Animation Domination originally aired on Fox as their Sunday late-night line-up, but has since been renamed Animation Domination Hi-Def (ADHD) and now airs on FXX Thursday nights at 11pm central time. It is a block of original adult animation shows glued together with shorts and here is the line up of shows ranked from worst to best.
Axe Cop
Axe Cop originally was a web comic created by Ethan Nicolle and his 5-year old brother Malachai that earned praise and was an instant hit. However, after airing for three years now, the show has fallen flat and hasn’t improved over time. Which is completely disappointing when you consider the comedic ensemble of talent involved with the show, Nick Offerman, Patton Oswalt and Tyler The Creator, just to name a few. I’m not trying to bash a show made by a 5-year old because Axe Cop can have a funny moment or two, but that’s really about it. The wacky absurdity feels lazy, stiff and forced, often overshadowing clever jokes if the episode happens to have one.
High School USA!
Created and written by Dino Stamatopoulos, High School USA! follows a group of millennials, often exaggerating, the good and bad times of being in high school and growing up in the modern world. With enough dark humor to make you cringe, the show has an Archie comics style animation, each character being an expy of the main cast of Archie. This adds an innocence that is already present with the extremely naive and always happy protagonist, Marsh, who always tries to look for the positive side of a situation, even if there really isn’t one. High School USA! does bring some laughs but nothing memorable, being a parody of teenage and high school films, the series sometimes feels just dark for the sake of being dark. The show touches on social issues and the hypocrisy in teen hierarchy very well, but ultimately it ends up feeling like Moral Orel set in high school, just less funny.
Stone Quackers
Stone Quackers follows three lovable losers Whit, Clay and Barf who live with the slightly odd Dottie, while an incompetent police officer named Barry (voice by John C. Reilly) tries to keep them in line and out of trouble in the fictional city of Cheeseburger Island. The show was created by Ben Jones, who also created The Problem Solverz. Stone Quackers is similar but far superior, and takes what made Problem Solverz good and runs with it while dropping the annoying qualities, an example being how they toned down the unorganized randomness. Each episode has a normal situation or challenge being handled in the most complicated and ridiculous way. Watching the characters escalate something that could be simply solved is a bit repetitive but every episode is sure to deliver on the laughs.
Major Lazer
Major Lazer is a Jamaican superhero created by DJ and record producer Diplo and Ferry Gouw who preform as a musical duo under the same name. Set 1000 years in the future somewhere in a dystopian Jamaica, Major Lazer (voiced by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) has a lazer-gun for a right hand and faces off against the evil President Whitewall (voiced by J.K. Simmons). The show set a bar it hasn’t lived up to since its sneak peak back in October 2014, but has a lot of great qualities about it as well. Its animation pays homage to old school anime while also having epic Dragon Ball Z style build ups with fights finishing in half the time. Major Lazer’s strongest point is the music, providing some of the best original music both on tv and music in general. With a diversity of genres, depending on the theme of the episode, the songs and fight scenes alone are worth watching for. That being said, the stories are often weak and excuses to get to the song and musical guests. With one dimensional characters, episodes tend to feel like an over glorified music video. In the end, Major Lazer is worth checking out and will appeal to your music side, or at least remind you of why you like anime.
Golan the Insatiable
Based on stories written by Josh Miller that appeared on the website Something Awful, Golan the Insatiable is about demigod, Golan (voice by Rob Riggle), who is banished to earth and ends up in Oak Grove, Minnesota. After Golan befriends an antisocial child, Dylan Beekler (voiced by Aubrey Plaza), he lives with her family, learning about earth culture. The whole time he is causing chaos for the locals, Golan also plots a way to return to his own dimension and reclaim his throne. The show is crude, dark, smart and adorable all at once, with well balanced themes and characters that feel real, even while being over exaggerated. Golan and Dylan are hard not to love as the pair make poor choices and bumble their way through misadventures and childhood leaving behind a wake of destruction most of the time. The series had a rough start when it originally premiered but character development and a change in the voice cast has really improved the show’s quality.
Lucas Bros Moving Co.
Created by identical twins and Brooklyn comedy duo, Kenny and Keith Lucas, Lucas Bros Moving Co. is ADHD’s best show by far. The series follows the misadventures of Kenny and Keef, the real-life twins’ cartoon counterparts who also provide the voices. Set in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the twins consume insane amounts of marijuana in almost every episode, hardly ever actually moving a customer, they are often questioned about their strength due to their skinny frame but reply “that’s why God made two of us”. Flipping to surreal on a moments notice and riffed with 90’s pop culture references, the show has the feeling of a stoner Seinfeld, and the characters clever banter about nothing only drives this point home. Low key satire about the trials and tribulations of young black men trying to make an honest buck and “showing love for the streets” are executed in a clever and hilarious fashion, making Lucas Bros a must watch.
