Thread by @fireh9lly

Finished the #Animaniacs reboot. It rules

It isn't perfect, and there are some genuinely odd choices that start to make some sense when you realise the production staff are 1) people who watched the original as kids trying to recreate as adults how it felt to them at the time, 2) the producer's background is Family Guy

As well as the animation itself being gorgeous it feels legitimately dark and even dangerous at times (though the libbish political semi-satire domesticates it a lot)

There are parts in it where you feel mean for laughing, and bits that go to that sort of "fanfictiony" area of taking things a bit seriously, which doesn't really happen in the original, but fits as future versions of children taking the Warners' tormenting literally

Like, we always knew Yakko was probably insecure (he's a smart child, arrogant, and a stand-up comedian, what else could he be?) but in Reboot he is often shown losing control and even having a mental breakdown at lack of attention. We get a traumatic backstory for Brain.

The original always had that subtle thread of sadness to it - Pinky and Brain are living short lives of torture, the Warners are ultimately unwanted, imaginative children being raised on a diet of pop culture junk food - but it never bothered to point those things out until now

None of this is bad, it is just different. No point ignoring that stuff now, no-one under 30 will watch this show and they all have depression.

I think the only real misstep is the mercifully short skit with the rapper, which is intensely cringy on multiple levels, miscasting Yakko as the Western canon smacking down this newfangled music, but not even having the guts to make the rapper properly annoying

(he gives Yakko "respect", I mean, holy shit, how have you got this far into a 1930s animation parody without noticing early 20th Century cartoon characters are black, as in "face"? On top of that I did the 90s the first time, whenever a cartoon starts rapping I develop a rash)

But the one that feels like I should hate it and yet I don't is how they reimagine Chicken Boo, for a time when the human guys ARE all giant chickens and no matter how much you scream about it, he's still your boss

The essential logic of the original joke gets transferred to Brain, who is more obviously competent at being a human-guy, and even able to weaponise the paranoia in a McCarthyist purge against suspected mice

But when Chicken Boo himself shows up, he totally breaks the original premise of his own joke. In the original it's kind of a satire of overpromoted, mediocre men, living his lives as rockstars and presidents while very obviously being a giant chicken

But in Reboot, Chicken Boo has a good disguise! He talks in a human voice and not clicks! And unlike in the original, where his motivations are unknown and probably sympathetic, here, he's actively malevolent, pompous, murderous.

Chicken Boo's not funny any more, it's too close to home. Better to reimagine him as the kind of tedious, self-involved strongman who'd be better as a foe for the Warners to annoy into meltdown.