Tankmen

Tankmen is a web series on Newgrounds created by Johnny Utah. The series originally ran in 2006 with 5 episodes and the characters eventually became so popular, they appear in other Newgrounds material, fan creations, and various video games such as Friday Night Funkin’. The main character, Tankman (Captain John) is also Newgrounds’ mascot.

Synopsis

In the year of 20XX, the world has been destroyed. These guys are all that is left.

Good Qualities

1. Despite it being a military series, the series depict the military as not being as harsh and grueling as it is in real life.
2. The whole plot is the Tankmen are fighting a pointless war with another military base with arrowhead helmets. They are at war for no reason and the premise wins us over.
3. The series has very funny jokes and lines.
   • The famous “cock jokes” where the characters make jokes about male genitalia.
   • Steve singing “I’m a Little Teapot” while peeing.
   • "I always kill for a Back to the Future reference."
   • The tankmen having a 3 hour truce to watch Titanic.
4. Many likable characters:
   • The protagonist, John, commonly known as Captain by thd other characters and Tankman by fans, is very brave and his wisecracks are hilarious.
   • Steve, John's best friend is very childlike (justified given he's revealed to be 16 years old), airheaded, and forgetful. But he's very endearing and has funny moments. It's also revealed he has a feminine side as he loves the color pink and it does not come off as jarring.
   • Ted, commonly known as Sniper by most viewers, although a minor character is very enjoyable and funny.
   • Skittles, the youngest character of the series, revealed to be only 13 is a very relatable and sympathetic character. Being a teenager, he's embarrased by his parents who clearly dote on him and are very protective and his overprotective father constantly calling him and wanting to know if he's safe is very endearing. His bordom is also justifiable too, being a child, he's treated like an infant by the other tankmen and is expected to be a private in the watchtower. It's so easy to emphasize with him, he wants to fight in the war but can't due to his young age.
   • Commander is grumpy but well-meaning.
   • Tim is ahead of his time as he is gay but it is portrayed in a way where it's not insulting and it's not too overt as much media is today.
5. The spin-offs, Tankmen Infinity and Skittles Meets Phil are well-recieved by viewers and fans and introduce likable characters and other aspects of characters that were not in the original webseries.
   • Tankgirl, known as Tankwoman among fans quickly became a fan favorite and she's very likable character.
   • Liutentant and Sargaent come off as a smarter version of Spongebob and Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants.
   • Skittles Meets Phil is very heartwarming and it shows a very caring and moral side to Skittles as he acts as a caring big brother towards Phil.
6. The short Kneeling discusses the George Floyd incident in a way that ages well.

Bad Qualities

1. The series can get pretty gory at times.
2. John is occassionally unlikable:
   • Not caring about Steve's 16th birthday.
   • Dehydrating Steve in the offical artwork, Graveyard Shift.
3. The characters occassionally talk more than necessary.
4. The fanart shipping Steve and John is disgusting as it comes off as pedophilia as Steve is 16 and John is canonically 35.
5. Steve can often be depicted as urinating in offical artwork and it can get disgusting at times.
6. Ted revealing he drank his own urine in a deleted scene is disgusting.
7. Bill was treated poorly, he was a new recruit and gets killed off rather too quickly.
8. Sargent's large chin is very offputting.

Trivia

• The Tankmen can be considered as modern-day mascots like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, etc.
• Despite the synopsis indirectly stating that the series takes place on Earth, it is clearly set on Mars.
• There 3 episodes left unfinished, according to JohnnyUtah on his Twitter, these episodes were titled Tankmen 2.5, Tankmen 3, and Tankmen 0. He has all the scripts, voice work, and storyboards completed but lost interest in the series 15 years ago due to it stunting his growth as an artist. While Utah expressed interest in possibly having another animator pick up his work, he has gone back on that recently and the episodes remain unfinished to this day. Utah has released only 5% of the production material (two storyboards, two title cards, a fraction of a script from presumably Tankmen 3, and a 20-second snippet of audio). However, the entirety of the production material remains lost media to this day and it’s unknown if JohnnyUtah will post production material in its entirety or if JohnnyUtah will have another person pick up his work. However, given Utah‘s current state, it’s highly unlikely.

Series

https://www.newgrounds.com/series/tankmen

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