2021 Animation Wrap-Up: Interesting Shows We Forgot to Cover

No podcast this time, but The Animation Guru has some choice words for you, as he runs us through some of the shows he saw in 2021 that he didn’t get to tackle in Renegade Animation!

So, we may have covered some films from 2021 that we were catching up on, but we are now at a point in time where we can’t really do a podcast talking about them, so I decided on some small reviews for the shows that we forgot to cover, due to time and reality getting in the way. Even with all of these shows, this isn’t everything. It just shows how much animation came out in 2021, and how the scene is vibrant and bountiful. Let’s just hope in 2022, the people who work on these shows get better pay, working conditions, production cycles, and get a new deal so they can keep making shows for their respective channels and streaming services.

A TALE DARK AND GRIMM

I was really bummed out that we had to skip covering this show back in October, because it’s a charming little CGI fling. This show is based on the books by Adam Gidwitz and was brought to Netflix by Doug Langdale and Simon Otto. This dark fantasy series definitely has a lot of charm with some great performances from the likes of Adam Lambert who is having so much fun as the devil, Nicole Byer as Mrs. Baker, Scott Adsit, Ron Funches, Eric Bauza, Cree Summers, and Eric Rodes just to name a few. It’s a distinct take on fairy tales, and while it won’t be super dark due to how it’s more family-friendly in spirit, if you need something to ease kids who are not used to horror, you can use this show to do it. It’s a solid adventure, and with it only having 10 episodes for right now, easy to get into and enjoy.

SUPER CROOKS

This is the newest installment in the Mark Miller comic book universe that doesn’t quite get off on the right foot. The pitch of super-powered thieves using said powers to pull off giant heists sounds like a great idea! It would basically be The Great Pretender but with powers! Personally, while it set up a pseudo interesting world, it took too long to get to what the main show built its pitch off of. The characters are great and the designs are very distinct, which translates to some incredible animation by Studio Bones. Sadly, some of the characters don’t get a lot of screen time or development. It still revels in that slightly edgy superhero perspective with the ultra-violence at points, though it isn’t as brutal as Invincible or The Boys. If it was able to pace out the story better for the main character and his arc over the show’s run, this could have been one of the best shows of 2021, but it’s still a fun and interesting take on the superhero genre. Maybe someone can take this concept of super-powered-fueled heists and do something with it, and who knows, maybe we will get a second season, but we will have to see if that live-action adaptation of this show is still happening after the failure of Jupiter’s Legacy.

THE HARPER HOUSE

This show from Brian Neely was, at first, a promising adult comedy about a family having to relocate to a “lesser” neighborhood after the mom lost her high-paying job, but after the ten or so episode run, it felt like it just regressed into typical adult comedy antics. At the beginning, the distinct art style made it stand out from the multiple Bento Box productions that are scattered across the landscape. It was also nice to see a show that had what seemed like a fairly healthy family and marriage dynamic that went against a lot of the more ‘mean-spirited for the sake of being mean-spirited’ nature of most adult animated families. Some of the episodes also talked about some rather interesting topics like the sexualization of women used in marketing. Unfortunately, as the show went on, what made it initially stand out was not really there. It’s a shame because it could have easily stood out among the multiple adult animated comedies we get every year.

SATURDAY MORNING ALL-STAR SMASH HITS

This show was such a surprise. This surreal, adult, and absurd take on late 80s early 90s nostalgic animated Saturday morning cartoon shows by Kyle Mooney, Dave McCary, and Ben Jones is a loving tribute, but also a scathing takedown on that time period of cartoons aimed at kids. It’s full of parodies of obvious shows like Care Bears and Denver the Last Dinosaur. It’s also got some serious deep cuts and parodies of the shows that used to flood the 80s and early 90s era of cartoons that include toy tie-ins, celebrity-starred cartoons, and shows based on films that were absolutely not supposed to be for kids. The live-action set pieces are making fun of a very specific show that was on back in the day, and while the silent awkward style of comedy is getting a touch tiring, the passion Kyle and his team had with his show makes up for any subjective elements of comedy. It’s a shame no one really watched this show, and I wish we could have had time to talk about it. It comes highly recommended.

FAIRFAX

While Invincible took all of the limelight last year with Amazon’s animated offerings, everyone should go back through Amazon Prime and check out this adult comedy series by Matt Hausfater, Aaron Buchsbaum, and Teddy Riley. It’s a modern-day take on kids journeying through life for the ultimate goal to be cool. Of course, doing this through the viewpoint of future influencers might be grating at points, but the dynamic between our teenage hopefuls does get better after the first few episodes where they understandably act like insufferable teens consistantly not thinking things through. The cast is full of a lot of delightful performances, including Peter S. Kim, Skyler Gisondo, Kiersey Clemons, Joboukie Young-White, Yvette Nicole Brown, John Leguizamo, J.B. Smoove, Jon Delaney, Zoey Deutch, and Billy Porter. Kudos to them for also giving the visuals a neon flair that makes it look different from other adult shows on these streaming services, and it’s already getting a second season, so be on the lookout for it, since it’s one of the few things Amazon has that’s not hyper-violent.

