Wednesday 27 January 2016

Tiny Toon Adventures: Back to school special

As I stated in the review, I really liked Animaniacs, so when I herd that a show prior to it by the same team, with inspiration from the Loony Toons, I had to give it a look. How was it? Well, one way to find out. Shall we head to school?





The plot of Tiny Toon Adventures is, like Animaniacs, not there, at all. It's short based, focusing on the interactions between the large cast of characters, something I'm fine with because last time I checked, children's television here has a problem with a cohesive narrative. One episode you could be showing how the characters were "made", in another episode they could be on a cheese shaped Death Star because "screw it, comedy". I'm fine with this, in fact I welcome it. Not everything has to have a cohesive narrative to it, sometimes, all you need is a little comedy.
"Congratulations, you've just drawn something to life. How do you feel?"

As for the characters themselves, they're good overall, a much more balanced cast in terms of comedy in comparison to Animaniacs, however their problem is that a large chunk of the characters are just the personalities of the Loony Toons in the bodies of children, something that becomes quite obvious as the Loony Toons are in this, granted in more cameo roles then leads, but they do make appearances throughout the duration of the show. While this makes sense, seeing as one of the main locations is, and I kid you not, ACME Looneversity (I probably misspelled that), where the Loony Toons are the teachers, as it says in the intro for the show. I wouldn't really mind the similar personalities if the Loony Toons weren't in the show, but because they are, it makes the similarities so much more apparent. That being said though, they are still great personalities, so the copy and paste may not even be an issue for many.
This was a nice piece of attention to detail for the first episode

Artstyle and animation wise, its pretty much on par with Animaniacs, same with the writing, though not as... mature as animaniacs. so there isn't much to say. It never feels as fast passed as some of the Warners shorts from Animaniacs, which isn't a problem, as it helps separate the two. What I do like more about Tiny Toons in comparison to Animaniacs is the consistency. Yes, The Warners, Pinkie and The Brain and others are very good, there are also ones like Buttons and Mindy, the Hip Hippos and, to a much lesser extent, Rita and Runt, where they start to become bland and repetitive very quickly. In Tiny Toons, while no one on their own is a standout in the same way as the Warners, they are all consistenly good, no one character really let's the show down in the same way as Buttons and Mindy. The worst one is probably Elmira, though that's because, like Buttons and Mindy, the cute psycho to animals while maintaining an innocence kinda gets old pretty quickly (Though I don't have any plans to review it, I will say, the time she caught one of the Xenomorphs from Alien, even if it was off screen, is pretty awesome).
Gee, I wonder what this is referencing...

"Is this just a clone of Animaniacs?" I think that way of looking at it is wrong, but yes they are very similar, they're by the same people, so of course there's going to be similarities. Is it still good? Yes, and worth a watch, especially if you like the Loony Toons, as this is closer resembling those then the Animaniacs. I am going to be covering other Loony Toon things during the year, so stay tuned for those, but for now, we have one last movie to review for the month, Spaceballs. See ya tomorrow.

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