Adventure Gnomes!

Every so often a new animated television show arrives that destroys and reinvents what a cartoon can be. We saw it previously with Batman the Animated Series, Ren and Stimpy, The Simpsons, and South Park, among others. Adventure Time is another of those shows.

The show is a brilliant mash-up of the fantasy genre and silly '80s cartoon buffoonery. The episodes are 15 minutes, the animation is bright and simple, and the humor is cleverly juvenile. It follows the daily lives of Finn the Human, a 12 year old boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with morphing super powers who somehow live together in a treehouse in the middle of the crazy fantasy world of Ooh.

Ooh is a world populated by a huge number of strange, mythic, ridiculous creatures including people created from sugar, philosophical wolves, frat boy Vikings, giants, wizards, space creatures, rainbow horses that speak Korean, a little elephant that bakes pies, and the most important things.... gnomes.

These gnomes are traditionally chthonic, living underground in a kingdom called the Beneathaverse. Ruled by a gnome king, these gnomes trick the heroes and kidnap Finn to power a machine that will flip the universe over, allowing Beneathaverse to be on top for once. The plot is foiled, obviously. But not after a kick-ass dance party in the clouds.