Adventure Time:
Slumber Party Panic
Pre-Viewing
thoughts:
I consider myself at least a part-time aficionado of
American animation, beginning with the early to mid-90’s and up to the
present. The cartoon shows that I’ve
followed are much too numerous to count, but even in my late teens and early
20’s, I would eagerly watch cartoons over live-action television any day. Luckily, I’m not alone in this and many
cartoons are made with young adults in mind, as well as children.
One such cartoon is called Adventure Time. Now for me, Adventure Time came at a period
in my life where Cartoon Network was starting to get a bit ‘silly’, for lack of
a better word. It was introduced among
other animated shows like The Misadventures of Flapjack, Chowder, Regular Show,
and The Amazing World of Gumball. I’ll
say that as of writing this, I am 3 weeks from being 26 years old, so these
particular cartoons were just past my radar, especially because of
life-changing circumstances, one of which is not having access to cable. Luckily, Netflix is a glorious oasis and I
find that paying $7.95 for decent saturation of different animated shows and
films is quite satisfying.
My first, initial gut impression of Adventure Time in
particular was something akin to “What is with these derpy faces?” It’s not to say that this particular
animation style is not prevalent in other shows I grew up with, such as later
seasons of Spongebob. The strange, rubbery
way that the characters in Adventure Time waved their arms like spaghetti was
very reminiscent of Excel Saga, a well-known Japanese anime where body physics
were over the top and unnoticed in-universe.
These wobbly movements were often coupled with wavering voice techniques
to lay on the comedic drama of a ‘revealed truth’ or ‘dramatic tension’. Even Avatar: The Last Airbender has shown
this a few times.
But these are just things that I’ve gleaned from the very
few trailers I’ve seen, or from a doctor’s waiting room, where the TV *clearly
* meant for children was on a low volume, and general society prevents me from
sitting in a tiny, powder-blue chair to observe a blatantly meant-for-children
TV show. From what I could observe, the
animation seemed clean and sleek, and if any of the character designs went
‘off-model’, it was clearly for laughs.
The other half preventing me from watching the show was the
same thing that prevented me from watching the famed My Little Pony: Friendship
is Magic. In a word? Fans. Now this is not to say that Adventure Time’s
fans are a group of less than positive.
In fact, I have only run into a very small fraction of people who
outwardly showed that they loved Adventure Time. This was at a convention, so it’s even more
negligible. However, I’ve been in the
thick of groups called “The Fans”, whatever that group may be, and sometimes it
can be overwhelmingly negative. Luckily,
this does not seem the case, and so I queued up the first episode of Adventure
Time and began watching.
The Viewing:
The first thing that was really quite pleasant was the
opening theme song. A mere 30 seconds
long, it’s a very lightly sung jingle, backed with a simple tune of what sounds
like a ukulele. Already, I can tell that
if this song is going to be used with every episode, it’s short and quaint
enough that it can easily be memorized.
It also seems so accessible that it’s timeless. Though I’ve only listened to it twice, so
that opinion may be subject to change.
The visuals are a fast sweeping pan of a colorful land, allowing the
viewer to see different characters, such as an old man with a vast, white
beard, a vivid town full of walking, talking desserts, a pink haired girl on a
rainbow dragon, a (admittedly startling) depiction of a raven-haired vampire,
and finally what I assume will be the main two characters, Finn the Human and
Jake the Dog, giving each other hugs and riding off into the mountains
together. Cue the title screen.
As the episode starts, called Slumber Party Panic, I feel
like I’m bombarded with a lot of things in a very short amount of time. An overhead view of a circular town is
visible, and Jake the Dog is chasing after the Rainbow Dragon seen in the
opening theme song. Then two things
happen very quickly: Jake seems to grow
to a massive size, his four spindly legs elongating to a dozen times his body
length, and the Rainbow Dragon seems to let out a babble of speech that, if my
closed-captions were not active, I would not have recognized them as Korean.
They run off screen and then the scene pans down into a
graveyard just outside of the city, where Finn the Human and the pink-haired
girl, Princess Bubblegum, are doing a science experiment. While she calmly explains that she is
creating a serum to raise the dead back to life, Finn begin asking inane
questions and his arms are given that previously mentioned ‘wavy-noodle-
appearance as he speaks or bangs on his chest.
It’s very clear that Princess Bubblegum is quite used to his silly
behavior, and answers his questions kindly.
This is not to say that Princess Bubblegum isn’t a bit off her rocker as
well, because as Finn presents a silver platter at her request, he uncovers it
to reveal “Old Mr. Creampuff?” and Princess Bubblegum answers wistfully “We used
to date”.
Before I could fathom what that really meant, or at least
come to the conclusion that it does not mean anything except perhaps a
throwaway joke, she takes the syringe of serum and sticks it straight into Mr.
Creampuff. As expected, he begins to
move and gurgle. As Finn cheers,
Princess Bubblegum is horrified and says that her experiment went wrong. Mr. Creampuff jumps up and lands into a large
vial of the remaining serum, and then spills it all over the tombstones. As the once-dead creatures reanimate, Finn
tries to help by attempting to shove them back into their graves. In stereotypical fashion, the undead yell for
satiation. But instead of “Braaaaains”,
they yell for “Sugar!” Upon hearing this, Princess Bubblegum insists that they
rush to the city, known as Candy Kingdom, and declares that they must protect
the citizens. They both run back and
Princess Bubblegum climbs to the top of the palace tower and calls for everyone
to get inside.
