‘Adventure Time’ would make the best religion
Why an animated show and its pop-cultural mythology provides me more spirituality, moral support and happiness than any other faith.
Many years ago I left the Catholic Church. People, who leave a major religion behind, tend to start exploring substitute ways to achieve inner peace and salvation. While some might slide into Corona-denying conspiracy theories — hard — , others take up new found crazes like light nutrition, angel cults or neo-shamanism. Although I never was a religious person, still I fancy making Adventure Time the focus of my beliefs.
This cartoon actually helped me gain new perspectives to life and this wonderful world, by showing me the sheer potential of infinite fantasy. Something I couldn’t say about Catholic confirmation classes.
In case you never heard of this show and start to take me for some sort of Charlie Manson of animation, no. I am just a humble fan of these mythological adventures and heroism in the lands of Ooo. And I enjoy how extremely well this show caters to my gag premise.
So I will let my imagination run rapid, just as every second of Adventure Time does so well, while I list the pillars of my animation lithurgy. Behold the reasons, why it’s better than most of our world religions.
What time is it? Conversion Time!
Genesis
At the beginning there was a boy, a boy with an assortment of swords, a rucksack and a mild case of ADHD. His name is Finn and he proudly wears his white hat with knobby ears, a prop that must not be amiss at any nerdy assembly on this planet by now. The teenager has a brother named Jake, who’s also his best friend and trusty adventurous talking pug at the same time. The yellow dog has a special ability to stretch and transform into any size or shape he wants to.
Their goal in life is hunting down as many monster battles and as much treasure as possible. Such a story theme might appear banal and simple at first, just like the animation’s art style, it is the very opposite in its execution. Each episode is a finely crafted compendium of branching out storylines, zany characters and intentionally cryptic references to yet unknown circumstances.
After a single episode of Adventure Time the subjective amount of content swallowed, feels comparable to a Coppola director’s cut, a huge chunk of The Silmarillion or some similar tome. This fantasy reference fits the bill, because of the cartoon creator’s love for Dungeons & Dragons, which presents an undeniable narrative foundation of the show.
Pendleton Ward, who has been making weird little shorts with a familiar cute eared character years prior to kicking off the animated juggernaut in 2010, wanted to create his own rich mythology. One could fill books with all its tales and gigantic cast — oh wait, there is one. The show led to videogames, board games and playing cards as well, and, and, and. Most Cartoon Network titles don’t explode into this amount of merchandise, trinkets, archives and even a monster manual. Perfect for me though, we already have holy scripture!
Nothing else on screen sounds like Adventure Time.What sticks out most prominently, is the way Finn, Jake and the rest of the Candy Kingdom communicate. Their language draws from Hip-Hop intonation and vocabulary (not to forget the epic fist-bump), fused with nerd-lingo and a lot of very appealing — not seldomly sung — nonsense.
They like shortening chewing their words, their names become peppy acronyms like Lumpy Space Princess’s “L.S.P.”. And at times they intentionally annunciate words so absurdly wrong, like “medicine” turns to “meh-di-zone” in Finn’s mouth, I want to scream out of joy. One of my favorite sentences has been uttered by P.B., as she is monitoring one of her gadgets: “My cookoo mama meter is going nay nays.”
“My cookoo mama meter is going nay nays.”
— Princess Bubblegum
And who could forget other timeless quotes like a horse being diagnosed with “poo brain” or hot food respectively painful situations being called “so spice”. This fever dream way of talking also resulted in akin sounding placeholder words for “Fuck” and “Shit”. And Jake’ girlfriend Lady Rainicorn only speaks in non-subtitled Korean, of course. Who does that?!
One reason why the banter in Adventure Time is just so damn good, excitingly organic and immersive, has to be that the voice talents record altogether in one room. So greats like John DiMaggio, Olivia Olson, Tom Kenny can improvise or just be charming unit of craziness.
Even better, when great guests are thrown in the mix like George Takei, Lena Dunham, Duncan Trussell, the incredible Polly Lou Livingston, Kumail Nanjiani, Lamar Burton, the list goes on. The voices give life, but I had to find out, what makes the show so magical, so holy.
Why do we flock to it?
This anarchistic series proves to be so much more than just giggle guaranty for overactive stoners — and with this even the New Yorker concurs. Adventure Time knows how to create suspenseful and smart narration. Even after 10 seasons and some change the ideas stayed fresh and original. They never stopped experimenting, the opposite, in a freakishly over-saturated world of animation often, where shows like to go stale.
