SMG4: Zachtaku review
Hello, welcome to the first ever Zachtaku reveiw, where i give my objectively correct, yadda yadda yadda, we've all heard the Mother's Basement Reddit tier intro before so lets get into the actual meat and potatoes.
Now lets start with how I found out about the series. Now, I know it's seen as kind of fillibuster content to talk about how "Ooooh this sereis found me at THIS time in my life!!!" Buthold on!!! This is actually relevant! Alright so, back in about 2019 Lizzie Freeman asked me about lending her voice to my animations:
So After that she's been the voice of Susan from BKNK ever since. And since that went so well I decided to follow her on twitter, because I like seeing and supporting any and all voice actors I work with if theyre active on social media, then comes 2020 when she voices Meggy for the first time. And I'm ngl, I kinna ignored it for the first like year or so because I wasn't really too big on Gmod, nintendo, fan created stuff
But then she kept on tweeting about like EVERY big event, and at some point there was even Vtuber streams and a collab with Wolfychu??? AND A EULOGY STREAM??? So I was like, ok I GOTTA see what's happening in this show now, cause it seems likepure insanity.
So yeah, I hopped on the train riiiight around Mario wants to be invited for BBQ, so riiiight after the Genesis arc.
But first!!!! I had to catch up, so I watched AAAAALL of the early smg4 Mario 64 bloopers. Now, I'm no stranger to Mario 64 blooper videos, hell, my upbringing was unrestricted internet access in 2007 so my brain was rotted with Rage Faces, Numerous mario flash animations, and TF2 Gmod videos, to the point where I chronically was humming the mario 1-1 theme so much i didnt even notice until my parents told me to shut the fuck up.
But I digress, it was a fun time nonetheless, though not exactly from my era because SMG4 started in 2010 and by that time I think I was addicted to Funimations TV channel. Although, as nostolgic as it was, I had to put the videos in 2.0 speed because I'm an adult and I got stuiff to do.
I'd say around 2014-2019 was the peak of SMG4's humor, because that was when they REALLY started abusing those gmod physics and were still allowed to curse, and even had some... suprising audio sources, like from Boondocks, which makes these videos REALLY funny from a progressive hindsight prospective.
So let's get started by reviewing these arc by arc eh? Firstly, the Waluigi arc. I mean, it's the average series of SMG4 vids with Waluigi going "Mweh heh heh. This'll be important to my master plan!" at the end of each one until the ACTUAL end where he does the evil. Good arc :)
Rapper Bob arc was good because Bob is the most based character in SMG4 :)
So, the anime arc... this is where things get SERIOUS!!! But I can't exactly take it seriously, I'm sorry, but I can't take Meggy's "screams of pain" seriously knowing that they're just vocorded from the loudest orgasm scream:
With that being said, this is also from the era where community curated closed captioning (try saying that 4 times fast) was still allowed and honestly I'm surprised theyre still in the videos at all! So those are definetly a mixed bag as to if they'll actually add or subtract to these videos enjoyment.
And with THAT being said, the first half of World War Mario is probably the funniest content the channel has ever produced. It has just that perfect blend of cinema and humor, without going too hard in on the cinema to detract from the ironic humor.
Now apparently the fandom calls these next 3 arcs the "cosmology saga" So I'd say, yeah, this is probably my favorite era of the series, because it really gives each character the time to shine and develops the lore in, not exactly a meaningful ways, but just goes and stretches the story this series is able to tell to it's absolute maximum levels.
And since we're getting more into the lore, lets take a quick intermission to talk about the characters, shall we?
All nintendo characters: it's a parody series, and not a well written one at that, so I'm not expecting a deep analytical dive into any which character to change my perspective on how I see them, they are a means to an end on getting from one joke to another, and thats it.
SMG4: I don't like this character, mainly because I don't like self inserts, he kinda drags down a lot of episodes he's in and even the series itself as he becomes the face and anchor of the channel more and more. I think I woulda preferred it if he was more so an onnipotent being in the background that maybe appears sometimes? I mean, I know the channel is named after him, but I'm kinda just here for Mario and the OCs man...
