Aeon Flux "Pilot" / Season One Review

 

Animation fans you've all seen me review alot of animated media before be it films / TV shows or TV show episodes. However there has been one piece of animated media that i've wanted to remove from my never ending but somehow always adding list of things to review and well now i'm finally getting it done and incase your confused about the title I will explain the title of this review later on in the review and so join me as I review the first season / pilot episode of Aeon Flux with the episode oddly enough being called "Pilot" enjoy.

The plot of this episode is Aeon Flux is sent to assassinate a government official all the while a strange disease is going round making people sick and ending with them dying. Just like how Star Wars: Clone Wars relies on it's visuals to tell it's story the same is true for this episode / first season since there are no words of dialog spoken and so you have to pay close attention as to what's going on but let me assure you that the story being told is honestly very well done in my opinion.

As to be expected since there's no dialog spoken in this episode / first season that also means that there's no actors. Which i'm not going to lie I found to be pretty off putting just because i'm so used to hearing in animated media and so to see an entire season of an animated show tell a story with not only no spoken dialog but also have no voice actors was honestly weird for me personally but at the same time it allowed the story to be told in a more naturel way and instead of having people telling you how to feel you can now have those feeling come to you more naturally in my opinion.

Honestly what was fun for me was trying to imagine what this pilot / first season would be like if it had voice actors in it and well truth be told it would still be pretty good. However the pilot / first season loose that something that helped make it stand out from the crowd since if it did voice acting in this pilot episode / first season then it would be just like every other cartoon out there with the only difference being that this was made with adults in mind and not with little kids / teenagers in mind but that's just what I think tho.

Doing the animation for this episode and thus this first season and i'm also assuming the entire show is Pion Animation who are now known as Luk Film and have done animation work for shows such as The Smurfs and Tiny Toon Adventures. As for what I thought of their work on this episode / first season it was honestly really good with the animation being alot better then it really had any right to be and honestly the animation in this episode / first season is alot better then the animation in alot of early nineties TV shows with the animation in this episode / first season looking like it could belong in a feature film the animation in this first episode / first season in that good.

Just to explain the title of this review (as I promised you that I would at the start of this very review) it comes from the fact that the official Aeon Flux fandom wiki page , Wikipedia and IMDB have this episode / first season listed under the name "Pilot" however when the series was released on DVD it was labelled as the shows first season. So it really makes it hard to title this review since both titles are technically correct.

To say that this show is adult would be like saying the Simpsons was funny once (no duh) because yeah there's alot of adult scenes in this first episode / first season. Hell there's more blood and gore in this one episode / first season then there is in most R rated slasher horror films i'm honestly surprised that MTV let this episode / first season air unedited because the content in this episode / first season could have cost them alot of sponsors.

One of the guess you could say running jokes of this show and something that started in this first episode / first season is the fact that Aeon Flux dies at the end. This is second thing that makes this show standout (with the other being like I said the show has no actors in this first episode / first season) since no show either before or after Aeon Flux has the main character die at the end of every episode and honestly how they tell that part of the story here while it can be seen as forced it can also be seen as a story that was well told.

You can honestly the entire first season of this show in one sitting why I hear you ask because this episode / the entire first season of Aeon Flux is only twelve minuets and twenty four seconds long. Which yeah is another issues but not in a bad way because this episode is so good that I honestly wanted it to last longer and while the show would eventually get full twenty two minuet episodes that wouldn't be until the show's third season but hey it means that I get to say that I watched an entire season of a show in less then fifteen minuets so that's a plus it's not much of a plus but it's still a plus none the less.

Now then boys and girls since this is an action show that means that I have to talk about the action that's in this first episode / first season. Which sadly is another one of the episodes / first seasons bad things in my opinion since the action in this first episode / first season is so repetitive that it honestly becomes boring but when the action in this first episode / first episode gets creative it can honestly be pretty entertaining but that's just what I think tho.

Overall to say that I thought that this first episode / first season was really freaking good would be huge understatement. Even tho there are many good things and many things that I liked about this first episode / first season there are also somethings that I didn't like about this first episode / first season all of which just like the things that I liked about this first episode / first season have been covered in this very review as such this episode / first season gets an 8.5 out of 10 from this animation fan and no I won't be covering the film anytime soon and nor will I be covering the entire show any time soon either since it would take far to long to do and I just can't be bothered to do so.

All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Aeon Flux fandom wiki page or Google Images. I actually cannot say which would be the best website for use for images from either this episode or anything to do with Aeon Flux since even tho the official Aeon Flux fandom wiki page doesn't have that many images the images that they do have are fairly high quality however on the flip side of that is Google Images because even tho they have more of a verity of images not all of them are high definition so I say use whichever website you want to use.

 

 

 

Aeon Flux TV Series Review

Animation fans there has been one show that i've always wanted to review but i've never done it for one reason or another well now I can safely cross this show of my list because i've just finished all three seasons and i'm here to bring you my review so here is what I thought of Aeon Flux.

