Toon In: Animated TV Highlights for July 2023, from Unicorn: Warriors Eternal Finale to the Return of Futurama
TV Lists animation
Welcome to the ink, paint, and pixel corner of Paste TV, where we’re highlighting some of the best premium animation projects 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.
Skull Island – Season Finale Post Mortem (Aired June 22)
Netflix and Legendary’s Skull Island dropped Season 1 at the end of June, so creator / writer Brian Duffield (Spontaneous) gave Paste an update on some details regarding the series canon. He confirms the story takes place in the early ‘90s, and the only mandates he had to abide by was that Monarch is not on Kong’s island until much later than the show, which is the reason for their absence.
“I also kept referring to Kong as King Kong,” he laughs. It was a topic Legendary kept correcting him about. “They said he’s not King yet. But I was like, ‘He’s King of Skull Island.’” However, in Legendary’s Monsterverse canon, Kong becomes King Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong.
Asked about the violence portrayed in the show, Duffield says he wrote everything using the touchstone of Jurassic Park as his benchmark. “I was wanting to make a show that’s like a summer blockbuster, so a seven-year old can see it and be like, “He got eaten by a crocodile!” As opposed to anything that was too gnarly. The Skull Island movie is really violent, so I wanted to be softer than that, and just a little bit more fun. I make sure there’s enough mincemeat so you could kill off some mercs. And then when good people do bite it, they obviously have a huge effect on characters like Mike or Kong. But Season 2 is very different.”
Speaking of, a Season 2 of Skull Island is already written. Duffield says when Netflix Animation did a reevaluation of all projects in 2022, “We were part of that but they didn’t cancel us, which was amazing,” he confirms. “All the actors had voice sessions and did a good chunk of Season 2. They haven’t finished storyboarding Season 2, but I’ve seen the designs for all of it. Just know, I wouldn’t have ended the show on a cliffhanger if I didn’t know about Season 2.”
He hopes the series does get picked up because he teases, “I have an episode in Season 2 where I didn’t tell anyone about the episode [story] until I handed it in because I figured they’re not going to be happy with such a wild swing,” he laughs. “But then they were like, ‘Cool!’”
Unicorn: Warriors Eternal – Season Finale Post Mortem (Aired June 30)
[Spoiler note: The following interview contains spoilers for Unicorn: Warriors Eternal Season 1 Episode 10.]
“End of the Beginning,” the Season 1 finale of Unicorn: Warriors Eternal on Adult Swim, did what animation legend Genndy Tartakovsky often does, provided some story answers but left the door open for more adventures featuring his slightly expanded gang of evil fighters: Melinda, Seng, Edred, and Winston the Werewolf.
In an exclusive call with Paste to unpack the finale with Tartakovsky, the writer / director confirmed that Unicorn was a single season order by Adult Swim, but he took the gamble to believe in the series and hope for more by ending on a cliffhanger. “We basically changed the goal for the second season,” he says of how it ends. “The first season is you’re building up, and then you find out that Melinda’s mom is driving The Evil, and she’s inside of it. So the goal is no longer to destroy The Evil, but “We have to save my mom!”
The finale reveals that The Evil has changed all of time, with all eras bleeding into one another for essentially a canvas of chaos. When asked if a second season would exist in that current mess, or go back to time hopping, Tartakovsky jokes, “Yeah, I have no idea.”
He then clarifies, “No, we definitely have an idea, but it’s like a Catch-22 in a way. Here,” he says about the last scene in the finale, “we could do whatever we want and that’s how we’ve set ourselves up. But then when you actually get into it, it’s like, ‘Oh, shit, now that we have an empty canvas, and we can do anything we really want, what do we actually do?’ It’s one of those things, where be careful what you wish for because now we have too many ideas. But at least what we have is a guiding and emotional direction.”
Tartakovsky admits they changed a lot in the Season 1 writing to move away from just plot moves to focus instead on smaller character moments, and he’s happy with the team dynamics. He confirms Winston will stick around, and Emma Fairfax made the commitment to take the Warrior’s purpose as her own, so Melinda / Emma are now a new character. “They both exist harmoniously inside Emma’s body,” he says.
Where does that leave the messy love affairs between Emma / Winston and Melinda / Edred? Tartakovsky says, “In a way, both Edred and Winston were kind of selfish because they’re just thinking, “Well, this is my girl. No, this is my girl!” But in actuality, Melinda and Emma have outgrown both of them, and their purpose is to be whole and to find herself. By the end, Edred kind of realizes that the person that he was in love with is gone. Moving forward, I’ll have to really figure out what the natural evolution of that is. It’s even fun to think about what if Edred meets somebody? Melinda could possibly be jealous,” he laughs.
Last but not least, Tartakovsky tees up changes to come with Seng. “He has real complexity because now that his connection to the cosmic realm has ended, what does that mean for him?”
Genndy says they now wait to hear if Unicorn: Warriors Eternal is renewed. “We’re in production on Primal [Season 3], and that’s going to be incredible,” he shares. “And I try never to think about [multiple projects], which are great problems to have. My life will look extremely busy, if it happens. And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t.”
