The Birth and Golden Age of Adventure Time - Seasons 1-5 Review & Retrospective

adventure time may just be the single most influential cartoon from the past decade that's not to say that it's the very best but in terms of shows that influence the production and storytelling of TV animation this series more or less changed the game they're handing continues to be cartoons with rich worlds that push the limit of the kinds of stories that can be told in 11 minutes but Adventure Time did it with such a unique and upbeat Sensibility one that has helped to shape the work of creators and viewers alike for me it's one of the few shows that I've been with since nearly the very beginning and it's been in my life for so long that it's got a bit of a special place in my heart this video will mostly go into my personal views on the series both as it originally aired and how I see it now after re-watching all of it recently but also look at how it changed over the near decade it's spent in production so come along with me as I take a trip to the land of blue and look at ten seasons of one of the most important cartoons in Cartoon Network history it's adventure time go to very distant lands [Music] it's kind of common knowledge that adventuretime began as a short for Nickelodeon's random cartoon series think of it as the mid-2000s equivalent to oh yeah cartoons but instead of getting cool shows out of it like chop zone and my life as a teenage robot all I got from this was fanboy and Chum Chum it was great like its predecessor random cartoons feature a trio of seven-minute shorts that served as potential pilots for series and the project was spearheaded by Fred Seibert founder of Frederator studios Pendleton ward pitched Adventure Time a concept based on his love for the spirit of improvised Dungeons & Dragons sessions the writing and part of The Simpsons and the feel of experimental animation like Ralph Bakshi's cool world the pilot which were produced plays out like a rough highlight reel of an episode no focus is put on the setting or set up pen and Jake just hang out until Lady Rainicorn leads them to the ice Kingdom where the duo have to rescue Princess Bubblegum from the clutches of the maniacal Ice King and yes I did say Penn & Jake as Finn was originally named after the show's creator before the series the reason for the change was simply because Ward didn't want to see his name plastered on to merchandise like sweat pants and understandable work getting into the animation the characters have a much rounded and looser look to them compared to the show and the backgrounds are simple watercolor doodles it looks all right but is heightened by some really good character animation particularly the dynamic movement when pen fights the Ice King compared to many of the other random cartoon shorts it's impressive what Ward was able to make out of the resources that he had especially with the guy apparently doing most of the animation himself the short has a stream of consciousness type of writing that is very similar to what the full series would eventually have lots of non-secular catchphrases varied action sequences that introduce new concepts on mile-a-minute and random set pieces like when Penn is transported back in time to get motivation from a realistic Abraham Lincoln surprisingly that element would find its way back into the show and in a much more dramatic way the thing that helps to make the pilot - Adventure Time so great is that it leaves you wanting more it gives audiences a taste of the world and a few of its characters and doesn't get lost in the details along with how unique it was and still is today the pilot was an instant hit with fans when it arrived online in mid-2007 and by April of the following year it had gained over 3 million views across the web despite the success for the time being Nickelodeon pastime picking up the show twice and to this day we still don't know why it could have been because Pendleton ward 10 had much industry experience prior to the pilot or maybe Nickelodeon was afraid that it might not translate well to a series or even appeal to children instead of the teens and young adults that had grown a liking to it online even considering just the pilot and not what the show would become it was kind of a mistake for Nickelodeon to turn it down considering how much potential the pilot had to begin with luckily Cartoon Network was more than happy to give the show a chance especially after Penn had worked with them as a storyboard artist on the Marvelous Misadventures of flapjack however the network went greenlight the show as is they wanted word to prove that he could expand his pilot into a full 11 minute episode series and be able to consistently replicate the magic seen in the original short while the Adventure Time pilot was good it might have shown a bit too much potential there were so many different directions that the show could have been taken in from what was shown and it seemed like each person involved in the development phase had a different idea of what they wanted the show to be production was apparently rough as the show was delayed past its targeted premiere date and a few episodes were completely scrapped but finally on April 5th of 2010 Adventure Time premiered on Cartoon Network following a long ad campaign one of the first advertisements featured a kid dressed as Finn running around a city screamin [Music] [Music] using what looks like a super elaborate and annoying prank video to hype up the show was probably not the best idea but when I first got a glimpse of it during trailers for a movie theater pre-show it looked weird just really weird but you couldn't say that I wasn't interested but for us odd as it seemed and considering all odds were against it succeeding is the first season of adventure time any good at all honestly I personally think it's better than I remember if you aren't a fan of silly