Jaime Garcia, Entertainment Writer

The Animaniacs was a show created by Warner Brothers and written and directed by Steven Spielberg in 1993. It was a show that would be educational in science, history, and math while relating its topics to relevant topics at the time in pop culture. The show was cancelled in 1998 due to the Warner Brothers distaste in the show. It was pulling in more of an adult audience than their targeted demographic which was children. 

The show has gotten a reboot recently and well its exactly the same it was 22 years ago. Same director, same voice actors, and the same premise as the old show. It still has that wacky zany plot while talking about politics, or how fast we get fed information. 

They went to the producers of the old show to try to copy their animation and how they approach topics.They wanted to be original while being reminiscent to the old show.The producers of the show like to think of as a continuation more than a reboot. 

In the original, they had segments that were parodies off of hit movies and have risqué characters and have some background element that would appeal to the adult audience. Some movies being parodies of Goodfellas“Les MisérablesWest Side Story“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and Edward Scissor Hands.” In the reboot you do not see many of that same risk being taken. Some people would probably complain about not being true to the original but, like they said, they wanted some parts of production to be like the old one, but still be original, this new show is its own thing and I don’t it can always be compared to the old due to it being different times when they both were released. 

They make the writers and artists work together so can have a product that has both parties feel like what they envisioned was executed. Shows that the producers worked on said they did this because they didn’t want to have the same animosity between writers and artists as they had in previous shows. 

There are very meta on their approach on some comedy segments. I kind of feel like there is more of this type of comedy then there was before but I suppose it’s them being meta once more because they can’t tackle certain topics and they acknowledge that they can run out of jokes at times. In certain parts of the show, I feel like they do and makes a segment feel dragged when they just reuse the jokes. When they do that it’s kind of the Animaniacs charm as they acknowledge themselves and what they’re doing, if their humor feels repetitive, if it feels unoriginal, or when they don’t know what to talk about. 

The show overall is a good piece of comedy animation that you don’t see that often. The only other show that has come close to the Animaniacs is The Amazing World of Gumball. It’s a good cartoon that is definitely worth the watch. It is exclusive to Hulu, and only 12 of the episodes have released, but with more to come next year.