Happy Tree Friends

[koosie]

Originally Posted by The Huntsman

I?ve written ten thousand word articles on the characters, so I?m pretty sure it?s not just mindless violence.

Really? Ten Thousand words is quite a lot. Surely you were padding it out just a little bit? Please can I read one just so I know what the score really is with Happy Tree Friends. I'd hate to think I've missed something enlightening.

[taranchula]

I used to watch these shorts back in 2001, and didn't really think they were anything special, the premise kind of wares thin once the shock value wares off.

[jekylljuice]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

Even if I didn't grow up on toon characters similar to the Tree friends in my cartoon days, I still cannot for one minute stomach such a god awful, heart wrenching, and unnecessarily brutal show that not only pushes the gore factor over the edge, but does it to characters who DON'T belong in that element.

Now sometimes its funny, like when South Park did the imagination land 3 part episode, that was funny because some of the toons did adult things and the jokes weren't solely based on ripping the cartoons to shreds because they hated them. Tree friends takes characters who are innocent and essentially harmless and puts them through worse treatments then your average horror movie does.

Now maybe some people find the reversal of cute and cuddly to gory gruesome funny, but not this way.

That's why I prefer Pib and Pog - I think they did a funnier and more appealling job of nailing the whole "extreme cuteness meets sick and twisted-ness" factor, for a couple of reasons (both of which, needless to say, are just a matter of my own personal preferences).

1) The HTF gang are cute and innocent. P&P, on the other hand, are "cute" and "innocent". While the central joke of HTF basically involves the juxtaposition of sweet and harmless little characters with gruesome and horrific situations, the central joke with P&P kinda works on the reverse principle. Pib and Pog themselves are actually quite nasty and hateful little beings who get massive sadistic kicks out of seeing one another suffer, the irony being that the setting and execution of their shorts is done in the style of a show for pre-schoolers. Consequently, most of the humour here springs not from P&P's misconduct itself, but from the kindly-voiced narrator's efforts to put a cheerful spin upon each and every one of their viciously mean-spirited antics. That narrator is a brilliant foil and, I don't know, she makes me laugh.

2) Compared to the violence in HTF, the violence in P&P is, at best, incredibly mild, and for me that's a real plus point. There's no blood or gore, and the worst that really happens to P&P is that their plasticine bodies get temporarily contorted out of shape. A lot of their antics, such as going at each other with machine guns, dunking each other into concertrated sulphuric acid, and impaling one another on beds of nails, are an ounce more extreme than you'd expect from the usual spectrum of cartoon violence (certainly for a show aimed at pre-schoolers), but the fact that they respond in a very traditional cartoon manner somehow makes it a more effective and better balanced mixture of irony for me.

As for Itchy and Scratchy, the Tom and Jerry pretext ran its course very quickly for me. I always thought they worked most effectively whenever they were used as a foil for the Simpsons themselves. Had they been introduced as an independent cartoon on their own, then it's my opinion that they wouldn't have had much to sustain themselves.

[Fluff]

BEST SHOW EVER Disco bear being teh best

[Sparky]

Originally Posted by Nyo

(Oh yeah, can we merge this thread with the older one? )

Why didn't these ever get merged? (I don't read many of the OT threads unless it's something I'm into.) Merging now.

[Fluff]

Originally Posted by Sparky

Why didn't these ever get merged? (I don't read many of the OT threads unless it's something I'm into.) Merging now.

are you Stalking me.....

[Sparky]

Originally Posted by Fluff

are you Stalking me.....

YES.

No.

[jekylljuice]

Ooh, awkward...okay, I'm a little hesitant to revive this thread, for I fear that I'm going to make myself immensely unpopular for what I'm about to say, but here goes...

I just wanted to retract those previous reservations I expressed about Happy Tree Friends earlier in this thread, because, strangely enough, I actually do rather like this show now. Don't ask me how it happened. I'm still the same highly squeamish person that I always was, but over the past three or four months, I've watched quite a bit more and found myself becoming more and more attached to the characters, who I think are actually pretty eclectic and interesting (the misconception that they're just cute little bags of blood and organs to be spattered at very turning does not, I fear, do them justice). The earliest internet shorts were certainly fairly crude, but I think that by the time they got round to the TV series (at which point the incongruousness, while always a crucial part of the atmosphere, was no longer the entire joke within itself), both the concept and the characters had been developed surprisingly well. And, while there is still quite a lot of stuff in HTF that makes me cringe, I guess that I've more-or-less learnt to accept it within the context of their world. My favourite character is Disco Bear.

Oh, and I still hate Itchy and Scratchy, but that's possibly because I'm opposed upon principle to the concept of an evil blue mouse repeatedly dismembering an innocent cat.

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by jekylljuice

I just wanted to retract those previous reservations I expressed about Happy Tree Friends earlier in this thread, because, strangely enough, I actually do rather like this show now.

If it makes you feel any better, so do I. Occasionally I come into this thread looking for the link, click it, and watch. I think I watch it mostly for the sheer absurdity of it all, and in truth it's better than a number of shows on CN these days. Academy-award material it ain't, but sometimes I don't want to bother with high art or stirring dialogue, or even a plot; some days I just want to indulge in something mindless.

Originally Posted by jekylljuice

Oh, and I still hate Itchy and Scratchy, but that's possibly because I'm opposed upon principle to the concept of an evil blue mouse repeatedly dismembering an innocent cat.

Same here, but it beats the hell out of shows like Mighty Mouse and Tom & Jerry. Why cats always seen to get the short end of the stick in these and other old cartoon I'll never understand. I like cats and frankly a lot of those shows annoyed the crap out of me.

[Frankie_4_Prez]

Originally Posted by Cassini90125

..featuring the rockin' Erin Esurance, the only cartoon character I'd ever buy insurance from.

LOL, you'd buy insurance from Frankie if she were selling it. No, you'd even buy doggie doo-doo on a stick, if Frankie were selling it.

About this show, I don't think I could ever bring myself to enjoy it. Maybe in ten more years, after I'm all jaded and sick of living in this world. Granted, I only saw a few 2-minute shorts, and not the actual TV sequences which most people here seem to agree were much better.