Happy Tree Friends

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Happy Tree Friends
Cute, cuddly, and amazingly violent.
Genre: Adult Animation Dark comedy Splatter Running Time: 2-7 minutes Country: United States Release Date: December 24, 1999 - December 22, 2016 Network(s): MTV G4 YouTube Created by: Aubrey Ankrum Rhode Montijo Kenn Navarro Distributed by: Mondo Media Starring: Kenn Navarro Nica Lorber Rhode Montijo (1999–2004) David Winn (2003-2016) Dana Belben (1999–2005) Ellen Connell (2005–09) Lori Jee (2009–2016) Warren Graff Aubrey Ankrum Liz Stuart Jeff Biancalana (2000–2005) Peter Herrmann Michael "Lippy" Lipman Mark Giambruno (2000-2005) Francis Carr (2005-2016) Renée T. MacDonald (2010-2016) Ken Pontac Seasons: 4 Episodes: 133

Happy Tree Friends (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 kid's show when in reality, it is a violent adult cartoon.

The series is currently on hiatus; it is not known when or if it will ever come back, as the most recent episodes were released back in 2016.

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 Adorably Vicious

1. Episodes can be funny to watch every now and then, like "Mime to Five".
2. Some of the deaths are really creative (if over-the-top and overboard), and they had a nice reference to the Final Destination series and 1000 Ways To Die.
3. Creative writing.
4. 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 really smooth to look at, as well as the TV series (The show switched from Flash animation to Toon Boom Harmony).
5. Decent voice acting, especially for Kenn Navarro, Nica Lorber, Liz Stuart, etc. Despite the characters only speaking gibberish and occasionally jumbled English.
6. The role models of the Happy Tree Friends characters, are pretty good and diverse as they have their own 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", 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 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 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.
7. The background music in this show is nice and really catchy to listen to. Even the darker soundtrack when the episode goes disturbing is also good.
8. There's plenty of easter egg and reference from other shows, movie or video games of this show, like example; "Here's Lumpy" A famous catchphrase of "The Shining" in the Episode "Aw, Shucks!".
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. As mentioned above, the characters are actually quite adorable and likable, even if they end up getting horribly killed in nearly every episode.
12. 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

1. 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 lead to to Mondo Media getting angry letters from parents, as well as getting demonetized multiple times.
2. 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 to Splendid, a wannabe superhero flying squirrel who usually causing harm or disaster.
   • The worst offenders of the main characters are The Mole and Nutty, where the former usually hurts the other main characters since he is blind, and he has no vision to see, especially in "Easy Comb, Easy Go" while the latter being a stereotype who loves only sweets and nothing else, which makes him hyperactive.
3. 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", "Chew Said a Mouthful", and "Tongue in Cheek". "Wishy Washy" is honestly the worst out of the episodes due to 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 demonetized by YouTube.
4. The earlier episodes usually didn't really have actual plots, it wasn't until around season 2 that the plots became better, which the TV series solidified.
5. Even though this is nitpick, some of the gore or crude humor can range from unplesant and even dreadful.
   • The humor can be predictable or unrealistically gory.
   • There can be too much gore, violence, and grotesque, shocking imagery, even for adult cartoon standards. Having relentless murdering gore shown in this show can make this show painful and unbearable watch at times, especially for people who suffer from hematophobia (fear of blood) much to the point where the show got banned in Russia.
6. 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.
7. The theme song for the show is highly obnoxious, if not worse than the show's violence.
8. Animations errors are extremely common in the show, with Lumpy's antlers changing direction being the worst offender.

Trivia

• 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.
• It is currently unknown whether the show is still in production or is already canceled, as there is no announcement of a new episode or season since the latest episode "In Over Your Hedge" aired. Even though the episode aired on December 22, 2016, it was available for purchase only and was not available for free until December 24, 2018.
• 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 extreme violent content shown throughout. It was also part of a crackdown on violent shows.

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