Ren & Stimpy (2024)

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Ren & Stimpy

To give you credit, Comedy Central, this is better than Adult Party Cartoon, but it's still not good, it's still bad.

Genre:	Black comedy Sitcom Satire Slapstick "Adult animation"
Country:	United States Philippines (overseas animation) South Korea (overseas animation)
Release Date:	July 1-13, 2024 (France) Unaired (United States)
Network(s):	Comedy Central
Created by:	John Kricfalusi (characters) Jenny Jafre (show)
Distributed by:	Paramount Media Networks
Starring:	Billy West Michael Kohler
Seasons:	1
Episodes:	10 (26 segments)
Previous show:	Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon"

Ren & Stimpy is a 2024 adult animated series based on the original 1991 Nickelodeon television series of the same name that aired on Comedy Central, created by John Kricfalusi, who had no involvement in this reboot due to his child sexual abuse accusations in 2018. The reboot first premiered in France on July 1, 2024, with no premiere date in the USA. However, the entire reboot was leaked on July 21, 2024 on 4chan.

"You EEDIOT!" Qualities

NOTE: Try not to attack Jenny Jafre and Robyn Byrd personally, but that does not mean they will be shielded from criticism like if they know anything about the original.

Mediocre Toon Boom animation by Awesome Inc. and Snipple Animation from the Philippines, which not only sucks because of the poor use of very light colors but also traces poses from the original series (which broke a rule from the original series when it was made by Spümcø where you could not draw the characters' same poses under any circumstances), which they look very terrible and when they do the original poses, they look really awful and badly drawn, such as Ren screaming with his teeth and tongue, which looks horrible and very on-model.
- Despite having some people from the original series (Bob Jaques, Kelly Armstrong, Stephen DeStefano) and even from Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon (Helder Mendonca, José Pou) and Owen Fishback of all people in the reboot, it couldn't decide to use either the art style of the characters from the original series or APC, creating some confusion.
  - While Big Star Enterprises' animation is slightly better than the other two, especially for ones that Awesome Inc. animated, their animation in this reboot is a bit lacking over-the-top poses.
- There's even a reason why Snipple's animation is terrible (despite the decent animation in Looney Tunes Cartoons, Tiny Toon Looniversity, Hamster & Gretel and Primos): it's because the studio is a terrible place to work and mistreats its former animators, who have already reported the studio for toxic working conditions.
  - Some of the background and new characters (like the Clear Toliet Woman) have bland and generic designs (more precisely they don't have the Ren and Stimpy art style) and fit more in shows like The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. They also rip off designs of characters from other shows, such as Tiffani (Stimpy's mom) from the episode "The Mother of the All Yaksmas" rip-offs Eris' design.
The new theme song, while not terrible, is less than memorable contrary to the original series theme song, "Dog Pound Hop". It is rumored that they did not want to pay royalties to John K. for the original theme song, even though the original theme song wasn't even composed by him, it was composed by the original series crew like Jim Smith and the late Chris Reccardi. This is very disrespectful towards Chris Reccardi who died 5 years ago.
- And while it is somewhat catchy, the new theme song is a bit generic and is simply not as memorable as the original one, even though it is fitting for this reboot.
To add salt in the wound of the previous pointer, some Ren & Stimpy veterans like Bob Camp, Bill Wray, and Jim Gomez got unjustly fired and harassed during the production of the reboot, because the reboot's staff saw them as "old white men", which is discrimination (racism on this case), ageism and misandry. And yet, the other original Ren & Stimpy staff like Billy West, Bob Jaques, Kelly Armstrong, and Vanessa Coffey (who hadn't produced and worked on a cartoon for 25 years since Rayman: The Animated Series was canceled in the case of the latter) who are also old and got kept in the reboot just for money, which makes the producers look like hypocrites.
- Ironically, Vanessa Coffey was one of the producers of this reboot along with Ashley Kohler and Jenny Jafre, despite this adult reimagination of Ren and Stimpy being Coffey's first time producing an adult cartoon, sadly she didn't handle it very well, due to the reboot does not justify to be mature enough and looking similar to her producing and poor writing on Rayman: The Animated Series, which already killed her cartoon producer career for 25 years. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bad return for Coffey as an animation producer, since the failure of the Rayman cartoon 25 years ago.
  - Worst of all, Bob Jaques and Billy West are actually old white men themselves! This shows that the new writers and Robyn Byrd are big hypocrites.
    - Overall, they gave crew members of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in animated shows a bad name.
      - The reboot team hired Robyn Byrd, one of John K's victims as a consultant on the reboot and receiving remuneration in John's place for being his victim, despite she previously tried to cancel the reboot with a fake news petition against John K. by falsely accusing him for allegedly using the reboot to abuse minors again, which is completely false, insulted a user on her old Twitter account who debunked her misinformation that the reboot was "canceled" thanks to her petition saying "Your moms" and having possible involvement in the firing of Bob Camp and some other Ren & Stimpy veterans in this reboot due to the reason above, being reasons why she did not deserve to be hired in the reboot due to her wrong actions against the reboot and her and the reboot team's harassment of the original series veterans. Even though she was a victim of John K's sexual abuse, she became the female version of him, due to the fact that she harassed members of the original Ren and Stimpy just like him, in her case it was with male veteran members from the original show.
        This reboot had a very troubled production, plagued with problems such as the production being delayed due to the COVID pandemic, and the departure of Nickelodeon Animation Studios (which would originally be involved in the reboot and would be their first adult animation if they hadn't dropped out of it) and being replaced by Awesome Inc. to the dismissal of some Ren & Stimpy veterans. The reboot also had a shortage of news during its troubled production of almost four years, where there was little news about the reboot even due to poor publicity from Paramount and Comedy Central.
