So, welcome to Witty Wednesdays. Today, I'm going to be talking about one of the newest
fan-made cartoons to appear in the Brony fandom: Button's Adventures -- the Episode Pilot by
JanAnimations, ShadyVox and EileMonty. JanAnimations animated, wrote and directed the episode,
ShadyVox voice acted, co-wrote, and designed the sound effects and music, and EileMonty
did some voice acting, as well. Button's Adventures starts off with the introduction
of a character: Button Mash (voiced by ShadyVox)! He lives in Ponyville (of course) with his
mom (voiced by EileMonty), dad and brother, and he also likes video games! He's also a
blank flank, but he just doesn't care. This sort of sounds like your typical gamer Brony's
OC, except that he doesn't have an Xbox controller as a cutie mark (haha, just kidding). He says
that he's ready for school and he yells this to his mom, but his mom says it's Sunday,
and this pretty much sets up the basis of the mother-son relationship and the episode.
The whole thing is meant to be silly. He then gets a juice box from the fridge,
and it has an "Are you a winner?" peel-off sticker on the box. He pulls it off to find
out that he just lost. He cries and yells to his mom again, and this moment pretty much
sets the mood of the rest of the episode. You know... something doesn't go his way,
and he has to yell to his mom about it. It also clearly points out that the kid is a
total loser. It then cuts to Button Mash playing a video game on what appears to be an NES
controller. And then, his mom walks in with his dad's old video game system. Now, I have
a question here... how the heck did she carry this thing from the attic to his room? Did
she balance it on her back? Or is it just a cartoon and we shouldn't worry about it?
Anyways... he turns the system on, and pong appears! Nothing happens, so he yells to his
mom again asking if it's broken. No answer. He then flips a button, the game starts, and
he loses the game, and he says "I don't get it." Now, this scene is another addition to
his character. So then, it cuts to him playing with a toy
train, and when he lets it go, it just bursts into flames. Now, I'm assuming that he's not
calling his mom again because, well, he probably doesn't care. And his mom isn't around, either.
It's one of the first times we see his careless attitude. This attitude is amplified even
more in the very next scene, when he challenges Sweetie Belle to a milkshake drinking speed
contest completely on impulse. And guess what? He gets a brain freeze!
So, in the very next scene, Button goes to his mom asking where his Joy Boy went (which
is a handheld). She said that she nearly tripped on it, and he has to take better care of his
things. We also saw the Joy Boy in the previous milkshake scene on the table as well as the
very first scene in the episode. So, Button Mash goes to his mom's room to retrieve it.
So, as he's picking the Joy Boy up, he sees his father's fake mustache. He decides to
try it on, looks in the mirror, and his mother walks in. Naturally, he gets yelled at, and
he then proclaims himself to be "the stache!" She then facehoofs, and then we jump back
to the brain freeze scene, where we hear Button screaming in agonizing pain some more, and
Sweetie Belle starts to play the Joy Boy. So, in the next scene, we see that he's stayed
up all night playing video games. She questions it, and Button is completely scatterbrained,
saying random words and gibberish. She unplugs the game like a normal mom would, and buttons
brings out what looks like a Gameboy. She takes the games away, saying it messes with
his head, and he says a bunch of stuff about the game that his mom wouldn't understand.
The episode ends with some Humgonian! Button calls his mom a "She-devil" in this language,
and she says that Button is nothing without her in the same language. She then grounds
him in Humgonian, and he swears in the language, kicks a ball, it hits him in the face, and
the cartoon ends. This last scene is the final stamp on the mother-son relationship. Children
naturally think that their parents don't know anything. And a lot of us realize that as
we get older that at one point, our parents were also where we were in our lives at that
point. So, The final scene is actually really relevant to a large part of the male audience
of My Little Pony, and it gets out a good laugh.
So now that I've summarized the whole thing, let's talk about the music for a second (the
main theme, that is)... the lead instrument is the typical square wave found in much of
the "8-bit music" today. It also has the typical percussive prominence found in much of the
music today, but the samples used are undoubtedly unique. Everything sounds clear in the mix,
too. And it also fits the theme of the episode pretty well.
The background music was very fitting, as well. It set the mood and it made it feel
like an actual My Little Pony episode at times. It had that immersive element that makes the
viewer feel what the characters are feeling. So, about the animation... for the most part,
it's very smooth. It is top notch for fan-made content. The walking cycles are up to par
with a My Little Pony episode. From what I've seen, there are a few large jumps and skips,
however, between frames that could be corrected with another frame in-between, or changing
the frame where there's too large of a jump, or perhaps a higher frame rate altogether,
but analyzing the actual show, it looks like it has a low frame rate, as well. There is
speculation on the frame rate of the actual show. There're arguments of 12 frames per
second, 16, 20, and even 30, but maybe that will be a future analysis video.
Now, for the voice acting and overall sound design... Button's voice is a bit shrill and
raspy, and definitely nasally, which fits with the gaming nerd stereotype. Now his mom's
voice is soft and sweet, but she raises her voice when Button does something he shouldn't.
And also, in the very first scene, the very first time we hear Button's mom, her voice
is raised. And for the sound design, it was pretty dang accurate. When the mom was in
another room, her voice would be muffled. And the sound of the voices overall fit the
space that the character was in. In a lot of fan videos you'll see, you'll often hear
a very dry voice that just doesn't have any sense of space. They did a really good job
here. The mother-son relationship is probably one
of the most relevant relationships to a majority of the Brony community. From my experience,
a TON of the Brony community plays video games, and the video sums up the relationship that
much of us have had with our own parents. We have all probably stayed up all night at
least once playing a video game that we were close to beating, and we probably directly
disobeyed our parents because, well, the game was more important at the time.
Now, if I had one criticism for the episode, I'd say that it felt too much like a montage
of clips, and not enough like an "Adventure." It didn't quite form one cohesive, continuous
story. The clips made it feel like a montage of stories like, sort of like "Robot Chicken,"
but it was all about the same character and setting, and while there were a few branching
continuations of events, it didn't quite form that one cohesive story that had a start,
development, climactic scene and resolution. The majority of the development happened in
the first minute of footage. I understand it's only 4 and a half minutes long and a
pilot, but the way the clips are, it seems like they were just mixed and matched, and
the characters didn't exactly grow with each scene. You know... he's in his room getting
ready for school, getting a drink from the fridge, he's given a pong machine and doesn't
know how to use it, and then suddenly, he's outside with a toy train and having a drink
with sweetie belle. Then he loses his toy, and then there's this random cut back to the
aftermath of the brain-freeze, and it just makes it seem like a random group of clips.
But then there was another cut to him being grounded because he stayed up all night playing
video games. Now, I know that the in-between moments for TV shows and stuff like that aren't
entirely important, but I felt like there wasn't enough substance to bridge the gap
between all these scenes. And just one more thing. To capitalize on
the silliness of the character and the episode, the spinner on the top of Button Mash's hat
was just perpetually spinning the entire time. It also created a constant sense of movement
and life in a few shots that may not have much movement. It was a pretty nice touch.
Overall, for what it was, the episode had some top quality animation, clear sound design
and vocal clips and some funny moments here and there. The story may have needed a bit
of work, and we're definitely going to need some development, and perhaps introductions
to other characters in the future episodes. I have a feeling that his dad is going to
just be one of those "mysteriously missing" dads throughout the series, kind of like how
they did it in Toy Story, but we could see his brother at some point.
So, I guess that's it for now! Stay tuned for my next analysis video, and check out
some of my other video series. I'll see y'all later!