In the 90s Ren & Stimpy, the Nickelodeon raster and of course King Cartoon Network opened doors great — I will call it — WTF- animation, culminating in giants like Spongebob and such, making it a proper legit and chic TV-concept.
Adventure Time is not only a proud heir of this punk-cartoon legacy, but exceeded it in many facets. There is one special bonus compared to the ones that came before, even if Adventure Time’s Ice King is voiced by the same guy as Spongebob, Tom Kenny. This show isn’t just punk, smart and self-aware, it always had this extra kick.
The lines blur, but Pendleton Ward’s creation couldn’t be called exactly adult animation, which also exploded in the last decades. Netflix goes quite nuts in that area!
My point is, while Adventure Time does stay away from blood, sex and swearing (just barely) and poses perfectly fine children’s programing, at least in my opinion, it deals with very mature and rather complex psychological themes like for instance manipulative behavior, obsession, neurosis and the sociology of mental illness. I think kids are able to deal with that, I mean they have to live with their loony parents too after all.
We watch characters work through old emotional scars, trauma, deep fears as well as awkward but still relentlessly gnawing teenage angst. And Adventure Time takes these things seriously, while presenting them in estranged ways.
‘Adventure Time’ deals with very mature and rather complex psychological themes (…)
Around seasons 5 and 6 this show becomes quite insane, wonderfully so. Yellow, naively smart and easy going Jake The Dog, inspired by Bill Murray in Meatballs, still lives with the young, passionate but constantly hyper Finn in a constant state of uncompensated adventurousness. Business as usual? Rather not, as Adventure Times’s storylines take a turn, implode into rich detailed side-plots, following other characters and breaking out into mini-series excerpts like “Stakes” and “Islands”.
That heightened level of symbolism and philosophy could push some super-fan battered by psychedelics down a rabbit hole, trying to solve all the hidden riddles of Adventure Time’s universe — or make one write about its potential as a religion.
But seriously, could it have been the mollusc Illuminati, who planted Mr. Snail waving to the audience in every single episode of Adventure Time? But fun facts and Easter eggs alone don’t make a good religion — maybe it’s enough for a solid sect — , it is all about good stories and their meaning.
Powerful Parables
I wonder if maybe the minimalism of Adventure Time’s art and animation style are key to its narrative significance: The simple sausage-y characters and the minimalist, brightly colored design leaves lots of free space for interpretation and abstraction. While the many well-placed details (like the snail) tell their own little stories. In any case this show bursts with allegories, and thereby— don’t know, if always intentionally — spiritualism.
Take Lemongrab for instance, voiced by Rick & Morty’s Justin Roiland. He presents as a disturbed tyrant, demanding total submission, screaming for it, with his unnervingly screechy voice of the inapt antagonist.
Choleric and schizophrenic he reads as a parable for the cause of unhappy pedantry, gruesome conservatism and the misguided status quo. But Lemongrab was made this way — so far Princess Bubblegum’s explanation for her lemony creation.
After eating his cloned brother, breeding an unholy deformed army of minions, he goes though psychological metamorphosis in episode “The Mountain”. After an absurd trip full of squirting ejaculation-metaphors he realizes the essence of eternity, of his juices, his own lemon fat.
What I understood as a Nietzsche reference, Lemongrab kills God — or “Matthew” — , who tried to enlighten him and whose body consists of his subordinates and pilgrims. I had to take a breather after that one and digest. Religious and critical concepts of enlightenment, power and hypocrisy flow together so elegantly in this episode, proving a worthy mind-fuck-match for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Mountain or Kubrick’s ending in 2001.
Then there is this other episode, “Walnuts and Rain”, which I’d call my favorite one. At least, it is this one I will show to friends and newcomers to the world of Adventure Time.
Religious and critical concepts of enlightenment, power and hypocrisy flow together so elegantly.
Jake falls into a seemingly bottomless pit and lands on a bark, steadily sailing downward. On it he encounters a slim bear hermit introducing himself as “Seven”, but only because he’d scratched “Bill” into the wooden planks eternities ago, so not to forget, but he did anyway and then read it backwards, upside down as “77I8”. That alone is such a deliciously twisted way to characterize a “lost” person.
