Score: 4

"Egoraptor, what happened to your funny?"

submission: Girlchan in Paradise Ep2

date: September 4, 2009

I know what I'm letting myself in for by writing this. I'm going to get downvoted to hell because anyone who speaks ill of such a runaway hit is obviously trolling and deserves to be downvoted, etc. But I have to say this because I feel it is my duty to be the critic few others will be.

You have fallen into a rut. Your works in general are struggling to come up with original humor lately, and Girlchan is the absolute largest black hole of anti-funny I have yet seen you produce. I could feel my higher brain functions shutting down while watching this.

I loved your earlier stuff. I still do. It was cruder, but it worked. Metal Gear Awesome did a good job of speaking to everyone who had played the game by parodying its various aspects, all the while just being kind of batshit insane. I liked that. And while I realize you obviously didn't put your full effort into animating MGA1, it's clear that your genuine animation efforts have improved. You're improving as an artist/animator, and that's cool.

But really, what were you thinking when you made this? Parodies of bad anime are not something new or original. They are exceptionally hard to do in an original fashion because WE'VE ALREADY SEEN IT ALL. Laughably bad voice localization. Continuity errors. Complete lack of lip-synching. Excessive character stereotyping. These have all been done, and continue to be done, both in poor or poorly localized anime, and the parodies thereof.

Girlchan not only fails to bring anything new to the table (besides the consistently impressive range of your vocal chords), but it drags on. And on. And on.

And then you made a second episode.

I really shouldn't have to point out what I find wrong with that by this point, should I? I mean, the whole joke is that there's no consistency in the plot whatsoever. You could drag this out another 50 episodes and it'd still be exactly the same as the first two.

I offer the following suggestion: try parodying a REAL anime. Besides, you know, DBZ. Because again, the issue there is there's not really much that can be said about that that hasn't been already. Chobits? One Piece? Death Note? To Aru Majutsu no Index? I dunno. Just something that might actually give you a ground level for some humor that potentially hasn't already been wrung completely dry.

And please, for the love of God. If you're going to do another episode of Girlchan? Keep it short and punchy. Don't drag it out for what feels like 10 minutes again. I know you're still capable of some good funny, I'm just not feeling it at all with this series.

Score: 8

"The yelling is what makes it."

submission: Mad Mad Mario

date: April 4, 2009

Mario's sick of saving the princess, yammer yammer it's been done. However this is how it SHOULD be done. Animation's passable, lighting effects from the lava are neat, it's pretty short overall and would otherwise be unremarkable -- but the dialogue is just delivered so perfectly I couldn't help but laugh. You may have nearly wrecked your voice but you did good.

Score: 5

"It must take serious effort to be this unfunny."

submission: Sprite TV 3!

date: August 23, 2008

I've seen a lot of sprite shorts, and as far as the high-profile, frontpaged ones go, I honestly have to say this is the dullest by far. It's impossible to even tell what's going on in a few of them. I think I cracked a smirk once. (This is coming from someone who's way too damn lenient with criticisms on sprite stuff as a whole.)

Technically speaking, very well executed for the most part. But for the love of Jiminy Cricket, come up with some actual punchlines if you ever do this again. This was like watching someone talk about their day in a really droning fashion. Except with sprites.