Bravest Warriors is an animated web series from zany-brained Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time. It chronicles a band of teen heroes warping around galaxies, saving weird alien worlds with their emotions. The heroes’ adventures are as colorfully kooky, off-the-wall, preposterous and deliciously psychedelic as Adventure Time. Bravest Warriors is produced by Cartoon Hangover, who has announced a second season coming in Fall 2013.
“I like making children’s television,” Ward says. “The point going into this was to make stuff that I would have liked when I was a kid. That’s what I’m interested in doing: making stuff that’s going to blow kids’ minds for the first time.”
It’s easy to see how Ward’s material maneuvers a child’s brain over a trapdoor, sending the incubating consciousness into the depths of weird. However, Ward’s eccentric stuff tickles the adult imagination as well.
One reason this show appeals to adults is its fantastic incorporation of science fiction. Characters take time naps, deal with sub-space anomalies, and blip through worlds via quantum doormats. Their suits are made of heat-resistant moon dragon toenails, allowing the troop to withstand boiling soup storms.
In one episode the gang nonchalantly invents a time machine, laughing about the antiquated idea that a time machine could create a temporal paradox that could destroy the fabric of space and time. The warriors conclude that if anything goes wrong they can always come back in time, and destroy the machine the moment before they use it.
“[I love] things ostensibly made for kids. When grownups write for children, it’s not like what a child would write — there’s an interesting mix of knowledge and memory that makes the show valid for any age,” writes Robert Lloyd, LA Times television critic.
Bravest Warriors was Ward’s idea, but he has since entrusted a bulk of the creative control to others. In particular, to Breehn Burns, co-creator of the Dr. Tran series.
“Cool people are working on it, that I trust…Breehn is really passionate about making sure all the sci-fi elements are there, that everybody loves. If you know Dr. Tran, it’ll have that really fast-paced super-bizarre vocabulary that Breehn uses,” states Ward.
And here we have the second ingredient that makes Bravest Warriors so entertaining. It is actively participating in the creation of new language, and in a marvelously unconventional way.
In the universe of the Bravest Warriors, if you have pepper it means you have guts. If you are acting a fool, you are a dirty little maple bar. A foxy lady is a fresh little chuck wagon. If shocked, you exclaim ‘holy parkour hill midgets!’ (The visual that goes along with this one is great; just picture a pack of squat dwarfs doing French parkour between adjoining grassy hills!) And lastly, in a moment of dire need in battle you may hear a Bravest Warrior emit this rallying cry, “these wistful dandelion sniffers need a good smack in the stamen!”
Bravest Warriors zips delightfully along at the speed of light. It is a whimsical, zesty, epic frolic that is worth joining.