Animating Halloween: The Amazing World of Gumball – Halloween

Plot: Gumball, Darwin and Anais head to the cemetery to meet Carrie for a ghost party at a haunted house.

Breakdown: You know what sucks? Watching an episode of Gumball with headphones on. Jesus Christ, does everyone do their best to have their voices squeak whenever possible? It’s like every character has an old shopping cart lodged in their throats.

I still have a bit of an odd relationship with Gumball, but I think I’m warming up to it a little. While the characters are still largely irritating, I found this episode to be fun. It’s a bit of a step away from your usual Halloween fare, in a good way, though I really think this special suffers from the eleven minute restriction.

Like I’ve already mentioned before, it’s very difficult to make one of these specials be worth it if they don’t at least get the full 22 minutes of a complete episode. The party didn’t get to be as funny as it could’ve been and neither did Gumball and Darwin messing around as ghosts all because they tried to do so much in so little time.

And just to get this out of the way, Gumball and Darwin kill themselves in this episode. I don’t care how they subvert it or sugarcoat it, they turned into ghosts and left bodies behind – they died.

Despite all that, they still had several moments that made me crack a smile, but none that made me laugh. I kinda like the humor Gumball has sometimes, like when they’re more deadpan or when they tried to control the T-rex, but it’s overall style has a lot of difficulty staying with me through the whole episode and I still can’t bring myself to like the characters. I liked Carrie a lot, but that’s about it.

All in all, a fairly fun Halloween special but nothing really…’special.’

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Episode One-Derland (Cartoons) The Amazing World of Gumball

Plot: Gumball and his brother, Darwin, ruin a DVD they rented. Afraid of facing their mother, they decide to plot and scheme to either replace the DVD or get the money needed to pay off the fee.

Breakdown: Gumball is a show I’ve seen in passing a few times on Cartoon Network, and I always felt divisive about it. I liked some of the jokes and comedic timing, but the art style put me off, and sometimes it seems like they’re being far more annoying than they are funny.

After sitting down and watching the first episode (first segment, DVD, I should say), I just can’t help but feel the same way. Again, I ended up liking some moments – there are pretty good jokes and clever writing in there, but Gumball and Darwin sometimes piss me off with their voice acting, Gumball annoys me with how stereotypical he is as a character (irresponsible scheming troublemaker – that’s new) and the art style has its moments where it works and others where it’s just odd.

This particular episode was also very cliché. Two brothers do something wrong so they get into a bunch of wacky shenanigans while trying to fix it without their parent knowing. I think that plot is a legal requirement of any sitcom or comedy cartoon with children that was ever made.

The actual art style is fine, it’s the fact that it’s always coupled with live action shots that puts me at odds – add that to the fact that you also have fully CGI characters and shifting art styles between characters and I just don’t know what to make of it. At the very least, it’s pretty unique.

Verdict:

I’m not sure I’ll ever get off the fence about this show.

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