ADVENTURE TIME RULES!!!: Look at What I Found on the Internet!!!

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Adventure Time

Genre	Adventure, comedy, children's fantasy, surreal humor
Format	Animation
Created by	Pendleton Ward
Written by	Pendleton Ward Patrick McHale Adam Muto Tim McKeon Merriwether Williams Steve Little Thurop Van Orman Mark Banker
Directed by	Larry Leichliter
Creative director(s)	Patrick McHale Cole Sanchez
Starring	Jeremy Shada John DiMaggio
Opening theme	"Adventure Time" by Pendleton Ward
Ending theme	"Island Song" by Ashley Eriksson
Composer(s)	Casey James Basichis
Country of origin	United States, South Korea
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	39 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Fred Seibert Eric Homan Derek Drymon
Producer(s)	Kelly Crews Pendleton Ward Thurop Van Orman (Supervising)
Running time	11 minutes (as of September 6, 2010)
Production company(s)	Frederator Studios Cartoon Network Studios Rough Draft Studios Saerom
Broadcast
Original channel	Cartoon Network
Picture format	1080i
Original run	April 5, 2010 (2010-04-05) â€“ present
Status	Currently Airing
External links
Website
Production website

Adventure Time is an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward and produced by Frederator Studios for Cartoon Network. The series focuses on the surreal adventures undertaken by two best friends, Finn the human boy and Jake the dog with magical powers, that dwell in the Land of Ooo. The series is based on a short produced for Frederator's Nickelodeon animation incubator series Random! Cartoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Cartoon Network picked it up for a full-length series that had a preview on March 11, 2010 and officially premiered on April 5, 2010.^[1] The series has been a critical and commercial success, receiving generally positive reviews.^[2] This also marks Frederator Studios' first production for Cartoon Network.

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[edit] Plot

12-year-old human boy named Finn and his magical dog Jake, are adventurers living in the Land of Ooo, a setting full of surreal characters, with fantasy and post-apocalyptic elements. The duo's typical adventures involve saving princesses, fighting evil monsters, exploring dungeons, helping people in need and stopping crooks. Along the way, they frequently meet have adventure relating to characters such as the Ice King, Princess Bubblegum, Marceline, and Lady Rainicorn.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Main characters

The main characters in Adventure Time. In foreground: Jake and Finn. In background from left to right: Princess Bubblegum, Lady Rainicorn, and Ice King.

Finn (voiced by Zack Shada in the short, Jeremy Shada in the TV series) - A 13-year-old human boy who enjoys defeating evil forces. He is shown to have a crush on Princess Bubblegum, although he tries to hide it. He wears a self-proclaimed 'awesome hat' that covers his extremely long and flowing blond hair (which he cuts off in season 2), and is prone to strange exclamations and outbursts. He has a lust for adventure and will help anyone in need. Finn also uses '70s lingo such as righteous; in addition, he will use mathematics-related terms as interjections, such as "mathematical," "rhombus," and "algebraic." He sings in an auto-tuned voice due to an incident in which he swallowed a small computer. Finn is believed by many of the inhabitants to be the last or one of the last humans. He is the Main protagonist of the show.

Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio) - A 28-year-old dog (in "magical dog years"^[3]) golden bulldog and best friend who was born with magical powers (a common misconception is that he acquired these powers by rolling in a "magical mud" puddle somewhere unknown). Acting at times as a moral compass to his energetic pal, Jake has a laid-back attitude to most situations, but loves adventure and will fight when he needs to. He is the boyfriend of Lady Rainicorn, whom he met in the pilot. Also, he understands Rainicorn, who speaks Korean. His powers help Finn considerably in combat, but are also sometimes used just for jovial forms of expression. He is shown to be quite skilled at playing the viola. Jake seems to enjoy songs and rhyming (e.g. "Solving crimes and makin' up rhymes"). He is the deuteragonist of the show.

