Facebook – Top 50 FAVORITE Animated Programs: 20

20: Æon Flux (1991-1995/MTV)

So, Æon Flux (yes, I’m leaving the letter like that on purpose because that’s how the show was titled, ok!?!) is this cartoon that was MTV. Its about this super slender chick that is all bendy, the titular chick. She wears this strange-ass garb and is all into aerobics and acrobatics and stuff. Also? She’s probably a spy of some kind. Don’t know, really. Originally airing on MTV’s “Liquid Generation” in short segments, the show featured Aeon in multiple missions to stop this bizarre head of government guy, Trevor Goodchild. Only, in these early segments, she always died. Eventually, the shorts got picked up and a series of half-hour segments were filmed and, while not necessarily interconnected in any fashion, they had greater linearity than before.

The animation of Peter Chung is… an acquired taste. Fans unfamiliar with this show may have seen his segment of Animatrix, for example. Characters are perverted into strange caricatures of human beings, each with long limbs and tall faces. It works, though, and even Aeon’s sex appeal manages to remain constant throughout, despite her grotesqueries. The action was fast, the pushing-R-rating stuff was sleek, and the writing was witty and fun, the whole time. Even if the plots didn’t connect, really, the episodic nature of the series worked in its favor, giving people a character they understood well enough (rebel woman) vs a character they knew well enough (totalitarian ruler) in different situations. What else was even necessary?

A movie staring Charlize Theron was filmed and, while not great by any real stretch of the imagination, it did the series justice by having nothing to do with the show, itself, and by half-explaining how Aeon died so many times, only to return to strike fear into the heart of the Breen soldiers time and time again. While nowhere near as good, it did push forward a rerelease of the cartoons on DVD which I have watched time and again. If for nothing else, the strangeness of this show is permanent and, above all else, appreciated.

Favorite Episode:
“Gravity” – the “season 1” opener – deals with Aeon falling to her death. Again, in the early episodes, she dies all the time, failing her mission. But this one is awesome. It features quirky ass sexual situations, some high-speed action, and a punchline that delivers. Worth the price of the DVDs in my opinion.

Favorite Character: Trevor: “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stranger” – long before The Joker in “The Dark Knight”

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Added February 15, 2017
Kyle’s comment about Trevor isn’t accurate, but I couldn’t find the original picture of Trevor licking a woman’s teeth or eye or whatever. So, there you go.
This is one of the worst entries I produced, from a writing standpoint and though I love this show, to this day, I can’t get behind this write-up. It is hot trash.