When everyone is present and accounted for, thanks to the
hanging piñata Manfried, she makes the announcement of… a slumber party. As the citizens cheer, Finn tries to butt in
and ask about the zombies, but she covers his mouth and drags him into a
closet. Princess Bubblegum quickly
explains that the citizens can’t find out about the zombies, or else they would
“flip out”. Finn asks her to elaborate,
but she only repeats herself, widening her eyes for emphasis.
We cut to the next scene with a small, brownish gumball of a
character, known as Starchie the Gravedigger, out in the graveyard. In a very blatant set-up, where even Starchie
acknowledges that his defenses are lowered and he’s all alone, one of the
zombie creatures comes up and moans “Sugar!” causing Starchie to scream, and
then finally explode into nothingness.
The scene cuts right back to Finn and Princess Bubblegum, and she
further explains that by “flip out”, she means that the candy people of Candy
Kingdom literally explode when they get scared.
So the real danger is that they will not die from being eaten, but out
of reaction to pure fear. I’ll admit, I
didn’t quite see that one coming, as the set-up of the zombie trope and the
Candy people being made of pure sugar was too good of an assumption, that when
it was subverted, I was pleasantly surprised.
Continuing on, Princess Bubblegum makes Finn commit to a
Royal Promise, that he will not under any circumstances tell the candy people
about the zombies. Her words are
emphasized once again by waving her noodley arms in front of her, and Finn
agrees. She leaves to go complete the
unfinished formula, leaving Finn to keep the citizens happy and ignorant. Unfortunately, he really wants to tell his
best friend, Jake the Dog, about the outbreak, but cannot. Jake suspects that something is up, but Finn
bounds away and denies that anything is going on with him and Princess
Bubblegum.
As Royally Promised, Finn keeps the citizens distracted by
playing Truth or Dare with them. As the
game goes on, Jake gets more and more suspicious, and keeps drilling him for
answers, all while Finn is desperately trying to keep his cool. After a spewing of dodgy explanation (while a
zombie tries getting through an open window), Finn declares a game of Seven
Minutes in Heaven and shoves Jake and Lady Raincorn, the aforementioned rainbow
dragon from the very beginning, into a closet.
As soon as the door shuts, Finn runs to another open window
and sees that all of the zombies have surrounded the palace and they begin
banging on the front door. Again, Finn
tries distracting the Candy people by playing loud music to drown out the
banging and groaning from outside, but the zombies began coming through the
back door. In another desperate attempt
to keep his promise, he grabs a bench and hammers it to the door, declaring
that it’s a game of barricades and that everyone should join in. Not surprisingly, they do.
However, it’s not enough and Finn makes a last attempt to
protect everyone from exploding by blindfolding everyone with taffy, courtesy
of Taffy Girl, and he makes a game out of beating the zombies as if they were
piñatas. Luckily Manfried was not
harmed, being the only real piñata there.
Every zombie is defeated just as Jake emerges from the closet, his Seven
Minutes in Heaven having ended. Jake is
startled to see the Candy People eating the zombies insides as if they were
candy – though to be fair, their insides ARE candy – and he demands that Finn
explain what happened. Finn tells Jake
without missing a beat, and then suddenly the entire room turns a cold, icy
blue and all the citizens, including Jake the Dog, are frozen in time. Princess Bubblegum emerges from her
laboratory and chastises Finn for breaking his Royal Promise. Finn doesn’t see the problem, since all the
zombies have been defeated. “What’s the
big deal?” he asks.
The room shakes and tilts sideways, and Princess Bubblegum
says “The Guardians of the Royal Promise are coming for us!” Sure enough, a large purple hand bursts
through the ceiling and scoops both Finn and the princess up into the sky. The Guardians are elongated bubblegum
machines with ice cream cones on their glass heads. They are about to dole out punishment on Finn
for breaking his Royal Promise, but Princess Bubblegum begs them to
reconsider. They do, and decide that he
just has to answer math questions instead of the normal punishment, trial by
fire. The princess is worried, because
Finn is terrible at math, but luckily the question presented is only “2+2” and
he answers correctly.
The Gumball Guardians reset time and Finn and Princess
Bubblegum reappear inside her laboratory.
Finn is overjoyed that he got the right answer, which triggers Princess
Bubblegum to realize that the same number was the answer to her problem with the
reanimation serum. She was just too
smart to see it. With that, she makes
the correct serum and cures all the zombies in the palace. Jake talks to Finn and says that he didn’t
have to be so secretive, he just had to say that it was a Royal Promise and he
would have understood. Princess Bubblegum then says that she hopes
that Finn has learned his lesson and grasps the consequences of breaking
promises. Finn naturally seems to miss
the point and declares that breaking promises means that he basically gets to
save her and do other cool things.
End of Episode
And there you have it, folks. I’ll say that I honestly had to watch it
again to catch a couple of the details, but I enjoyed it even more the second
time around. Adventure Time seems to
have all the right things for both younger and older viewers, male and
female. Some of the more bizarre
characters, such as Lady Raincorn seem unusual at first, but are strangely charming
enough to maybe make more appearances.
This 10 minute episode was a concentrated formula of what good cartoons
are all about, and yet the little twists and extras felt right and in their
place. I even felt like the standard PSA
was well said enough to not grate on my nerves.
In conclusion, I’ll take a quote from Jake the Dog to sum up what I
thought of this first episode viewing:
“This is messed up… but sweet!”
I suppose I should give it some kind of star rating, which
only seems appropriate. However, I’m too
eager to watch the next episodes. I’ll
let that speak for itself!
Adventure Time! Go!
