Cartoons!

[Tanukitsune]

I'm watching Over The Garden Wall, I was going to ask if it's supposed to remind me of old B&W cartoons, but it seems I already got my answer.

 

The tavern girl in episode even sounds and looks like Betty Boop to me. And yeah, the Highwayman's song was ridiculously well animated and creepy.

 

To be completely honest, when I first saw footage of the show I thought it was a movie. I'm glad it's just a mini-series with an ending, there are too many good cartoons and it's hard to me to keep up with them. I haven't watched Korra in weeks and frankly, I'm afraid to, I didn't really enjoy the few episodes I saw and I'm afraid if I watch the show it will just confirm that I just don't like it anymore.

[Tanukitsune]

I'd hate to make another post since the last one, but I haven't been gaming much with NaNoWriMo and WOW, the ending of Over The Garden Wall is absolutely sublime!
 
I love how the story starts almost whimsical and gets darker and darker near the end.

 

The beast said it was true darkness, but it was just a shadow, that can't exist without a light of a soul? I didn't really get the symbolism here. Did he represent death or a truth Wirt didn't want to face?

 

What happened to Woodsman Daughter? Did she never die?

 

The show is a bit or jerk with the train scare, did they want us to think Wirt and Greg were dead or a coma?

 

Can we call the ending ambiguous? It could have all been a dream, but we get to see the world again. But in the end they Wirt wakes up to Greg talking to his friends and I assume they want us to think he was telling them about the dream world.

 

Frankly, the show is practically perfect, I only wish the ending was more ambiguous, like I said, it felt like it wanted to, but by showing us the world, it throws the ambiguity out the window. :\ 

[namman siggins]

I'm finally watching Over the Garden Wall and the way Greg's Frog is drawn reminded me of something.  For a while I couldn't place what the frog's look reminded me off until I picked up some Frank comics and there it was! Greg's Frog reminds me of how Jim Woodring draws frogs in his comics.

[GraysonEvans]

I watched Ernest & Celestine a month ago and I am still thinking about it now, I would have to say it is the best animated movie I have ever seen.

[syntheticgerbil]

I should watch it undubbed one day. All that was available was the dubbed version in theatres. The celebrity voice actors just aren't voice actors. Everyone sounded too strained. That said, I did enjoy the movie.

[dium]

I finally got off my ass and... sat down to watch Over The Garden Wall, which is now my fav TV of 2014.
 
Literally the only thing that even remotely bothered me:

the unexplained epilogue to the woodsman's story where his daughter comes back. It felt like a forced happy ending that came out of nowhere and made that whole thread ambiguous in an unsatisfying way (as supposed to ambiguous in a cool evocative way, which is how it felt for most of the show).

 

Sorry I know everybody else watched this a month ago.

[deleted user]

_

[SuperBiasedMan]

More Over the Garden Wall

Ehh, my take on the entire point was this:

The beast is made of lost souls (as you can see in the screenshot tegan posted earlier here), people who it managed to isolate and take hold of. It told the woodsman that he must keep the lamp lit with the special people trees in order to keep his daughter alive, but I think in reality that kept the beast alive and imprisoned the woodsman's daughter along with the other lost souls. It is ambiguous and I'm unsure, but I thought that Greg being fine was supposed to be like the beast lost his hold on him as well as the other lost souls.

[dium]

Spoiler convo woo!

That makes sense, and it's how I choose to interpret it. I totally get the decision to lighten things up for the target-aged audience, and it didn't take away the awesome feeling I had upon finishing the show. Still, it wasn't a highlight. I like dark (or neutral) ambiguities fine, but happy ambiguities can feel a little bit deus ex machine-y.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Sorry people who haven't seen it

Yeah, I get that. It did also feel like it was a tacked on happy bit to me, especially because EVERYONE is happy in the end. I only thought the stuff I said above after seeing tegan's screencap and realising the nature of the beast. I probably just half want to make it better because it's also one of my favourite TV things ever.

(go watch it)

[Ben X]

Hooray, Adventure Time seasons 3 and 4 are up on Netflix (although you can only get all the episodes if you live in Sweden, Denmark or Brazil)!

[GraysonEvans]

I think season 5 is my favorite personally, the writing has gotten kinda crazy and oddly honest. I love it a lot

[tegan]

I haven't watched any of Korra since season one ended, but I guess the series finale from last night made it pretty clear that Korra/Asami is canon, so now I guess I have to watch it.

[tegan]

That spoilered thing above is kind of super important; seriously. I'm gonna talk about a thing that does spoil the finale of Legend of Korra (which I have not actually watched yet), so be warned.

 

 

So in the past couple of months there have been a couple of similar stories from the cast and crew of Adventure Time and Gravity Falls about attempting to include LGBT characters in the narrative and why they were ultimately cut, and in both cases it was revealed that the companies involved weren't concerned with domestic backlash (eg: angry Conservative parents) the way they might have been ten years ago, but with the reaction in foreign markets where homosexuality was still outlawed. Gravity Falls specifically wasn't allowed to use a transgender symbol and an elderly lesbian couple in "The Love God" because Disney expected it might prompt certain countries to drop the network altogether and was sadly too big of a risk to take. As you may recall, Korra was pulled from television earlier this year and made the switch to being distributed exclusively digitally, and I can't help but wonder if moving the protagonist into what is pretty clearly a queer relationship is the reason why they did it. Not in a "how can we get this off the air" way, but in a "how can we work around this arbitrary standard" way. I'm really interested to see where this kind of thing might go in a few years time.

