Buffy the Animated Vampire Slayer

[locker_monster]

sl_podcast posted this first but it must be seen by all. Or, at least by all Buffy fans. Watch it before it gets pulled. :-)

With Buffy Season Eight making waves and Dollhouse on the way I doubt Joss would have time to revisit this, at least not any time soon. It's a shame it never got picked up. It would have been a great, slightly lower budget way of expanding the universe. With most of the original actors providing voices, it could have been just like the show, only in animated form. Actually, it probably would have been slightly larger in scale than the show considering sets and monsters wouldn't be limited by money. Just look at the library set. That's how it should have been: big and labyrinth.

I think if Joss found the time, and wanted to revisit this, a DVD movie would be the way to go. They're the latest craze. Just look at all the animated DC Comics DVD movies that have been popping up. It's not another weekly show but it's still a chance to get the show out there to the fans. And it's not like most of the actors are up to much these days. ;-) You can record voice over work over the phone nowadays.

Just to gush about this a little, I'm loving this little short. Kind of reminded me of Batman: the Animated Series of yore. That had a lot of butt kicking and good storytelling as well. Buffy jumps around like gravity doesn't exist, but okay, it's a cartoon and I'll let the laws of physics slide. Seems they would have made the vampires more kid friendly; the vamp here gets a voice treatment to sound less human and the vamp out gets a cheesy glowy effect, as does the staking. Was the vampire voiced by Joss? It sounded vaguely like him. But here's our gang, back together and sophomores once more. I find it funny that animated Buffy is dressed like season one Buffy, with the mini skirts and high boots. No radical redesign here. The gang's pitch perfect though; classic season one Scooby Gang. Giles mocking them about going to the party made me laugh so hard.

The only obvious roadblock is trying to pitch this to a network, which is probably what led to the cartoon's demise. It's not exactly a kid's show but it's not exactly an adult animated show either. Though, a cartoon like Justice League straddled that line and it did really well. Hopefully the posting of this stirs up interest once more.

Comments

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

When I saw your post topic, I thought it was going to be about this, which I saw somewhere recently...



Hadn't seen the animated thing before, but it's pretty cool. Wish it got picked up. I doubt there's much chance for it, unfortunately - there'd be IMHO more of a chance of a movie like you said, or maybe something else set in the Buffyverse but not specifically using the main characters (since unless you set it in the past, which gets harder and harder as time goes on unless you decide to make it a complete reboot without even pretending any continuity), you get into the complicated Post S7 situation of Buffy leading an army of slayers).

But since there does seem to be a trend of kiddish shows where the plot is "ordinary kids are secretly part of a monster/alien/etc fighting agency", I could see one focusing on a new slayer being assigned to protect her home area and go on missions and such, with some of the main characters having cameos or supporting roles.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

That's the cover of #20. Sounds like the story for that issue will be one of the scripts that was written for the animated series. So maybe Joss does have an ultimate plan for getting animated Buffy picked up. :-)

From the little I managed to find on the cartoon, the continuity would be changed so it's season one but it's the magicked time line where Dawn is present. So it is a sort of continuity reboot in a way. All the animated DVD movies are reboots anyway. None of the DC ones are following anything that's been established before.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Well, to me, Buffy's different than Marvel/DC. They're all used to different continuities and different interpretations. They've already been reinterpreted dozens if not hundreds of times. Some of the DC ones are in fact somewhat faithfully following specific storylines though (although usually more self-contained ones not directly part of DC's continuity).

The Buffy universe (movie aside) has so far been mostly consistent - yeah, there are things like the (non S8) comics and novels, but the idea still seemed to be that while all of them might not _be_ canon, they all take the canon stuff _as_ canon. But to do a Buffy cartoon now, involving buffy in high school, either you explicitly set it in the late 90s, which probably wouldn't sell as well, or you set it 'now' (with all sorts of modern things like practically every teenager having a cell phone that were absent in the original), and essentially are starting a completely new continuity for (I believe, at least) the first time (again, movie aside). You still _could_ do it, but it puts it in a different category. Then again, maybe the Buffy franchise needs it to become eternal and timeless. Still, I'm a continuity lover so I'd prefer one that at least pretended to play within the world as it is in the Buffyverse (even the post-Dawn one).

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even thought about how the cartoon would be set 1997. I wonder if they took that into consideration when they were writing scripts; would there be references to contemporary pop culture or would it simply be stuff that was happening in 1997? To set it back then would limit things. Kids probably don't care about cultural references but the adults watching would notice.

I do believe they were setting the cartoon within the show's own continuity, the presence of Dawn aside. All depends on longevity I guess. You want people to keep watching you've got to reinvent sometimes.