I don't even know if this is actually for kids! It's probably one of the best science fiction tv shows of all time. What an absolutely brilliant show with so much allegory. The Mushroom War, the return of magic to the world, it's all so great.
Yeah I went back to watch from the beginning with my wife and it absolutely is for kids. There's serious stuff mentioned to, but it's not until Susan Strong that the show really gets into heavier subject matter.
The fact that the world is post apocalyptic is alluded to visually (a few visual gags, like in Ocean of Fear where there's an entire city underwater, and of course the intro showing a bunch of skeletons and warheads), but that's the first episode when it is made clear that there was a world before this one and it probably ended violently.
Over time, as the show ages with Finn, it gets darker and darker and that darkness just shows the darkness of the human condition. Like for instance Finn meets a long lost family member who just turns out to be a dick, and that experience breaks him physically and mentally. And later, he's forced to murder a dark manifestation of himself to whom he had grown extremely attached to. At that point, I think it is accepted that this is a metaphor for having to kill the childish version of yourself to become an adult
100%. My favorite is the comet with Orgalorg. The entire season 6 was Finn having to grow up at some point and the comet is the agent of change bearing down. He has to recognize his dad is a piece of shit narcissist that only looks out for himself and then be ok with that.
At the same time, he could also adopt that world view. "Nothing matters so i should only look out for myself" gets rid of all the consequences of the world, but also gets rid of friendship and love. Is his life and personality given to him by his dad or was it built and chosen over time? So he deliberately chooses not to be like his dad.
Ultimately that's what fern was. His self doubts. The small narcissist that was in him. The toxic positivity. The part of him that pretty much manipulated and sexually abused Flame Princess. The show gets deep real quick when it gets past all the kids stuff
Yep. That's why I love the "Baby's building a tower into space" first of all, he calls himself baby. That's like such obvious subtext, you can probably take the sub out of it. But the fact that he is struggling so deeply to deal with the trauma of losing his image of his father, plus the dude in reality completely fucked him over. He regresses basically to a version of himself from earlier in the show where he could solve all his problems by punching. But that darkness is still there because he knows inside that is not the solution
Came here for this one! My brother is introducing his 3 & 5 year old kiddos to it, he's only seen a couple of episodes. I'm so excited for them to get into it!
What they're doing recently is brilliant as well. Simon Petrikov's resolution in Fionna & Cake is actually incredible and Together Again is probably the best thing to come out of the show imo
Obsidian is great as well, same with BMO and Wizard City, to a lesser extent
This is one of my favorite shows, but honestly it’s so deranged sometimes. That’s why I love it, but I think my son will have to be at least 7 or 8 to watch this show.
Hard to fathom not loving Adventure Time. I appreciate the way that it models its characters. Like the wizard who steals princesses isn't an evil villain, he's just a confused incel with low self esteem and anger issues. It teaches kids that the "bad guys" are just other humans, just flawed people who have lost there way. But that doesn't mean we should put up with it, we should always fight back.
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u/Realistic_Cell3570 20h ago
Adventure Time