Adventure Time is an animated series about an orphan boy named Finn and a talking shapeshifting dog named Jake who live near the Candy Kingdom, which is a monarchy ruled by a queen made of bubble gum named Princess Bubblegum.
The artwork is childishly beautiful. The colors are all intense and make any other series (that came before - many have copied it since) seem faded by comparison somehow. The world in which the series takes place is called Ooo - it is a dystopian future Earth with a large chunk missing, due to a mythical, long ago man-caused catastrophe that unleashed chaos - destroying civilization while at the same time creating all sorts of new, mutated forms of life. At the beginning of the series, we meet Finn, living in a tree house with Jake and Beemo, an apparently living Nintendo Gameboy with a Korean female voice.
I love and hate this series. On the one hand, I like the violence. It is one of the few children's cartoons of the current generation that glorifies anger and violence towards and destruction of evil beings. Many episodes center around Finn’s battles against evil demons and monsters either on quests or in protecting the Candy Kingdom from threats.
On the other hand, I hate its fully pantsuited view of adult males. Most adult males in the series - the Ice King, Finn’s father, the Lich, Lemongrab, Jake, King of Ooo, etc. are scheming idiots and always betas. The women though are holy, flawless mary sues. Where as Finn is violent and stupid, Princess Bubblegum is violent and smart and saves the day after Finn bungles things in an adolescent way on numerous occasions.
There are several absentee dads - Finn’s father Martin, Hunson Abadeer, Princess Bubblegum (no father - only a mother), everyone in the Candy Kingdom created by PB is also fatherless.
Not having bothered before to research it and just assuming Pendleton Ward was another case of “your mother married a drunk”, this is what I find when I look now, from Rolling Stone even:
“As a child, Ward never met his father. He was raised by his mother, Bettie, the daughter of a Texas rancher and oilman. She had been a groupie for the Steve Miller Band, sung with Joe Ely and performed in off-Broadway rock musicals before making a living as a visual artist. She encouraged Ward’s creativity, and by the time he was in first grade, he was making flip books from his mom’s Post-it-notes.”
Thus the white knighting. So his mother couldn’t be bothered to find a decent father, or prevent him from becoming obese even as a child, but you know she encouraged his creativity, and really she’s a princesses that deserves saving and not starvation and so forth.
In conclusion, I hate Adventure Time for stealing from the apocalypse genre and pantsuiting it.