Jake reanimates the lonely bear’s hopes and giggles, by hanging out with him, playing cards and freestyle rapping. I read this as advice: Sometimes it can be healthier to accept a situation with no way out, facing it even with contentment, for example a terminal disease — I know, a bit of a stretch. But that is how faith and parables ought to work, dude. You extract what helps you out of them.
At the same time, Finn throws a wrench into the clockworks of a monotone, hedonistic kitchen-kingdom, ruled by a gigantic insatiable king. To find some sort of revolutionary and anti-establishment message in a storyline like that, suggests itself. I see an allegory there, for greed and addiction to distraction.
In the episode “Ocarina”, handcuffed in a police department, Jake explains to Finn how the world used to work (for the Land of Ooo and the Candy Kingdom exist long after some post-apocalyptic scenarios) and why there has to be law and order. Almost like Lewis Caroll’s Jabberwocky poem, he spits some mad science about power structures and class-critical truth.
Then there is the “Little Brother” episode, also a real goodie. Worm Shelby gets his butt cut off at a party, which then transforms into his tiny brother Kent the next day. He sets out to fight evil, gets in the middle of a struggle between mice and rats within Finn and Jake’s epic tree house-tree. He is tempted, struggles, but finally turns full-hero facing and destroying the spooky gross Rat King. The tiny worm also tells Jake that the dog will someday be his food.
Not only did the episode come up with this existentialist gem of a pun, it also turns out to be a straight-up monomyth in the vein of Joseph Campbell, a scholar of religions and mythological story telling. He once pointed out how religions ought to challenge the mind, not numb it. Other than being mind-numbingly cute, Adventure Time proves to do exactly that. It made me question and wonder about the true nature of certain characters, and want to be good through inspiration and exemplary. Thank you, little butt worm Kent.
Trans-Future
Sometimes creating a character casually is the best way to go about it. Aim for normality, identifiable attributes, flaws and quirks, just have fun and avoid preconceived notions, especially if you create a woman. Stay clear of the overplayed girl power or the boring victim trope, Pendleton Ward recommends. Suddenly empowering females inhabit your cartoon, as in the Adventure Time universe.
Though most female characters we meet in the Land of Ooo are princesses, they aren’t the infantile Disney type. They represent everything, from lumpy space, hot dogs, ghosts, raggedness, breakfast, fire, candy, slime (the “core ancient elements”, deep cut fans know what I mean by that) and others. Most of them are stone cold empresses, intriguing away and holding summits in which we get a glimpse into their individual ruling methods.
Sure, “Princess Bubblegum” may sound like a one-dimensional nod to Hello Kitty full of cutsie pink gender stereotypes, but she is a damn super-intelligent prodigy. Actually the thousands-of-years-old P.B. glorifies science and excels at it, even though Finn and Jake sometimes mess up her experiments.
This highly intelligent monarch speaks German and Japanese, among many others, has a fierce fashion sense and proves to be a motherly socially empathetic leader. Next to some dark secrets, her main dilemma manifests in being emotionally distant and her huge creator-guilt-complex. No character is perfect.
Marceline, the Vampire Queen, on the other hand feels more like the buddy tom-boy, but that rather stereotypical categorization doesn’t do her justice. How she earned her title gets told in the “Stakes” mini-series of Adventure Time and will fucking move you, I promise.
From her childhood to her hunting powerful seriously chilling vampire gods, Marceline is the coolest. She is like that girl in school, that was always a bit taller than you, faster at climbing trees and sort of scary. Others made fun of her. And of course you had the biggest crush on her. Inevitably, I mean, she plays killer bass guitar.
Under sadistic tendencies and gross inclinations one might find this long suffering, fragile and sensible core, someone being cross with her father — ruler of the Nightosphere, quasi hell — and missing her mother. She even has a mysterious connection to lamo Ice King.
Marceline and Princess Bubblegum were an item once, that’s the reason why P.B. still sleeps in the black metal t-shirt she once got from Marci and will become narrative fuel in some episodes even.
Nobody conforms to an ideal type — we are all different and in that we are all the same.
The female characters in Adventure Time go through autonomous emotional motions and are written in non-binary way, gender-wise. So much so that some episodes just swap the genders altogether, for the fun of it. Then Fiona & Cake go on adventures and Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino voices Marshall Lee, The Vampire King.
Gender identities become a joke and obsolete, because good stories do not require a set specific distribution of penises and vulvas. The moral seems to be: Nobody conforms to an ideal type — we are all different and in that we are all the same. Come on, now that’s prophetic.
