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The Amazing World of Gumball: The Party
Elmore Junior High

Some of Gumball's classmates include Banana Joe - a jokester banana, Carrie - an emo ghost, and Hector - a sasquatch giant.

Direct from Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe comes the third DVD release from The Amazing World of Gumball entitled The Party.  As one of the trio of cartoons in the animation renaissance on Cartoon Network (alongside Adventure Time and Regular Show), Gumball has a striking visual style all its own and a crazy array of loveable characters to boot.

The Amazing World of Gumball revolves around, who else, Gumball - a 12 year old blue cat attending Elmore Junior High.  Gumball is very mischievous and scheming, but also finds himself in some rather uncomfortable situations (sort of a cartoon Larry David).  His best-friend and adopted brother is Darwin, an orange goldfish.  An extremely loyal individual, Darwin is usually found stuck like glue to Gumball.  Anais, their pink rabbit of a younger sister, is a child prodigy and incredibly intelligent.  Often times, Anais is the most level-headed member of the family.  Mother Nicole (also a blue cat) is a workaholic whose fuse is as short as her amount of free time.  Richard, a large pink rabbit, is the stay-at-home dad that can commonly be found in front of the television ingesting junk food.  Together, they make up the Watterson family - perhaps the most dysfunctional clan in all of Elmore.

The Party contains the final dozen episodes from the first season of The Amazing World of Gumball that had yet to be released.  Readers who haven't checked out the show will probably be perplexed by the animation style at first glance.  Animated characters are shown in front of real-world backgrounds.  This really sets a surreal tone that has come to define Gumball.  Outside of the Watterson family, other characters appear in different animation styles that vary from characters made out of notebook paper to another character actually being an upside down human mouth.  This oddball, mish-mash of characters results in a truly diverse cartoon where anything is possible.  I'd be remiss if failed to mention the spectacular music on Gumball that almost sounds reminiscent of the catchy and quirky music from some of the levels of the Little Big Planet video game franchise.  Highlights on this collection include “The Party” where Gumball struggles to find a date and “The Kiss” where viewers get to meet Grandma JoJo.

As is typically the case, instead of studios releasing entire seasons of cartoons at once they decide to put out a massive amount of smaller DVD releases to rake in even more money.  This is the last DVD containing season one episodes, so I’d expect a Blu-Ray down the line much like Adventure Time and Regular Show.  The lone special feature is a small character gallery with pictures and short bios of a handful of Gumball’s classmates.  It’s really not even worth advertising.  The Amazing World of Gumball is a fantastic cartoon, but unless you are a diehard fan I suggest waiting for the eventual Blu-Ray release of the entire season with (hopefully) a greater amount of special features.

Cody Endres
Review by Cody Endres
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