SMG3: Ok, now this guy was pretty funny I gotta admit, he had pretty good chemistry with everyone, and he was one of the... less bad redesigns.
Tari: She was my favorite. I liked her because she was moe. THough something happens later on that I did not like and I will get more into that in it's relevancy.
Meggy: She was a fun, tomboyish character, who had a lot of fun interractions with the cast... but she kinda divulged into becoming the "mom" of the group later on in the series always having to be the steryotipical sitcom "woman who has to keep the hilarity of those STUPID BOYS" to a minimum.
Melony: She was cute as well, but they kinda didn't know what the fuck to do with her after Revelations.
Bob n boopkins: BASED
Alright that just about covers all the relevant ones.
Now, the YOUTUBE ARC: This was a fun one, it's where Lizzie Freeman finally starts voicing for Meggy so I think that made watching four hundered and seventy one of these fuckin things worth it. This is also SMG3's big villain arc with his EVIL versions of the characters, so that was fun to see.
Next is the Genesis arc. Firstly I just wanna say I was met with this warning when I first looked it up on the SMG4 wiki to get a refresher:
So I guess that's a good idea of what I was dealing with.
But I actually really liked this one! Gave explinations for pretty much everything! even things i didn't particularly want to know, but got it anyways! THis was also around the time Sunset in Paradice was happening so Meggy isn't in it at all so it's just a full deep dive into the Meme lore, meme verse, meme this meme, that, just stupid fun lore all around.
Now is the Relevations arc, which is probably my favorite arc all around, it's kind of where the series goes full :Tails gets trolled" with it's powersystems and characters. Niles was a fun antagonist, kinna wanted Melony to hook up with him on the rebound, but I liked him as a villain too. It had a really good fiunal fight and finale, so much so to the point where I even bought merch for a youtube channel for the first time in my life, got the melony plush and the poster!
I think it was around this time where Lizzie stopped voicing Meggy because she said her schedule was too busy for it, and honestly, I don't blame her, having to reccord an episode every week, streams, a constant flood of MarioXMeggy shipping questions, I'd hop out too lol.
Well i mean, as a voice actor, but as a viewer I got that sunk cost fallacy hooked to me now, but either way, it was a graceful exit, and no drama was berefitted from this... (foreshadowing)
Then came the lawsuit story arc. this was the first time in the series where i was like: "fuckin... ok??? I guess???" I mean, obviously the redesigns were done purley for a capitalistic reason of selling more merch without getting into trouble, I wanna say to fund Glitch some more, but I don't know how much merit that claim has seeing as how they got the Australian government and Epic games funding them from the back end, but I digress. I feel as if the story telling of this arc has a fundemental flaw in that if they lose the case the OCs dicipate to nothingness via DMCA, but I feel like it should be the other way around???
Oh yeah, here's a sidebar I just remembered with Meggy being a laywer now, origionally she was going to be a cop, but the SAME WEEK that Meggy police academy video came out the murder of George Floyd happened so they had to ditch that aspect of her character REAL fast, and I mean, good on them for reading the room, but they also had NO idea what the fuck to do with Meggy's character from that point foward.
Oh yeah, side bar 2, this is when I tried getting into the fandom more because I liked the series and wanted to talk amongst like minded people, but holy shit was I wrong, SMG4 fans fucking HATE there own series, and they do not fuck with the lore AT ALL. This was one of the most dour, miserable fanbases I had ever wittnessed all of my time watching the series, and I'm glad after my short stint into trying to get into the fanbased, I jumped the fuck out.
So yeah, next is the Puzzle vision saga, which is where is all crumbles down, but lets highlight some highs first!
It Has to be Perfect: THis was a fun arc, even though I'm not the biggest fan of SMG4 the character this was a good look in to the creators vision... even if the messages falls flat because he's... not really the writer... or involved with the creation at this point anymore because he has a whole team of creatives working on the project now... Well anyways, I probably should have known everything from the Cosmology saga was going to get thrown out the window once he stated "Uh guys, this isn't meme energy!" I also liked the part where SMG3 calls out SMG4 on clicking sus links, and that's how his twitter gets hacked, because that happened on the very SAME weak of the peak of the hype for the promotion of this arc.