Adventure Time represents LGBTQ+ people without even trying, without an agenda. Gender is a spectrum, as is mental health, and this show knows how to convey and celebrate this. When Finn yells at a mean blackmailing bald witch, how “crazy ugly” she is, we get it: I am at my ugliest, when I act like an asshole. More of this, when we get to the Ice King.
Not only the multi-faceted character design makes Adventure Time so ahead of its time. They think a lot about the future also, which they paint often bleak and apocalyptic, as mentioned. In one of the episodes in the “Islands” run, Finn and Jake enter an ahead-of-their-time Metaverse-spoof, a virtual reality world, in which their little handheld-computer friend BMO, also kind of a non-binary character, rules as a digital Adonis-god, weary of the real world.This future vision has humanity finally giving in to the singularity, or it could be read as a kind of Wall-E-styled critique on our lost battle sacrificing humanity for convenience. Either way, I bow before their righteousness, by putting a construct over reality, although Adventure Time always second-guesses “reality”, and this show loves its videogames and addictive behaviors (shout-out to the ending of episode “Dungeon Train”). Their commandments for the future would probably be: “Dude, no commandments!”
Savior Finn
Behold, a young boy of twelve years in the first episode, pining over an older woman and really into swords and saving people from monsters. As an evil-witch-punching baby he was abandoned in the woods by his genetic, fuck-up dad and adopted by a feisty pair of crime investigators, two yellow pugs. Through his life he shed many tears and even lost his right arm — more than once. It’s the “Passion of Finn”, who turns out to be a mutant like all humans in Ooo, as Ward once mentioned in a Q&A.
Though he handles affairs of the heart awkwardly and sullenly like every teenager, his story is one of maturity. Pain tends to only make him stronger, just as every enemy and every ordeal. At the end of the series Finn must have reached an age of 17 or even 18, he grew like his voice actor Jeremy Shada, who’s in his mid-twenties now.
The young hero overcame the deadly terror he felt towards the open sea, his issues and emotional entanglements with princesses as well as the beating he received from a come-to-life barn monster.
Finn will always reincarnate (or even re-resurrect like in HBO’s “Distant Lands” specials “Together Again”). And the epochs and passing of time in the Ooo-multiverse also appear to be elliptical, similar to (SPOILERS) Battlestar Galactica or the unnerving Simulation Theory.
All of Ooo’s precedent eras bore elemental and individual archetypes, which Finn is also a part of. We even meet former iterations of his hero-type, a hustling girl rogue, as well as a pre-mutation human version of Finn. In the fifth season in a What if-scenario we see what would have happened, if the apocalypse hadn’t been triggered as “planned” and pre-Finn had been corrupted by dark powers.
In that iteration he is literally differently drawn, only slightly though, but shows the same compassion and sacrifices to the ones around him, just as the Finn we know thousands of years later. And in Adventure Time’s last episodes we meet a brave bunny, who seems to carry on his essence. Though tempted and often beaten, Finn always reappears, he is in all of us, this selfless, much tried savior… with a robot arm.
Creator Jake
Similar to P.B. this morphing pug has something of a god, a tumbling, blundering god. Seriously though, it is undeniable, the ability to turn into any shape, size or form has a hint of divinity. The origins of his mysterious power become the center of attention in later seasons.
In another genius episode called “Everything’s Jake” he is the unwitting creator of a whole yellow world around him. He sinks into his own belly button (the source of life, mind you) and encounters an entire city, with population and countryside, all made of his own body.
Jake tries to save this civilization consisting of manifold split-personalities. I felt reminded of my own misguided self-reflection and DIY-psychotherapy, and how it can turn into self-harm. Remember the dog Confucius’s words: “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something. — Jake, The Dog
As another form of creator, he fathers a litter of zany kids later on. And as a fresh dad myself, I extremely relate to his anxiety and neurotic worries concerning them. Like, when he wakes them up fearing they might have died in their sleep. The puppies grow up fast and soon get their own episodes.
A jive talking dog in the image of Bill Murray, with a son called “TV”, deeply relatable human traits, often pretty dumb, with bad advice but sometimes enlightening as well, who took over my heart, fashion and the internet by farting in perfectly timed moments — that is a god I can get behind.
