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AnimeTitle: Samurai Jack – Season 1 Title: The Venture Bros - Season 1 Title: Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law Vol. 2 I’m a girl who will give anything a go to find the right man, so when I was asked out to a movie night with a group of bachelors I thought “why not”. Two hours and four episodes of Samurai Jack later, I started to realise it wasn’t the romantic night I had envisioned. What I'd actually been invited to was an 'anime movie night. What is anime anyway? Aren’t they just cartoons? Well, with three series of American anime coming my way I was definitely going to find out. We started with Samurai Jack from the Cartoon Network (see they are just cartoons). Samurai Jack tells the story of young prince Jack from medieval Japan whose father's empire is destroyed by the demon Aku. Jack escapes but wants revenge, he fights Aku and manages to defeat him but before he dies the demon opens a time portal and sends Jack to the future. Basically, each episode follows Jack's search through the future (which is ruled by Aku and all of his robots) for a way to go back to his own time, while constantly coming up against some obstacle. The stories are very action packed and the minimal animation style looks very stylish. From that, we moved into the “adult swim” movies, which to be honest had me a little worried about their content, but it was just the cartoon networks shows for an older age group.
The main characters are Dr Venture a super scientist, his twin sons who are nitwits and have very old-fashioned ideas, and their hyper-macho bodyguard Brock Sanders who is “licensed to kill”. They spend most of their time fighting off various villains - the main one being the very unsuccessful Monarch and the masculine-voiced Doctor Girlfriend. There is so much to like about this series with all the adventure story/cartoon parodies that to my surprise I found myself really getting into it. After the enjoyment of The Venture Bros. I was going to now go somewhere I never though I would - the world of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.
In the modern version Birdman has given up being a superhero and become an attorney. His clients are famous cartoon characters from the past who have been wronged in some way and are being defended by Birdman. I couldn’t believe what this show got away with. Every taboo was spoken about if not broken, and all with established cartoon characters. This show uses many loved characters - everything from The Flintstones to Jabberjaw - in very disturbing and surreal ways. It's crude and has a silly randomness that makes it hard to know what is going on. This is one cartoon which really fits the “adult swim” group, and one I will never show my kids (when I finally meet Mr Right and actually have some). After a long night of “anime” (cartoon) watching I didn’t meet Mr Right, but I do have to say, “GO Team Venture!” (high five like hand clap with two fingers like a V). Verbatim: In a word: Bent |
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The Venture Bros. were then put on and to my surprise it was like I was 12 again watching cartoons with my brother on a Saturday morning. This series has a look and feel of the classic Hanna-Barbera series and stories like The Hardy Boys mysteries and Scooby Doo with a silly twist.
I thought Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law would be wholesome - like the original series Birdman from the 1960s but I was very, very wrong.
