In this new show based on the video game Cuphead, brothers Cuphead (voiced by Tru Valentino) and Mugman (Frank Todaro) live in a world reminiscent of 1930's cartoons. They constantly end up in a series of misadventures, while the Devil (Luke Millington-Drake) keeps trying to get Cuphead's soul.
My hats off to the animation. Yeah, it can't quite match the feel of the old-school type, but does a really strong job. Backgrounds are watercolor. There are film scratches and slight shadows are applied to characters to give the impression of them being cells placed on a background. (I can't take credit for noticing that last bit. The guys on the Youtube Channel Double Toasted brought that to my attention.) You even get some stop-motion backgrounds reminiscent of the stop motion-cave that Popeye walked through back in the day. (Again, Double Toasted.) Like the video game, there is a concentrated effort to maintain the feel of the 1930's, like the character designs, costumes, buildings, etc.
However, the stories are not as strong as the animation. To be clear, the stories are alright. They're traditional comic stories. But, in an era where children's cartoons have become more ambitious and tried new things, this feels surprisingly regressive. The plots are often traditional shenanigans and worn-out situations that have been done before, like a character overhearing something and misinterpreting what was said. Nothing special.
It doesn't help that the cup brothers aren't the most engaging. They're miscreants who constantly disobey and make bad, selfish decisions. To be clear, they're immature boys, so I wouldn't say they ever make me straight up dislike them the way it would if they were adults, but still they can get annoying with their constant need to not listen stick their hands in it.
Doesn't help that that Cupman and Mugman's voices and personalities aren't what I (and I'm guessing others) would have in their head based on the video games where there were no dialogue. (They have old timey Bronx-style voices.) Fans of the game may be disappointed with the adaptation here. There were so many colorful villains in the Cuphead game, but not a lot of them are used. Sadly, the show doesn't have much interest in the use of some of the more fantastical/high concept ones. Of the villains they do use, at least two of these groups of villains are the types who say 'Youse' and aren't that interesting. I think that kinda defines the most disappointing part of this, the creators seemed mostly interested in writing about 30's city scenarios. Remember how those old cartoons could feature things like books coming to life or really weird, out-there stuff happening? There isn't much of that here. (Though, there's a ghost episode that's pretty fun.) Also, if you liked the villain King Dice (voiced here by Wayne Brady), who was the second most prominent villain throughout the game and appeared throughout, he's surprisingly only in one episode here.
Sorta recommended. It's not a stellar show, but generally entertaining. Kids will probably get more mileage out of this.
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