Animation Monday: The Awesomes / Outlands

Nathan Young

11 years ago

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This Animation Monday post is going to talk about two online animated series you can find on Hulu and YouTube. First off, let’s talk about The Awesomes on Hulu.

The Awesomes

The Awesomes is an animated comedy series starring Seth Meyers streamed on Hulu. The show follows a group of superheroes who are a part of a once legendary superhero team. Under new leadership, The Awesomes attempt to put themselves back together. Meyers serves as executive producer alongside co-creator Mike Shoemaker and Lorne Michaels. In this series, Seth Meyers voices Dr. Jeremy Awesome. His father Mr. Awesome decided to retire from the superhero business. And it’s up to Jeremy Awesome to build a new superhero team or lose federal funding.

At first, Perfect Man and the other superheroes on the Awesomes quit. So it’s up to Jeremy Awesome or Prock and Muscle Man to assemble a new superhero team. One problem, doctors have told Prock that using his time stop powers could kill him, but he uses his powers several times in the pilot episode. The superheroes assembled are Muscle Man, Frantic, Gadget Gal, Impresario, Tim, and Hotwire. Along with secretary Concierge, the team goes out to save the day in a very interesting way.

At first, The Awesomes is an homage to the classic Saturday morning cartoons all adults grew up watching. I think The Awesomes has an animation style similar to Family Guy and their world is almost like The Incredibles or Teen Titans. Sadly, I thought the animation was one of the few good things about this show. Many people thought the writing was terrible. And the storylines was just pieced together. The series pilot episode lacked witty dialogue, and leans heavily on simple one-liners, set-ups, conflicts, and resolutions. I thought the characters were cute and somewhat funny. But they also represented worn-out stereotypes and an overload of pop-culture references. And what’s with those Jack Link’s Beef Jerky product placements?

Hopefully The Awesomes will get better on this 10 episode run. The show has great voice talent and animation qualities. But the cartoon needs to improve somewhat on its writing! This cartoon is certainly for adults and is not appropriate for kids. To learn more about The Awesomes, go to: http://www.theawesomes.com/. Enjoy the pilot episodes!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/515146

http://www.hulu.com/watch/517064

Outlands

Geek and Sundry has come out with a new adult animation series called Outlands. The series is created and produced by Adam de la Peña from G4TV’s Code Monkeys. The entire show is animated like a old, 16-bit computer game. The synopsis is: a group of misfit soldiers are sent into the wilderness of outer space, in an area known as the “Outlands.” Their mission? To clear the outer planets of any life forms that may stand in the way of building shopping malls and multiplexes. The series premiere episode kicks off as we meet the crew of the TITANTIC II (Hutch, Ben, Chubs, Sergeant Skill and MAK) when they explore their first planet with very mixed results, a murder in the crew, teddy bears and beers.

The show is set in the distant future of 1992. Felicia Day and Dana Snyder lends voices in this animated show. And so far, I am enjoying this animated show. The show reminds me of the classic video game animations you saw in the early video game systems. Which many people admits they like even today! The show has plenty of offbeat humor and the storylines are okay. The first episode has been seen by over 370,000 people on YouTube. And I hope this series is something that will become a permanent part of the Geek and Sundry family!

To learn more about Outlands, go to: http://outlands.geekandsundry.com/ Enjoy the first episode!