Valt the Wonder Deer: Yay or Neigh?

First things first: still working on the Bastion trilogy. All three stories are outlined, first one's got a rough draft, but needs finetuning. Oneshot ideas are shot down, because they need to be expanded into episode-style plots. I'm going to try and think of something quick to publish, but it's taking me longer than usual, so my apologies for that.

Anyway, Valt the Wonder Deer: good or bad? I've made my avatar of him, might as well answer the question now that he's been on YouTube for a while.

The show definitely has its moments, and when it's good, it's really good. The emotional connection between the main character and his parents is portrayed genuinely enough, there are a few instances where things get weird between the characters and they get creative to make a heartwarming moment. This is all good.

Character designs and casting, likewise, are pretty decent overall in the main cast, some of the secondary characters are questionable at best. Matt Mercer really earns his paycheck in this one, lemme tell ya.

Animation, though, is just plain bad, unfortunately. The combat is too floaty, not enough acceleration and impact to the motions, the only thing that works is when weapons are clashing, which only happens in one fight (best one so far, between Da Ming and the Dark Warrior). Even the walk cycles on Valt are off, the opening credits reveal a very poorly animated quadruped walk with all four legs moving at the same time in an unnatural way, and the ending credits reveal this is an endemic problem. For shame, China, for shame, this is basic stuff. Some of it is downright terrible, as seen in the episode Alia first appears.

But concept-wise, it's good, and it has some neat ideas. The Dark Warrior as this water-beetle type... thing, really works. Da Ming is a surprisingly well-made villain who's not afraid to get his hands dirty. Like, seriously, you compare him to the likes of Team Rocket and he actually gets some freaking respect, the dude's dangerous when he's not plot-clumsy. And the heroes run the gamut of a teleporting phoenix to a steroid-dealing three-tail three-eyed cat and a yak that shoots ice boogers out of his nose.

I wouldn't count on this getting very big with Western audiences, though, because it fits into a really small niche and it's not using its medium very well. Episodes are only twelve minutes, and that really hurts it in places. The use of stereotypical American accents (New Yorker variants especially) does not help with the immersion, either. The target audience is a point of confusion, too, as early episodes will have characters facing the camera and delivering the moral of the episode (while talking to each other, mind you, so it's not 100% on the nose, but about 80%), yet later episodes deal with prospects of death and the main plot revolves around exploitation and essentially slavery.

If I have to recommend it or describe it succinctly, I'd say it's closest to Captain Planet in terms of moral lessons, it tries to be Avatar in plot but adds a personal stake in the parents, and the characters themselves are fairly fresh ideas for an audience that's used to Western and Japanese mythos getting adapted to animation. Between Paw Patrol childishness and My Little Pony childishness, Valt falls squarely in the middle. It's not clever enough to ever match the likes of Sounds of Silence or even Winter Wrap-Up, but it isn't complete junk and it's a mostly harmless show to get into. The twelve minute length makes it easily digestable, at least, and the few memorable moments so far might give the artsy crowds some more inspiration.

It's about halfway to its first 'finale,' so to speak, if we're not counting the Dark Warrior fight as a finale, so there's more to come, and it might get better once Valentine shows up.

I am going to complain about the Season 2 designs once that rolls around, though, so stay tuned for that.

Speaking of staying tuned: Hazbin Hotel. Yay or neigh? I say a prancing and enthusiastic yay myself, probably don't have to guess who my favorite character from that one is

Cracker out.