You ever wish you could inflict the pain you feel onto the world?
Do you mean you want to project your inability to control the unpredictable brutality of nature, by answering the violence perpetuated on your psyche by externalizing violence onto others around you?
Me too. All the time. But, there’s help!
Trust me on this one. It will fuck you up and do you an injury, but maybe exactly the way you need right now.
It’s a musical, here’s the
trailer - the voice talent are top notch, and the songs manage to rock. Possibly because of all the Emmy and Tony award winners in the cast, including a lot of folks who’ve done musicals on Broadway apparently (although finding those links is
demasiado trabajo). And believe me, the story is all very silly and happy
MURDER, and filled with delightful music and singing and
UNQUANTIFIABLE CORPSES.
All seriousness aside, this thing is like someone put a bunch of refuges and traumatized children from realistic WWII movies, a full ml of lysergic acid diethylamide (Lucy), and the entire run of Teletubbies into a blender and set it to MAXIMUM BLOOD.
WARNING: MAXIMUM SPOILERS
Seriously, one of the nicest songs in the entire run is when the “you didn’t know they were the heroine of the show” sings to the “you didn’t know he was the villain of the show” as she murders him in cold blood and the Nowhere King … well … let’s be honest: bleeds out, freeing everyone who he’d trapped.
Hush now
Time to move on evermore
To open your very last door
I’ll be here to help turn the key
When you leave
I will at last have peace
And our world will finally be free
…
When I see the light leaving your eyes
It’s such a lovely DIE NOW FUCKER lullaby.
Don’t get me wrong - it can be an incredibly long watch. You’re going to see some of the absolutely weirdest shit you’ve ever seen animated, and then it’ll be over and you’re going to be going back to individual episodes to try to figure out why they resonate so hard with something inside yourself you can’t even name. Oh! Maybe it’s your
existential fear? (season 2 episode 3: My Tummy, Your Hurts)
For me, it was a little like a group therapy session. Some of the people in the room with you are obviously out of their minds and maybe shouldn’t even be there. Others are so angry all the time they don’t seem to even be able to see themselves. But then … without really expecting it, something clicks in you and you don’t have to go there any more.
Or, you only go back for the one thing that you know is what you’re needing.
That episode is Season 1, Episode 8 (Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!).
PPS: I think the way the show works is that it is so busy being distractingly silly and buoyant and casually non sequitur that you don’t notice the way it pulls the doors in your soul open and then smashes through the cobwebs letting all your monsters into the light of day so they, and you, can finally be free.
Try it. Maybe Centaur World might be the angry incomprehensibly skull-crushing existential nightmare that you need?