finally working through all of Adventure Time (on season 7) and while it does change its tone significantly, I always see this website talk about that fact with such despair and resentment & I don't totally get it. Was there some magic element lost along the way or is it just change in and of itself that older viewers rejected? Originally I stopped watching around 2011 as it aired, so I'm not sure myself
I noticed by season 3 it started to feel 'off.'
And that's where I stopped my marathon.
Season 1 was about testing Finn's resolve as a hero with Memories of Boom Boom Mountain as its peak when Finn decided to save everyone but each save made someone else suffer. Lots of adventures.
Season 2 was about something. It was still wacky and full of adventures
Succeeding seasons was about satisfying shipping homosexualry and lesbians or some shit
Seasons 1-5 will always be the pinnacle of Adventure Time for me
>shift to more serious/experimental tone puts of people who just want wacky adventures
>Finn's breakup with FP felt like character assassination and he can't catch a break afterwards
>more episodes that lack Finn and Jake, or even any other main character
These are some common gripes. Though personally I loved it from start to finish, there is no point where it "fell off"
Some people got upset Finn became a teenager, they wanted him to be a 12 years old forever.
Cinemaphile is prodigiously whiny. A collection of some of the worst losers in the world. I'm trying to spend less time on it in favour of spending more time interacting with people irl, as should everyone.
Oh, and I rewatched Adventure Time not long ago. It's great throughout. There's a tonal shift, sure, but it works. I guess some people didn't like it.
I remember, on my first watch as the show was airing, being bummed by Finn (and Mordecai from Regular Show) going through troubling times, but on the rewatch binge, it didn't last as long as I thought and I liked it. Like another commenter said, it's sort of a puberty period for Finn and the show, and they come out the other end more mature in a pleasing way.
It's ideologically motivated.
It sounds like you're an industry person and it resonates with your career-motivated grooming, of course it does
you're ideologically homosexual
>Cinemaphile
ISHYGDDT
Also
>Twitter is prodigiously whiny. A collection of some of the worst losers in the world.
FTFY
It’s different but not necessarily bad. Most of the worst episodes happen from like season 4-6 though. The miniseries’ that start popping up in the latter half of the show are generally my favorite pieces of AT.
Anyone who likes Adventure Time is an insufferable hipster in one way or another be they bubblinegays or finncels.
Exactly. This kind of people are always into the worst kinds of cartoons like adventure time, regular show or smiling friends.
>MLP is so much better btw! The absolute pinnacle of all Western animation, it's what every show ever should strive to be! Everyone who likes it is an upstanding individual who will help make this world a better place to live!
Die out
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Lee, what are your thoughts on Adventure Time?
kys
Season 6 really sucked for me. It killed me, my friends, and my mother's interest in the show and when I stopped talking to all them about it the show just got worse week after week. Like they betrayed the original premise of the show in a bad way. It got really pretentious in a way Regular Show, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, etc never did and it sounded like they were spitting stoner nonsense about mental worlds and astral projection and shit. I just didn't care. The bee episode in season 6 was the clear dividing point for me. It was just gobbledyasiatic pseudo-deep weirdness for the sake of it rather than being weird in a convincing and charming way like the first 5 seasons.
>Was there some magic element lost along the way
There's a very clear difference in tone and story as the show go on. I remember when S1 AT was called randum and stupid. Not entirely wrong but the weird experimental show really appealed to some, even the OST was out there
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AT's change is more of a gradual thing and hard not to notice the fan influence. People talked about the lore, so it got more focus. People shipped a lot, so relationships became the focus. People loved the breakout character episodes, so everyone starts getting one. Whether you like or dislike how it is handled there is a clear difference between Finn and Jake go to silly magic school, and side character is sad because parents probably.
>People talked about the lore, so it got more focus.
I think people misremember how much focus the lore actually got. The vast majority of episodes were still random slice-of-life adventureshit even deep into the show's run. e.g. The Ice King/Marcy stuff fans circlejerked over got not much focus at all in the scheme of things
When I say lore for that period I mostly mean random jokes and off hand mentions. The earth having a chunk out of it is a visual gag, the Enchiridion exists for a punch line about smooching princesses, the Lich was a lich. Not to say it is bad all these became more or there was never backstory to some. But I do thing it contributed to Ooo becoming a bit less fantastical.
To me, the change in focus on story and relationships was necessary, the problem comes in the fact that it became unfunny, unexciting and just overall worse in quality. This is not dependent on the tone.
Cinemaphile was wrong as always.