strange and fast-paced comedies and don't have an appreciation for well done random humour wordplay and fart jokes you aren't going to enjoy what Adventure Time was during its earliest episodes from the outset it might seem like absurd nonsense but the series takes everything it does seriously while still understanding how goofy it can be the Lana booth feels like a pretty consistent world but here it's built in a way that feels like the creators are kind of throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks this isn't really a bad thing as it gives each episode leeway to introduce some new character or concept there can be episodes where our heroes explore a city of thieves and one where they power an adventure with their imagination this style of story building can also give some of the episodes a bit of a mixed quality occasionally the slightly mundane premises can work putting a small elderly elephant in some dangerous woods doesn't sound like it would be very entertaining on paper but tree trunks is carefree spirit really carries a lot of the comedy in the episode and then there's episodes like Donny it's not bad but they had to introduce a set of highly intelligent wolves to make the episode interesting like why even make the episode about this annoying shrek knockoff when you have these guys what holds the show together during this time is the relationship between Finn and Jake Finn is more active but goes into every situation headfirst and Jake is more level-headed but is also a lot lazier and a little more selfish they balance each other out really well and they help bring some great gags to episodes that are otherwise a bit lacking honestly some of the most entertaining parts of the season are when the duo are just having casual conversations oh dude are you something totally Rock and we can do whoa what let's use our imaginations man that imagination is for turbo nerds who can't handle how kick-butt reality is one thing that helped Adventure times stand out from the straight action and comedy shows that were populating Cartoon Network at the time was how it kind of combined both in such a laid-back way probably the sequence that's most representative of the season is the house hunting song from the episode evicted it's a bombardment of out there visual gags and creative transitions and it's tied together by Pendleton ward half narrating and half singing this little ditty too catchy chiptune beat it's weird it doesn't quite make sense but it's really fun to watch the songs are something from the show that I've always liked even here when they're done on a much smaller scale they sound like songs that someone would actually think of off the top of their head which is kind of realistic in a way but I don't mind it all when they become more elaborate later on all of them are great the background music also helps to get the series its unique style the mix of synthesized melodies and Harper cushon is not particularly memorable but it does really add to each scene the tone of the show can also get really messed up when it wants to there's a whole episode where the setup has the entire Candy Kingdom falling victim to a fatal cold and when we get a glimpse of it the kingdom looks like it's suffering from the aftermath of its own version of the Black Plague on some occasions there are even strangely dark jokes that work just because they're deliberately put in spots that make them feel out of place thanks guys your blood oath is fulfilled one thing I noticed that I need to bring up is that in the last few seconds of the episode the enchiridion you can hear distant screams in the background I have no clue why that person is screaming I guess they just really don't like Adventure Time the series is filled with obscure little details many of which are hidden in the backgrounds a lot of people say that Adventure Time has a very simplistic art style and that's understandable if you've only seen a few designs or pieces of promotional art at this point the show is a little rough around the edges some designs feel like they were taken from flapjack and the appearance of fins I whites looks very unsettling even if they do make him slightly more expressive still not only does everything move pretty smoothly but there's so many neat creature designs and the backgrounds are simply gorgeous some of them even tell their own story and the look of everything only gets better from here there's some downright bizarre trivia from the earliest days of the show they're recording the theme song Jesus was actually meant to be a demo Pendleton ward just like the demo more than the final version but you can hear executive producer dared Ryman's keyboard clicking in the background they never bothered to fix this and it's in every episode my absolute favorite piece of trivia from the show comes from the design of the cosmic owl it's feast was inspired by the way light bounces off one of the urinals at Cartoon Network Studios first of all shout out to the brave man who took their camera out in a public restroom to get a picture of this and secondly if anyone who works at Cartoon Network is watching this I really want to know if that reflection is still there that urinal is a part of Cartoon Network history now season 1 of Adventure Time is not for everyone if you're looking for a more serious story heavy show this probably isn't what you're looking for and it won't be for a very long time right now it's a well-written spongebob and flapjack s comedy with a wacky world and characters to explore it's also got some of the smartest fart jokes put on TV so if you're into that kind of stuff this should be right up your alley really really quiet [Music] my favorite episode from the season would be ocean of fear there's no other episode as twisted as this one so far and it has some wild and gorgeous visuals to bring so many different emotions out of this body of water