 

Either way, it's about fucking time kids got a canonically queer protagonist in cartoons. 24-year-old me is flipping her shit, I can only imagine what teenage me would have felt.

[slime]

One of the creators of Korra shared this lovely anecdote from a long-time fan:

http://michaeldantedimartino.tumblr.com/post/105667758470/avatar-mom-i-have-cried-about-so-many-things-in

 

[The tumblr link contains spoilers for the same part of the finale that tegan is talking about.]

 

 

EDIT: Bryan Konietzko (co-creator of Korra) wrote a blog post about it. The post puts into words a lot of thoughts and feelings I (and many other people, I'm sure) have about the subject in general:

http://bryankonietzko.tumblr.com/post/105916338157/korrasami-is-canon-you-can-celebrate-it-embrace

 

Michael DiMartino (the other co-creator) wrote his own shorter post as well:

http://michaeldantedimartino.tumblr.com/post/105916326500/korrasami-confirmed-now-that-korra-and-asamis

[Brannigan]

Andrea Romano, voice caster/director extraordinaire was on the nerdist podcast. Cool interview and anecdotes. Hearing her say "duck tales...wooo ooo!" and saying you can't not say it that way was great.

[Twig]

I finished Over the Garden Wall last night and... man that was real good. Don't have much to add but yeah. Real good.

[SecretAsianMan]

Tegan slowly introduced me to Steven Universe over the weekend.  We watched about half the current episodes thus far.  Neat little show.  Steven himself is kind of annoying and his shenanigans are starting to wear on me a bit (a problem I have with almost every character who's an idiot that manages to survive/save the day because of some goofy reason instead of actual competence).  But the show's got a lot of nuances and quirks and hints at a lot of things which is the kind of stuff I love.  So I'll probably keep watching it.

[dibs]

I finished Over the Garden Wall last night and... man that was real good. Don't have much to add but yeah. Real good.

 

I watched it over the weekend and I loved it.

[Griddlelol]

As of this morning, I've watched every episode of The Regular Show that's available on Netflix 4 times. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Tegan slowly introduced me to Steven Universe over the weekend.  We watched about half the current episodes thus far.  Neat little show.  Steven himself is kind of annoying and his shenanigans are starting to wear on me a bit (a problem I have with almost every character who's an idiot that manages to survive/save the day because of some goofy reason instead of actual competence).  But the show's got a lot of nuances and quirks and hints at a lot of things which is the kind of stuff I love.  So I'll probably keep watching it.

 

I do like the developing trend of hinting at a wider world without having an explicit narrative (like in SU and Adventure Time) especially since I recently caught up on Gravity Falls and I'm really not expecting the main plot thread to be that good. It might be kinda fun or interesting when it ends, but because it's in the format of an episodic show it's going to have problems with loopholes and things like

(season 2 episode 6-8ish spoiler)

why does the society of the unseen eye or whatever they were called suddenly appear, having never targeted Dipper before? And now they're conveniently removed unless they decide that the head guy can regain his memories and return later.

 

You can make justifications for presumably anything but jumping through the hoops isn't worth it when the thing that's actually really good about the show is just the fun and the comedy. The main plot is a vague hook but I think when they have to conclude it, that'll make it very hard to continue the show especially since at least some people are bound to be disappointed.

[Merus]

why does the society of the unseen eye or whatever they were called suddenly appear, having never targeted Dipper before? And now they're conveniently removed unless they decide that the head guy can regain his memories and return later.

 

They've been around in the background for a while, but the loophole is that they only hear about things if the townsfolk talk to other townsfolk. Dipper doesn't blab. There's also a strong suggestion that they're not particularly competent, given that they're run by Old Man McGuckett

.

 

Given how rock-solid Gravity Falls has been about using the mystery plot as a way to examine characters and relationships, I imagine that when The Mystery Is Finally Revealed it will turn out to be relevant to the show's main themes.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Thematically sure, I guess I didn't think of it that way. I was mostly thinking that the resolution of the plot wont be worth the build up because I just don't think Gravity Falls is about good plot even if it's forced into that mold.

 

Also, like I said you can add justifications and then I could ask something like why didn't we see the graffiti eyes before now? But the main point is they just wanted this to be a plot for an episode, they might not have even though of it in season 1, and they need to have some excuse for why they only appear now.

[Merus]

Oh no, it's not about good plot, but then I think if they spend their series finale doing plot-plot-plot, it'll be out of character for the show.

[BobbyBesar]

Tegan slowly introduced me to Steven Universe over the weekend.  We watched about half the current episodes thus far.  Neat little show.  Steven himself is kind of annoying and his shenanigans are starting to wear on me a bit (a problem I have with almost every character who's an idiot that manages to survive/save the day because of some goofy reason instead of actual competence).  But the show's got a lot of nuances and quirks and hints at a lot of things which is the kind of stuff I love.  So I'll probably keep watching it.

 

I feel more or less the same way. It seems like they've been pushing mythology quite a bit in the last few episodes, so you have something to look forward to.