Now for the inbetween lore because this is kinda important lore stuff. So basically at the end of IHTBP Peaches castle gets destroyed and they have to buy a new castle. I don't really know why they did it, the color scheming of the castle kinda sucks, it's all blue white and gold and feels like it's deccorated in a permanent state of Hanukkah. while peaches castle had actual artistry and color variety, but nevertheless its there now, and we have to deal with it.
Next arc is what I actually consider to be the peak of SMG4, Western spaghetti. Now, i could really care less about the videos leading up to it, that's kinda unimportant to me, what I REALLY liked about this event was all of the promotional material leading up to the video itself, firstly was the interractive Gmod map with all of the characters on the train of the video and you could actually go into this map IN GMOD, which was probably the coolest thing that SMG4 ever did. Not to mention that we could get our first hints to Mr.Puzzles here. And THEN there were the promo images on twitter that they were posting to promote the event, where there was all sorts of misdirections and actual hints to what was gonna happen. (I *REALLY* wanted Tari losing her arm to happen) But either way, the actual video itself was a very well put together affaire, had a really good villain for Meggy and some really good moments with Tari, also I felt it did a REALLY good job building up Mr. Puzzles
Oh yeah also, i REALLY wanted to buy the poster for this episode, but Tari's hand coming in from the top ruined it, so I didn't buy it.
The next arc listed on the wiki says the WOTFI of 2023, but I don't necessarily consider that an arc, but more so an event. but it was a pretty fun one as well, where the fanbase got a couple of hours per voting how to excecute every which part of the plan would go which was fun. and we got an actual reveal to Mr.Puzzles himself!
Now the actual next arc was Puzzle vision itself and it was... a massive dissapointment on all fronts. Firstly, I thought that the "mysterious voices critisizing his shows" were some higher council of power controlling him behind the scenes, but no, it was just general "online trolls" I suppose, so yeah, it's just Mr. Puzzles, and what's his big goal in all of this? A generic "I NEED MORE POWAH" motivation. and even the excecution of how this storyline played out felt so... mishandled.
Like ok, here me out here, it felt like this three story arc saga was building up to something major, like a three part thing starring the three main characters! First arc was SMG4's with IHTBP, then Meggy with WS, and then THIS arc should have been Mario's arc! It would have made perfect sense! SMG4 Mario is the perfect antithesis to ALL of Mr.Puzzles motivations! Mr.Puzzles wants cinema, and actual constructive content, but SMG4 Mario lives for CHAOS, MEMES and slap dashed comedy in 10 minute increments! Hell, Mr. Puzzles is addicted to staying within the confines of the 4th wall of televised story telling, but SMG4 mario is THE representation of the entire internet entertainment industry! He is ever changing... 4th wall breaking... he is meme incarnate. (Elon Musk of he watched SMG4 be like)
But no, Mario just... kind of puts a hinder to Mr. Puzzles plans? Then he just kinda dips for the rest of the vid and leaves it to the rest of the cast... and honestly, I'd say this is the first time in the series where the OCs work as a detriment to the storytelling of the arc as a whole. I honestly think Mr.Puzzles should have been a Mario and Luigi villain. Alas, Mr.Puzzles is defeated and allis saved... I distintcly remember being so dissapointed by this finale that I actually quit my job working for a medicinal tea production company (it was shady anyways... and looked like something straight out of breaking bad...)
So now in this inbetween two cardinal sins occur, let me address the lesser of two evils first. at some point in between these arcs theres a feature that features a visual gag of Meggy getting scared and shrinking down into her wee booties and hopping away like a goomba. Now, this was the first actual funny gag that Meggy had gotten in a long while so the fanbase kind of latched on to it. I mean heck, I liked it too at the time,it was a funny visual gag! I even remember one of the machinima artists on twitter popping up saying that he was happy that people enjoyed the joke he came up with.
But then SMG4 noticed that the fans actually liked something about Meggy for once and fucking RAN with it. It was after Puzzle vision where you will see, they ran this gag into the fucking GROUND and actually had it be important for her character??? I don't really know too much about the Meggy leggy lore because I actually SKIPPED the next arc, and The reason for that ties directly into the NEXT contriversy.