A Fallen Angel named Ice King
His hell is a frozen one. Ice King up and foremost irritates people around him. Like a cheap throw-away Captain Planet-villain, he appears to be the stereotypical bad guy, so Finn and Jake have someone punch in the face. But this guy isn’t just a needy blue creep, with very intrusive tendencies and an eating disorder.
Ice King used to be a scientist named Simon Petrikov and tried to save the world from an impending meteor crash (hey, McKay’s Don’t Look Up, hack much? jk), long before there was the Land of Ooo. After it hits, a magical crown from Scandinavia changes Simon’s character each time he wears it.
Lonely little Marceline lands in his care and this frantic personality change worries her a lot. Together the two rummage through the post-apocalyptic wasteland and grow very close.
Finally and tragically, while trying to save the girl and all of humanity, he ultimately transforms into the floating, white bearded Ice King, the frost blasting maniac we know from the show, only now with a multi-layered backstory that breaks your heart.
Speaking of which: This Youtube-recap of Ice King’s backstory is so devastating — it’s probably the music. I cried never-ending tears the first time I saw it, nursing a massive hangover and a break-up. I wouldn’t want to withhold this sob fest. It gets me every time.
The more Ice King fanatically demands love and companionship, the more distance to others he builds ups. So he arrives at a point, he simply kidnaps princesses and tries to marry them, to awaken furniture to life and hanging out with ignorant penguins — one of them with a sinister Lovecraftian secret identity, Gunther.
Again there is a guiding moral to be found in this unfortunate prophet of the cold, turned to a needy inflated cartoon-nemesis: Evil feeds on helplessness, loneliness, deep societal fears and those with trouble connecting to people. It is a vicious circle, as soon as you decide to choose the path of materialism, wealth and power — the crown is evil, get it, duh — , friends and meaningful relationships will fall away. A sad cautionary tale about a disturbed man, who will cry with gratitude when you offer him a sandwich.
We all are Gods
There is another reason why Adventure Time would make a great religion in a few millennia time. I wouldn’t translate Ooo’s own reglion with “Glob” at the center, who manifests in the candy people exclamations like “Oh my lumping Glob!”, who’s more precisely the four-faced entity Grob, Glob, Gob and Grod. That’s not the only all-powerful entity in this universe, far from it. There are so many! I love looking at them and seeing what makes them tick.
It’s interesting how these goddesses and gods act, interact and define themselves. These all-powerful weirdos are all so messed up, flawed, just like me and the people in my life. Now that’s what I call an appealing religion. Let’s meet some of those almighty knuckleheads.
Beware Magic Man, Loki-like, constantly annoying all of Ooo with his paranormal pranks. He’s a whacky exile-Martian, who messed up big time because of love and wants to return to Mars. An early character in the series, who remind fans of Q on Star Trek — many concepts and ideas in Adventure Time are clearly inspired by TNG. Magic Man manipulates and puts everyone through his high jinks like a come-to-life-cursed monkey’s paw. Magic Man is Glob(etc.)’s brother by the way.
These all-powerful weirdos are all so messed up, flawed, just like me and the people in my life. Now that’s what I call an appealing religion.
Cosmic Owl looks like a uncolored glowing outline of a bird and shifts through dimensions, visits dreams and lives in the stars. He is a prophetic figure, sealing dreaming folk’s fate through cryptic symbolism.
He likes to hang out with Prismo, a wish-fulfilling god and spectral shadow, who is actually just the dream projection of a sleeping man (everything still clear?). Despite his inter-dimensional, inter-chronological powers, Prismo is very insecure, self-proclaimed nasty, often stumped and would rather play boardgames than hold together the ties of transcendental existence.
Death, a wispy desert animal-skeleton wearing a cowboy hat, turns out to be a wonderful Zen-master, in one of the episodes in the HBO “Distant Lands” run. Still he sort of fails at connecting with his furious son.
The list goes on and on: a self-sacrificing Lincoln-god on Mars, the meaning seeking Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant without self-determination, the already mentioned life-creating but stubborn Princess Bubblegum and self-absorbed Matthew on the mountain — there’s more, but I should stop…
These rulers over dimensions and the destiny of billions still sometimes lean back and play Banjo, gossip in a whirlpool or gift home-made pickles to friends. I identify with these gods. It’s easy! Maybe it’s part of my healthy god complex, but more importantly I see how these different archetypes form a healthy, real spectrum of human characteristics. Sometimes it doesn’t get any realer than a fallible cartoon owl-god.
