Fuzzy Friends

**Fuzzy Friends** is an American animated children's television series that originally aired on The Kiddie Channel from September 15, 2018 to November 29, 2020, with a total of 3 seasons and 130 episodes over three years. The series was created by Chaister Garrincha and Braddock Schroeder.

The show was often noted for having the main characters designed and animated using traditional Flash animation, while the recurring characters and backgrounds were made using CGI animation.

## Plot

The show followed the Fuzzy Friends, who travelled around the globe to make natural science discoveries. Along their stops, they discovered the importance of local languages, music, food, and other customs. Every episode took place in a location where the gang stopped to learn about and meet people around the world.

## Why This Show Sucks

* It blatantly rip-offs *The Amazing World of Gumball*, in terms of animation and characters.
	+ Apart from the dog protagonist who rips off Gumball, there are also rip-offs of almost every character, such as a pig who's a rip-off of Penny, a bear who's a rip-off of Carmen, a giraffe who rips off both Darwin and Richard, a raccoon who's a rip-off of Nicole, a tiger who's literally Anais, a hippo that rips off Banana Joe and a duck who's a rip-off of Tina.
* Not to mention that many of the main characters are badly written in numerous episodes, and most of them were flanderized horribly in later seasons:
	1. Setrick started out as a sensible and reliable leader whom his friends were able to trust, but currently, he is now an overexcited, clumsy, careless goofball who always messes everything up all the time, either unintentionally, or even on purpose.
	2. Bander went from being friendly, shy, sympathetic, and cowardly into being sarcastic, cynical, intelligent and much smarter than the others.
	3. Tadie went from being a funny but reliable toddler, into a more dumber idiot who equally screws up everything just like Setrick.
	4. Ruby was at her absolute worst in this show, as she was even more bossy and demanding than she is currently.
	5. Galinsky has been reduced into not only a loud and immature party animal, but also a stupid and lazy butt-monkey who barely wants to do something simple.
	6. Brighella is very annoying, rarely ever shutting her mouth, and overly happy in **even the worst situations**. She is also rather sadistic, as she practically *tortures* all of her friends, but never gets punished for her actions, making her a Karma Houdini.

* In season 1, each plot for the episodes were very generic and predictable, to the point where you knew exactly what was going to happen in every episode; it started off with the team at their home being set out on an adventure, then they went with their balloon, the focus character of the episode came with an idea that screwed everything up and the project collapsed, the character responsible for the mistake apologized, and then they did it all over again. Most of the time, it got extremely repetitive and made the episodes feel like the same exact thing.
	+ In later seasons, even if they didn't use the same formula over and over again, it either made the episode have no story whatsoever, made the episode use the infamous three-strike formula that was already repetitive in other shows, as mentioned earlier.
* The show's writing is horrible, and it has a good number of horrible episodes, such as:
	1. In the episode "The Culture Project", we all know that Setrick is usually brave and strong, but he legit *breaks down* when he sees a harmless snake! While this fear is understandable, it's something that shouldn't be shown in the episode due to the show's target audience being very young children.
	2. In the episode "How to Make Profits Without Really Trying", Stellina encourages all of her friends to ***illegally swindle tons of money*** and get away with it!
	3. In the episode "That's Not Going To Do Well For My Reputation!", when the show's creators plan on selling toys of the main characters, the Fuzzy Friends call them a monster despite the fact that they should have known in the first place. **Tadie even points that out!**
	4. In the episode "Let's Go Camping!", when the Fuzzy Friends want to go on a camping trip, they're immediately disqualified for accidentally dumping trash everywhere, even though they should have been smart enough to pick it up in the first place.
	5. In the episode "Sugar, Spice and Something Nice", it is revealed that Ruby has a fear of cupcakes. **Why would anyone be afraid of cupcakes!?**
	6. In the episode "No More Crazy Business", the Fuzzy Friends are mistreated just for one little mistake they made, which isn't even justified!
	7. In the episode "Fuzzy Friends Humanized", the main characters turn into humans for 24 hours, everybody cheers for them, yet they are still happy for what they did.
	8. The episode "Mind Your Decisions" is the biggest offender, where the Fuzzy Friends actually decide to *take a break from travelling*. **This ruins the show's premise entirely!**
* Season 1 looked very cheap and resembled cheap-looking stock animation. Not to mention there were many animation errors, and the audio quality was no better. The voice acting was below average and the lip-syncing was way off.
* The show's attempts at breaking the fourth wall often go wrong, such as Ruby asking the viewers random questions, or Galinsky telling the writers to stop working for no reason.
* The backgrounds look pretty lazy, as they barely look passable at all. They have Chaister Garrincha and Braddock Schroeder's names placed everywhere.
* Many of the Fuzzy Friends' adventures have put them in grave danger, as they have been shown to resort to *outright* *killing themselves*, such as ***literally burning in an erupting volcano***, to sailing off glaciers only to find themselves in a humongous snowstorm. At one point, they were even lured into the ocean which attempted to drown them. But in other episodes, the Fuzzy Friends are simply not aware of the harmful risks involved.
* No subtlety whatsoever.
* Every episode is completely insufferable.
* The show rarely makes any references to the original source material.
* All of the character designs are terrible and lazily-designed, and many parts of their bodies look poorly drawn, as they only consist of stock images and nothing else.
* The rest of the characters are bland and have little to no depth whatsoever.
* In some episodes, there is a random sub-plot about Ruby having a crush on Setrick, but that never gets resolved.
* Mediocre flash animation that tries too hard to copy Gumball's art style, but fails.
* The show looks **way too realistic**, which completely disrespects and ridicules all of the charm and charisma that Gumball has.
* The main typeface used in the show, while decent for the most part, can look rather nasty and sickening at times.
* There are bad morals and life lessons in several episodes.
* The concept of the main characters travelling the world seems very generic.
* The show's books aren't any better. And what's even worse is that there's a 2022 reboot of the show called *Fuzzy Friends Republished*, which is also awful.

## Redeeming Qualities

* The show greatly improves after season 1 with better plots, better animation, more reasonable stories, and most importantly, more refined comedy, awesome and very expressive voice acting, as well as entertaining and fast-paced plots.
* Unlike *Gumball* however, *Fuzzy Friends* only features two animation styles: 2d and 3d, most likely to cut corners and save money.
* As mentioned before, the later seasons were completely unnecessary. However, Kiddie insisted that the show was going to be continued, no matter what.
* Despite looking crude, the titular characters' Flash animation and the CGI backgrounds are decent (depending on your view). Of course, it's not on par with *The Amazing World of Gumball*, but it still looks nice, since the show was animated by Garrincha and Schroeder themselves.
* The character designs, while still lazy, are admittedly cute (as well as the photoshopped main characters).
* The episode "Sugar, Spice and Something Nice" is wonderfully rainbow-themed, as Chaister Garrincha wrote it.
* The show has some tearful and heartwarming moments, particularly later in the series. To quote the creators, a world-travelling experience.
* A bit of the voice acting is passable sometimes.
* There are a few funny moments here and there, mainly because the humor stabilized after the first few episodes.
* It was sometimes better in its early years, as it was a lot cheaper and the show wasn't so full of generic episodes.
* The concept for the show wasn't too bad, as it could have been a way of teaching children about world locations.

## Reception

Despite many critics who praised the writing and creativity, *Fuzzy Friends* has been criticized for its often loud, over-the-top humor and excessive similarities to *The Amazing World of* *Gumball*. It has also received some positive acclaims and since developed somewhat of a cult following, with particular praises for the animation, as well as the various references to world culture.