- Released: 1 Januari 2011
- Amount of seasons: 2
- Seasons watched: 2
- Rating: 2/5
Synopsis
A girl named Kate and her puppy Magic must match the right animals to their future owners in the big city, while also having to retrieve a cat princess for the magic animal kingdom known as the Pocket Kingdom.
My Thoughts
I remember watching the (horrendous) English dub of this on Boomerang a lot back in the day and despite how awful the voices were, I watched it anyways because it had pretty much everything I wanted. Talking animals, magical fantasy kingdom inhabited by them, an overarching plot, etc. However, I never watched the complete series until now.
Adventures in Pocketville is not a very good show, I think it's safe to say that. While I do like it a lot, it definitely has a lot of problems that are worth addressing.
For example, the characters are very bland, even our mains. Kate and Magic really don't develop much throughout all of this. Heck, even the side characters usually don't. I don't need every single character to have a distinct arc and personality, but it most certainly would be nice for our major characters.
The villains are also lame. While I will give our main villain Ima/Eva that she has a badass design and voice, she often just comes across as incompetent. They try to make her out to be this cunning manipulative cat, but in reality she bungles everything almost as much as her bumbling henchmen. Speaking of which, they don't have personalities, either. I really couldn't tell what separates Zull and Gort personality-wise. The only thing that separates Krakia from the other minions is that she's a chick and can fly. The Pet Buster also makes no sense. Like apparently the whole operation he's running is legal, despite him obviously treating his animals badly and trying to make a quick buck off of them.
The world of the Pocket Kingdom is definitely the highlight of the show. I definitely preferred the goings-ons there over the basic same hijinks going on in the city: finding pets for people and looking for Ava/Ami. Pocket Kingdom doesn't have a well-established lore or anything, but it's still a beautiful realm inhabited by peaceful pets, so it does make for a nice location.
Honestly, my main complaint regarding the Kingdom is that the houses seem to be built for humans and not animals, despite there never having been a human there before until Kate came along. And another complaint I have: the scaling with the animals is really weird. All dogs are the same size regardless of breeds, cats are the same size, too. But then there's other animals that are their human-world size (ponies) and such. Just...kind of weird to see the scaling like this; you'd either expect to see them all the same size or all Earth-sized.
The whole gimmick of the show: traveling to Pocketville in order to find the right pet for a child in need in the Big City, does make for a nice setup for the show. There's plenty of aspects to explore this way, without feeling redundant. The series also isn't afraid to break format when need be. The main arc of finding the rightful princess and returning her to the throne is also a pretty decent arc. It's more on the background in the first season, but things regarding this arc really get going in season 2 and things do get pretty intense.
The voice acting is either good or bad depending on what dub you're watching. The English one: mostly atrocious. Seriously, obnoxious voices that can't properly act galore. But the US dub is fairly decent.
The animation isn't very good. The art style does look okay, but the very obviously stilted puppet-type animation that doesn't look very good in motion. Nothing about it looks downright horrible, but it the overly detailed and shaded style doesn't work as well if you ask me. I think it'd have been better if they'd gone with simpler designs and more fluid motion. Also, the lip sync sometimes sucks. I know that it's a dub, but this goes for both dubs, UK and US.
My favorite aspect of the entire show was honestly the friendship between Wallace, a Scottish stray dog, and princess Ava/Ami. They didn't start off so great, but their bond was actually allowed to develop naturally and they became really close friends throughout the show. In the final episode they kiss, which was rather weird as they never seemed romantically interested in one another, but that aside, I genuinely loved their bond. I'd love to imagine an AU where Wallace went to live with Ava/Ami in Pocketville rather than remain a stray.
So, overall: I don't think this is a very good show, but I still enjoyed a lot of it. If you like talking animal shows and don't mind the more juvenile tone, you may get some enjoyment out of this. Just don't expect too much.
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