Reviews

Jorge Gutierrez is one of the best cartoon creators of all time, with a unique visual style and dedication to Mexico. This miniseries is yet another one of his great projects and ticks all the boxes.

Animation: By far the best part of the show. It's some of the most detailed CGI I've ever seen in a television series, to the point where I forget that it's not a movie since it just looks so theatrical. Plus, the characters often play around with the black aspect ratio bars. It just pops. 2/2

Music: A mix of Mexican-style music and music you'd hear in a western. Perfect choice. 2/2

Characters: In just nine episodes, we get to know and love the complex, messed up cast of Maya and the Three. All the characters are presented as flawed, having a somewhat gray morality. Take King Teca for example. He cheated on his wife with the goddess of death and that's how Maya came to be. There's also a lot of development, especially for the titular Maya, who commits probably the most selfless thing I've ever seen in the series finale. 2/2

Writing: It combines mesoamerican mythology, Lord of the Rings, and westerns to create an epic coming of age story. With the kinetic action, emotional moments, and clever jokes sprinkled about, there's never a dull moment. 2/2

Voice acting: A brilliant cast of Latino voice actors. You can't go wrong with icons like Rosie Perez, Carlos Alazraqui, Gabriel Iglesias aka Fluffy, Alfred Molina and so many more. 2/2

Overall, 10/10.

This show wasn't advertised a lot. It's on Apple TV Plus, which almost no one has, and its very existence was kept a secret until just this year, most likely due to non-disclosure agreements. Well, if no one will hype it up, I will.

Writing - 2/2 while it does fall prey to some common cliches (western isekai, main character is an outcast, goes to boarding school etc), it still manages to stand out from the crowd with its unique universe and terminology. The stories are a nice balance between self-contained and plot-relevant to the overall arc.

Voice Acting - 2/2. The voice cast is a great mix of British child actors and well-known American actors. The voice actors for Wolfboy, Xandra, and Sprout each have a great delivery and pack a lot of emotion for serious scenes.

Animation - 1/2 probably the weakest aspect of the series. Sometimes the animation can be really great, like during fight scenes and the theme song, but most of the time, it's somewhat choppy. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not.

Characters - 2/2. William "Wolfboy" Wolfe is our hero, a loner who wears a wolf mask and gets sent to a strange realm at the center of earth, where he meets sprites named Xandra and Sprout. Xandra is fierce, passionate, and distrustful towards Wolfboy because of her bad experience with humans. It turns out that she and Wolfboy aren't so different after all, because Xandra's parents died and Wolfboy had no family except for his mum.

Music - 2/2 Very adventurous techno-like music, fitting the tone of the show.

Overall - 9/10.

Poor Awdry, he must be looking down from Heaven with disapproval along with David Mitton, George Carlin, and Michael Angelis. Britt Allcroft similarly does not approve.

This show ruins everything that Thomas stood for. Thomas and Friends is popular because the characters are well rounded, the stories are strong and written well, and it adheres to railway realism despite the fantasy elements. Despite Thomas and his friends being locomotives, they seemed like real people to us.

Plus, the original Thomas was a very calm show, making it popular with autistic people such as myself. All Engines Go is a rapid fire mess with pacing faster than the speed of sound, flat characters (including Kana, one that seems to be plagiarized from a fan OC), and most importantly ....

It's very unrealistic. I know it's a cartoon, but Thomas was praised specifically because it was realistic to real life railways. This one isn't. The characters bounce off the rails and even uses their wheels as hands. Not even Chuggington got this bad.

Avoid this ableist, pandering, sensory overload mess and watch the original Thomas the Tank Engine. It's much better.

I came into Centaurworld thinking that I wouldn't like it very much, just because I didn't like the centaur designs -- too simplistic. But boy was I wrong.

Centaurworld is like the Cowboy Bebop of western cartoons -- it combines so many genres into one that it becomes its own genre. There's adventure, action, mystery, drama, comedy, and a musical aspect -- every episode has tons of songs.

Not to mention the fierce juxtaposition between the gritty and dramatic nature of Horse's original realm (she's a war horse) and the fluffy cotton candy nature of Centaurworld. This is really meta -- you see, it's a commentary on the battle between comedy cartoons and story-driven cartoons. Centaurworld is both of these things and more.

I found myself not really caring for the centaur characters at first, thinking that they were annoying, but as you spend more time with them, you feel more sympathetic to them -- especially Mamawinks.

Mercury Filmworks always delivers on the animation, and they did a great job with the brown, darkish lighting for Horse and Rider moments vs the pinkish neon color scheme for Centaurworld, and the beautiful animation for both of them. The former is stylized like a graphic novel while the latter is simplistic.

