What's up, you fucking troglodytes. Today, I'm going to be going over a tv show that you may or may not have recently heard of, called Invincible. When I first heard about this show, I dismissed it because I thought it was going to be a show for children. The screenshots I saw made it look like a high budget Saturday morning super hero cartoon. I wasn't aware of the comic book series it was based on made by Robert Kirkman, the guy who brought us The Walking Dead, and with how everything lately has been trying to suck on the mommy milkers of Marvel, I just was going to ignore the show and not bother with it. But, thankfully, a friend watched it and told me he thought it was great and that I'd like it. So, I said fuck it I'll give it a try and went in blind on the first episode.
My initial thoughts were pretty quickly proven to be dead ass wrong about the show, however.
This show is pretty much the opposite of being for children. There are a shit ton of heavy/dark things going on throughout the show, lots of very entertaining gore, and they might even manage to drops some naughty no-no words like Shit, or Fuck. I'm getting the vapors just thinking about it. Outside of anime, I can't really think of any cartoons I've ever watched that were nearly as brutal and dark as this show manages to be. If you want kind of a general idea of what to expect from the tone of the show, it's somewhat similar to The Boys. Just in how some of the superhero's are kinda fucked up people, and in how it shows their powers. It takes a more realistic approach to how powers would actually work on a human being. Whether that be people just being vaporized into meat paste, or an innocent bystander getting their limbs obliterated on accident from a hero who can't control their own powers too well. The show is shockingly graphic, which again, I wasn't really expecting when I turned it on.
The first episode of the series for the first half is pretty basic, standard superhero stuff that you'd probably see in a DC animated film. Which isn't bad or anything, it was kind of fun and reminiscent of something like the start of spider-man where he's going through the early stages of developing his powers, and wondering why his penis is hard all the time. But, I was wondering how great the show could actually be since it wasn't really blowing my mind or anything at first. But then the last 20 minutes of the first episode starts and leaves you thinking holy shit, what the fuck just happened. No major spoilers, but, man, I was legitimately shocked. As soon as that 20 minutes was finished, I knew I was going to be glued to this show.
I mentioned before the show handles some very dark topics/subjects, and it doesn't pull any punches when it does. If you watch this show get ready for absolute brutality, to the point of being comical in a great way. The writing for the show is absolutely wonderful as well, with characters like Omni-man having a crazy amount of depth to them. He in particular is probably one of the most interesting super hero characters I've seen in anything in a long time. None of the characters in the show feel hollow or unpolished though, everyone is pretty well rounded with who they are. The entire universe of the show is written well, with hints being dropped throughout the season of a larger grand scheme happening throughout the galaxy. It just teases you enough with the large amount of ideas it wants to show you, just barely letting the ass crack slip without sharing full on bare ass. I genuinely am just excited to see where these things end up taking us in the next season of the show.
Beyond the excellent writing and narrative of the show, it also has some top tier animation. The animations during the battle scenes is so well done and perfectly executed, it's just gorgeous to look at. Everything feels very fluid and in perfect motion, it's just some good fucking animation. There are times where you can notice a bit of not great CG work happening, but it's not present enough to really ever bother you or make a dent on how great the rest of the animation is throughout the series. The fights are also pretty constant, meaning you don't have some dragonball z shit where a character has to power up for 17 minutes and they just keep cutting to other things in the mean time. Another good part of the animation is that everything has weight to it, they do a great job of showing how insanely overpowered some of these characters are. During fights there is a lot of impact not just to the characters, but to the environments around them. And, it's awesome that you get to see the full scope of those impacts.
Probably one of my favorite things about this show is that it's more grounded with what would happen with super powers being real, like I mentioned before. In Marvel and DC movies, they almost never show people dying from insane fights that in real life would obliterate thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. They always downplay it and it just feels like the world those characters are in is empty without any life. In this show when someone gets punched through a building it shows that there are dozens or hundreds of people dying from having an indestructible hulking mass thrown through them. When a villain is shooting a laser gun at a crowd of people, he doesn't just scare them off. You see them get turned into bloody mist or melt into a puddle of gore on the ground. You get to actually see the after effects of what a battle with crazy powers could possibly be, and realize how devastating the shit would actually be. It makes all of the action in the show very intense, and it's just awesome.
One more thing I'd like to touch on is that the show has a stacked/great voice cast to go along with everything else to boot. The main character is voiced by Steven Yeun, who you'd know as Glenn from The Walking Dead. Omni-man is played by JK Simmons, one of the best actors out there in my opinion, and there are other noticeable talents like Mark Hamill (Who literally is an S tier voice actor), Seth Rogen, Zachary Quinto, Walton Goggins, etc. They all do an absolutely terrific job at their characters, there was never a line uttered that sounded goofy like they weren't taking it seriously, or just half assing it. You can feel emotions put into the voice lines, and I would say each person do a solid fucking job. Everyone here sounded really into their role, and I'd imagine most of everyone was pretty passionate about the show. Or, they're just, like, super fucking good at half assing it. One or the other.
Overall, I don't have pretty much anything to say negatively about this show. There will definitely be comparisons between this show and The Boys, which I can understand why. But, this show stands strongly on its own legs and I would highly recommend anyone to check it out. I've given in to the super hero fatigue lately, I've felt like the genre has been being a dead horse with yet another dead horse. But, this show is pretty special and feels like an entire new breathe of fresh air. I went into it without any expectations and my mind was blown. I think the show is great, and you should go watch it right now if you haven't started it yet. You crusty virgin.
I'm just starting this show, i really like the animation style, as you said it has "saturday morning superhero cartoon" vibe, which is amazing considering the overall concept.
I've been hearing a lot about this show and it is a big feature in the latest memes. I'm gonna go download it now.