Adventure Time with Finn and Jake – CartoonClack

I can’t tell you how excited I am that the higher-ups at CliqueClack gave me their blessing to start this column. I love cartoons. I’m a twenty-five-year-old — a college graduate no less — and I love cartoons. It’s a love affair started early in life, but with so many great newer shows, how can I resist? I’m a kid at heart and that kid gobbles up cartoons like chocolate chip waffles. There are plenty of series ready to be written about, but I thought I’d start with a new favorite of mine: Adventure Time with Finn and Jake.

I was a little surprised how much I liked this show. Before it first aired a year ago, Adventure Time looked too similar to Flapjack and Chowder, two Cartoon Network shows I didn’t hate by any means, but wasn’t entirely fond of (but those are stories for another post). This is yet another case of me needing to break out of my comfort zone, because after seeing a few episodes, Adventure Time had me sold.

The show follows a human boy named Finn and his buddy Jake. Each episode they go on an adventure, usually helping people in trouble. The plot seems pretty basic, except Jake happens to be a talking dog that can stretch to almost any shape and size, and they live in a treehouse with their sentient video game console named B-Mo. The people they help live in the Land of Ooo and tend to be either talking objects, talking animals or — very often — giant talking food. It’s like if The Legend of Zelda met Peewee’s Playhouse.

Looking back, the weird factor was what made me hesitant about the show in the first place. Bizarre trippiness can get really grating in a cartoon really quickly, even more so when it’s a show aimed at kids. I’m pretty sure my most frightening nightmares have been spawn from my few childhood viewings of H.R. Pufnstuf. After getting into Adventure Time, I found that weirdness to be surprisingly restrained. It still has bizarre moments, but they keep the bizarre charming.

It’s hard to explain what makes the show work, but if I had to put it into words, it would be effortless quirkiness. While I’ve seen other cartoons collapse on their own cheekiness  (“Look, it doesn’t make sense! That’s funny, right?”), Adventure Time keeps the plots on the side of traditional television tropes, with a fantasy twist. The duo teach a bully to be nice, but the bully is a giant who is terrorizing creatures shaped like buildings. Finn helps get his friend reconnect with her father, but her father is an out of control, soul-sucking demon. Jake wants Finn to get to know his girlfriend, who happens to be a rainbow dragon-unicorn who only speaks Korean.

Part of the reason the show remains charming is because the characters are funny and fun to watch! Easily my favorite voice actor in the cast is John Di Maggio, who plays Jake the dog. Most know Di Maggio as Bender on Futurama, and there the two characters have some similarities, although Jake is far less homicidal. Di Maggio is one of my favorite voice actors, and his involvement was what sparked my curiosity about the show in the first place. Finn is played by Jeremy Shada, who is 14-years-old. In a media where child characters are often voiced by adult women, it’s cool to see the main character actually played by an adolescent. On top of that, Shada is great as the boy adventurer. His chemistry with Dimaggio is spot on, and he really hits the energy of a kid without being annoying.

Spongebob‘s Tom Kenny is sinister and sad as the Ice King, a sorcerer who kidnaps princesses so he can marry them and not be alone. You don’t see him every episode, but his penguin henchman — henchpenguin, if you will — Guther is about the cutest evil cohort I’ve ever seen. Teen Titans‘ Hyden Walch is Princess Bubblegum, the could-be love interest for Finn who divides her time between ruling the land of Ooo and enhancing the scientific community (that’s right, the princess is a science nerd). However, my favorite minor characters are the rest of the princesses. Unlike Bubblegum, the other princesses aren’t human, but a wide variety of creatures — most not even real animals. Just a few of them are: slime princess, wild berry princess, bumblebee princess, hot dog princess, muscle princess, nut princess, old lady princess and zombie princess. There’s something awesome about making a world where a princess can be practically anything! My favorite princess — and side character — is the ambiguous Lumpy Space Princess, voiced by series creator Pendleton Ward. I can’t explain to you why she is so amazing; you kind of just have to watch the show.

Adventure Time has definitely found an audience in the Adult Swim “this is weird, but in a hilarious way” audience, but the show is still appropriate for kids. I’d even argue that Adventure Time teaches better lessons than most children programming on today and in a more entertaining way. For one, Finn and Jake’s main purpose is to help people in trouble. They openly state that being a hero isn’t just about beating up the bad guys, but being nice to people around you. When they see creatures being bullied, they stand up for the ones getting hurt. Jake can be kind of flighty as a character, so there are multiple story lines about being a reliable friend and keeping your promises. The idea of being proactive, going out and having an adventure is really promoted in this show, too. Another plus for parents: The opening and ending songs are not only brief, but also rather pleasant. Both songs make me smile ear to ear. Take a listen below.

Why does this show work? For a lot of reasons, but a huge part of it is the genuine childhood spirit just oozing out of each moment. I remember playing pretend as a kid in the Chicago Suburbs and coming up with stories and games in this vein. If you asked a kid to make a cartoon and then just tweaked it here and there, this is what you’d get. It’s like Axe Cop, but with more clarity. You can even argue it’s a 21st century nephew to the iconic Calvin and Hobbes. It’s a little snarky — with some of the humor going over kids’ heads — but with the strong affirmation that the world can be anything you want it to be.

Clacked by Katie Schenkel
on Apr 15, 2011 @ 14:00 EST5EDT