Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2000-10)

Nothing I’ve personally experienced is a better representation of absurdist humor, as I understand the concept, than ATHF. This review is going to be intensely brief, because it’s the exact sort of thing that can only be appropriately discussed by quoting lines from it. Don’t let anyone on youtube tell you different, or get upset at you because of it. It’s genuinely the only manner of discourse that makes ANY sense, because this show makes NO sense. It’s not intended to. When you watch these ten to twelve minute episodes, expect the endings to be sudden, both in terms of narrative and logic. They follow an anthropomorphic group of fast food items and their sweatpants and wife-beater sporting neighbor. Master Shake is an ego-driven (essentially powerless) megalomaniac, Meatwad is an adorably naive weirdo, and Frylock mostly tries to ruin their fun, while still usually contributing to it in some fashion. Carl...Carl is god. Plenty of ancillary characters crop up repeatedly to fuel their timeless shenanigans, as well.

If you’ve never seen a second of the show, go watch a few clips. There are loose plot structures afoot, but you really won’t be missing anything in terms of context and being spoiled isn’t actually something that can happen, here. As long as you’ve seen the above four in action, you’ve seen enough to make a decision. Outside of the episode Robots Everywhere, I don’t personally feel that the quality drops noticeably or objectively over the course of the core show’s run. What I mean by that is that the last few seasons were actually given new names, which all still contained ‘Aqua.’ Those later seasons are not on DVD, and consequently, I do not have them and have not seen them. I’m not one for watching things on television as they air, so this is mostly how I’ve experienced the series. Know that the seasons don’t perfectly match up with what is included on each DVD volume. Two episodes of Season 1 are on Volume 2. Season 2 is spread across Volumes 2 and 3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force proper is available on seven dedicated releases and a shared volume branded as the season entitled Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1. There’s also one movie.

I said ‘objectively’ in the previous paragraph because, to me, the first few volumes FEEL more iconic. I believe this is simply because I’ve watched them enough for most of their lines to become permanent references in my cultural repertoire. The episodes on the fifth through eighth volumes are not any less creative or in any significant way lacking. I simply haven’t committed the same amount of time to them. I should fix that.

Guess this wasn’t so brief after all~

5 Unfathomable Scumbags out of 5

Multiple Personality Detective Psycho : Series 1 (2000)

MPD Psycho follows Yosuke Kobayashi, a detective who developed Multiple Personality Disorder after a personal tragedy. Yosuke assumed a new identity and put to rest the reason for his personality split, but years later it comes back to haunt him, manifesting in a number of different ways in the real world.

Yosuke gets called out of retirement to help with an investigation. Meanwhile the appearance of a strange cult with barcodes tattooed on their eyeballs coincides with a number of gruesome murders.

You'll need to fit into specific criteria to get the most from the series. Firstly, you'll need to like mysteries that don't pander to a casual audience; pay attention or you'll get lost (I paid close attention and still felt lost part of the time). You'll need to like stuff that makes your brain melt like candle wax in a furnace. And, lastly but perhaps most importantly, you'll need to be willing to experience Takashi Miike's work. Miike is a Japanese film director with a love of all things bloody and violent. He's no concept of pacing, or perhaps he does and simply doesn't care.

Each episode has its own unique murder technique but also adds to the overall story arc. With there being rarely a satisfactory conclusion to the individual stories, I was left hoping it would all begin to make some kind of sense when the arc was tied up at the end. But this is Miike, to wish for such things is folly.

The series has a cast of sickos and idiots. There's a one-eyed snuff film lover, an idiot police chief, a killer that cuts babies from their mother's wombs, some school girl suicides, etc. It flits from coma-inducing boring to heightened (suggested) gore to slapstick comedy. (The pixelated nudity and gore are a stylistic choice by Miike; it enabled him to suggest things that were forbidden on TV and have the viewer's sick twisted mind fill in the rest.) In the end I was left scratching my head about something. I'll need to give it a second viewing.

6 episodes, approx 56 mins each.

3 severed body parts out of 5