ADVENTURE BEAST

The unfortunate nature of this show was that it came out on Netflix and just died. The service didn’t offer any screeners or anything outside of one measly trailer to announce that it’s coming to the service. It’s a shame because it’s a really decent time! The take of a nature documentary show combined with the dark comedy of “here are all of the darker nature elements to the animal kingdom that you may not know about” is a fun combo to play around with. It just didn’t quite hit it out of the park in terms of its characters. I liked the father and daughter dynamics, but the sidekick was extremely grating on my nerves. If there was more of a sense of what the show wanted to be, I think the show’s pro-nature and animal safety would hit harder if it wasn’t clashing with the violent adult comedy stuff. Otherwise, it’s an interesting oddity that comes with a light recommendation if you want to find something a little different with your adult animated fare.

HOUSEBROKEN

It’s very rare for an adult animated comedy on the Fox block of adult animated shows to break out or even survive the one-season curse. Luckily, Housebroken by Clea DuVall, Gabrielle Allan, and Jennifer Crittenden takes an animalistic approach to tackle certain adult topics through the lens of a therapy group for house pets, and while the animation may not look different from other shows that are out, the vibe and tone of the show does feel different enough from Family Guy, The Simpsons, and Bob’s Burgers to stand out. It helps that it has a pretty killer voice cast including Lisa Kudrow, Jason Mantzoukas, Tony Hale, Sam Richardson, Nat Faxon, Will Forte, Sharon Horgan, Brain Tyree Henry, and Clea DuVall herself. I’m happy to see it get a second season, and I hope it can keep hitting it out of the park with this diamond in the rough.

THE GREAT NORTH

While this is yet another show from the Bob’s Burger and Central Park team of showmakers, and it doesn’t do a whole lot to reinvent the wheel of comedy, they somehow found a way to keep their comedy fresh with their setting of a small Alaskan town and a focus more on a patriarch trying to keep everything positive and upbeat with his family. While I personally don’t think it hit it out of the park as quickly as Bob’s Burgers or Central Park, as the show’s two seasons have aired, it has gotten better with the individual family moments and characters. The voice cast is also stellar with Nick Offerman, Will Forte, Jenny Slate, Dulce Sloan, Paul Rust, Aparna Nancherla, Megan Mullany, and a delightful performance by Alanis Morissette. It might have some growing pains to try and stick out from the other shows made by the team, but it’s starting to get its own two feet to stand on, and if you like the other shows the team has made, then you will like this one.

Q-FORCE

Honestly? This show that was created by Gabe Liedman on Netflix was the target of some incredibly unnecessary hate. Is it a great show? No, but as a first season? It’s fine! It has some rock-solid action, a few decent jokes, and a couple of likable characters with the lead Steve Maryweather, voiced by Sean Hayes, Stat, voiced by Patti Harrison, and Deb, voiced by Wanda Sykes. The dynamics between Twink and Rick Buck could get a touch tiring with their characters, but due to how rampant adult animated comedies are with unlikable obnoxious characters, they aren’t even the most obnoxious. The fact that this was a spy action show made for LGBTQ+ viewers, starring LGBTQ+ actors, and made by LGBTQ+ people is a rather impressive feat. As we all know, unless they were shows like Steven Universe or Adventure Time in style, most shows treated gay characters in very demeaning and punching down kind of ways. It might not click with everyone, the jokes may not always land, but the passion and heart are in the right place. I hope they didn’t cancel this series, because there’s potential here for a second season to flesh out the characters, maybe polish out the animation, and throw in some stellar action sequences, and you could get something really cool!

DOGS IN SPACE

This cute little sci-fi adventure show comes to us from Jeremiah Cortez and is available on Netflix to watch. This show follows a group of scientifically enhanced dogs as they traverse space to find a new home for humans, and honestly, this show got buried upon release. There seemed to be no buzz for it, and only a few reviewers covered the show. It’s a super charming little adventure with a likable cast of characters, a superb voice cast that includes Haley Joel Osment, Sarah Chalke, Kimiko Glenn, Chris Parnell, William Jackson Harper, and an incredible set of performances by Debra Wilson who plays a couple of the characters in the cast. It is a rather silly show, but it also has its themes of anti-colonialism, abandonment, trust, and it doesn’t skip on the action when things get revved up. This is easily one of the hidden gems of 2021, and if you have yet to watch the first season, then you should definitely check it out!

Special thanks to Cameron for the editorial! Follow him @camseyeview on Twitter!