Cool cartoons I'm excited about
So while I was on my search, I went through some animation magazines and trailer compilations and stuff and found a bunch of interesting projects that I just want to infodump about.
The first one is the one I'm most excited about, Voro.
Synopsis: "Lily is a talented young novice who dreams of becoming a master thief. Unfortunately, because she is young and puny (and a girl), the guildmaster assigns her only most trivial missions. However, during one of these quests, Lily finds herself at the centre of a battle between several ancient cults, worshipping entities who have been long forgotten… In order to prevent the world from sinking into chaos, the teenager will have to find a series of occult artefacts during quests that will make her question her own ethics. She will have to make crucial choices of allegiance – even going against her old mentor Seamus!"
It's a show aimed at young adults, based on a finnish comic of the same name (though in translation it's called Lily the Thief) and it's gonna have 16 episodes of 26 minutes. Btw, the comic looks like this
The director says they're making the show for slightly more mature audience than the comic and so they wanted to make the style more cinematic and realistic and also age up the characters a bit. Also they're planning to make a videogame, so that's fun.
I found out that the author of the comic, Janne Kukkonen, is on tumblr (he is @/kukez) though he doesn't post often. Idk what he is up to rn but he previously said that, while writing Voro, he accidentally spiraled into making a whole other story ("Raivotar" which means Fury) that's more gritty in comparison to Voro being pretty lighthearted, so I'm interested in what comes out of that too. Also I'm trying to buy a used copy of Lily the Thief rn because it looks cute and I want to know more about this girl already.
The second one is Shepherdess Warriors.
Synopsis: "The story takes place in a small medieval village, nested at the heart of a green valley by the sea. Only women, children and elderly people live in this village, as all men were recruited to join the Great War in a distant land. They left ten years ago and never came back. Nobody knows what happened to them. To protect and defend the village, women had to step up and decided to create the Order called “The Shepherdess Warriors”. Molly, our lead character, is a young girl, who never knew her father. At 10-years-old, she is now old enough to start her training as a shepherdess warrior, an apprenticeship she's been waiting to start for a long time…"
Also based on a comic, but this time French one. Sadly, looks like it wasn't translated into my language. But the animation looks amazing and the concept's fun. It's gonna have 13 half-hour episodes. Also Molly strongly reminded me of Kelsey from Craig of the Creek (who is 9 and daydreams about being a fantasy hero) and I love that for her.
Third one is The Monsters Valley.
Synopsis: "Ellis is a common teenager who, apparently in an accidental way, touches a magic orb and acquires a power that allows him to control fire. At that moment, he starts being chased by strange creatures who want to take advantage of his power. Ellis, overwhelmed by the situation, asks Blanchet, his childhood friend, for help. Together they will enter into this dreadful and wicked world to try to find a way for Ellis to get rid of his power without knowing that fate has another plan for both of them".
This is gonna be an original Spanish series, not based on anything, aimed at teens and young adults. The creator is already planning five seasons (13 episodes of 25 minutes) and wants to expand to other stuff, like videogames, films or novels. (Damn, that's ambitious) He also says the show "proposes a journey of the hero from an adult point of view, with gray characters, battles, magic and blood".
Beyond the teaser and this interview, I found a link to a now privated video called "The Monsters Valley developing footage" from 8 years ago, twitter and facebook accounts made for the show that were only active in 2019, a link to a site that my browser says is fake and probably dangerous and a studio website that's just a logo and a contact link. So I just kept hitting dead ends with this thing. Then I suddenly found show's creator twitch? Good luck to this guy, honestly, he seems passionate.
There are more interesting projects, like The Tern, for example, but for now these are the top three I wanted to highlight.
