Gameoverse really didn't need muh trauma to tell it's story, which is "cat girl and mascots world hopping videogames". This episode would've played exactly the same if we didn't have the cat girl relapsing every time she sees a hero or town. It's not saying anything about trauma, people or society.
It's not even trying to be #DEEP and deconstruct old videogames either. A current year pretentious cartoon would humanize both the heroes and the villains and this show doesn't, it uses trauma arbitrarily as an emotional attachment and forced stupidity crutch. You can't subvert the retro videogame hero archetype only to play the retro videogame villain completely straight. Maybe this changes later but i don't feel like Ross wanted to subvert anything, he is too oldschool.
So why so much trauma? Did Glitch point a gun at Ross and say: "Mr Donovan, you NEED to traumatize the cat girl or else the grown adults will think animation is for kids and refuse to buy her labubu plushies! This is the future of indie animation!"
The kitten needs to be traumatized or else the preteens will think this show is meant for them and think its lame. They need to think its really mature and deep to think its cool. They need to sell them the merch before the animes get them!
It's a little better than a lot of the G.P catalogue since to me it doesn't do a lot of the annoying tropes other shows from this crew does. I'm not gonna call myself a fan but I didn't hate what I watched it was fairly entertaining.
We're still in pilot territory so I'll reserve judgment for the greater plot threads. Characters are fine enough, though banter feels a bit too "Yell-y" to me.
Yeah, I was waiting for something like that to happen. Considering Glitch's other shows didn't really have fanservice like that and were mostly supported by, to put it nicely "People of certain ideologies", it was only a matter of time before some folks started rioting about Kit and Miss Info's outfits.
On one hand, it's fucking stupid. On the other hand, some sadistic part of me wants it to keep happening so we can keep making fun of them
The only thing I know about gameoververse is fucking egoraptor working on the show and everyone keeps posting the cat bitch with her fat ass, which to me simply exhbits that this show has been resigned to the normie gooner masses and will likely be completely forgotten once the showrun is over. Which is arguably better than:
This shit. This is the audience Glitch cultivated with who they chose to greenlight and how they advertised. When you commit highway robbery to these types they will worship you until you put some gooner buddy of yours on the show (because of egoraptor) then they will lose their shit. These people would say nothing if the two fingerbanged on screen because they need to subvert everything like the spiritual niggers they are.
Idk if anything can beat Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. People were raving about that panic attack scene for months.
Autistic rambling but...
Really says a lot about people when panic attacks and ptsd flashbacks are commonplace in media supposedly about heroes. I long for strong hero archetype MCs who don't break down. It's just miserable to see characters that are meant to be empowering fall victim to real life weakness that people already experience and (if they're sane) don't want to be reminded of. Instead of saying, "Wow I wanna be like da hero." I feel like audiences now say, "Wow da hero is literally me." And then they call that deep as if replicating the collective exhaustion people feel today is the pinnacle of storytelling. It's just depressing.
Ya, Gobbles gave his "uplifting" blurb but it wasn't earned and didn't feel earnest.
Ugh why are you making a haha funne CARTOON and injecting overemotional garbage. Gives me whiplash.
ETA: like, I got Space Dandy vibes quite a lot from Gameoverse, but Space Dandy had the tact and pacing to keep the emotional scenes appropriate to timing and the super whacky comedy episodes separate. Maybe Gameoverse just needs to find its footing.
Thinking about why the show feels the need to shove trauma into what should've been just a fun, comedic romp through video game inspired worlds with the occasional villain conflict, I've come up with two possibilities:
1. It's a mandate from Glitch.
As much as they preach about creative freedom or whatever, it's a fact that each of their shows need to sell. They need to get people hooked so audiences will buy the merch, maybe watch a movie and so on. The fastest and easiest way to get modern audiences to sympathize with a character is to put some emotional trauma in them. Gets them feeling sorry and cry, then they'll buy the cute and cuddly plush so they can hug it.
2. Ross thinks it will make the show better.
The original GameOverse, old and rough as it was, was exactly the kind of show some folks here wanted it to be. Nothing but some idiots traveling to game worlds in a non-serious story and just having dumb fun.
But even if Ross sanded off the rough edges, a fun, comedic show with a non-serious/basic story living under the same roof as TADC, MD, and eventually, GD and KOG was never going to catch on. That's not even accounting for the modern sensibility that all media has to have some "Deep" and "Complex" story to be good,
Ross obviously wants as many people as possible to like the show, thus the forcibly injected trauma in a misguided attempt to get audiences to love it, as well as a possible self-conscious desire to match up to Glitch's other shows.
As tired as I am of seeing it come up so often, individually, I'm okay with someone trying to tell a compelling story about guilt, trauma, PTSD, and so on. If the second possibility is true, then I can only hope Ross knows what he's doing and goes on to pull this off.
Of course, it could also be the first possibility. In which case, fuck you Glitch.
Thinking about why the show feels the need to shove trauma into what should've been just a fun, comedic romp through video game inspired worlds with the occasional villain conflict, I've come up with two possibilities:
1. It's a mandate from Glitch.
As much as they preach about creative freedom or whatever, it's a fact that each of their shows need to sell. They need to get people hooked so audiences will buy the merch, maybe watch a movie and so on. The fastest and easiest way to get modern audiences to sympathize with a character is to put some emotional trauma in them. Gets them feeling sorry and cry, then they'll buy the cute and cuddly plush so they can hug it.
2. Ross thinks it will make the show better.
The original GameOverse, old and rough as it was, was exactly the kind of show some folks here wanted it to be. Nothing but some idiots traveling to game worlds in a non-serious story and just having dumb fun.