It was in the episode where they introduced Tari gets a modification that lets her arm talk, I think his name was clamp? Well either way, it came as a shock to everyone that at the end of this episode that Tari had a new VA in the credits. Now, I have no problem with VA's coming and going from a series if it's their time to go, again, Lizzie Freeman had a graceful exit from the series and that's all fine and dandy. What i DONT like is when Voice actors get replaced and they find out THE DAY THE EPISODE COMES OUT.
So yeah, when the Episode came out, Tari's VA, Celeste Notley-Smith, said that she had no idea that they were going to do this, and that she was still good to go to voice the character despite her outside work, hell, even when she was pregnant with TWINS she acted her HEART out for that season 1 Meta Runner finale. But no, no email, no warning, no nothing, they just straight up dropped her. Now, I know a discord mod, or something like that had some excuse cooked up, but Celeste debunked that too after that came about, and after that? nothing.
And this bullshit maddens me to this day, because at that point everyone was getting on Glitch's ass for this bullshit, but then I saw a paradigm shift. I watched the narrative on this contriversy shift in real time. It went from people complaining about this disrespectful replacement, to people complaining about Glitch unfairly treating it's employees and using AI in there works???
Like, No!?!???? That's not what this is about!? What the fuck are you guys talking about!? I don't know if this was the previously mentioned miserable ass fanbase using this as an opportunity to air out there dirty laundry they had with Kevin and Luke, or if it was an inside job from Glitch themselves to change the narrative by falsey making there own side contriversy by flooding the zeitgiest with false data to drown out the truth. Well either way it worked, a couple days later, they addressed the "abusive workplace" and "AI art" """""Claims""""""" and completely ignored the Celeste contriversy.
After this, ALL of this was never brought up by anyone ever again, all that came out of this was a bunch of burnt bridges with voice actors they previously worked with, but in all honesty it probably ain't nothin but a thang to Glitch since they got that Digital Circus money to cover there tracks, and I'll just have to assume, no HOPE they at the very least gave Celeste some sort of offline, out of court settlement style apology for what they did.
Now, for the next two arcs? Who gives a fuck, I ignored them, they were Leggy centric anyways so they probably were dog shit.
I think I begrudgingly jumped back in to see how they were doing around the Karen arc, and honestly? after all that other stuff i kinda just aerodynamically flew around the top of my dome because this shit just dont stick anymore...
So yeah, they introduce Mr.WPNZ, he was... fun? then he goes to prison, teams up with Mr. Puzzles and some slime thing?
Ok yeah that's the main problem with SMG4 post-cosmology, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing anymore. They wanted to be so divorced from all of the stupid, inane fanbase drama that those arcs caused that they wanted to do something completely different, and tried to experiment in various ways to take the series, but in doing so, that's all they did, endless experimentation and no expanding, which lead to stagnation, and that's why by the end of the series it just felt like things were going on one endless straight line towards endless mid, no more character development, growth, or death, cause that causes contriversy, unless its a villain. so Nothing can ever happen, ever, except to villains.
and that's why the series just kinda ends on a big wet fart. mismanagement and not knowing how to actually continue.
But at the same time, I get it, it was a series that ran weekly for about 15 years, and to be on top of the ball for THAT long without any breaks is a tall ask. also, as a creative, your first project is always gonna be beautiful in some ways, and awful in others. I could go the cynic route and say that they just ended this series because they noticed said stagnation lead to a result in less funds, but I'm gonna take the hopium route and say that Luke and Kevin probably recognized this Stagnation and decided to end the series, not nessesarily a high note, but a note. They actually ended it, and sometimes, just ending a series is enough, rather than letting it consume your very being.
And as for myself, I'm happy for the memories this series left me with, the fun I had creating fan content for it, the fun merch i bought because of it. I had my fun with it, And in the end, that's all I ask of any series or media I engage with, and if i don't fw it, I just simply stop watching.
Yeah, I didn't even watch the finale lol.