Show Reviews

Originally me and my friend started watching this a long time ago, I can't remember when specifically but it was either this or last year. I knew some things about the show already through just general osmosis and being around the internet for a while. I've heard that it "gets good" after a while too (I assumed in a similar vein way like Steven Universe), and remember when the finale was about to air everyone was anticipating how it will end. But when we finally started watching, I was put off by the seemingly constant "lol random" humor that felt nonstop. I felt so overwhelmed by it that I had requested we actually drop the show because I just couldn't handle it. I wasn't sure if I would be able to bear with so much of that just to get to the parts that "get good".

Eventually I did end up giving it a second chance. I thought, similar to SU, the first season or two would be pretty rough, and I had to give it the benefit of the doubt. I decided to start over from the beginning, which I sort of ended up regretting because it felt grating imo. Part of the issue with the "lol random" humor is that it conditions my brain to assume nothing in this show is taken seriously at all, and it's not important to pay attention to any of it as it will all just be random nonsense. This becomes a problem later on, since now I'm at a point where I'm used to just expecting random nonsense to a degree where I accidentally miss something important that I had either not paid attention to or assumed was just random nonsense. This made it a little difficult for me to pay attention and think about certain important story aspects when we got farther into the series. Would the proper term be a lack of immersion? Maybe.

This is probably gonna be a hot take but; the show in general sort of felt like a whole jumbled mess of random ideas, with sporadically sprinkled in important lore episodes which are immediately juxtaposed with more jumbled mess. And towards the end, they sort of managed to sort and arrange the jumbled mess into something coherent, but it felt too late as not much later the series was over. This juxtaposition sometimes led me to being really confused after "lore" episodes. Like after some episodes I'd just be like "Was that supposed to be part of the story?" "Did this actually happen or is it just random nonsense that doesn't matter?" "Is this the present, future, or past?" "Am I supposed to know who these characters are or have I already seen them before and forgot?" "Is this character we see a singular time even important?". This constant confusion also made it really difficult for me to enjoy the random lore drops. I'm sure the show is jam-packed with tons of symbolism and hidden meanings, but I'm really really oblivious to things like that. My brain is too smooth for it. I really wanted to love it, and see what all the hype was about. But it just didn't do it for me. I went through the final episode not realizing that was the last one, and thinking "That's it?". We still have to get through some of the after shows: Hidden Lands and Fionna and Cake, and I hope that I'll maybe be able to enjoy those a bit more but I'm not really sure.

I feel like another part of the reason that I wasn't really into the show as much as some other people is that I didn't watch it as it aired on tv. Those who enjoyed the show while it was ongoing and anticipated each episode as it released, and those who grew up watching the show are more likely to be impacted by some of the sprinkled in "lore" episodes. Especially when compared to me, who watched it on the side while playing games while chatting with a friend all in one go with no space between the episodes to build up hype. Sort of a "you had to be there" situation I believe. My experience with the show wasn't the same as others, and I feel that is another aspect of whether or not I ended up enjoying it.

One of the things I did start to enjoy was the reveal of the post apocalyptic setting. I was especially interested in the worldbuilding, and the remaining humans along with Finn's mom's story. I'm hoping that we get more information about this world of the remaining humans in some of the after shows. I also enjoyed the survival aspect between Simon and Marceline, although I wish it was gone into a bit more (again I believe they do so in some of the after shows as well). Again I feel like if the lore-based episodes weren't so juxtaposed between the random episodes I feel like I would've enjoyed the series a bit more. That reminds me, there were these parts of the series that my friend had dubbed "arcs", where there was an overarching story and theme for quite a few episodes in a row along with a subtitle. I feel like I enjoyed the arcs, as I was able to get into them a bit easier since the story wasn't just a singular episode and done. They were able to go a bit deeper into the ideas and essentially had more time with them. Those were nice.

Overall I felt the series was fine. It was funny. I even teared up a little a couple times although I don't remember specifically when. It was okay, but I didn't love it as much as I had hoped to. I really wish I was able to get into it more, but the initial conditioning of expecting randomness wasn't helpful in getting me immersed. I guess I heavily rely on first impressions when it comes to a series, and that's probably not a good mindset to have but eh. I did get a couple potential rainicorn oc ideas out of it though, so that's nice. Me and my friend are currently watching the after shows so I may update this later on with additional mini-reviews of those as well.