I disliked the tone shift less because I found it ill fitting and more so because when it happened, the cartoon network executives broke into my house and nonconsensually ran a train on me
It's mostly Finncels upset that their self-insert got cucked by dykes and didn't grow up into a giga chad with a harem of princesses.
I got bored of the show and basically stopped watching around the Lemonhope arc, but I still remember the earlier seasons fondly. I also don't really talk about the show. The people crying about it on Cinemaphile are mostly trolls and asshurt shippers.
He basically already had a harem of princesses, he was just obsessed with the one girl that DIDN'T want him.
I liked the whole thing, but it's easy to understand why people might stop liking something as it changes. The annoying part of the discourse to me is all the bullshit about how tumblr women writers hijacked the show from Pen. A good chunk of the AT crew worked on it for years, and they were just making stuff they wanted to make as they gained more leeway and freedom from the network. Artists making stuff they are passionate about is a good thing, so love the change or hate it, I think you have to respect that. Executives dictating to artists what they can and can't make is what has led to this era of creative stagnation for animation. We should be celebrating artists having the freedom to make unique, creative shit, even if it doesn't appeal to our particular tastes. Rant over.
>Was there some magic element lost along the way
For me it was mainly the dialogue, interactions between characters and ruined characterizations. Dialogue became drab, often basic, stilted and energyless. For example compare episodes with similar premises, something like henchman to marceline the vampire queen or beautopia to mama said. Interactions, mostly between ""main"" characters started becoming awkward and uncomfortable, team dynamics at the beginning were centered around Finn and to lesser extent Jake, this was later replaced with a giant Bubblegum wank, who also became writers' pet, especially noticeable after season 6 so Muto would be able to desperately push for his crack OTP (for example compare scenes were Finn, Jake, Bubblegum and Marceline are present at the same time or just three of mentioned characters during seasons 1- early 5 to seasons late 5-9). I could write a whole essay about retcons, that do not help with the worldbuilding, and inconsistent characterizations of almost all of the major characters but that would waste too much of my time so I'll pass. I'll just mention that I found Finn's flip flopping between introspective, analytical thinker (for example in the comet, hall of egress, elements) and an absolute incompetent moron (for example whole stakes, I am a sword, seventeen) the most aggravating. Also plenty of good or interesting set ups with disappointing conclusions, too much pointless filler (Ie. episodes that focus on a random writer's OC character from background doing random thing instead of focusing on the damn main cast). Adventure time was taking on more serious subjects even during season 1 like in "ocean of fear" or "what is life?", so personally I didn't mind the gradual change of tone or it becoming less episodic. I do fell that during seasons 7-9 the show was riding on fumes, maybe partially because of the PG rating or material fatigue, or different storyboarders but as a viewer I don't care.
>For me it was mainly the dialogue, interactions between characters and ruined characterizations. Dialogue became drab, often basic, stilted and energyless.
Exactly this
personally, i mostly just hated how the focus shifted away from fun lil' adventures to gay relationship drama. That's almost never handled well, but it felt especially bad in AT since you already know how good the show would be like without it, since that's exactly what the first few seasons were like. I will say though, unlike most other anons, i did like quite a few of those latter episodes that were about "muh deepest lore," mostly because i'm just a sucker for that kind of thing. like that one with that space prison that the Lich was on? cool as hell.
people exaggerate the relationship drama. Other than the FP arc mid-season 5, it wasn't that big a focus at all.
idk, i felt like it became an increasingly large presence in the show after that fire and frost episode. In fact, i thought that finn-centric episodes started to become way more mopey in general, like all that stuff with losing his arm and fern and what have you. Before he was energetic and optimistic, but after it he was so sulky and even self-pitying, which i did not care for. might've happened because of sugar's sad-boy fetish or something.
It was only a large presence in 5.2, with a series of episodes focused on Finn's breakup drama starting with Frost and Fire. Too Old, Earth and Water, Love Games, Dungeon Train, and Red Throne. After Breezy, we don't get much on Finn's love life until Flute Spell in late season 7.
you now, now that i think about, you're right. most of the episodes i was thinking of were either before season 5 or during. it's been a while since i've seen this show, so i guess my memory of it isn't very good. still, like i said in my previous post, a lot of the latter episodes centered around Finn having him acting in a really mopey way about stuff that i really don't care for. There's also the fact that there's a lot less finn-centric episodes in general. He's supposed to be the protagonist after all, so seeing him getting almost written out is just odd.
you weren't there. AT being unpopular happened seemingly overnight and unspokenly. AT being bad imo flagpoled the sad, terminally ironic, insincere time we have now.