But even if Ross sanded off the rough edges, a fun, comedic show with a non-serious/basic story living under the same roof as TADC, MD, and eventually, GD and KOG was never going to catch on. That's not even accounting for the modern sensibility that all media has to have some "Deep" and "Complex" story to be good,
Ross obviously wants as many people as possible to like the show, thus the forcibly injected trauma in a misguided attempt to get audiences to love it, as well as a possible self-conscious desire to match up to Glitch's other shows.
As tired as I am of seeing it come up so often, individually, I'm okay with someone trying to tell a compelling story about guilt, trauma, PTSD, and so on. If the second possibility is true, then I can only hope Ross knows what he's doing and goes on to pull this off.
Of course, it could also be the first possibility. In which case, fuck you Glitch.
Is using trauma as a crutch for drama isn't even that common in Glitch shows?, that doesn't even happen in Murder Drones since ALL of the attempts at drama were either bungled and/or forgotten about (seriously this is show so fucking bad at almost everything it tried I'm still kind of mad about it to this day), the closest thing I can recall is V's retaining her memories about what happened in the manor, but that gets pretty much sidelined by episode 5, and all of the horrible things that happened and have happened to the characters didn't really affect them all that much.
In the Digital Circus, the main drama is coming from the fact that they're trapped in the game world inside, Ragatha is someone I can point to that I could count as suffering from trauma from her mother clearly still affecting her current behavior, Jax also counts given how much Ribbit is still chewing at him, Kinger feels more poignant than traumatized over losing his wife, now that we know he's the most mentally stable out of everyone given the right circumstances, and everyone else's problems basically are more of a direct result of the Circus prison.
Both the Kog and GD pilots don't really have that type of drama present, but that could change.
Gameoverse really didn't need muh trauma to tell it's story, which is "cat girl and mascots world hopping videogames". This episode would've played exactly the same if we didn't have the cat girl relapsing every time she sees a hero or town. It's not saying anything about trauma, people or society.
It's not even trying to be #DEEP and deconstruct old videogames either. A current year pretentious cartoon would humanize both the heroes and the villains and this show doesn't, it uses trauma arbitrarily as an emotional attachment and forced stupidity crutch. You can't subvert the retro videogame hero archetype only to play the retro videogame villain completely straight. Maybe this changes later but i don't feel like Ross wanted to subvert anything, he is too oldschool.
So why so much trauma? Did Glitch point a gun at Ross and say: "Mr Donovan, you NEED to traumatize the cat girl or else the grown adults will think animation is for kids and refuse to buy her labubu plushies! This is the future of indie animation!"
People keep shitting on the voice direction during gobbles's "we can do this!" speech but I didn't notice because it's the same quality as Digital Circus (amateur anime fandub) so I just thought "it's a modern indie pilot alright". The main thing I noticed is that Kaboodle's actor's mic was NOTICABLY worse than the others which is funny because he's a professional YouTuber who should have a decent mic setup.
The strength of the show is the comedic premise that Kit has to go to planets and sabotage the hero by gaslighting them so they die, but I really don't think the game grumps guys are capable of being funny.
See, someone else gets it. This was also one of my main gripes with Murder Drones where due to the schizophrenic tone I wasn't sure what I was supposed to take seriously and what was supposed to be ha ha funi joek.
I'm honestly just tired of millennial writing in general. They always can never seem to decide if they want a comedy or a drama so they do both and they almost always cancel eachother out. I blame shit like Adventure Time.
It creates a disconnect where as I said, it becomes difficult to tell what is meant to be taken in earnest and what is supposed to be them taking the piss.
Modern writers are afraid if they're too sincere they'll be called cringe so they undercut everything with jokes to make it feel like they're in on it.
There was some especially awful voice acting from Egoraptor, who sounded like something out of that parody clip of what Breaking Bad would sound like dubbed over by anime dub VAs.
You know GLITCH fans are faggots for trying to cancel Jax voice actor over a nigger joke yet they give Arin a free pass. Nigga said nigger online for 20 years.
I watched Gameoverse to see what the hubbub with the puritanism was about and I had three main takeaways:
1. I get a cynical vibe from both the attractive female characters being in swimsuits, but it's not gratuitous at all. People need to relax
2. What GAVE me that cynical vibe was that they spent the entire episode underwater and yet they're wearing swimsuits. Why not scuba gear? They spend maybe a full minute above water and yet they're in swimsuits like they're at the beach. It feels humorously transparent that they just wanted them to be skimpily dressed
3. Jumping off of 2, when I noticed how little they cared about the world taking place underwater I couldn't stop noticing it. If they had made a joke about "it's a game taking place underwater, where all the characters are fish, so there's no code to make us drown" that would've been nice but they flat out refused to use the setting to any sort of advantage. The dinosaur has trouble swimming at first and then after that scene everybody who isn't a fish just walks around. Did I miss something?
There's more to say about how tired it is that the conflict for one of these involves trauma and PTSD but it's an okay enough plot. I think the villains' motives are far more intriguing than the heroes' though.
Wait a minute, I just realized something : The whole "if the good guy wins the game is le heckin destroyed dood!!!1" is just something from Reboot! If the player characters win, that game is destroyed, I think?
The main thing I noticed is that Kaboodle's actor's mic was NOTICABLY worse than the others which is funny because he's a professional YouTuber who should have a decent mic setup.
I found an old Gameoverse Facebook page for anyone who wanted to see what this project might've looked like before Glitch picked it up.
Arin was planned to voice this character for a decade. There's an irony in how he actively participates in Sonic and furry shit while pretending to be above them and asserting that their stories shouldn't be serious or sincere.
Now he's voicing in a furry drama