[edit] Recurring characters

Princess Bubblegum (voiced by Paige Moss in the short, Hynden Walch in the TV series) - Princess Bubblegum is a hybrid of bubble gum and human DNA. She rules the Candy Kingdom, an empire whose inhabitants are also composed of enchanted candies who love to party. Her proficiency in science and fluency in German is testament to her high intelligence. Finn has a crush on her, but is reluctant to admit it. While she is typically kind and well-mannered, her temper can be a powerful force when provoked. Marceline reveals that Bubblegum's real name is "Bonnibel" in the episode Go With Me.
Lady Rainicorn (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker in short, Niki Yang in the TV series) - Princess Bubblegum's loyal, majestic, half-rainbow, half-unicorn steed who speaks Korean. Despite her being unable to speak English, she seems perfectly capable of understanding it. She can also turn objects and people different colors. She has a love of the viola. She can fly because she can intercept light and can dance on it. She's very fond of Jake and they play music together; Jake sometimes describes her as his "GF." Jake describes her as "The Rowdy Queen" because she can have fun and fight evil.
The Ice King (voiced by John Kassir in the short, Tom Kenny in the TV series) - The primary antagonist of the series, the Ice King spends the majority of his time kidnapping princesses in hopes that one of them may want to become his wife, even using death threats if they refuse him. Despite being labeled a sociopath by the Cosmic Owl, he is shown to have relationships with the penguins (primarily one named Gunter), as well as snow & ice beasts who populate the Ice Kingdom. The Ice King is then shown in a few episodes as being misunderstood, lonely, and he secretly envies Finn and Jake for being immeasurably happy in their causes of which the Ice King wishes to understand. His magic powers (primarily freezing things by hurling 'frozen lightning bolts', summoning snow monsters, and flying with his beard) stem solely from the "powers he stole" that were put into his magical crown which rests on his head. At one point he temporarily lost his heart, who became his own character: Ricardio the Heart Guy.
Marceline the Vampire Queen (voiced by Olivia Olson) - A 1,000-year-old vampire girl introduced as a villain who steals Finn and Jake's homes, but later reveals that she only wanted to scare them to death for fun. She drinks "shades of red" as opposed to blood, but is still vulnerable to sunlight and is capable of turning into a giant anthropomorphic bat. Although portrayed as an ally of Finn and Jake in the series, her father is evil incarnate, and she generally lets her own interests come before others. It is implied by the two wounds on her neck, that she was once human. Also, she is a survivor of a "mushroom war" as stated by series creator Pendleton Ward.
Lumpy Space Princess (voiced by Pendleton Ward) - Otherwise known as "LSP", she is princess of Lumpy Space who speaks with a very thick valley girl accent in a man's voice. She is an extraterrestrial creature known as a "Lumper" which looks like a cloud with arms and a face, which can convert other beings to their race by biting them, aka "werewolf rules". LSP is spoiled, constantly sarcastic, and constantly seeks to impress her peers, going as far as receiving cosmetic surgery and punching herself into a ball for a clean-shaven Ice King.
B-MO (voiced by Niki Yang) - BMO is a sentient 8-bit video game console that lives with Finn and Jake. His appearance contains elements of Vectrex, Game Boy, and Atari 2600 game hardware.he speaks with a Korean accent.
Tree Trunks (voiced by Polly Lou Livingston) - Tree Trunks is an elephant friend of Finn and Jake who speaks with a gentle, Texan accent. Tree Trunks lives in a little home in the forest, surrounded by apple trees which she uses to make very good apple pies. In the episode "Tree Trunks," Finn and Jake help Tree Trunks achieve her dream of taking a bite out of the Crystal Gem Apple, only to explode as a result. However, it turned out Tree Trunks ended up in a crystal dimension where she became Quartzion, the dimension's queen who attempt to have her crystal men abduct Finn to turn him into her crystalized king. Fortunately, Jake saves her from herself by removing the Crystal Gem Apple from her stomach before he and Finn take her home.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Adventure Time episodes

Each Adventure Time episode comprises only one distinct segment as of September 6, 2010, approximately eleven minutes in length. Currently, Cartoon Network airs new episodes from the show's second season on Mondays at 8:00 p.m. in most markets.

