We Rank the Five Shorts from Rooster Teeth’s “Anim Jam”
Last week, Rooster Teeth celebrated its 17th anniversary since spontaneously coming into existence on April 1st, 2003. Likely connected to this were five days of new animated shorts in a series called “Anim Jam”, where the RT Animation Studio split itself up into teams to make these five shorts in just 40 hours (spread across five days, in case you were worried about the “crunch time” issues). Now that each short is out, we’ll rank them from worst to best (though your mileage may vary) and assess whether we’d like to see more of them.
5) Rabbitloaf & Friend
This short follows the misadventures of an ornery blue rabbit cop named Rabbitloaf and his duck friend…Friend, as part of the Minor Crimes Division, which likely means they’re not very high on the payroll. In this particular outing, Rabbitloaf complains to the cashier of a donut place that his donut didn’t have sprinkles, which leads to some mayhem that actually ends up stopping a real crime just outside. What we see here is probably the gist of how each episode would go: Rabbitloaf’s short temper and urge to cause a scene would generate crazy and zany scenarios which Friend would assist in while passersby get caught up in the chaos, all the while an actual criminal would be trying to do crime but unknowingly be thwarted by the hoopla caused by the title characters.
Though the reason I put it at the bottom of this list is mainly because this set up feels rather played out as a premise. A pair of idiots with one being the crazy angry one while the other is happy and air-headed. Classic Ren and Stimpy/Red Oni, Blue Oni. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of places to go with it, at least in how it’s shown here. It also seems to be devoid of much thoughtfulness or heart, something that even the less complete entries have. I’m all for two assholes doing asshole stuff, but after this past decade of cartoons where I find myself caring deeply about said assholes, it’s hard for me to go back. This was the last short of the week, being posted on Friday, but certainly not the best to go out on.
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