I will say this: I should be seeing more cartoons. It has been more difficult to consent to this passion for some of the best and most pleasant work that television has to offer with so many ordinary series that fight for my professional time and attention, but here and now I make a resolution more or less than mid -year to return to them. Please hug me.
Two excellent animated series are publishing new seasons after long pauses (or on the original platform, both in Hulu). “King of the Hill”, which worked in Fox from 1997 to 2009, lives again with 10 new episodes that transmit on Monday; “The Amazing World of Gumball” (2011-2019), one of the best products of a great age of Cartoon Network, is back like “The wonderfully strange world of Gumball”, in a season of 20 episodes now available. (The previous seasons of both programs are available on the platform). Each is under the protection of its original creators; Both are his old and easily recognizable and extremely different.
Visually, there is little or no difference between a situation comedy of multiple cameras and the next comedy of simulated camera sites and the following, a non -camera simulator and the following, a CBS police procedure and the following. But each cartoons creates its individual grammar, its dynamics, its world, its synergy between the image and the actors, its level of discomfort of the slippage. (The voice actors, I mean: the animators are also actors). There are trends, of course, in ways, lines and ways to represent a mouth or an eyeball, and a lot of drawing is extracted from the history of the medium, because art influences artists. But the spectrum is broad, and the novelty counts a lot.
“The wonderfully strange world of Gumball”
(Hulu)
Created by Ben Bocquelet, “Gumball” is not formed with a single style, that is, not establishing himself is his style. The characters understand a Hodgepodge, no, an encyclopedia of visual references, dimensions, materials and degrees of resolution, and include traditional 2-D animation, puppet animation, photo collage and live action, usually in a photographic background and a point in a world whose infinite variety does not seem short of inevitable. (The late “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants” by Netflix is the only other cartoon with such a range of ways.
Like many modern cartoons (except anime, which would say it is a different, although widely influential art), its main characters are children. Gumball, currently with the voice of Alkaio Thiele, is a blue cat, son of a mother cat and a rabbit father; He has a little pink rabbit sister, Anais (Kinza Syed Khan), and an adopted brother, Darwin (Hero Hunter in the new season), a pet of golden fish that cultivated legs and approaches quite easily in the air. His high school classmates include a ghost, a cloud, a banana, an ice cream cone, a margarita, a balloon, a cactus, a T. Rex and a flying eyeball. Gumball's girlfriend, Penny (Teresa Gallagher) is a yellow fairy that changes shape. Each is represented in a different style, and that is just the tip of the animated iceberg.
Like the best cartoons made for children, it does not underestimate your audience, which you could understand or manage. Many episodes of “Gumball” become a kind of authentically disturbing horror film, including the last episode of the original series, which saw the characters terribly transformed into realistic animated children and an vacuum opening just before the final credits. It also demonstrates an skepticism of adults about the world that could infect young minds in a profitable way. There are criticism about capitalism, consumerism and online culture: in the first episode of the new season, a hamburger that speaks evil controls the corporate universe; In another, Mother Nicole (Gallagher again) is seduced in virtual reality by a lonely and jealous chatbot.
The decade and a half since “King of the Hill” left the air, surreptitiously, if obviously, reference is made in a comment on “that kitchen program that Fox canceled stupidly 15 years ago”, is not exactly represented in the new season, but time has passed. (The characters did not age 13 years during the original series, but grew a bit). Hank, with the voice of Cooking Mike Judge, and Peggy Hill (Kathy Najimy), who return to Arlen, Texas, from Saudi Arabia, where Hank had been exercising his experience in all propane things, are attracted to the addition of some toilets but have not changed. As a character, Hank, of course, distrusts the change, although possibly not as much as the friends who gather, as before, in the alley behind his house; In fact, he worries that the love for football he acquired while reducing his position in his eyes. Peggy, on the other hand, was extended for his time outside; She likes to demonstrate some words of Arabic. Both hills are treating retirement awkwardly; Look for strange jobs, has a stab to make beer (not those fruits flavor things); She exercises.
In the revived “King of the Hill”, Bobby and Hank compete with each other in a homemade beer competition, for Peggy's dismay (but eventual delight).
(Mike Judge/Disney)
The show takes place in an environment awkwardly drawn but highly evocative and extremely ordinary that serves its stories perfectly; He feels like a precise interpretation of Sirt of his middle -class Texas suburb. There is little that cannot be handled as a live action situation comedy; In fact, for long sections, you can close your eyes and let it touch your head as a radio program of yesteryear: “Ozzie and Harriet” or “Vic and Sade” for the deep cut, which testifies the quality of writing and performances. (Judge's voice has a non -school quality that perfectly coincides with the drawing. Once I was almost certain that Hank's voice was my friend Will Ray, a guitar linger of country music, which would have made sense, given Judge's interest in music and her occasional lighting of the moon as a bassist. That is not here or there, but I am happy to have found a place to mention it).
His son, Bobby (Pamela Adlon), is now an adult; Small points in the chin indicate that you can grow a beard but cannot be shaved or that it cannot grow a beard; It does not seem exactly an choice. A previously established talent for cooking, the final episode of the original race referred to its ability to judge the quality of a meat cut, has become its restorative, offering a fusion of Japanese cuisine and Texas; Obviously, it is good in this, although for any reason, more work to draw them? – Your restaurant lacks customers. The torch that his girlfriend ever carries Connie Soubhanousinphone (Lauren Tom) occupies the other half of his story here.
There are light topical references, a side joke on the names that billionaires give to their children, for example, but the program happily lives in their world of daily inconvenience and victories. Hank is excited about a trip to the presidential library of George W. Bush, but one cannot imagine it with any affection for the current occupant of the Oval Office; It is too common for that. The extreme views and conspiracy theories are charged in the friend of Hank's pest exterminator, give Gribble. The late Johnny Hardwick, who expressed him during the first six episodes of the new season, was replaced by Toby Huss. (Jonathan Joss, who played character John Redcorn, died in a shooting this June). Cartoons have a way of dealing with death, they don't have to do it, and time does not mean more there what the animators want. It is a comfortable state to be.