my least favorite episode is the jiggler this one isn't bad but a lot of it is disturbing for the sake of being disturbing it offers little comedy to balance it out it's just a little unpleasant to sit through that's all now that we got the basics of the show out of the way I can more or less breeze through most of the remaining seasons I imagine it won't take long at all the second season just works on expanding everything that worked in season 1 they begin to build their experimental plotting around stories that also double as character studies the episode power animal comes from the odd idea of Finn getting abducted by pack of gnomes but it's also about Jake struggling to control his concentration enough to save his buddy this episode also has one of my favorite endings from the show I love how abruptly so many of these end let's go eat cinnamon bun we get a similar kind of evolution with the animation in this season by the time the finale rolls around the show has really stepped up its game with lighting and movement a lot of the episodes look really great and have beautiful details but others still look rather rough there's a lack of consistent perspective with the distance between the train cars during a short chase sequence and Mystery Train and in crystals have power a lot of drawings of Jake are a little too loose and unprofessional a lot of the episode still looks very cute and charming so it's not all bad this is where we begin to learn more about the world and all of its characters we get a hint that there might be more to human culture beyond just Finn with the introduction of Susan strong and we meet Marceline's dad hunson abadeer after Finn get the pair to reconnect I love this episode so much it's far and away my favorite from the season the song is great the action is great the comedy is great and there's great attention to detail with ensure Puckett it just randomly shows up in this episode and they actually take time to address it I've been meaning to ask you what's with that pocket on your shirt Oh Jason here sup Jake season 2 is just a string of funny high concept episode finn and jake make a movie solve a murder mystery escaped purgatory and get trapped in the cgi videogame it's all really fun but for the first half of the season the show has a lot of episodes that are similar to season one in terms of tone and construction they tend to have more uncomfortable humor and takes some jokes a few steps too far my least favorite episode is probably slow love what happens in slow love for around a year after the episode aired I couldn't answer that question and I still can hardly remember some slug uses Finn and Jake's house as a shell and he wraps with some swords and destroys the house and he's also voiced by biz markie it all just kind of happens in general season 2 really plays to the strengths of the first season and overtime mix the comedy animation and character development much more well-rounded with a barrage of great episodes one after the other if you aren't sure about getting into the series now this is a fantastic place to start this is where the show really takes off this batch of episodes are probably the weirdest and most different so far but they continue the solid writing scene towards the end of season 2 there's a whole lot more variety than the assortment of Finn and Jake adventures that we previously gotten but the focus isn't completely taken from them and it shared pretty equally with a variety of characters the best instance of this is in my favorite from the season what was missing Finn Jake bubble gum and Marceline all have to team up to unlock a magic door with a song by a genuine band leading to a lot of characters hinting at their different feelings for each other and what I think are some of the very best songs in the series even changes of pace like thank you but focus on brand new characters still managed to integrate the main cast smoothly the exception to that is holly-jolly secrets which is more or less an episode and a half of filler before revealing ice King's tragic backstory the filler is plot relevant and very enjoyable in some instances but the episode really didn't need to be stretched to 22 minutes despite how interesting this backstory to Ice King is there's a lot of episodes that handle darker themes than what the series had previously there's a somewhat serious zombie epidemic Finn and Jake are knocked out while the whole Candy Kingdom disappears and Jake embraces the fact that we all have to die sometime and basically tries to kill himself it's okay though because it's all done in a spiritual way a lot of episodes seem to explore new facets of established worlds like the Utopia or the darker end of the Candy Kingdom scene in apathy like the slight shift in character focus and all feels naturally integrated with the show and is a great way to handle world building this season feels like the first to offer fanservice but like really specific fanservice me mal was actually a character drawn by a fan whose mother sent it to Penn and he liked it so much that it became a part of the show it's cool to see shows on her passionate fans with decisions like this and Jake versus me mal is honestly one of the best from the season give it up me now you're only making my face also I don't really know if anyone wanted a gender flip version of the show but for a whole episode we got it we got five episodes of it and they're all kind of alright the one with Donald Glover is pretty good but the first one is just kind of disturbing upon re-watch Fiona spends a whole day hanging out with Prince gumball but at the end he turns out to have been the ice queen in disguise the whole time Fiona was falling in love with an old woman in the costume and that really doesn't feel right I mean the whole episode does turn out to be a fanfic buy the ice king in the end so I suppose the tone makes sense I feel a similar