The reboot is writer-driven instead of being storyboard-driven, which while being writer-driven is not a bad thing as script-driven shows like SpongeBob SquarePants starting with season 9b, 101 Dalmatian Street, Amphibia, The Amazing World of Gumball, and The Simpsons is good, it hurts the reboot due to the unnecessarily large number of writers who writes the reboot's episodes who had never worked on the Ren & Stimpy franchise before. Not helping is that it is rare to get any funny moments in this reboot, with most of the humor being rehashed from previous series or being more dialogue-based, which makes the execution of the jokes feel hollow. Almost all of the reboot's episodes, excluding the first two episodes and one Ask Dr. Stupid segment were written by Jenny Jafre, and almost all of the episodes she wrote are terrible and unfunny, especially Screentime and Aw Hell No! This shows that Jafre knows nothing about the original show.
- It doesn't help that the reboot tries hiding notable crew members who worked on the episodes by not having them on the title cards and instead putting them in the end credits. It's as if the reboot doesn't want to let viewers know this is writer-driven, although the end credits would state otherwise.
Billy West's voice acting for Ren and Stimpy is rather poor due to his advanced age of late sixties-early seventies and having caught COVID-19 during the production of the reboot (due to his anti-vaccine stance and him supporting Ivermectin as a "COVID cure" instead). His voice role of Ren turned into a grumpy version of Stimpy and his portrayal of Stimpy is not that happy anymore. What's sad is that Ren's screams provided by West in this reboot look bad, due to his not preserving Ren and Stimpy's voices under his advancing old age and having contracted COVID towards the end of production of the reboot.
- Ironically, West doesn't reprise Mr. Horse, who he did the voice of him in the original show, replacing John Kricfalusi as the said character in the Games Animation era, possibly due to his old age. Mr. Horse is instead voiced by Michael Kohler in the reboot.
- Some of the voices like Satan (Sam Richardson) from "Aw Hell No!" sound very horrible.
- The reboot overuses celebrity voices, which is not always a good idea for animated productions and it can negatively affect some of them, unlike the original 1991 show which didn't overuse celebrity voices and they were only used in the episodes when celebrities voiced characters in the original show.
Although Ren has become good again in this reboot, he doesn't get very crazy anymore, which doesn't help that there was a decision to remove an aspect of him because "it was traumatic for John K's victims" which generated criticism from fans of the series on 4chan. Ren is also out-of-the-character such as by mentioning his love for the Beatles, which derails his character, since in the original series Ren never had a love for the band, although this moment of Ren ended up getting viral and has been used to mock this reboot.
The end credits are dull and bland, not only for not having a background with Ren and Stimpy themselves like the original series and APC's end credits, but are also a plain generic black background.
Some characters do not appear in the reboot (Sven Höek) or appear very little (the Salesman).
Tiffani, Stimpy's mother and one of the new characters of Ren and Stimpy in this reboot shouldn't be his mother, because it's bestiality for a human to be the mother of a cat character, and the reboot misses an opportunity to show Stimpy's parents and when it finally shows his mother, she's drawn as a human, showing bestiality.
It uses modern technology like cell phones (or more precisely, a smartphone) in the episode "Screentime" and in a scene where Stimpy is a woman using a modern cell phone, which makes the reboot run the risk of becoming dated in the years to come.
It also teaches bad morals such as:
- Using and being addicted to modern cell phones can turn people "into monsters".
- Serving as a slumlord for cockroaches.
Ren and Stimpy no longer sleep together in the same bed like in the two previous series, which annoys those who saw no problem with that since it was seen as a good thing by some fans of the series. This is probably due to a bad decision made by the reboot team not wanting them sleeping in the same bed. As mentioned in #4 and the lack of veteran crew members like Wray, Camp, and Gomez, the new crew members know nothing about the original series.
- This is also disappointing for those who ship Ren and Stimpy as a couple, who were eagerly awaiting moments of love between the two as a gay couple, which unfortunately will never happen in this reboot, despite the characters being confirmed to be gay shortly after the end of the original series in 1997 through the words of John K. himself in an interview. The reason for that change isn't even explained, showing that the crew behind the reboot (such as Jenny Jafre and Robyn Byrd) are very homophobic.
Some bad episodes, such as:
- "Screentime" (a rip-off of "My Shiny Friend" that is a horrible satire on smartphones and gives a bad lesson about smartphones can turn people as "monsters")
- "Aw Hell No!" (one of the first ones leaked online; and one of the most boring)
- "Renhattan" (a rehash of Onward and Upward, though slightly better; but started the reboot on a poor note)
- "Squatters" (another one of the first episodes leaked; and is also boring)
Some episodes rip off plots from the original series and even from Adult Party Cartoon, such as "Screentime", which rip-offs "My Shiny Friend", "Renhattan" which rip-offs "Onward and Upward" (due to both episodes having the same plot of Ren and Stimpy living in a horrible place and they try to improve it and be the first episodes of both reboots).
- Some of the reboot's episodes have bad endings like in "Screentime", where Ren gets stuck in Stimpy's belly at the end of the episode which is vore and even wasted potential like "Aw Hell No!", where it doesn't do anything fun with the idea of Ren torturing sinners in hell.
Although it was intended for mature audiences, it feels rather safe and hollow to be considered one and aside from mild-swearing, it may be seen as some typical kids' show since even the original is not as tame as this show.
Lack of APM music is heard in this reboot. The music seems too original, while not a bad thing, it goes against the point in the first two where they used APM music.

