Jakes Takes: Homestuck The Animated Pilot: [S] ADAPT
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Didn't expect to be reviewing two buzzy indie animated pilots from a big studio with big names involved in a row, but here we are.
I"m coming into this from a weird place; I was big into homestuck in college, binging the whole series like I did many a webcomic before paitently following each page of act 6 as I roleplayed, made friends and made stupid decisions. Standard 20 something stuff.
As a lonely nerd it was easy to see why the series appealed to me: fun characters, a unique gimmick of being video game styled in a way that suprassed what even my beloved Scott Pilgrim had pulled off and using EVERY inch of being online instead of in print to it's advangage: gifs were frequent, big flashy videos were used, there were full on games, other comics within the comics, an da big sprawling narrative about 4 dorks, 12 alien dorks, a bunch of weird little guys, two diffrent versions of a murder man, some sort of space god who started out as a tiny edgelord, and a whole new universe starring 4 new dorks but now with more angst. Homestuck was a lot in the best ways, being flashy, having great music and being a delight to binge, and the worst ways, with details easy to miss, 80 tons of plots and a LOT of mechanics to it's world that are easy to miss.
So while i'ts something I enjoyed the combo of it getting even more convolluted along with a mean spirit and Andrew Hussie disappearing up his own ass meant I never even finished it the last act balloning into 80 seprate acts within an act instead of just... mcguiving a way to have more acts. Add in Hussie melting down a bit, weird cease and descists and the comic far as I k now being hard to find after the fall of flash, and you have something that was vital to the time it came out but has set into the dust of history.
Or so I thought. Instead I got the most unexpected announcment in recent animation history , just beating out that chinese tom and jerry movie i'm still impatiently waiting to come out in the US: Homestuck was getting an animated pilot and impliclity a series, with lead character John being voiced by homestuck vetran , undertale creator and living legend Toby Fox and produced by a new subsidariy of indie giant spindlehorse spindleroo. The series would be cowritten by Spindlehorse vetran Skye Henwood and Hussie.
The internet's reaction was good and normal..
A lot of hand wringing about "how dare your fandom infect mine" forgetting that just because a fandom has jackasses dosen't mean it's CREATORS are jackasses. I get being wary of Hussie, he got more and more troly as Homestuck progressed, but viv and toby did nothing wrong and in toby's case he STARTED in homestuck. Him doing a voice makes total sense. He wouldn't likely have undertale without homestuck. You don't have to like ANY of these three works but please , let creators be friends.
The crap Vivianne Medrano has gotten for this has been the worst and the most frustrating. Everyone magically assumed that just because she's involved, and only as a producer mind you not the writer as she has two other shows she's busy with but simply using her success as a platform, that the show would automatically be just characters screaming fuck at the top of their lungs for 11 minutes.
This criticism of Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel and now this pilot which again, she did not write and was co written by the man who wrote the original series, has gotten on my last nerve. I get so tired of people being pissy that Helluva Boss and Hazbin hotel say fuck all the fucking time. It fucking grates on me. The series uses a lot of fucks, but the swearing is all for effect or to flavor a character. Blitzo says fuck a lot because he's a brash asshole whose badly comepsating for his deep fucking seated insecurties. Stolas tends to only use fuck in sexual contexts with few exceptions. Moxxie only tends to use it when pissed off and so on and so fucking on. Characters tend to swear on a situational basness. Two of hazbin's hotels leads don't even fucking say it that often, or swear that much: Charlie only says fuck when genuinely upset and Alastor only does when caught off guard, one a tad childish the other trying not to use it to show a sense of class and control. The series' both use fuck a lot, but it's all in a well used fucking context and often the language and adult situations are used for dark humor. There's just as much character based humor and vivid fucking expressions.
Long story short; These shows say fuck a lot but it's done well and if you don't like them, that's fine. But if your going to crticize something find something fucking wrong first.
The shows do have issues as much as I love them. A show made for adults using swears a bunch isn't one of them.
So getting back to the actual pilot this was a giant swerve: an adaptation of a work that had a messy legacy, used 80 dozen mediums and would be a lot to adapt, but had the potetial to make something great done by it's creator and a vetran of two of the best shows in anmation right now. It was promising enough to get a look.. and good enough to remind me why I used to love homestuck.
For those less familiar with homestuck it follows four kids who are online friends and about to play a beta for a video game and the real magical destiny just beneath the surface of their weird offbeat lives. There's also a bunch of aliens one of whom says fuck so much I question why any Homestuck fan has such a problem with the f bombs in this one. Dave already used it and whlie amped up for John, it fits his character enough to allow it. It's an adaptation, they'll adjust things. it's why my old friend I genuinely forgot about the mayor shows up earlier. It was a big shocking twist to have a silly little guy doing the computer stuff.. here it's easier to have him there to explain why that's happening and open up the mystery of "okay wait why is he watching them.. how what is this what".