[edit] Production

Following the animated short, Frederator Studios pitched an Adventure Time series to Nickelodeon, but the network passed on it twice.^[4] The studio then approached Cartoon Network, with creator Pendleton Ward delivering them an early storyboard for "The Enchiridion", showing that the premise could be expanded into a series while maintaining elements from the original short: funny catchphrases and dances, an awkward kiss moment with the princess, and an "Abe Lincoln moment." Cartoon Network greenlit the first season in September 2008, and "The Enchiridion" would become the first produced episode.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]
Series creator Pendleton Ward has stated that the artistic style is influenced by his time at CalArts and later working as a storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. He tries to include "beautiful" moments like those in Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and some subversive humor, inspired by series like The Simpsons and Pee-wee's Playhouse.^[8] Executive producer Fred Seibert compares the show's animation style to that of Felix the Cat and the Max Fleischer cartoons but says its world is also equally inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and video games.^[9] Ward intends the show's world to have a certain physical logic instead of "cartoony slapstick" -- even though magic exists in the story, the show's writers try to create an internal consistency in how the characters interact with the world.^[8]^[9]
Ward describes the character Finn as "fiery little kid" with strong morals, while Jake is based on Bill Murray's character in the movie Meatballs, as a laid back twenty-something who usually jokes around, but occasionally gives good advice.^[8]

[edit] Critical reception

The show has received generally positive reviews. Television critic Robert Lloyd, in an article for the LA Times covering the new series, said it "strikes [him] as a kind of companion piece to the network's then currently airing Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.^[10] Each takes place in a fantastical land peopled with strange, somewhat disturbing characters and has at its center a young male person or person-like thing making his way in that world with the help of unusual, not always reliable, mentors."^[10] He went on to say that the show is "not unlike CN's earlier Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, about a boy and his imaginary friend, though [it is] darker and stranger and even less connected to the world as we know it." Lloyd also compared it to, "the sort of cartoons they made when cartoons themselves were young and delighted in bringing all things to rubbery life."^[10]

[edit] Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Nominee	Result
2008 Annie Awards	Best Animated Short Subject^[11]	Pendleton Ward Larry Leichliter For the original short	Nominated
2010 Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Short-format Animated Program^[12]	Pendleton Ward Kent Osborne Larry Leichliter For "My Two Favorite People"	Nominated
2011 Annie Awards	Best Animated Television Production for Children^[13]		Nominated

[edit] Pilot

"Adventure Time"
Directed by	Larry Leichliter Hugo Morales Pendleton Ward
Produced by	Kevin Kolde
Written by	Pendleton Ward
Starring	Zack Shada John DiMaggio Paige Moss John Kassir Dee Bradley Baker Pendleton Ward
Music by	Casey James Basichis
Studio	Frederator Studios
Distributed by	Nickelodeon
Release date(s)	December 7, 2008
Running time	8 minutes

The animated short "Adventure Time" aired as part of Frederator Studios' Random! Cartoons, and led to the creation of the animated series.

[edit] Pilot

The cartoon begins with Finn (named "Pen" in this short) sleeping under a tree and Jake meditating. After they do a little dance (which Jake downloaded from the internet), Lady Rainicorn (a unicorn/rainbow hybrid) flies by in tears. They discover that Lady Rainicorn is so sad because Princess Bubblegum is being imprisoned by the Ice King. Using snowballs, they battle their way past the Iceclops, Snow Golem, and other monsters that inhabit the Ice Kingdom.

A scene from the short.

Eventually, Finn and Jake reach the Ice King's mountain lair. Finn and the Ice King fight while Jake remains outside flirting with the Rainicorn, ignoring the battle. Just when Finn seems to be gaining the upper hand, the Ice King uses his "frozen lightning bolts" to freeze Finn in a block of ice. For unexplained reasons, this transports Finn's mind "back in time, and to Mars" where he has a short motivational conversation with Abraham Lincoln. After being told to believe in himself, Finn is returned to the present: just in time to see the Ice King fly away with Princess Bubblegum. Chasing after him using Jake's extendable legs, Finn rescues the princess from the Ice King's grasp. Jake pushes the magical crown off the Ice King's head, thereby removing the King's source of power. The Ice King then plummets off screen, yelling a long list of complex threats of things he will do when he returns.
The story closes with Bubblegum giving Finn a kiss, which embarrasses him greatly. He attempts to leave, but Jake claims that they have nowhere else to go and that there are no adventures that need them. Unfortunately, some nearby ninjas are stealing an old man's diamonds, and they both run off in pursuit.