Things We Are Ashamed to Like: 2 Feb. 2007

I love cartoons. Love 'em. As I write this, I'm checking out John K.'s blog and watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Debates on Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and the resurrection of the Fleischer style were prevalent in my nerdy-film debates at college, and I am ready on a moment's notice to tell you why exactly Family Guy sucks nards. (Seth McFarlane is a cool dude, though, so I feel really bad saying that.) I'm an animation junkie, and I'm not afraid to say it.

What I am ashamed of, though, is that I'd watch anything which came anywhere close to my field of interest. When cartoons met video games, I was hooked. When cartoons and video games employed a main character who played video games (just like me!), it became destination television. Ladies and gentlemen, I was an avid watcher of Captain N: The Game Master.



Before you ask, I will tell you that I'm ashamed of this. Of course I am; the program was a thirty-minute commercial for whichever game was hot on the NES that week. The heroes would meet a new character, they would have adventures, and the commercials in between each act would remind us to go out and buy the game in which this new character was featured. It was advertising at its finest, and the exact reason why cartoons of the 1980s have earned their dubious reputation.

But I still love it, even to this day. It was obviously written by disgruntled writers who had come to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune, but had settled for a decent paycheck to make ends meet. It led to the occasional moment where the humor got really, really screwy; after all, kids are stupid, and adults aren't watching. What's it going to matter if the episode doesn't make sense? This feeling only intensified after the introduction of Game Boy, a character who was, get this, a sentient Gameboy. When one of the characters is a grey box who yells punchlines as loud as possible, then narrative coherency is no longer a priority.

Perhaps I'm giving the writers too much credit, or perhaps my judgement has been impaired by a hellish week. But when I found out earlier this week that the series is being prepared for a DVD release, my heart just about jumped into my throat. Blame nostalgia, because I can't find any other good reason to be excited about a shoddily-produced commercial. The thrill of seeing Simon Belmont and Kid Icarus in the same frame again, no matter how badly produced, written or animated, fills me with joy. Sometimes you just have to be that indiscriminate kid again.