In the episode “All the Little People” Finn finds a bag full of little versions of the main Ooo-characters, even himself and Jake. He becomes obsessed, sleepless and sadistic, “playing” with their tiny fates. Either this is an allegory for videogame addiction, The Sims or Stardew Valley comes to mind, or it shows brilliantly how power corrupts and how invasive blind belief can be.
Sometimes it doesn’t get any realer than fallible a cartoon owl-god.
This all reminds of the Olympian catalogue of funny, sexy, dumb and not at all perfect greek godesses and gods, who stood for heightened human traits and inclinations. In Adventure Time there is Party God, a giant flying, fratty wolf’s head, who rages like a bunch of Dionysoses.
If I had to choose a belief system, I’d go for the one with the divine showpiece that isn’t afraid to be weak, jealous or grumpy, that eats like a pig sometimes — as long as they know how to beat-box and wobble their arms in waves when they dance, all’s fine.
The big takeaway I got from Adventure Time’s pantheon of almighties is that we all are gods. That is actually the base of some far eastern philosophies, that rings so very true. It feels the most respectful way to live with and for each other, the perfect tenor for an animation-based faith.
Judgement Day(s)
It all comes down to this: A juicy end of the world, and of all existence. But not once, again and again we will face ruin and doom. A religion’s basically just a psychological tool for us humans to not go insane after realizing our own mortality. It would be folly not to accept our own demise.
And just as Joseph Campbell’s mythological circle of innate human storytelling can be found in Adventure Time, the show celebrates the circle of birth, the mentioned reincarnations, life-affirmation and so on, just as much as the doom, withering and death, mostly by simply accepting it.
A religion’s basically just a psychological tool for us humans to not go insane after realizing our own mortality.
Either the end comes in form of ungodly “heavenly fires”, an old disgruntled giant, some satanic candy butler, a bomb or earth devouring acid slime — almost every season of Adventure Time closes with a devastating finale of apocalyptic proportions, also every iteration of its timelines.
The ultimate big baddies The Lich and GOLB only want to undo things, they function as plot necessities rather than characters, and maybe stand for the inner demons in all of us that are just there, unmovable and mystifying evil — again, better accept it.
The final finale got me good. Again tears started gushing, when BMO sang the rallying chant of the very last episode of the last, 10th season. Music, worth its own giant academic thesis in regards to understanding Adventure Time, is the show’s lifeblood. Of course the destroyed world is conclusively saved by it. Quarreling ex-lovers, one pink and one black, get back together in a lovely moment, heroes say farewell and almost every character receives a bookend.
As I said, Adventure Time takes its stories, themes and characters seriously, and treats them with care. But, and that is a true ideal, it knows how not to take itself seriously. So my “being childish” has grown middle-aged and I am glad for this text, a contribution to all world religions, I hope. No, I shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone for this premise — but yeah, I am actually taking it seriously.
The big religions of our time lost a key element, self-irony. The old tomes and rites are all a joke, nothing more. They can be wonderful, of course, inspiring and uplifting, but they remain tales, supposed to give you some safety, something to lean on and shrug off. Adventure Time does this so well for me, being self-critical in self-exploration and -improvement. That is how you make good out of the bad.
As soon as religion becomes about exclusion and blind rule, following an odd dusty dictate, you know you’re on the wrong path. This show on the other hand draws people in by making them feel better, feel more, feel different. And it always includes them, just look at this happy fan community.
That is how you make good out of the bad.
Like Campbell said — sorry, last time, I’ll mention him — humanity needs new myths of faith, adapted for modern times. And I think I found them. Maybe I will become a scholar teaching about the meaning of “Everything Burrito”. If you happen to feel sad and lost, because the show is over, check out Bravest Warriors by Ward, also a pretty fun watch.
All I can say, these almost 300 episodes, counting specials and such, I gobbled up like Jake does ice cream. It’s extra chocolatey. And Adventure Time taught me more about friendship, moralism and the good-bad-spectrum, than any holy transcript. I learned how to be a bit less arrogant and level-eyed. And let’s begin to accept that Adventure Time has ended. Jake would want us to.
Even though Adventure Time probably will never have an actual altar or be an accepted religion, that time I met a girl from South Korea (hi, Subin!), who coincidentally had the same ringtone as me, Jake singing “Bacon Pancakes”, felt pretty holy. Real Talk over, Amen.
(I have written a version of this article in German, many years ago)
