Even ignoring the fact that Finn is called Pen in this version (after the short’s creator), the short has very little in common with the rest of the series. But the original short of Adventure Time made a huge splash, helped along by the very beginnings of viral video culture. If you just do that, the show will not disappoint, and, more often than not, it will offer something more, if you really look closely.Īdventure Time’s original iteration was an animated short produced for Nickelodeon’s Random! Cartoonsshowcase, which produced very little of interest besides Adventure Time, The Bravest Warriors (another Pen Ward series, available on YouTube), and a forgettable Nickelodeon cartoon called Fanboy and Chum-Chum. Mostly, with Adventure Time, you just sit back and watch the beauty and madness unfold. That can make it difficult to choose which episodes are essential, as the tone and content of various episodes can vary so wildly, but I did my best. Pretty simple, right? Not so with Adventure Time. The show very rarely follows a set structure, and often each episode feels like an independent animated short, unbeholden to any previous or following episode. I mean, if you’re a kid, you just want to watch Spider-Man punch The Joker or whatever until the day is saved, right? And then you want to see that again next week, and the week after. Most shows aimed generally at kids are rigidly bound to their formula, as to keep things from being too hard to digest. Any time you think that the show has nothing more to show you, it shows you something you wouldn’t have even thought anyone would think of, not even in some fever dream.Īdventure Time often throws out the usual formula of children’s television, which is what makes it utterly unique in its field. There is no other show out there as creative as Adventure Time. Pen Ward’s vision, helped along with some veterans of other shows, such as Spongebob Squarepants and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, gave the series an impressive pedigree of solid writing, animation, and world-building. The other reason for the show’s incredible success? It’s just really, really, really good. And others saw it that way too: the short was nominated for an Annie Award before even airing on television fan artists immediately latched onto its main characters the video has been shared and watched innumerable times by innumerable young adults and kids who want to feel like young adults, not to mention adults who want to feel like young adults. It was one of those things that, even though it was just a short little seven-minute video, felt like something more important. The first is the Internet: the original short was one of the first videos I remember watching on YouTube, and, at 16, I was hooked. The success of the show can be chalked up to a few things. Now shows like Steven Universe (created by Adventure Time veteran Rebecca Sugar) and Gravity Falls (which reads like a version of Twin Peaks for kids), along with the phenomenal miniseries Over the Garden Wall (created by another Adventure Time veteran, Pat McHale) have taken up the torch, but for a time, there was just Adventure Time. Adventure Time is the elder statesman of this new wave of generation-crossing animated shows. Now, you can’t look at the state of children’s television without playing “spot-the- Adventure-Time-influence”. When Pen Ward first created the Adventure Time with Pen and Jake short in 2006, he was still just a fresh-faced CalArts grad with a multitude of ideas, trying his hardest to find a home for them, and Nickelodeon passed on his original pilot because they thought it would be too weird for the kids out there. They cross paths with the sociopathic and mentally unstable Ice King (Kenny), the megalomaniac ruler of the Candy Kingdom, Princess Bubblegum (Walch), 1000-year-old self-proclaimed Vampire Queen, Marceline (Olivia Olson), and any number of wacky weirdos across their episodic adventures. The Setup: In the post-apocalyptic acid-soaked fantasyland of Ooo, a young boy named Finn (Shada), presumably the last human alive, and his magic dog Jake (DiMaggio), go on various adventures to help the less fortunate, the unfortunate, the more fortunate, and, more often than not, themselves. Where to watch: Seasons 1-5 (and the first half of season six) available on Hulu Plus, stray episodes available for free on Six Seasons on Cartoon Network, 2010-Present Starring Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio, Hynden Walch and Tom Kenny Boom! Comics “Adventure Time #5” alternate cover image courtesy of Created by Pendleton Ward
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