#fusionjune

Most of what’s confusing is some characters being stated as older than a teen or a lot lot younger than a young teen (i.e. Mandy as 9 when even in show canon she is something like 10) and the original FusionFall concept ages all of the characters a bit. I can only assume this was because they were aiming for a preteen/teen audience as opposed to adults or much younger children. I guess i’m also mostly miffed that Juniper gets assumed to be older both in the show canon and the original FF game? because like.... she’s  been visibly aged up in the game like every other kid character but that’s exactly it. Every CN original character who was a kid in their source shows have been aged to a teen age or if they are much newer cartoons, they’ve been kept mostly the same. Maybe popularity also plays some kind of role. For example, both Juniper Lee and Ben 10 premiered in 2005(spring and winter respectively) By that logic, most characters should be aged accordingly to the audience. But then again, Ben has so many sequels and spinoffs/animated content, his audience-perceived age can just stay young forever, right? Meanwhile, translation into an anime-like style with characters like Mac, Bloo and Goo (from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends), they look nearly identical in age to their original counterparts. I guess this maybe could also have something to do with the longevity of the series, like with Samurai Jack or Johnny Bravo? it didn’t end until 2008 or so and seemed to be still quite well-known and aired after it ended too. Plus with these kinds of characters, their age seems to be a strong part of their character so giving a bigger age jump to Mac, Bloo, Goo or even Jack or Johnny, would just be too jarring for established fans.

So going by that last thought, I guess with Juniper Lee the problem arises when actually considering the shows vitality as a cartoon specifically. The show itself was always quite cartoony, but it was well-established in realistic rules for  human characters and even plotlines. I guess what sticks out also is that the protagonist is actually too realistic. They are just a normal pre-teen middle-schooler, stuck with a job position too early for them but everything else about them is fairly normal. Yes, even taking on multiple club activities or getting k grades in school or having more than three friends. The show designers just went deep with making sure this character. is relatable enough for kids watching it but approached it as adults and whats more, approached it as writers rather than cartoonists.. It could also have been too jarring to get something visually different too, from CN’s established channel styles so far. The Life and Times of Juniper Lee does not have thick lines, big eyes or Hanna-Barbera animation. It looks almost full-animated and like something from Warner-Brothers or ex-Disney animators trying to go for maybe like a.... Looney Tunes visual aesthetic. The human characters are some pretty realistic designs or caricatures though. If we compare Juniper to Jack for example, it seems as if it’s way more interesting to see a mysterious character fight with a goal toward a mysterious end-path rather than an ordinary character fight with a generic goal and practically no path. Both are completely different characters of different ages of course: as if an 11-year old kid has everything figured out right? But that’s just the thing, it’s a too-realistic setting, aside from all the magic stuff happening that just.... was not memorable enough for viewers then? The connections in the show were maybe just too realistic or too realistically established, not connected or obvious enough. Cause how are audiences supposed to be able to tell that there’s reasons for stuff like her streak existing or why there’s an industinguishable bracelet or all these small details that go un-noticed on first viewings? I guess nothing made the show much remarkable for first impressions an that just saddens me is all.

Also how the hell did people think she’s much older in the original show? There’s adults in the show constantly on-screen who we can sort of compare to that hey, most these focus human characters are like, kids right? I guess it’s the whole idea about the show’s style being too different from established CN styles again at work: the characters look huge on-screen, at least for the first season and if it’s on a computer or flat-screen. So even though there are adult and other kid characters next to the protagonist (and really, kids are not actually always that tiny) the protagonist is still being perceived as a freaking giant. So maybe that was a problem, I honestly don’t know, it’s not like I‘ve done an actual audience study on this. I’m....really glad that JL managed to avoid some of the things I’ve always felt weird about in East-Asian protagonist portrayals. You know, the sort of..... “orientalism” in lots of earlier cartoons. Juniper is literally just a normal American kid.