"Happy Happy Joy Joy!" Qualities

It's nice to finally see another Ren & Stimpy-related media after 21 years outside of Nickelodeon crossovers (or 18, if you count APC's The Lost Episodes DVD).
- On that topic, the Ren & Stimpy reboot can feel quite nostalgic, especially for longtime fans who were children who grew up in the 1990s and loved Ren & Stimpy.
Despite its flaws, it's still a huge improvement over Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon".
Big Star Enterprises and Bob Jaques, who worked previously in Adult Party Cartoon thankfully returned for this reboot, although despite their animation for a few segments (by Kelly Armstrong) were overshadowed by the animation from Awesome Inc. and Snipple.
- While the segments by Snipple Animation weren't good to look at, there are some moments where the animation gets a bit smooth.
The reboot still has well-designed title cards just like other R&S-related media, despite lacking credits as mentioned before.
Despite they no longer sleep together in the same bed, Ren and Stimpy are still likable and, thankfully, have gotten their personalities back after the awful APC reboot, especially Ren himself, as he no longer acts bitter, abusive, violent, and unlikeable (from APC). Although they can be out-of-character sometimes (like Stimpy spanking Ren on the floor) and the controversy of the removal of a trait of Ren, due to being traumatic to John K's victims which was criticized by Ren and Stimpy's fans on 4chan.
- Many characters (who weren't here on APC reboot) like Muddy Mudskipper, Kowalski, Eugine, Shawn, Old Man Hunter, and Powdered Toast Man make returns.
There are a few episodes that were alright at best, such as "All About Log" (which brings back the Log commercial after being not seen in APC), "Bad Stimpy" and "A Stimpy is Born".
Despite the voice acting not being as good as the original series, it's nice to see Billy West reprise his role as the titular characters, even despite his controversial takes on Twitter such as being against the COVID vaccine and ignoring his former wife, Violet Benny, who Billy was married to her between 1992 until 2009, when they divorced in favor of other women during the production of the reboot.
Although extremely rare as mentioned before, there are still occasionally funny moments, like the ever-famous quote "This whole journey reminds me of a Beatles song" as previously mentioned.