Now I would normally write what the plot to the show is here but the show is so strange that I can't work out what the plot to the show is. It's because of the fact that the show has no plot that to me helps the show stand out quite a bit and yes I know that there are shows out there that don't have a plot but those shows also have a premise which means you can very easily pick up on if the show is going to be good but that's not the case with this show.

What also makes the show standout out from all the others is that for the first two seasons there was no dialog at all so the actors i'm listing are only in the shows third and final season and they are Denise Poirier as Aeon Flux and John Rafter Lee as Trevor Goodchild. There are alot more voice actors in this show but since the supporting cast changes with each episode I thought it made more sense just to list the two characters who are in every episode. 

As for what I thought of there acting for a show that started in the early nineties the acting is pretty decent don't get me wrong when it's bad it's really freaking bad but when it's good it's great. I can't help but wonder if the either the actors or the crew involved didn't know what they were doing because there are times where you get this really odd line delivery and that's something that could have been fixed very easily.

After some research (less then five minuets on Wikipedia and IMDB) i've narrowed down who did the animation to two companies one is MTV Animation and the second is Colossal Pictures. Either way the animation is clearly the best thing in this show and that's saying something because there's quite alot of things in this show which are great and worth talking about. I will say tho that the character designs for this show are really weird and i'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

This show aired from November 30th 1991 until October 10th 1995 spanning three seasons but I know what your wondering how can a show be on for three seasons but be running for four years. Well the answer to that is the first two seasons of the show aired on a show called Liquid Television and each episode was around two to five minuets in length. However it's when we reach the third season which started in 1995 that the show's length expanded to a full twenty two minuets as for why there was a three gap between seasons your guess is as good as mine on that one.

You might have noticed that i've not posted an image of what the character of Aeon Flux looks like well that's because if I did I could get banned in some places where this review will go. Now that i've said that I might get banned that should give you an idea as to how mature that this show gets at times so I wouldn't recommend any little kid watch this especially the first two seasons i'll explain why later on in the review.

One of the reasons why I wouldn't recommend this show to any little kids is because in the first two seasons of the show there's a lot of blood and alot of gore and when i say a lot I really mean a lot. It was common place for animated shows in the eighties and nineties to make guns sound like lasers and the villains henchmen robots but here our hero uses guns and not on robots on real life people. 

The other thing that makes this show really freaking adult is the fact that in the second season Aeon Flux dies at the end of every episode so you can only imagine how disturbing a little kid would find a show like this and more importantly if this was made for kids all of the parents groups would loose there collective minds. I do have to say tho that I liked the fact that the main character dies at the end of the every episode since it makes the show standout but you can see what's going to kill her a mile away.

I don't know if anyone else will agree with me when i say this but in my personal opinion the show lost some of it's edge when it moved to a twenty two minuet show and that has me wondering where this show is at it's best. In the original format it worked but it didn't allow much time for character and story but we got a lot more mature content but in it's new form we got alot more character and world building but it lost some of that mature content.

When I was watching the show I couldn't help but compare it to the anime film Ghost In The Shell because they both came out in the exact same year and they both pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in animation. So without those two things saying that both anime and animation can be for adults and we wouldn't have these more mature shows today that we all love yes there were others that helped with that but for me it was these two that really got people thinking.

Due to the fact that this show has no real plot or story to tell there's no continuity at all and while that does work for the first two seasons. It doesn't work for the third season since your in a longer format and that means there's only so long you can go without having continuity but tho on the flip side of that it also means you can get episodes where both the hero and villain switch roles and this show does that really well in my opinion.

Overall this series is strange and weird and yet at the same time it works yes the show does have a lot of faults but we cannot ignore the fact that it was a mainstay on MTV for a long time and it has inspired to check something else out (hint check the above picture) the show gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.

Top 5 Adult Cartoons

Hello there animation as well as there being great animated shows for kids out there their is also a few great shows aimed at adults as well and in this list i will tell you what my top 5 shows and before i forget i will not be including Beavis And Butt-Head because i havn't seen that many episodes of it and the same goes for Drawn Together because that would be lower down.

5) Spicy City

This show earns it's spot here just due to how strange it is this show was made for HBO and my god is this show adult i won't name some of the things seen in the series but let's just say there's a reason why the only picture i can use is a piece of fan art i found of google.

4) Aeon Flux

Again this show was and still is really odd for the first two seasons the main character never speaks and there is very little to no dialog within those episodes and each of the first episodes within the first two seasons are around 5 minuets in length and yes the main character dies at the end of every episode.

3) Family Guy

It wouldn't be a list of the best adult cartoons if Family Guy wasn't on here and i know the recent seasons havn't been as good but for the first few years this show was rude , crude and laugh out loud funny.

2) Robot Chicken 

There's not really much i can say about this show that hasn't already been said where as Family Guy uses shock humor to claim it's an adult cartoon this one does it in the jokes that it tells and very rarely goes for shock humor.

1) South Park

Of course South Park was going to be number 1 this show causes more controversy then any show on this list they even had an episode where i certain f word was said 399 times and for those that don't know the maximum amount you can say that word on TV is 400 the makers of this show have been getting angry letters from people since day 1 and there now on season 20.