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A wards S potlight City of Ghosts
Kid Cosmic
Lazor Wulf
The Midnight Gospel
A Good Year to Watch Toons Just in time for the 2021 Emmy season, we chat with acclaimed TV critic Robert Lloyd about the current state of TV animation and other toon-related topics.
L
ooking back at the 2020 and early 2021, can you tell us which new animated shows managed to impress you and why? Robert Lloyd: I have so much television to keep track of that I’m often late to the game when it comes to animation. But I loved The Midnight Gospel from Pen Ward and Duncan Trussell, and Elizabeth Ito’s City of Ghosts, which are highly personal and stunningly original, though both are built around interviews with real people. They’re really among the best things I’ve ever seen on television. Craig McCracken’s Kid Cosmic is a delightful, desert-set serial adventure comedy about
a pack of accidental superheroes, including a toddler and a senior citizen, fending off alien invaders. The drawing, which might be described as sketchbook naturalism, is full of incidental detail — it reminds me of Studio Ghibli films like From Up on Poppy Hill or Whisper of the Heart — and the seasonal story arc lets the story and gags unroll at a slower pace and over longer stretches than the 11-minute stories McCracken has previously told. I also liked Central Park and Star Trek: Lower Decks, and need to spend some time with Birdgirl and The Great North.
This past year has been a specially rich period for shows featuring diverse characters and culture. Which ones stood out for you? City of Ghosts is set amid minority cultures and subcultures in the real places of Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, Leimert Park, Little Tokyo and Venice, and uses the voices, memories and observations of real residents, recast as ghosts and interviewed by a kid team of paranormal investigators. It’s about how the past informs the present, and possibly the future, with a luminous photo-based look and an attitude of joyful melancholy. It’s also maybe the best show ever about L.A. And though
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june|july 21
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