I recently watched the Animaniacs reboot with my little sister and we both liked it, but I feel like it has the potential to be better. Now, I don't want to be too harsh on the reboot because afterall, only the first season has been released and I think it would be unfair for me to judge the entirety of the reboot for that reason, but I will still share the nitpicks I have because I believe there's room for improvement, so here we go. I feel like the comedy doesn't land as hard as it could, there were some jokes that made me and my sister laugh, like the joke in s1 ep13 where there's a slow motion sequence and Yakko requests for the scene to hurry up, or the joke in s1 ep1 where Pinky implies that he knows humans use the internet to watch, um... salacious content. But the reboot tends to rely on gross-out humor as an ongoing comedic tactic, which I don't think is very funny. It definitely gets a reaction out of me, I'll say that, but not the one intended. Characters expelling saliva while kissing just seems... kind of unnecessary. And I'm not sure if this was intended to be a joke, but the line in s1 ep1 where Pinky states that his relationship with Brain is derived from his enabling of Brain's "abuse" feels... kind of insensitive. Abuse is just... not something that should be joked about or thrown around like that (coming from someone who has actually experienced physical and verbal abuse as a child). And it doesn't make much sense for Pinky to classify Brain's boppings as abuse since there's a VERY big difference between slapstick comedy and physical abuse. Pinky's line also sort of taints my perception of his friendship with Brain. We know from the 1995 Pinky and the Brain spinoff that the two care a lot about each other and that their friendship is a lot more intimate than we initially think. Now, I know that Brain has always hit Pinky on the head with just about any object he can get his hands on, but again, slapstick is NOT the same as actual, real life abuse. Because slapstick isn't intended to be taken seriously, it's a form of comedy and a lot of people find it amusing, especially me! I love slapstick cartoons! But if the line was taken out of the episode and replaced with some other piece of dialogue, that'd be great! I think it shows care for the audience, especially since the show is still aimed towards children. When it comes to the nature of the main characters, I think they behave just about the same as they did in the original series, except for Brain, who is noticeably crankier in this series. I'm aware that Brain's voice actor, Maurice LaMarche, has stated that his elevated grouchiness in the reboot makes sense considering that he still hasn't taken over the world in 22 years. I'm not exactly keen on this modification, but I think this concept could be interesting to explore in the show if done correctly. Perhaps Brain could slowly come to realize how ill-natured he's become and has to combat the increasing maliciousness that comes from his desire for global domination. I feel like something along those lines would help the audience become more accepting of the change in personality. I just hope that Brain's temper doesn't interfere with his friendship with Pinky, because I think one of the key traits that made Brain such a likable character was his warm spot for Pinky. In addition, I've seen Russian viewers express their dislike of the reboot's use of Russian stereotypes. I do not speak for the majority of the people as I am not Russian, but I will say that you can critique a foreign country's government WITHOUT making fun of its people. I think we're well passed the era of generalized stereotypes. For the art, I'm quite fond of the redesigns of the characters, even if they are rather subtle. I think it's a neat new look. However, I think the lineart is a bit wonky. There's not much variation in line width either, the thickness at the start and ends of the lines appear to be the same size, which I think makes the animation lose its fluidity, no matter how smoothly animated the scenes are at times. It's hard to explain without any visuals, but I hope that makes sense. Some of the backgrounds are too brightly-colored, making them not very easy on the eyes. A decrease in saturation would look much nicer, in my opinion. I think that's about it for my review, it ended up lengthier than I would have liked, but I really do believe that the show has the potential to improve. I hope the criticism helps to make the reboot a worthy successor.
Review of Animaniacs
