Saturday, June 17, 2006

Review: Teen Girl Squad

Teen Girl Squad is an animated comic from the creators of the Homestar Runner fame, the Chaps Brothers. The series started out as a request from a Strong Bad e-mail from a girl who wanted Strong Bad to make a comic for her friends. The series became more popular with each episode, and then soon got its own page on the homestar runner site.

The "Teen Girl Squad" consists of four girls: "Cheerleader", the most popular one who's out to look "So GOOD!" and get the boys, "So-and-So", whose full of smarts and has an imaginary boyfriend named Brett Bretterson, "What's Her Face", the outcast and the one that usually gets left out of the girls' fun, and "The Ugly One", the most random and eccentric one of the whole group.

The art style is very simplistic to represent doodles. The notebook paper backgrounds, uneven panels, and dialoge balloons makes it look like a comic you'd find a 5th grader drawing in math class. Even with the simple style, each character has their own characteristics. For example, you can simply tell apart between The Ugly One and What's Her Face.

The animation is limited, since it's supposed to represent a comic. People who have never heard of Teen Girl Squad would at first pass this series up because of limited animation, but after watching at least two episodes, they'd most likely become fans of this series.

Most of the humor in this series relies on sight gags and random phrases. It seems everytime you watch an episode, something in the background happens, like clouds eating birds, for example. Random phrases are mainly something said when one of the girls die, like "MSG'D!". This bothers me a bit when things pop out of nowhere and kill them, but every episode ends in a hilarious result.

The music mainly consists of a music loop in the background in each episode. Surprisingly, the music loop never becomes annoying to me, and I even catch myself humming it. The only other music was in Episode 8.

Now, here's where I have to tack down some points: Voice Acting. Too many of the characters sound the same. I could hardly tell the difference between Cheerleader and So-and-So if I was to only litsen to their voice and have to guess which one it was. That aside, the sound quality is very good. There's no background noise, static, or poping noises.

Overall, I enjoy this series alot. I would highly recommend newcomers to Homestar Runner to watch them. This cartoon gets a A- from me, and would be perfect if not for the voices.

THIS REVIEW IS OVER!

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