Well I had hour to kill so I watched The Boys: Diabolical, an Animatrix-like Anthology for Amazon's The Boys. To feel more justified in sitting thru more of Amazon's edgy Capeshit I feel compelled to review the 8 episodes. I've color coded the episodes in case anyone wants to follow my recommendations. Obviously green is watch it, yellow is maybe, red is avoid.
Laser Baby's Day Out - Written by Seth Rogen and his partner in crime Evan Goldberg. Man after watching this my expectations of Rogen's TMNT Cartoon are so much lower. It's more or less an edgy ripoff of the classic Looney Tunes "Feed The Kitty" with a foolish well intentioned researcher trying to save a deemed failed superhero baby. The grossout gore just bored me to tears. After sitting thru it with its half assed retro style I was ready to drop this Anthology hard until I saw that each cartoon was going to be written and directed by different talent. All these shorts are 12 minutes long and this felt way longer. Skip it.
An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents - It's a Justin Roiland Short. If you've watched Rick & Morty you know exactly what this is. It made me laugh a couple times but it's not anything special. Watch it if you like Rick & Morty humor. I'll admit Roiland's humor is a guilty pleasure for me even if I dropped Rick & Morty with Season 3.
I'm Your Pusher - This is a The Boys style short story set in the continuity of the original comics. The animation is pretty competent and it was pretty cool to see the original incarnation animated with Simon Pegg voicing Wee Hughie. Definitely worth watching for fans of the original comic and the tv show.
Boyd in 3D - This was actually my favorite short of the bunch. I felt it was a pretty well written short story about body dysmorphia, modern day Instagram/Tiktok fame & wealth, and drug abuse. The art style at first put me off but I grew to really like it because it was very well animated and the characters had some great emotional faces. The ending I think will annoy some people
because it's one of the oldest cliches but I'm not even fully spoiling it in the tag because I felt it was well earned and just worked. In my opinion this short is worth watching even if you don't like The Boys. Kudos to Ilana Glazer and her brother they have some talent.
BFFs - After watching in my eyes one of the best cartoon short films I saw something that annoyed me so much I just had to skip it. I hate poorly done Faux-Anime, I think Awkwafina is a horrid writer who uses swears as a total crutch. And when the talking poop appeared I turned it off. Worst short of the bunch, unwatchable.
Nubian vs Nubian - A solid concept being pretty much a parody Black Panther and it made some funny jokes about how just downright cheesy it can be when African Americans try to reclaim their African heritage. Not to derail into
but I can't help but applaud Aisha Tyler (Lana from Archer) for writing a little story that gently mocks Black Americans when they start dressing up daily in African clothing. Unfortunately Aisha is clearly not a writer and needed someone to punch up the script. The characters are all downright unlikable. It's an attempt to be like Archer without the fun wordplay and old pop culture references that made Archer an entertaining cartoon. Everyone in Archer is also pretty much shitbags but at the show's prime they're hilarious shitbags who all had moments of likability. Not a bad short but this type of content has been done better. I'm certain I'll forget about this one quite quickly.
John and Sun-Hee - A pretty decent if not a bit sappy story of accepting the death of your loved ones but it's backed by some pretty great animation and action. I mean jeez the action scenes here are just really well made. You can see some shortcuts had to be done, during one sequence a car is being driven and it feels like you're watching a 3D Model just move along on screen. It's not ridiculously bad like the infamous 2016 adaptation of Berserk but it's noticeable. The animation style does a really good job at hiding it though. Again like "Boyd in 3D" this one is worth viewing even if you're not a fan of The Boys. I'm impressed Andy Samberg.
One Plus One Equals Two - And this little anthology ends wisely with a story that's in the same continuity of the actual TV Show. This one is Homelander and the mysterious Black Noir stopping a terrorist attack. If you know The Boys then you pretty much know how this is going to go down. The animation is solid, Anthony Starr continues being a great actor for Homelander. Just a fun short story.
Anthology products are tough, even the best Anthology Series like The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits produced duds. This is no exception. But I was pleasantly surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed half the shorts and only hated two of them. I hope Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg keep their input distant for Season 3 because I still think it's a fluke that The Boys has turned out to be an enjoyable Dark Comedy. The Preacher TV Show was straight up garbage. And I'm not giving them any credit for Invincible because Season 1 was more or less a straight up remake of the comic and I hope that continues being the case.