In general the pilot feels streamlined: the chats go from the reams and reams of them a person would realistically have, to a few conversations for brevity's sake. We still get the gist of who these four dorks are quite well: John is a well intentioned little weirdo whose biggest problem is a loving dad he's angsty too because teenage times, Dave is an irony poisoned little shit who repeadtly says he's not going to actually play the game their all going to play and mocks John's life choices despite being his best friend with an undercurrent of sexual tensions, Rose is an intellgent young lady who can troll a bit but is still the most grounded of the core four and Jade is a bouncy little bean whose kind, sweet and a little spacy. We get the kids down pat in their screentime and get the series tone. It leaves a lot on the floor as to what's going on but the basics is simple: this is a kid in some weird video game world, a lot of shit is happening, and it's his birtdhay and he's trying to play a beta with his friends but instead gets into a cake fight with his dad.
I applaud the pilot taking a memorably silly fight where a child slapped a cake and making it into a full on shonen brawl between a teenager who wants to destroy the cake his father lovingly made and a silent 50's dad who just wants to give his son a cake but accidently shoves him out the door. It's gloriously stupid, taking an already silly situation and taking it up to elven with gorgeous animation. It also has some nice detail to it: Dad never really ATTACKS john. Shoves him out of the house with a cake yes, but you don't get the sense he intended to put his son through a wall. He throws cake after cake simply to give hi mcake and tries to pie him because that's a whole thing with them. Pranks are in the family blood. John likewise, for all he angsts about his entirely normal and kind dad, only ever aims at the cake itself. He just dosen't want cake. Their just really bad at commuincating. The fact dad never talks probably dosen't help. It's telling when john starts falling Dad scoops him up on his back and makes sure to take most of the impact then focuses on taking out the smoke alarm. God I missed this character. Such a legend.
The pilot is hightned.. but in a way that fits and is used to help streamline things: instead of text chats or just using a window to represent whoever john's talking to , both Dave and Rose (with jade absent for plot reasons I'd honestly forgot about), stretching into frame, sometims as their full selves, sometimes as little chibis. It allows the characters to interact more broadly, something that wasn't an issue for the original but in animation two characterst yping constantly on their computers or phone would be tedious. Having John yank the game bro out of dave's hands, put it in his inventory and later throw it in a fire.. that's great. Dave tilting John's head so he sees the title drop. Beautfiul. it allows the characters to be the animated little goobers they always were, and takes advantage of the new format: now the characters have full modles instead of cool little sprites, they can be expressive, get even weirder and play off each other. The way the pilot plays with the medium and the calls and texts is it's big highlight. It's likely why the trolls were revealed earlier than the comic: besides Hussie having' created them by now, having them in shadows and siolutees limits what they can do when they do enter the story.
Props to the voice cast too: I haven't heard Fox voice act before, but he's phenominal as John getting him down just right from his hightened sense of self importance to his weird delcoration of sticking his hand up a mailboxe's ass. Adam McArthur, who I know from Star VS and I was shocked to find actually had a giant role recently as Yuji in Jujutsu Kaisen, is a delight as dave, more energetic but in a way that still fits his irony poisoned (Thanks rose for reminding me of that term), hispster douchery. Cherami Leigh, who I know from Persona 5, is a delight as rose, getting her dry deadpan and subtly trolling nature down, trying to inch john in admitting he finds dave handsome. Jade is a fun bouncy high pitched delight in her brief scenes, but dosen't get as fleshed out as the other two. That said this is pretty in line with the source.
And of course the ending was a gorgeous montage hinting at the many adventures to come, and showing off the trolls with their own anime opening style segment that will defintely be used for the series opening down the line if it gets one. Is it a bit "See this isn't ALL 13 year olds dicking around?" Sure, but it's an effective teaser without giving TOO much away.
Overall I really enjoyed this pilot and hope it gets the money from either merch or daddy bezos to become a full series. This wouldn't be the first time Amazon had payed for an intenet sensation to be turned into one of the best cartoons of all time... it'd be the third. And the second it'd adapted a massive late 2000's made saga with a lot of stuff that could be streamlined or improved. Like invincible this is a project with a great base where you can simply make it better.. except act 6. That's going to need a lot of reshuffling to flow as a story let alone in a series, but that's something far into the series future. For now it's bright, fun and reminded me of an old friend and why I loved it. It also had Karkat breaking a keyboard and being mad he only got one linie so already top notch characterization there. Thanks for reading
