Toon In: Animated TV Highlights for August, from Strange Planet to Changes for Solar Opposites
Welcome to the ink, paint, and pixel corner of Paste TV, where we’re highlighting some of the best premium animation projects on streaming or direct-to-video aimed for teens and adults. This monthly column not only provides an overview of the new animated series to check out, but we’ve also collected some of the finest creators and voice talents in the medium to give updates, or introductions, to their series.
Please note interviews below were done with animation creatives who are not working under WGA contracts. Rather, they are speaking as producers or their shows are represented by non-striking Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) contracts.
Strange Planet (August 9)
If you’ve read Nathan W. Pyle’s webcomic Strange Planet, or any of his New York Times Bestselling collections riffing on those comics, then his gentle satire of humanity via blue aliens with acute emotional awareness will already be familiar to you. For everyone else, the Apple TV+ animated series of the same name has the potential to rocket Pyle’s profile even more. He developed Strange Planet into a series with comedy veterans Dan Harmon and Steven Levy (Community), which is a 10-episode meditation on our human foibles as expressed by those simply-drawn but deeply-expressive blue avatars.
Pyle tells Paste, “I try to describe it as, ‘Imagine a planet full of beings who all go to therapy and they’re all willing to talk about their emotions.’ I think that’s part of what makes this unique idea. They’re not simply beings on another planet who are talking in a nasally voice about strange Earth customs. We’re actually visiting their planet, and they’re talking about their own lives. They’re actually thinking on an emotional level that we could aspire to.”
It’s been a long-gestating intention for Strange Planet to cross over from web comic to animated series. Pyle reveals he started discussing it with Harmon and Levy about eight months into the web comic’s existence. And then he met with Alex Bulkley of ShadowMachine animation studio, whose minimalist design style on Bojack Horseman felt in keeping with his own style for Strange Planet. “Just sitting with people who can draw at a technical level that I aspire to—and they’re drawing beings that I’ve made for the Strange Planet webcomic—but they’re turning them around and they’re running them into each other. It was really cool and humbling and also inspiring to see people [working] at that level.”
In crafting episodic stories for the show, Pyle says they had to do a lot of character expansion and arc building, which was very different from how he wrote and drew his web comics. “Four panels doesn’t complete a full story circle, usually,” he laughs. “What’s interesting there is how it brought to the surface the question of how many of these characters are going to be recurring? How much of an arc do we get to see with some of the characters? We chose something of a hybrid in terms of anthological and recurring characters. We knew as we were creating the first season, that the recurring characters would spring up out of our debates and discussions. I think it worked well. It didn’t work perfectly, but it did work well. And it’s the kind of thing that we obviously hope to continue in the future.”
Something that does carry through from the webcomic to the series is a cast of unnamed characters. Pyle says that was something Harmon and Levy were adamant stayed intact in the adaptation and he agrees with. “They said those restrictions created more opportunities for creativity and they were right,” he explains. “And I’m excited to see the audience engage with it. Audiences may name some of the beings themselves, and that creates a new wrinkle on this as the audience continues to interact with it, even as a show.”
Ultimately, he hopes the space created by Ted Lasso and The Bear for very emotion-based storytelling has set the table for Strange Planet to slip right in beside them on the streaming menu. “I wanted to make a show that you can enter into and I think those two shows absolutely did, and our hope is to do the same.”
Mech Cadets (August 10)
Fans of Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa’s Boom! Studios comic book series, Mech Cadet Yu, can rejoice because the adventures of teen hero Stanford Yu have been adapted to the Netflix computer-animated series, Mech Cadets. Japanese animation studio Polygon Pictures is behind the anime look, with Tohru Patrick Awa (Super Mario Bros. Movie) serving as the supervising director and Aaron Lam (Ash Vs. The Evil Dead) as head writer/executive producer. Directly aimed at teens, Mech Cadets is set in the near(ish) future and revolves around underdog Yu coming into his own. Initially, he works as a janitor at the Sky Corps Military Academy, but he has ambitions to pilot a Robo Mech, which are robots that arrived to assist humanity in an unexpected war against alien invaders. It looks slick, and has the vibe of a very upscaled Power Rangers meets Pacific Rim. It also features a strong voice cast including Brandon Soo Hoo (From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series), Daniel Dae Kim (The Legend of Korra), Ming-Na Wen (The Mandalorian), and Debra Wilson (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor).