Recpetion

Announcement

When it was first announced on August 5, 2020, it received a backlash from the American animation industry creators, for rebooting the show after John Kricfalusi was accused of pedophilia in 2018. Robyn Byrd, John K's victim made a petition on Change.org to cancel the reboot, because it would cause trauma to John's victims. Although Byrd said the reboot "was canceled" thanks to her petition, Billy West debunked the misinformation of the reboot's cancellation in late 2020, that it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leaks and overall reception

Following the leaks of some episodes and later the entire reboot in 2024, the Comedy Central reboot received a negative reception from longtime fans, due to various problems such as its poor-quality animation, Billy West's weak performance as Ren and Stimpy as a result of his old age and him getting COVID during the end of the production of the reboot, being writer-driven instead of being a creator- and storyboard-driven, and infamously the unfair firing of Bob Camp and some of the other Ren & Stimpy veterans during the reboot's production. However, some fans liked the reboot despite its many problems, and they consider it better than Adult Party Cartoon, although not too much.

Bill Wray criticized the reboot in a now removed post on his Facebook account and denounced the writers of the reboot (mostly composed of women) for harassing and firing him, Bob Camp, and Jim Gomez from the reboot.

Bob Camp also expressed disappointment with the reboot, saying "the folks making the new series are dealing with trying to remake the original in a woke world and trying to make up for John K's sins." However, he encouraged fans to "give the show a chance to find its own voice" and expressed no ill will towards the reboot's staff.

Like Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", it garnered an ironic cult following on social media comprising of people making memes based on perceived bad jokes of this reboot such as Ren mentioning his love for the Beatles, which John Kricfalusi hated the band by saying "This whole journey reminds me of a Beatles song" and an incidental female character (loosely based on one of the writers of the reboot) describing how the piano teeth joke would play out to an audience member.

The series is also notorious for being incredibly hard to find or even watch because it seems that it doesn't air anymore internationally after just two episodes aired in France, and all the leaks on 4chan are taken down, although archives exist, so it will likely be possible for the show to be lost media in the future unless if Paramount themselves officially release it, although unlikely as it was believed to be a tax write-off as a result of the cuts at Paramount.

Trivia

Before the reboot officially premiered, some episodes were leaked on 4chan, resulting in criticism from fans who disliked the reboot. The entire reboot would be leaked later also on 4chan.
Unlike other Ren & Stimpy media, it does not credit John Kricfalusi for creating Ren & Stimpy, due to the child sexual abuse accusations against him on March 29, 2018, but he does make a cameo appearance in the episode "Aw Hell No!".
The reboot was going to premiere in Latin America and CIS on July 12, 2024, but for unknown reasons, the premiere was canceled and it was infinitely delayed. However, the first two episodes premiered in France.
The French voice actors of the original show's dub from France were changed to Belgium in this reboot.
The quote from the episode A Stimpy is Born, "This whole journey reminds me of a Beatles song", became an internet meme on Twitter (rebranded to X) in August 2024, and has been used to mock this reboot.

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Ren & Stimpy (2024)

Contents

"You EEDIOT!" Qualities

"Happy Happy Joy Joy!" Qualities

Recpetion

Announcement

Leaks and overall reception

Trivia

Videos

Comments

Navigation menu

Ren & Stimpy (2024)

"You EEDIOT!" Qualities

"Happy Happy Joy Joy!" Qualities

Recpetion

Announcement

Leaks and overall reception

Trivia

Videos

Comments

Navigation menu

Search