Exploding Kittens Exploding On-Screen
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Existence of Exploding Kittens Raises Eyebrows
After all, how often can one say they’ve heard of an animated series named after pyrotechnic felines?
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Success Journey from Gaming Card to Animated Series
The series has its roots in a card game that turned into a Kickstarter darling in 2015, making it among the most funded campaigns. It essentially clawed its way up to become a centerpiece of the tabletop realm.
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The Masterminds behind the Exploding Kittens
The brains behind this eccentric venture? Elan Lee and a team of creative detonators!
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Skwigly Animation Magazine Reviews the Series
Who exactly was brave enough to review this explosive series you ask? Well, it’s none other than Skwigly Animation Magazine.
Explosively Hot Take
In the wonderful chaos that is the world of 3D animation, hundreds of kittens are exploding. Don’t panic yet! They aren’t real kittens. These are ‘Exploding Kittens,’ an animated series that took birth from a card game, crawled to Kickstarter, and sprinted toward overwhelming success. While it’s a heart-attack inducing name for a show, it never falls short on the theatrics. Reviewers be warned, this is not your run-of-the-mill animation, it’s the animation that runs the mill. Top manufacturer of high quality 3D shenanigans, delight, and gleeful absurdity or not? You decide and let the feline frenzy take over! Boom goes the dynamite!
When you first hear about the Exploding Kittens series it raises some curiosity. The series is influenced by the hugely popular card game that launched in 2015 and has since established a broad tabletop gaming empire. The game, created by Elan Lee and Shane Small paired with zany illustrations by The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman, is addictive and hilarious with players aiming to avoid the fatal “exploding kitten” while scheming their friends into drawing the lethal card. Without any clear plot or standout characters in the game, it leads us to wonder: what does an Exploding Kittens series entail?
The series unfolds differently than the game. It starts off with God (voiced by Tom Ellis, ironically celebrated for playing the devil on Lucifer), who is banished to Earth in the form of a chubby cat by heavenly officials for being irresponsible. This couch-potato deity needs to successfully answer a human’s prayer before he can return to the heavens. The human being Abbie Higgins (Suzy Nakamura), a sharp-tongued mother troubled by her growing distant family. Now under the moniker of ‘Godcat’, he must put his pride aside to aid in restoring her family’s bond. However, things quickly become chaotic when his arch-rival, Beelzebub (Sasheer Zamata), is also sent to Earth to render Godcat’s world into a living nightmare.
At its core, the narrative may seem sewn together from fragment pieces of other series, but don’t judge a book by its cover, or in this case, a card by its game. The creators, Inman and television producer Shane Kosakowski, have crafted a narrative that extends beyond the original game whilst keeping true to its morbid humor and distinctive art style. Through its nine-episode run, it carves its own path in the world of adult animation without losing its ties to the original game.
Each episode explores the characters’ journey to reunite with each other. They tackle various issues, from rebuilding marital bonds between Abbie and her husband, Marv (Mark Proksch), helping Travis (Kenny Yates) combat an online bully, to the rivalry between Godcat and Devilcat. While the narrative might seem straightforward, it presents a subtle commentary on our polarized world and the power of unity.
If adult animation is what you crave, the hand-drawn 2D design of Exploding Kittens will find a special place in your heart. Visaualy, it’s right at home with existing Netflix hits like BoJack Horseman and Big Mouth. The animation is humorously absurd yet intricately detailed, immersing the audience in Inman’s imaginative universe.
Though Exploding Kittens may not be an animation masterpiece, it does represent a prime example of evolving game-based narratives into distinctive works of tv content. The creators have struck a balance between creating something new that still resonates with the original game, making it more than just a coattail ride on its predecessor’s success.
This heady concoction of humor and zany antics is now available exclusively on Netflix–watch the entire first season of Exploding Kittens now!
Original article: https://www.skwigly.co.uk/exploding-kittens-review/