New indie pilot has arrived: They call it "Planetronika", another Y2K styled, nostalgic experience.
I didn't really love this animation. Neither of the characters had me hooked and we don't even know what they usually do for a living. The video description said that the main character Butterfly is a "space explorer" but they don't go to space, nor do anything of interest. All that happens is that slime dude, Freestyle throws a really bouncy basketball and it goes crazy and starts destroying the city; Butterfly uses a ray gun to slow it down but falls in the sewers, as a replacement the two characters use one of their pets as the ball (someone call PETA), which look suspiciously like the aliens from the flash game
Run. Butterfly NBA dunks on the slime, which for some reason removed his clothes.
We weren't given a whole lot to work out with this. A quarter of the runtime was dedicated to the bouncy ball with some sight gags that lost their charm really quickly. The pilot only had one location and two characters, which would definitely warrant some interesting character interaction but we got none of that either.
The worst part of this pilot is the fact that nearly all of Butterfly's scenes had something to do with her ass.
I'm of the opinion that having your characters showing a bit of ass is okay when done IN MODERATION. You designed the characters, so make them beautiful, but if it happens more than 5 times for your 7 minute pilot, it starts to get a little suspiscous. I feel like I have to call you out if your characters have more ass shots than a Nicki Minaj music video or a 7 minute section of a Dreamworks/Illumination movie.
But the animation is nice I guess, but could that be a plus if that is to be expected of web animation? And knowing that it is only a pilot implies that there's more to it than this. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on this one but the overreliance on ass shots is a real problem.
"But kids media have ass shots all the time!"
While this is true, is it right to have 50% of the shots be the character's ass? NO!
Even then, I didn't get a real picture of what an episode would look like. If Butterfly's a space explorer why not have the pilot consist of two characters pack up for a mission? Or have them playing basketball while in a ship?
Final verdict: 4.5/10. These indie creators really need to stop relying on Y2K vibes to carry their shows. This animation has the same issue as Wastelandia and LokiIRL: Reminding me that Y2K was a good decade isn't enough to make me want your show. We loved Y2K because the stories in those gemmy shows knew how to make silly antics work.
Oh yeah and The author of this pilot allegedly blocks anyone who even points out Butterfly's ass problem on X.
I'm not getting hopes for this project if the creator isn't interested in the one thing that could make his product better. Once again, another pilot which could've been great but thanks to circumstances falls short. Oh well, I guess I'm watching Space King and Mammal Squad again.
