The Amazing World Of The Amazing World Of Gumball

Sure has been a long time since last blog, eh? Let's change that!

I've recently finished my binge of The Amazing World of Gumball, a cartoon that's currently airing on Cartoon Network and almost finished with its fourth season with two more seasons confirmed to come. It's hardly the only series I follow, but I did notice that it seems to get talked about less than other series I follow, which confuses me since it's actually really, really good. So what better solution than to ramble about it here?!

Amazing

I think the most immediately outstanding thing about the show is the art style, or art styles rather. I've seen some media that tries to blend different art styles but none as far as I know have done it as effectively and extensively as Gumball. Characters run the gamut between being animated in a variety of 2D styles, CGI 3D styles and even some live action bits such as chin puppetry and use of professional photography for the backgrounds. The mesh of styles works really well and gives the show a very distinct look as well as a highly diverse cast

Quite a cast

Of course just art style alone is no reason to watch a show. But while I think the show's style is great, I think the cleverness of the writing and the vast breadth of humour as well as other emotions the show manages to reach for are seriously impressive. The main cast is composed of Gumball, a blue cat, and his family consisting of pet goldfish-turned-adoptive brother and total sweetheart Darwin, younger sister and socially awkward genius Anais, and their parents, the lazy and silly Richard and overzealous and fierce Nicole.

Don't make her angry.

This must sound rather typical and for most of the first season their dynamics are the main focus of the show, with most episodes being set either at Gumball and Darwin's school where there's a whole bunch of other students and staff members, or at home. These episodes are still somewhat funny in their own right, they're nothing special but they're easy to digest and get through since each episode is only 11 minutes.

Then season 2 happens. Season 2 of the show really blew me away. While season 1 was funny in its own right, season 2 is when the show's art drastically improves, the writing becomes much more clever, Gumball and his family become more well-rounded characters and the show starts to do more unconventional episodes as well as focus a lot more on the world and side characters it has built up in season 1. The thing that I love about the show past this point is that pretty much anything can happen and it's all amazing. An episode where continuity suddenly catches up to the main cast as everything that happened in past episodes suddenly has consequences? Sure. An episode about a zombie outbreak parodying the horror genre? Yup. An episode about all inanimate objects in the show's city being sentient? Yes. There's even an episode that is a homage to Karate Kid in the style of poorly animated 70s cartoons.

And it's great.

Then season 3 happens. Season 3 manages to blow me away again. Just like with season 2, season 3 continues the trend of episodes having very novel concepts as well as exploring different parts of the show's world. The first episode is all about Gumball and Darwin's voices changing as their voice actors become too old to do a believable kid voice and the episode is a wonderful sendoff to the old voice actors and introduces the new ones all through a wonderful song. 

I really do love the show's songs, they're amazing.

But season 3 is also where the show stop being entirely episodic and subject to the Status Quo. Episodes start appearing that permanently alter the show's Status Quo and are part of more overarching yet also contained plots. A very interesting one which is actually going to be very important in the fourth season finale is the episode about the Void, where all the mistakes of the world inside the show are placed, such as concept art for the show, bad trends from the 80s, the Crazy Frog (?!), Clippy and minor background characters who got replaced and forgotten by the whole world. One of these characters, a background character from season 1 and 2 who barely had like 5 lines turns into a far more important and sinister character as the series progresses. I just love how meta that is, how this unimportant background character is so unimportant even in the context of the world that he just gets deleted and then later comes back unsure of what his role in life even is. Season 3 then ends off with easily one of my favourite segments of the show, where money problems faced by the main characters directly translate into the whole world of Gumball falling apart. It's a marvel to behold in its absurdity.

This blew me away.

Then season 4 happens. And season 4 is still great, the best so far in my opinion! I think that in itself is a feat, considering how many shows start to show signs of decay by season 4, but Gumball only manages to get more off-the-wall in season 4 as well as continue story threads established in season 3. Just the episodes that have aired the last two weeks are great. There was a great detective/crime investigation parody, an episode about violence in video games with an amazing moral and ending, an episode all about Gumball trying to get someone to slap his butt and an episode with a whole anime fight sequence guest animated by a professional Japanese studio, and from what it looks the season finale is going to be an epic two-parter closing off one of the series' running threads. My excitement for that episode is part of why I even wrote this blog, I had to get it out somehow! 

Butt.

Throughout all of this the show really does manage to impress me with how incredibly varied it is. The show has all sorts of comedy, in the first season much of it being slapstick which is sold very well due to the quality of the animation to a lot of surprisingly dark or even cynical humour, more so in later seasons. But despite that the series also knows how to have emotional moments or even whole episodes that are actually genuinely heartfelt or cute alongside being funny, and that just really impresses me. The show references things from a vast pool of things, be they old or modern, family or adult media, and out of all shows I've seen seems to be the most in touch with modern times when it comes to integrating them into its plots. 

I really do think the show is underrated, I think there's currently a renaissance of cartoons on TV and Gumball is easily among the cream of the crop, I just wish it'd get recognized more as such. Despite that, the show has done good enough to get 6 seasons, so it must be doing very well for Cartoon Network to renew it as such, which makes me happy since I'm certain the next two seasons will be just as good if not better than the previous ones!