Grojband
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 "Got a band that's really cool,
Stealing words from you know who? Playing gigs when we can, Trying to impress our fans. Older sister goes berserk, Her temper is her biggest quirk, I got a plan that might just work. Now, we're gonna rock, And we're gonna roll! We are Grojband, Whoa, oh, oh!"
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Grojband is a Canadian animated series developed by Fresh TV and distributed by FremantleMedia, Ltd. (FME). The series is created and co-directed by Todd Kauffman, the co-creator of Sidekick, and Mark Thornton. Executive Producers are Tom McGillis, Jennifer Pertsch, creators of the hit animated reality franchise Total Drama. It is geared toward children ages 6 to 11. The series premiered on June 10, 2013, in the United States, September 5, 2013, in Canada and on Easter Monday 2014 in The United Kingdom.
Synopsis
Grojband follows the story of a Canadian indie rock garage band of the same name formed by Corey Riffin and his three best friends, Laney and twin brothers Kin and Kon, as they work together to propel their band to international stardom. When they do not have the lyrics, Corey and his friends get Trina, Corey's sister, into an emotional mode to write entries in her diary that Corey can use for lyrical inspiration, so that Corey and his friends can perform a perfect song.
Why They're Gonna Rock, & They're Gonna Roll! AND THEY'RE GROJBAND!
- Amazingly smooth, lively, and nice to look at animation that fits the hardcore, musical, theme of the show.
- Very fitting voice acting, especially Lyon Smith, who did great as Corey Riffin.
- Speaking of Corey Riffin, all of the characters have individual, distinct, relatable and overall likable personalities, such as the laid-back and quirky Corey, the confident Laney, the intelligent Kin, and his brother, the delightfully childish and innocent Kon.
- Awesome and unique songs that are sometimes performed in genres other than just rock (including country music, heavy metal, yodeling, love songs, punk rock, sea shanties, and even elevator music) such as Please Come Back (which this song was heartwarming) and My Mind Is Mine.
- Good character designs (except Trina).
- A really awesome and catchy theme song.
- The plot lines of the episodes are written very realistically, where the characters actually have to brainstorm and overcome what could be real scenarios that kids and teenagers face, such as personal change.
- The show's humor is a fair balance of clever original jokes and relevant pop-culture references that move the story alone, rather than being just filler, such as the constant cartoon gags that seem to be inspired by Looney Tunes.
- The second half of the first season drastically improved the show with good continuity, the character becoming more interesting like Corey, interesting plots in episodes, and even the series finale.
- The show itself pays homage to the works of Craig McCracken, Genndy Tarvtskovky, Maxwell Atoms, Phil Lord, and Chris Miller.
- The plot is original, although... (see below in BQ#1)
- Really awesome and good episodes like:
- Smash Up Terby (A great start of the series)
- Saxquatch
- No Strings Attached
- In-D Road Rager
- Dance of The Dead
- Math of Kon
- Space Jammies
- Monster of Rock
- Helmet
- All You Need Is Cake
- That's My Jam
- The Pirate Lounge for Me
- Rock House
- A Knight to Remember
- Curse Of the Metrognome
- Hear Us Rock! (Two-part series finale that ends this show on a high note)
Bad Qualities
- The plot, while original, is also a strange idea for a musical show, where the main singer has to plagiarize his sister's diary entries to write songs, which is definitely not a good idea.
- Trina is mean-spirited, annoying, short tempered, obsessively in love, has a mediocre design, and also an alpha bitch, and she has little to no redeeming qualities.
- She often acts similar to Katie Ka-Boom from Animaniacs due to her wrathful nature, but worse. In fact, she was at her absolute worst in the second part of "Hear Us Rock", stating that she wins in the end. Thankfully, she later got her comeuppance by Mina as the latter, standing up to her afterwards.
- The band members can be unlikable at times, especially Corey.
- The pacing can be too fast sometimes.
- Some songs are not that catchy.
- Some bad episodes, such as “Group Hug”, “Zoohouse Rock”, “War and Peacevile”, “Hologroj”, “The Grin Reaper”, “It’s in the Card”, “Six Strings of Evil”, and “Bee Bop a Loofa”.
- Some toilet/gross-out humor was noticeable, such as vomiting (notably offscreen), excessive flatulence, etc.
- While the first half of the first season is decent, it didn't start off the show that well with the characters not being that fleshed out, like Corey being an idiot hero, Laney being the butt-monkey, Kin and Kon being the failed comic reliefs, and Trina being a wrathful troubled control freak.
Reception
The show has a 7/10 on IMDb.
Production
Series co-creator Todd Kauffman has stated that he had always wanted to make a series about a garage band, and believed the concept of having the band's songs come out of the diary of the lead character's sister would make the premise more interesting. Using this idea, he was able to successfully pitch the series to Fresh TV and its president Tom McGillis. Soon afterwards, Teletoon, FremantleMedia, and Cartoon Network all took interest in the project and came in to help with its production and distribution.
The series is animated in Adobe Flash, with series co-creator Mark Thornton stating that using the software removes the need to outsource the show's animation to countries outside of Canada as is commonly done with American animated series. In producing the series, the creators sought to homage and take inspiration from a wide variety of movies and television series, particularly the works of American animators like Craig McCracken, Maxwell Atoms, and Genndy Tartakovsky, as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the works of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. They also sought to explore many genres and styles of music with the series, including country music, heavy metal, yodeling, sea shanties, and even elevator music.
Many concepts were changed as the series developed. Notably, Grojband was originally pitched as a 22-minute series with its intro and theme song being 60 seconds long, but in the final product, episodes are instead 11 minutes long and the show's intro and theme song are 20 seconds long. These changes resulted in the removal of several plot elements ignored or unexplained in the final product, including the presence of the characters' parents and Corey and his band having to return Trina's diary back to her without being noticed at the end of every episode. Another notable change between the original pitch and the final product is that Corey and Trina's shared last name is "Trippin" instead of "Riffin".
Trivia
- This show is the third show made by to carry on the tradition of having a skull on one of the character's appearances (like Duncan from Total Drama). In this case, it's on Corey's hat.
- All of the episodes aired in the United States before Canada. It would considred a cartoon network show sometimes.
- In the French version of the show, the show's signature title is different than the original one. The "O" in "Grojband" is replaced with a spray painted Grojband skull.
- It can be implied that at the beginning of the series, the show takes place in the year of 2010 because in Ahead Of Our Own Tone, they traveled a year into the future and stayed that way until the events of Curse of the Metrognome where the turn of the next year happened. The next episodes were Hear Us Rock Part 1 and Hear Us Rock Part 2 happened. This took place during the Apocalypse which was a strong allusion to the rumors of the apocalypse happening in 2012. Working backwards, we can say that the series was in 2010 until Ahead of our own Tone and was 2011 from Ahead of our own Tone to Curse of the Metrognome, and 2012 from Curse of the Metrognome, onwards.
- Laney's voice actress also voiced Bea on Top Wing, Mavis from Hotel Transylvania: The Series replacing Selena Gomez, Skye Flower from fellow Teletoon series Carl Squared, Quills from Numb Chucks, Suzy from Camp Lakebottom and Caillou's first voice actress before being replaced by the late Jaclyn Linetsky.
- The art style of the show would be later used for another Teletoon show named Looped.