way about my least favorite episode in the season another way VIN just feels really stubborn in overly angry and it's not very fun to watch even if Finn does eventually admit the error in his ways season three of Adventure Time is still the very best so far it feels a lot more varied while still delivering the great characters action and comedy we expect by the final episode it even feels a little more mature Incendia has been admitting that he's blown his chance with princess bubblegum and MALDI episode could have felt super angsty and overdramatic it's a beautiful and sad self-realization for Finn I feel like I'm all gummed up inside it's like am all gummed up inside it's like a monk gummed up inside Oh Finn Adventure time had started to naturally grow up and that opened up the door for a slew of new possibilities for stories you know what else it opened up the door for merchandise querque network tends to license off it shows for only a small amount of items that can only be found in the corner of a hot topic or online even with its more popular ones but Adventure Time was everywhere you could find it on accessories of all kinds cool DVD sets underwear of all things and video games that were occasionally alright and other times just painful there's even a humongous line of comic books and graphic novels and I happen to own a few yeah Adventure Time had become so much more than a show at this point season 4 was practically the height of the series popularity and I really started to click with people and I feel that the creators were just starting to see that perhaps they both a little more comfortable with doing whatever they wanted now or maybe they were starting to have trouble coming up with fresh new ideas after creating nearly 80 episodes whatever the case was the creators started to quote-unquote dig a little deeper with some of the stories for the season I was kind of turned off from season four when I first saw it as the creator's seemed to tone back the parts of the show that made me enjoy it a lot in the first place the focus on the side characters is bigger than it's ever been before and Finn and Jake take supporting roles in the majority of episodes most of the stories that introduce new characters fail because they don't give me a reason to care princess cookie is a great episode because we learned why the cookie is the way he is but in Webb weirdos we're stuck listening to a bickering married couple and it's as awkward as it sounds it's not that I don't like some of the characters that are focused on but I feel like some of the episodes will be much more entertaining if the book has done something else my least favorite episode is dream of love which is just about tree trunks and mr. pig really wanting to make out in public it was just kind of weird and I could have done without it other times it's kind of handicapped there Prudential with their concepts like FEMA Noirs a story told with FEMA's imagination so the voice of every character has to be his and lady in people's includes Lady Rainicorn so there needs to be jokes that drag on with her speaking in Korean that most audiences won't understand frequently the season also sacrifices opportunities for humor in favor of telling more dramatic stories and that does work in episodes where more is at stake like in two of the flame princess episodes and Sun of Mars but it doesn't work as well with the more standard Adventure Time episodes like you made me or the hard easy episodes like those to come off is more boring and less entertaining because of the way that they're executed despite my negativity there are plenty of episodes in the season that I wholeheartedly enjoy mostly the ones that have enough comedy that makes them worth remembering return to my nightosphere return to my nightosphere i don't want to go back to my nightosphere returning to the nightosphere is probably my pick for the funniest episode in the whole show as its depiction of hell is filled with as much disturbing imagery as there are inconveniences for the characters like if you've ever been to any convention the waiting and line sequence it's a little too close to home one decision that I really like is to bring characters from the first two seasons back into the fold and make them fit the tone of what the show has slowly become this does wonders for characters like Magic Man and ricardio but also begins the trend of the show taking very small details for a minor episodes and devoting an entire episode to them they turned a non-sequitur gag ending with a strange green worm into a plot device for an episode where Finn is trapped in his own constantly changing nightmare the premises for episodes only get stranger from here conveniently the King worm episode is the only episode of any cartoon that's ever given me nightmares apparently pen Ward thinks that's cool but the day after I had that nightmare I got really sick and also had to go on a seven-hour car ride you still think that's cool pen because it wasn't cool I can't talk about the season without mentioning I remember you the episode that more or less changed the series for good it kind of connected the dots with the little hints of backstory that the show had been slowly dropping and that led up to one of the most emotional moments so far looking at it now it is a prototype Steven universe episode it's a character study between two characters where one kind of gets mad at another but then they reconcile and sing a powerful song that leaves you wanting more about their relationship it's like Rebecca sugar made it back to her pilot completely by accident the episode was followed up by the season finale the Lynch just a heart-pounding episode that opened up so many new doors for the show and ended on a doozy of a cliffhanger season 4 may have been the most disappointing season for me personally but it had some of the highest highs so far some of the feelings