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire (July 5)
Much like the Lucasfilm anthology series, Star Wars: Visions for Disney+, Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is a new Disney+ collection of ten, 10-minute shorts, all with an afrofuturist throughline. Academy-award winner Peter Ramsey is the executive producer, and curated with supervising producers, Tendayi Nyeke and Anthony Silverston, a talented roster of African animators working in a range of animation styles. The shorts are gorgeous and open up mainstream audiences to a wealth of new talent outside of the familiar European and North American animation studio names.
My Adventures With Superman (July 6)
There have been a lot of animated iterations centering on Superman / Clark Kent stories, but Adult Swim’s latest go at the character, My Adventures with Superman, is unabashedly leaning on the vibes of Christopher Reeves’ take on the character mixed with the tone of the live-action Smallville. The series features Jack Quaid voicing a college-aged Clark, with Ishmel Sahid as Jimmy Olsen, and Alice Lee as Lois Lane.
Executive producer Brendan Clogher, who developed the series with Jake Wyatt and Josie Campbell, tells Paste that their very first pitch for the series was Clark’s first day at The Daily Planet, where he is interning with Jimmy, and they meet Lois Lane. “It gives us a really good starting point for the characters,” he says of the premise. “We want to tell a complete story for Superman in a way that encapsulates the Clark Kent of it all. From the beginning, it shows his journey developing his friendships with Jimmy and Lois, and eventually his relationship with Lois.”
The series is also fully embracing the anime aesthetic, which is very much the artistic wheelhouse of Clogher, Wyatt and Campbell. “We grew up watching Toonami, so we grew up on Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and all the classics,” Clogher details. “I come from a background where I’ve worked in action animation for over 10 years. And a lot of the stuff I work on is rooted in a very anime aesthetic. A lot of the artists we pulled in were anime people, so to speak. It felt right, and we just went in that direction.”
As for how they connected Hughie from The Boys as their Superman, Clogher says Quaid was the actor who really nailed the Clark Kent voice. “When we heard his voice, we’re like, ‘That sounds like the guy Lois Lane would fall in love with, that sounds like the guy Jimmy is best friends with, and then it also sounds like the guy who you’d want to save you from a burning building,” he explains. “And Jack, just as a human being, is a really humble guy, deep down. He’s also a big nerd. The fact that he’s those two things, and also really dedicated to his craft, came through in the performance and it clicked.”
Praise Petey (July 21)
Freeform debuts its very first animated series, Praise Petey, from creator Anna Drezen, a former head writer of Saturday Night Live, and Bandera Entertainment’s Mike Judge, Greg Daniels, and Dustin Davis. An adult comedy that is often very NSFW, the series follows Petey (voiced by Annie Murphy), a twenty-something New Yorker, as she relocates to New Utopia, North Carolina.
“It starts out with her inheriting a cult from her dead dad,” Murphy tells Paste about the premise. “She’s a deeply flawed character, which I find to be the most interesting kind of character. And that leaves her a ton of room to grow and learn, and fail and learn. And she’s, of course, surrounded by a cast of extremely colorful, ridiculous characters and hilarity does ensue.”
Also featuring the voice talent of Stephen Root, Christine Baranski, John Cho, and Amy Hill, Murphy says from the second she read the pilot script, she was all in on the series. “When I read that Petey was dating a literal plank of wood, I was like, ‘A-ha! This is the show for me!’ I feel like Anna and I are gonna be on the same page when it comes to senses of humor,” she laughs.
One of the rare animated sitcoms created by, written by, and featuring a female lead, Praise Petey covers the gamut of ridiculous, modern pop culture mixed with the absurdity of a down-home cult scenario. “The writers’ room was very full of very funny women, which is, unfortunately, not as common as it should be,” Murphy says. “And it was clear to me that Anna certainly wanted to surround herself with very smart, very funny women, and write a show that is so bizarre and out there. But also, goofy and feminist.”
It’s also way past PG-13 at times, and very much written with the female gaze in mind. Of its tone, Murphy enthuses, “I am so shocked and pleased by the things that Anna has put in the script, and that people said, “Yep, you can put that on TV.” There are some jaw-droppingly, brazen things that came out of my mouth and that we see in the animation,” she warns. “But I’m really glad because I feel like comedy, especially right now, is so censored and safe. And that’s not funny. I’m really glad that it seems Anna was kind of given carte blanche, and she ran with it in a big way.”
Futurama (July 24)
Resurrected for a third time in its 24-years of existence, Futurama lands at Hulu this time around with the same creators (Matt Groening and David X. Cohen) and its entire original voice cast, including Billy West who voices Philip J. Fry, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Dr. John A. Zoidberg, and the President of Earth, the Preserved Head of Richard Nixon.
Of its miraculous return a decade after the last new episode aired, West tells Paste it is the “greatest thing” to happen. “In a world of one thing coming at you at the speed of light after another, it’s hard to be impressed by anything,” he admits. “But this is a zombie show that the fans won’t let die. I’m glad for that.”
West says fans will feel like the show never left in terms of tone and characters, but the writers manage to skewer plenty of our current societal problems, from pandemics to streaming TV. “Nothing gets by the writers, as far as the world and what goes on,” West says. “They’re so sharp and so funny. They kind of reinvent comedy as they go, and the way we deliver it is different from anything I’ve ever done. The wordings of the lines, and the twists are great. They’re beautiful.”
Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, Total Film, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen
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