It has been a while that I have had access to Apple TV+ now, but I have noticed that as the days go by, I have been using it less and less. Some of this is due to the holiday season and just being so insanely busy, but some of it is also due to the fact that the streaming service has a horrible user interface and just an incredibly thin library. Some of the series and films are good, I must admit, but I feel that it's an insane struggle to find anything, and that the service prioritises rentals and purchases over offering things to the subscribers side of the platform. But a show I sometimes return to before the three months I received for free come to end, Strange Planet, has managed to catch my attention, and is quite an interesting surprise in regards to Apple's general lineup of content. While somewhat sticking to the science-fiction genre that Apple seems to love exploring -- the service is mostly science-fiction series and films -- it's a unique animated series. Animations are generally lacking on the service, so it's quite odd to see. It seems that Apple has chosen to add few options in this genre, compared to the sad state of the adult animation industry that other streaming services just endlessly threw out, all the same and largely insufferable.
While Strange Planet is by no means anything particularly special, it still holds a similar state of animation style and isn't really trying to blow the industry out of the water with something incredible, it does feel different to most animation series. Reminding me a lot of The Midnight Gospel, which had a lot of philosophical themes to it, without much narrative direction and really just a character roaming through odd worlds as the dialogue unfolded. It's a pretty creative way to get a series of themes across while utilising the power of animation to explore things that perhaps traditional filmmaking just cannot. Though to my surprise, it appears that the series originally started as a webcomic. I have never heard of it before, but it again speaks on the capabilities that another form of media can achieve where traditional filmmaking can't. What's a slight surprise from here is that Dan Harmon, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, contributed to the creation of Strange Planet's animated series. It definitely has some of that similar humour, just without the obnoxious elements.
Strange Planet
In a sort of weird style of Star Trek, Strange Planet focuses its story about strange blue alien type beings that are navigating through the Earth, trying to understand humans. This is nothing new in regards to a series idea, but it does the whole idea quite well by connecting its story to the struggles of trying to understand what it means to be part of modern humanity. The seemingly endless complexities of human life and the ways in which we choose to live. Of course this is done with a magnifying glass and some slight exaggeration; pointing humour at the idiocy that is society and some of our structure. I have read reviews online that the show just hasn't really managed to stick to its source material, that it strays a little too far from what the webcomic did. I haven't read it, but it seems like something that would inevitably happen with something Dan Harmon is attached to, again with that Rick and Morty style of writing that comes into influence during production. A bit of a one-trick-pony in recent times.
The idea that strange beings are roaming through the Earth trying to understand us is ripe with ideas, and Strange Planet does it with different episodes that hold no similarities to each other. The idea of who comes from the strange planet is an interesting idea also, that aliens could one day visit us without us knowing, trying to figure us out and finding everything we do just fundamentally flawed and primitive. I think the show does it well with the use of very bright choices of colour too. It's a simplistic animation style, but the colour choices certainly make it by being bright. Light blues, pinks, orange, a lot of fun gradients that work into the backgrounds while the foreground manages to still stick out from it. As mentioned before, the animation and its style are certainly nothing impressive. It's not reinventing the animation world, but I still appreciate that it doesn't just copy the current trend that inevitably sort of died and saw a wave of cancellations recently.
And with the humour it has, it generates some light laughs here and there, of course over the idea of how silly our lives are. It isn't super witty, and fortunately it's a kind of relaxing show with the dialogue and themes. I found it quite enjoyable due to this. Like it's a little bit of a fever dream in the evenings, that you won't really remember much of the next morning, but appreciate the trip during the moment. One of the ways the animation and stories connect is through the voice acting. It seems the voice actors are mostly unknowns, though while watching it, I felt as if I had heard these voices before, perhaps some of that fever dream feeling that the show has slipping through. I'll definitely be watching more of it going forward, specifically choosing when to watch it: nights in which I'm a little tired, but not prepared to sleep. Wanting to watch something that's fun, colourful, and also incredibly easy to digest.
It's a little surprising that the show just isn't that popular. With an established name from the webcomic, I have to say I have never seen it mentioned anywhere before, but this tends to be the case with shows on Apple TV+, where there just isn't any marketing and its user base seems rather niche as Apple product owners. In a way, it's a shame that the audience is deliberately so small. I feel it would have the same cult following as the aforementioned The Midnight Gospel otherwise. I do think it deserves a bit more. And it's refreshing to see shows like this that aren't trying to do too much, that are a little more adult but not trying to be vile with adult themes. A true rarity these days as it feels every 'adult' animation is just identical to the next, throwing out the most vile comments every other second in an attempt to justify its existence.
I do hope that shows like Strange Planet continue, so that the animation industry can heal a little. To do different and simplistic things again. With just one season and 10 episodes, it's more than enough. And I'm only three in!