>seemingly overnight
So what season/episode would that have been
.
What episode is this
Frost & Fire
The episode itself doesn't bother me, but I'd rather they'd completely dropped exploring Finn's love life than to have invented a character to be his girlfriend and for her to be given nothing to do once that's over.
Contriving a scenario where PB ages down and then contriving another scenario where that's undone was ridiculous back to back, especially because the former was depicted as definitive. Revealing she's actually ~800 years old makes it more ludicrous in retrospect that they ever seriously entertain the idea of them getting together.
Season 1/2 established Finn had a crush on PB, but it wasn't depicted as an infatuation until Season 3 (saving her hair, snapping at Jake when he presses him on it, becoming emotionally despondent at the first sign of rejection etc). You could've just had the crush unceremoniously fade away after Too Young and no one would've thought twice about it.
They spend so much time exploring what it means for him to have a healthy romantic partnership that they're at a loss for where his place in the story should be once that's mostly covered. I feel like that's what made him wind up being incidental to his own series.
People were still watching up until the very end though. IIRC the talkback thread for Come Along With Me was like 1000 posts
Its so fricking depressing to think that not only do we have 0 chance of getting the show back to being what it was, the shittiest parts of it are embraced as some sort of zenith of cartoons from that time by the media and the mongoloids who like that shit.
>0 chance of getting the show back to being what it was
At least F&C was better than the late og adventure time, so personally I'm fine with that. It had its own problems, mainly with the pacing, but I wouldn't even call the show particularly bad.
You just have shit taste.
You had to be there
see they ran the first five seasons basically back to back, within like 2 years. then suddenly there was this hiatus for the first time, and we'd been so spoiled that it hurt
then a bunch of writers left so a ton of plots got abandoned or didn't finish what they were clearly aiming at in the start.
it's fine though, still a good show all the way, and all but one of the HBO specials
It stopped being about a boy and his dog going on wacky adventures and transformed into pretentious drama about lesbians while making Finn look like a b***h.
people stopped watching it so they have to pretend every part they didnt watch was terrible. especially since rebecca sugar and steven universe are popular to shit on. the only bad episodes were some of the guest animations and the shitty dad filler episodes in the final season.
Finn ends the show single because his girlfriends either dump him or turn gay.
As somebody who finally marathoned the show a month ago, I hadn't realized how much I enjoyed Finn and Jake's interactions until Season 6 hit. Finn is cast to the side while other characters hog the spotlight and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it just became boring. No, I do not give a frick about Jake's fat son or Lemonhope waddling around or attempts to make the show seem deeper than it actually is. Just give me Finn and Jake.
Allegedly one of the new writers genuinely hated Finn
Assuming you mean this, I think it's probably blown out of proportion. This writer could've meant Finn has to weather hardship in service of learning whatever lesson the episode they were writing had. I'm sure there's context missing from the statement that makes it more than 'I hate this character'.
After Holly Jolly secrets, it felt like the series continuously tried and failed to recapture that lightning in a bottle moment of revealing ice king's backstory, and ended up just cheapening it in the process. Constant deep dives into backstory and lore became meaningless, and the fun goofy adventures layered on top took a back seat to the writers using the cartoon as personal therapy.
Didn't they end up giving most throwaway gags from early seasons some 2deep4u backstory?
True, bringing Betty back was a mistake and the dementia allegory was much better rather some convoluted backstory about the crown being this powerful magic tool and effectively killing IK as character by turning him back into Simon
It became shit the moment it stopped being about the wacky adventures of a boy with his magic dog and more about the random sad backstory about some background character that no one cares about because every writer on the show wanted their version of the IK's backstory ep only fail miserably most of the time to make good drama because the show always keeps going back to the status quo, not to mention that you can tell that these hacks were running out of ideas to make new episodes for when the last season of the show has an episode about the fricking love live of that granny elephant that NO ONE really likes.
Also, most of the few changes that weren't reset by the status quo were awful like the stupid PB backstory about her making the whole candy kingdom a bunch of mental morons
This show simply shouldn't lasted 10 fricking seasons
The real reason why Adventure time gets exponentialy worst after season 5 is because Argentina changed the voice of Jake the dog in spanish and made the dub ten times worst.
AT is really fun throughout, a lot of people got into the show over shipping reasons and loathe it because their ship didn't become canon, note how the people who hate AT the most often are just angry Finn didn't get with PB or have a harem or something.