When did Adventure Time go from being fun and intriguing to being a pretentious clusterfuck?

When did Adventure Time go from being fun and intriguing to being a pretentious clusterfuck?

I think it was right around the time your mental age stopped advancing at 12.

>Adventure Time
>fun and intriguing

the moment people like you started watching i guess.

When Sup Forums told you to stop liking it.

I wouldn't know, because I don't agree with that assessment. You tell me.

This. Islands was great.

When most the writing started to be done by people who knew nothing and cared less about the D&D inspiration it was initially born out of.

I think the main problem though is that the show is mostly directionless. The writers want to do narrative driven stories but they either aren't allowed to make substantial changes or don't plan far enough ahead so that you get things like Breezy where opportunities to do something interesting come to swift and unsatisfying ends. Jake's family is another example of an idea to make a radical new change that just sort of falls by the wayside disappointingly.

It seems as though there's a lot of writers competing to do THEIR ideas with little concern for what the others are doing or for a bigger picture which makes the show seem frenetic and unfocused. AT having no real 'end' that the show's team can work towards in tandem means there's a lot if different creatives each pulling the show in their own direction.

When season 3 ended.

Hi Ward.

>the show is mostly directionless.
To me, this isn't a flaw at all, that's the show AT has always been. Turning AT into a linear narrative would detract from the variety of storytelling that makes the show what it is. The sprawling network of interconnected plot lines and characters is the charm in my opinion. But it's not like there is a complete lack of focus, there are several overarching themes and ideas that tie the episodes together.

Season 5. That's when it all dropped by a significant level.
Show's still pretty darn good though.

Season 3

This. Really AT is just a love it or hate show and Sup Forums pretending that there was a drop off point in quality has been a thing since S1 was airing. The show has always been directionless and driven solely by the input of story-boarders and artists and that was sort of the point, Pen didn't want to run the show in a traditional way and a lot of its charm came from how different each episode was depending on who storyboard it which led to some great episodes and some bad ones. The only people who were left unsatisfied were people who took the show far too seriously and were mad when they didn't follow their fanfics so they did the sensible thing and fucked off to a show that appealed more to them.

Except they routinely started attempts at linear narratives just for them to unceremoniously drop the plot points because they didnt have a real plan to begin with.

I would agree with you if it was like Season 1 of AT where you just have a bunch of goofy stand-alone episodes that just exude fun instead of moody shipping and sappy backstories.

>Except they routinely started attempts at linear narratives
No they didn't. A lot of the shit they did was at random and wouldn't address them until much latter like how retards thought Susan was Finn's mom and then seasons latter turns out she's a cyborg. Remember when Jake was magic and now he's an alien?
>I would agree with you if it was like Season 1 of AT where you just have a bunch of goofy stand-alone episodes that just exude fun
You still have that even in the latter seasons

>No they didn't. A lot of the shit they did was at random and wouldn't address them
I mean, off the top of my head here's a bunch of plot points that were picked up, treated like they were going to be a serious change in the direction of the show and then quickly dropped with unsatisfying conclusions

>lich king
>young bubblegum
>fire princess
>jake's family
>finn's missing arm
>entirety of stakes

I'm sure there's more that escape me at the moment, but AT shifted from a purely high-energy episodic nature to attempting multi-episodes storylines that feel half-backed and truncated. Each time these plot points are treated like they're going to have some substantial impact on the show that never live up to what they were attempting.

>that the show is mostly directionless

AT has always been and always should be directionless. The problem comes when they try to give the show ONE overarching theme. Not understanding that give AT ONE overarching theme (including growing up) goes against the idea of what the AT time is or at least what it was in the earlier seasons

>multiple episodes dedicate to finn's budding relationship with fire princess
>multiple episodes on vampire girl's & ice king's past
>now like a third of the episodes are parts of miniseries
>always been directionless
It started out as episodic but had a focused direction in what it wanted to be, essentially all the episodes of the first two seasons have very similar tone and humor. Now it's an uneven mix of narratives and episodic that's adrift without any idea of what it wants to be.

I think the "Stakes" arc was pretty pretentious.

SCREEEEEEECH

It's been hit or miss writing-wise for a while, but that's about when I stopped following it.

I never expected there to be a serious change in direction for Adventure Time. There doesn't need to be some earth-shattering of the status quo to keep the show interesting. In fact, that would go against what the show is trying to accomplish, which is essentially a slice-of-life. The status quo changes gradually like life. Blame your disappointment on your own misaligned expectations, it's not a fault with the show.

Okay it seems i have argued my point poorly. My point is not so much that AT is directionless but that but that the direction should be allowed to wander whatever it wants. There's nothing wrong with having an episode or two about family, responsibility, or relationships but none of these things should be the ONE focus of adventure time

>All the episodes of the first two seasons have very similar tone and humor

I don't know what you're talking about the early seasons tone and humor were all over the place

>manic fantasy world with magic and adventure that play out like D&D scenarios
>"essentially slice of life"
I don't think slice of life means what you think it does. We Bear Bears is 'slice of life'.

>There doesn't need to be some earth-shattering of the status quo to keep the show interesting
It's not about "shattering the status quo". It's about the writers not being able to put their money where their mouth is. Presenting a plot point as something the show is going to run with just to drop it because the writers don't know what to do with it. ALL of the examples I listed had rushed, unsatisfying conclusions which would have been better had the writers not attempted them in the first place that suggest they were either ill-conceived from the start or hemmed in by program constraints.

Look, my essential point here is: what is AT even about anymore? When it started it was very clear in what it was. It was about Finn & Jake and their adventures with humorous offbeat writing. Now it's a miss-mash of forced relationships, sappy backstories, self-contained miniseries, cosmic musings and pretentious art projects. It's a bunch of different creatives butting heads with what they think the show and the characters should be about.

No, the early seasons were waaaay more uniform than everything that came after. They were always wacky and slightly subversive, at times touching on serious topics but never to the point of letting those topics get in the way of fun and shenanigans, the tone and humor were much more consistent than modern AT.

Just look at some season 6 episodes that aired very close to each other
>James II
>Sad Face
>Breezy
These things are so different. One is wacky fun, one is a weird experimental art piece, one is about serious relationship topics and character development. There is nothing in the earlier seasons that are so wildily different as episodes like these in the later ones.

The way that each episode can be so different from all the others in the later seasons can be both a strength and flaw of the show but it is definitely something that the early show did not do. Or, at least, not nearly as strongly.

>No, the early seasons were waaaay more uniform
i guess but when i hear unifying i think of all the episodes about Simon and Marcy those episodes are unified if you consider the idea of a wacky adventure regardless of what that adventure consist of to be unifying then i guess you are right the early seasons of AT were very unified

I know what slice-of-life means, and Adventure Time is like a crazy, magical, fantasy version of it. It's not a perfect description but it's pretty hard to define AT neatly.

>Lich king
That plot isn't finished yet.
>young bubblegum
This one's fair. My understanding is that they didn't know if they were going to get renewed so they made PB young at the end of season 2. In hindsight it was a bit of a waste of time, but Too Young was a solid episode.
>fire princess
They got together, they broke up. I guess they could've done more with her but I'm glad they didn't because she's a pretty boring character.
>jake's family
What's wrong with this one? We've had several episodes with Jake's pups.
>finn's missing arm
That was resolved in a compelling and believable way and Breezy was a good episode.
>entirety of stakes
Stakes was great. It was a well-executed, self-contained story.