Basically, the main character Finn goes adventuring with his dog Jake. Adventure Time is full of random, surprise scenarios. One day they might be fighting a cat scientist, and the next day, they're saving a watermelon family from a fire. The great thing is, all this random, crazy stuff makes sense somehow. Heck, it’s even relatable, and it makes you feel like you understand these characters more. For example, one episode starts with Jake and Finn using flamethrowers on huge blocks of ice, in order to get to the goodies frozen inside such as bikes and TVs. What? But if you think about it, the scene makes perfect sense to the child in all of us. Let’s say you’ve got a sandy beach that has blocks of ice washed up on shore. There looks to be cool stuff inside. Let’s say you’ve got flamethrowers. What would you do? You don’t ask, “Why are there blocks of ice on a beach with cool stuff inside?” Dangit, you use that flamethrower. The show works on that level of imagination we all carry with us, that level of “what if” that we often had as kids. For kids of the 80's, it’s the kind of ideas that got our Barbies fighting on the front lines of a backyard war with He-Man. Dinosaur attacks could happen as easily as pony airdrops. And it all just made sense.
Even though Jake and Finn’s adventures take them to new places, meeting new people and doing lots of seemingly unrelated things, there is a bit of character building and backstory building that happens throughout the series. You discover Finn’s motivations for adventuring. You find out what makes the Bubblegum Princess tick. You find out that Jake and the Lady Rainicorn have a thing going on. Finding out what makes all the characters who they are and where they’re from is another fun part about watching the show. You might wonder what kind of world someone like the Hotdog Princess lives in, so you might keep an eye out for that lore, for example.
The same things that make Adventure Time work are the same things that people might not enjoy about the series. Getting through the first 3 or 4 episodes might mean instant love. It takes a while to get used to the quirky nature of this show and its rhythm. A lot of times, it seems like it’s going to follow a trope or a stereotype, but then it quickly changes direction. I kind of like these nods to classic cartoon storytelling. They know where they’re leading you, but they never take you all the way in that direction. It’s a really subtle, smart thing to do, but it’s not something everyone will get, or be entertained by.
Adventure Time: The Complete First Season is also surprisingly feature-packed. Audio commentary on a cartoon? Yes please! The commentary might be full of a lot of goofing off by cast members, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. Animatics are storyboards that are accompanied by commentary as well. Then the featurettes go behind the scenes with the creators of the show including the writers and animators. This, in the spirit of the show, is completely goofy as well, with one writer chasing down a tiny animated Finn and all kinds of other crazy unpredictable stuff. Then another featurette goes behind the scenes of the behind the scenes featurette. Yeah it's twice as crazy as the first.
All that being said, it’s still difficult to describe Adventure Time in a nutshell. It’s random, it’s strange, and it’s full of wtf moments. It never feels like a preachy, or mind-numbingly boring cartoon for kids. It’s a bunch of tangential stories that stem from anything from movie tropes, to life lessons, to just plain imagination. It never stays in one place for too long, and it’s definitely not trying to teach anyone anything. It doesn’t follow the squeaky-voiced, annoying formula of a lot of cartoons by a longshot. It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy this kind of madness, but when you do, you’ll be telling every friend you have to just watch one episode.