I can't believe I ended up loving it, and you will too if you give it a chance -- unless you don't like musicals.

Scoob was rather tame and forgettable, and didn't quite work as a tribute to Hanna-Barbera. Luckily, CH Greenblatt is here to save the day. Known for zany yet heartfelt cartoons like Chowder and Harvey Beaks, Jellystone puts all the comedy-oriented/lesser-known Hanna-Barbera characters all together.

It's like The Looney Tunes show because it's sitcom-esque, yet still true to the characters and fresh for a new audience. There are a bunch of previously male characters that are now women like Jabberjaw, but this interpretation of them is fine.

Just like the show's interpretation that the Banana Splits are a criminal gang. They must have gotten inspiration from the 2019 movie.

Plus, it's got some deep cuts - the average person doesn't know about "Heyyy, It's the King!", but here, the characters from that series are portrayed as major rivals to Top Cat and his crew.

Despite the show's sitcom setup, it gets pretty unhinged and I love it. There's a vore plot, 3 kids disguising as a man in a trenchcoat and somehow becoming a politician, medical malpractice, shady DNA tests, helicopter parenting, turf wars, anime body pillows, sneaking into a party, turning everyone into jelly so you can get away from telling them you didn't read a book for your book club, gay subtext, trans subtext, and so much more.

The series is now high on my cartoons of 2021 list. Check it out, especially if you're a Hanna-Barbera enjoyer.

Ridley Jones is a show from the creator of Doc McStuffins and Vampirina -- Chris Nee.

It mixes Night at the Museum with Indiana Jones for a very entertaining show with just a hint of an underlying arc.

It's intended for a young audience, but the clever dialogue, high stakes, and action makes me forget that it's even for preschoolers in the first place. Never underestimate your audience. Ridley and her friends all get a chance to be fleshed out in their spotlight episodes.

Ridley is adventurous and virtuous. Ismat is a queen of Ancient Egypt, which does have historical basis -- children did rule Egypt. She has two dads, which not only promotes LGBTQ acceptance, but alludes to homosexuality in Ancient Egypt, which did happen. As she's a queen, she's stylish and a bit haughty, but also has insecurities like being afraid of the dark. This makes sense if you've been in a tomb for so long.

Peaches, despite being a famous space monkey. Is afraid of heights. This fear may seem contradictory, but it helps flesh her character out.

Dudley the Dodo Bird is quite skittish. He's the last of his kind, of course he'd be. Dante is a dinosaur who talks like a skater/surfer, which can be quite humorous and sets up his character as going with the flow but also being adventurous.

Fred the Bison is non-binary and always wants to prove themselves as tough and not cute. There's a nice little moment in the first episode where Ridley asks what Fred's pronouns are, and Peaches says that Fred's just Fred. That's a nice little moment that blended in naturally and can teach kids at home that Fred uses they/them pronouns.

The underlying arc is Ridley's mother dodging from being fired from the museum. The Jones family lives there, and if Ridley's mom is fired, they'll have to move out. Mr. Peabody makes for a threatening antagonist so far, and being fired/losing a job isn't something often talked about in preschool shows.

For some great songs, nice imagination with realistic hair and fur, lovable characters, mystery, and adventure --- check out Ridley Jones with your family, it's awesome. The one and only complaint I have is that the pacing is a bit too fast at times, but at least it's better than being slow.

It's been 20 years since the original Monsters Inc and 8 years since Monsters University. And we've been waiting four years for this show to come out. I watched the first two episodes, and while they were quite solid, they have a few problems. Allow me to break them down.

-Mike and Sulley don't appear that much. Mike is made the new CEO of Monsters Inc, with a new focus on monsters making kids laugh rather than scream. If you watched the original movie, the two had legitimate problems with scaring children, so this development makes sense. So while we do see them, most of the focus is on Tylor, a new employee.

-This wouldn't be a problem, but Tylor isn't that interesting to me. He's very much a blank slate for the viewers to project on, since he's the new guy and is confused about the new initiative by the company to be funny, much like the audience might be.

-The animation. It seems a bit rough at times, but I'll let it slide because TV budgets are way smaller than movie budgets.

-Now let's talk about the things I do like. I like the return of several fan-favorites, such as Roz, Celia Mae, and Smitty and Needleman. There's some unintended comedy in the show that got a good chuckle out of me. And the original jazz theme music is back, as well as the Art Deco style animation for the title card and credits.

This show has a lot of potential despite its flaws, so I will tune in for more episodes.