This past Monday Night, Cartoon Network premiered their latest animated series "Problem Solverz". The series is about three strange characters solving various problems for people. It's simple enough that you can use if for as many episodes as the network will give you. Sadly, it's not a show I'll be watching much at all, because I can't bare to look at it for more than 5 minutes at a time.Now, unless you're blind you can tell almost immediately what my issue with this show is just by looking to the left of this very text: the color palette is so literally painful to look at. Never in my entire life have I seen a cartoon aired on television that hurt my eyes so much. Compared to two of the shows that air right before it, Adventure Time and Regular Show, both of which are colorful, but in a way that doesn't assault my senses as if they have some ages old vendetta against me. Not so with Problem Solverz. No, this show has a color palette that hates anyone can see and wishes to cause them pain, no matter the cost. And sadly, that cost might just be high enough.
Of course, my quarrel with the aesthetics of this cartoon are twofold, because I could get past the color blitz if I felt like there were enough redeeming qualities to make the save. Sadly, there aren't because this cartoon looks like it was animated with as little effort as possible. If you want proof, look at the video above. Characters in this series look like those Leprechaun's they'd give you to color in back in elementary school. You know the ones; the three sheets of paper, on with body, one with the limbs, and the other with the head. This is obviously the method they use in Flash. Make each part of the body individually, save them all, then paste them into each frame in whatever way you need them.
If this was a Newgrounds animation circa 2005, this would be acceptable. Sadly, this is a televised series in 2011. This is not acceptable. When a series gets picked up to be aired on television, than I expect a certain level of effort be used. This is nowhere near that level and if they aren't putting the effort in to animate this, why should I waste my effort watching it? And yes, effort is required to get past that color palette. Hell, even a handful of the cartoons on the Newgrounds put more effort into their animation than this series. And even a well known series that this is animated in a very similar way, South Park, makes up for that aspect in various other ways, from interesting animation sequences to not having an offensive palette.
I think the worst thing about this whole show is that there seems to be a genuinely good idea hidden underneath it's two irredeemable aspects. The writing wasn't all that bad, it's just not enough to save everything else. Sadly, this isn't a show I can continue to watch or even suggest to anyone I know. Cartoons are a visual medium and the visuals here are atrocious. Truly, that's quite a problem.
