Happy Tree Friends
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| Happy Tree Friends | ||||||||||||||||||||
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 Just because something is an adult cartoon, doesn't mean it has to look like an adult cartoon. See kids, this is why you should really be careful of what you watch on the Internet!
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Happy Tree Friends (commonly abbreviated as HTF) is an American adult flash-animated black comedy series created and developed by Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro, and Warren Graff for Mondo Media. The show is infamous for its notable look of looking like a show aimed at all ages when in reality, it is a violent adult cartoon.
Plot
The show revolves around a bunch of animal friends who live in a forest where they get into unexpected situations where they are killed (but come back alive in the next episode).
Why It's Happy
- The idea of making a show about cute and cuddly animals being killed in the worst ways possible is pretty nice, and it manages to challenge the subverted kids' show trope pretty well.
- Episodes can be funny to watch now and then, like "Gems the Breaks" and "Mime to Five".
- Some of the deaths are really creative or unintentionally funny (if over-the-top and overboard), and they had a nice reference to the Final Destination series and 1000 Ways To Die.
- Creative writing.
- The animation, along with its art style, is great and very nice to look at, especially when it improved starting in Season 3, the color palette is smooth to look at, as well as the TV series (The show switched from Flash animation to Toon Boom Harmony). The fact that this was all done as early as 1999 is just perfect.
- Decent voice acting, especially for Kenn Navarro, Nica Lorber, Liz Stuart, etc. Despite the characters only speaking gibberish and occasionally jumbled English.
- The role models of the Happy Tree Friends characters, are pretty good and diverse as they have their problems and personality:
- Cuddles is a likable, yellow rabbit with pink cheeks who inexplicably wears Pink Bunny Slippers. He is a cheerful, happy, excited little bunny that he likes, such as playing rock n' roll in the episode "In A Jam", riding a roller-coaster with his friends in "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" (not to be confused with the infamous damn train mission of the same name from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), and going on a water slide in "Let It Slide".
- Giggles is a happy and friendly pink chipmunk who loves frolicking through flowers, having tea parties with Petunia, ice skating, and has a sweet demeanor. Her name comes from her habit of giggling often.
- Lifty and Shifty are two raccoon crooks whose crimes sometimes cause the deaths of others, and it's always satisfying to see them get their bloody karma at the end.
- Flippy, one of the most popular characters in the show, is a green bear who is a war veteran with PTSD. Whenever something happens that reminds him of the war, he "flips out" (hence his name) and starts killing everyone, which may be very gruesome but creative and even funny at the same time.
- Petunia is a beautiful dark-blue skunk with a sky-blue arrow marking on her forehead, She always wears a pink flower on top of her head and a pine scent car air freshener or deodorizer around her neck.
- Flaky is also a very popular character. She is a shy red porcupine whose quills are full of white flake-like dandruff, thus her name. She has the identifiable personality of a very cautious and timid character, which is actually understandable considering that the Tree Friends live in constant danger of being brutally killed.
- Pop and Cub are also entertaining. Even though Pop can be a negligent father, there are some episodes where he shows concern for Cub. Speaking of Cub, he has a ton of cute moments.
- The background music in this show is nice and catchy to listen to. Even the darker soundtrack when the episode becomes disturbing is also good.
- There are plenty of easter eggs and references from other shows, movies, or video games of this show, for example; "Here's Lumpy" A famous catchphrase of "The Shining" in the Episode "Aw, Shucks!".
- Unlike Elsagate, this show is not directly targeted toward children and doesn’t have happy-go-lucky music whenever a character dies or gets killed.
- The show is like an adult-oriented preschool television show on PBS (hence the cutesy art style, name of the show, name of some characters (Examples: Cuddles, Giggles), and the gibberish (which was probably based the Teletubbies Speech)). Not only that but also, this was inspired by The Itchy and Scratchy Show in The Simpsons, which by itself is a parody of Tom and Jerry.
- As mentioned above, the characters are quite adorable and likable, even if they end up getting killed in nearly every episode.
- It did have spin-off action-cartoon series, "Ka-Pow!", which, unlike most spinoffs not worth mentioning, was actually pretty good!
Gory and Violent Qualities
- For starters, although this is a nitpick because this is a subverted kid's show, it could easily be mistaken for a real one. A child could see this series and get scared or traumatized, which led to the series being banned in Russia and Malaysia for this.
- Some bad or average characters, such as the Ant Family, for example.
- Lumpy's stupidity can be either funny or repetitive. His stupidity can also lead to him getting himself or other characters getting killed. The same thing goes for Splendid, a wannabe superhero flying squirrel who usually causes harm or disaster.
- The worst offenders of the main characters are The Mole and Nutty, where the former usually hurts the other main characters, although this is understandable since he is blind, and has no vision, especially in "Easy Comb, Easy Go" while the latter being a stereotype who loves only sweets and nothing else, which makes him hyperactive.
- Episodes can be badly done or varied in being decent or mediocre.
- Speaking of episodes, there are some bad of them, such as "Wishy Washy", "Who's to Flame?" "Chew Said a Mouthful", and "Tongue in Cheek". "Wishy Washy" is considered to be the worst out of the episodes due to Lumpy's corpse and one infamous scene involving Petunia peeling herself with a potato peeler causing her to die from massive blood loss, which got the episode taken down and banned by YouTube due to violating the ToS involving suicides (intentional or not).
- The earlier episodes usually didn't have actual plots, it wasn't until around season 2 that the plots became better, which the TV series solidified.
- Even though this is probably a nitpick, just like South Park, some gore and violence is not that good and can be rather unsettling to watch.
- The humor can be predictable or unrealistically gory, and no, not in a good way.
- There can be too much gore, violence, and grotesque, shocking imagery. Having relentless murdering gore shown in this show can make this show painful to watch from time to time, especially the aforementioned Lumpy's corpse and Petunia's suicide in "Wishy Washy", to the point where the show got banned in Russia and Malaysia.
- There was a special video made for YouTube called "YouTube Copyright School" but unlike other Happy Tree Friends episodes, it got more dislikes than likes, amassing 31K likes and more than 90K dislikes. When a user gets a copyright strike, They will have to watch the video and then take trivia questions about the law of copyright infringement. [1]
- The theme song for the show sounds terrible.
- Overuse of animation errors, with Lumpy's antlers changing direction being the worst offender.
Trivia
- Usually, the episodes that get released onto YouTube usually breaks their guidelines, but Mondo Media has never been demonetized by YouTube once, as YouTube sees them as a registered company rather than an individual. This was probably because YouTube wanted to avoid lawsuits with companies like they did with Viacom.
- In the 2002 movie Good Girl, the show can be seen on the television.
- Because of its very huge cult following, it has gained multiple types of merchandise.
- Mostly, all the episodes on YouTube are Partner rated TV-Y.
- Despite most of its violence, about 10-20% of the show's audience consists of children, ranging from 5-18 and up.
- There was a long hiatus between "In Over Your Hedge" and "Too Much Scream Time" "In Over Your Hedge" aired on December 22, 2016, though it was available for purchase only and was not available for free until December 24, 2018. "Too Much Scream Time" wouldn't air until September 27, 2023.
- The idol from the Internet episodes makes several appearances in the TV series. The only prominent one is in the episode "Idol Curiosity".
- The show was banned in Russia due to the extremely violent content shown throughout. It is also banned in Malaysia too, according to IMDb.
- This show was part of a crackdown on violent shows.
- "Wishy Washy" is the only episode in the entire show to get banned by YouTube.
Videos
References
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