I have may just come out of personal tastes so you might be able to easily overlook all the problems that I saw and this season might be your favorite speaking of which it was really tricky to even pick a favorite episode because quite a few are very excellent I do have to go with King worm no matter how much trauma it may have caused me the episode is just that great and enjoyable to watch I don't feel so good so unlike others I really like the two-parter that opens season 5 it does act as a what-if episode and does little to truly capitalize on the potential that was set up but on its own I really like it both parts are very funny and action-packed and I do kind of like how none of it really mattered in the end everything up to the ending is entertaining enough to justify the plot direction though I am disappointed that little more was done with the alternate dimensions premise in the long run I guess it was worth the only three week long wait between seasons yeah Adventure Time used to have an incredibly consistent weekly schedule for airing new episodes something that fans of Cartoon Network can only dream of now episodes came out so quickly that it was easy to get hooked and that added to the show's appeal anyway season 5 is a weird one in the way that it's twice as long as a regular season so it feels like two seasons in one the first half of the season is really great the creator's balanced out the storytelling and comedy tendencies that were a little poorly handled previously and as a result we got a lot of episodes that are very entertaining there's a few here that are just okay like lost and all your fault because I honestly can't get into pretty much all the Lemongrab episodes but I still find things to really enjoy about some of those the show kind of lightens back up for this stretch of the series and I really don't have a problem with that in my opinion the episodes are really great again maybe not as great as the peaks of season 3 but we are getting more character development than ever before of all the episodes my favorite has to be polloi so much happens to Finn in only 11 minutes and the way it wraps up is wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time I don't want to say too much more so please check this one out if you haven't already the first half of the season wraps up on a couple of episodes that are more than a little disappointing but things change during the mid-season finale Wizards Only Fools this is the first time I noticed writing that really felt out of character in this case for Princess Bubblegum she's very stubborn and insists on sticking to her ways even causing herself and her friends to end up in jail as a result this might seem like just one bad episode but this kicked off a bit of a trend a trend that was continued with Frost and fire the worst episode of season 5 and the worst episode so far in just 11 minutes Finn's whole relationship with Flame Princess completely falls apart after he takes advantage of her to trigger almost sexual dream it puts on unnecessary end to what was a great story arc and suddenly makes Finn look like a creep no one ever questions Finn about his actions here either he just continues to hit on Flame Princess and even Princess Bubblegum throughout the rest of the season and the conflict just fizzles out Adventure Time had taken a turn for the worse and it appears to have been a result of many different members of the crew leaving around this time within around a year of this shifting quality Steven universe clearance and over the garden wall would all premiere and each took away valuable players from The Adventure Time Team pendleton ward even stepped down as the showrunner during this season after getting burnt out he was still a part of the show and still had involvement in the story and storyboarding phases but whatever the case was the series was no longer being filtered through him and that kind of shows the problem seen in season four had been cranked up to 11 and the show seems much more aimless than before I mean it's kind of like Adventure Time more like a waste of time finn and jake are focused on lesson and instead we get episodes about root beer guy who is group your guy it doesn't matter cuz he's killed off the next time we see him I haven't even mentioned James this annoying character gets his very own episode where all he does is put the main cast closer to death we're also supposed to feel very bad for him when he willingly sacrifices himself not a bad idea for an episode but the title character just ruins anything it had going for it even when we get super cool episode concepts like Betty which involve time travel and all this cool magic stuff they're poorly executed in one way or another a lot of this half of the season is just alright but there's barely five episodes that I would consider great even combined with the first half of season 5 this season still ends up being the weakest so far even more so than the first I remember watching the Box Prince episode the one where Finn just hanging out with a bunch of cats with boxes on their backs and that's literally the whole episode and I was thinking where's this show going to go from here like how much longer is this going to last well it just so happens that that episode ended up being pretty much the exact midpoint of the series and we're just about to enter into its lowest point I'm Nick Tendo and I'll see you all next time you blow it man [Music]

Channel: NICKtendo

Views: 273,063

Keywords: adventuretime, Adventure Time, Adventure Time with Finn and Jake, Adventure Time Season 1, Adventure Time Season 2, Adventure Time Season 3, Adventure Time Season 4, Adventure Time Season 5, Review, Rant, Retrospective, Animation, Analysis, Cartoon Network, 2010, new cartoon, NICKtendo, Cartoon Review

Id: ALoWYy1v-iI

Length: 28min 19sec (1699 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 24 2018