Have you ever watched Bojack Horseman and imagined what it would be like if the main
character was actually two 30-year-old female birds?
Well, imagine no longer because the show Tuca & Bertie is airing on Netflix on May 3rd!
If you are watching this video before May 3rd, you may be wondering how I am reviewing
this.
For those who haven’t seen any of my reviews before, I got the opportunity to watch the
first season of the show early to give you my thoughts about it!
I am Hailey from Cartoon Universe, and here is my review of Tuca & Bertie!
This show follows the lives of two bird women, Tuca & Bertie, as they try and live their
life as young women in a modern city.
And as you can see, just like in Bojack, there are characters that are basically just humans
with animal heads.
But this time around there are even living plants, and humans are extremely rare to see.
In fact, most characters are birds.
Which I suppose make sense because this takes place in Bird City, after all.
I was quite intrigued by this show when I first heard about it for a few reasons.
First off, from the style alone it is very reminiscent of Bojack Horseman.
Which is no surprise because this show was created by Bojack Horseman’s producer and
art director, Lisa Hanawalt.
And because of that it means that there is a lot of potential for this show to become
quite deep and realistic despite how it looks.
And that brings me to my second point.
There are almost no western animated shows created by women for adult women, meaning
that this show is very special.
I honestly couldn’t think of any, and I have been watching a ton of cartoons over
the past few years.
I have heard Daria counts, but besides that, nobody I knew could think of any others, although
it appears two more are coming to Freeform in the near future and there may be a few
more soon after, so there is hope.
But regardless, from what I could tell this is the first cartoon of its kind in a long
time.
But just because a female creator makes it doesn’t mean I will like it, and I have
always had issues with comedy-based adult cartoons.
Yet I do like Bojack despite how crude it can be.
So, how does Tuca & Bertie fair?
Well, let me just say it’s very much an adult cartoon, with all the staples of what
you’d expect in a comedy that is aimed for an adult audience.
Characters get naked a lot- especially Tuca, and you really just have to accept that the
world that they live in is really weird.
And as I said before, this type of show has always been a tough watch for me.
Adult humor in general is not my cup of tea, but I was very interested in seeing what this
show was about, so I knew I needed to check it out.
Thankfully, I did see a lot of myself in Bertie, which made the show pretty interesting right
from the start.
She is shy, is moving up in her career, and is in a steady relationship.
Well, I can’t relate to all of those things, but she is certainly a character that I could
see myself being friends with, even if she is a bit of a pushover.
A lot of her story focuses on her juggling her full-time job, her new part-time job at
a bakery with an apparently handsome penguin, and maintaining her relationships with her
boyfriend Speckle, and her best friend Tuca.
Tuca on the other hand, is almost the opposite.
She is wild, loud, and impulsive.
There is also the recurring theme of her being unable to accept change, which I understand,
but when she becomes a burden on Bertie it becomes annoying.
The show describes her as being relatable, but I am not sure how much I agree with that.
And I had a lot of trouble liking her, especially when she was by herself and not kept in check
by Bertie.
Her story for this season centers around her love life, finding a job, and confronting
her past.
Speaking of a character’s past, a great thing about a show like this is that the characters
evolve pretty quickly as we learn more about them.
By the end of the season I had a much bigger appreciation for Tuca for all that she has
been through, but her unstructured and risky lifestyle still puts me off from truly liking
her.
Yet, as we should come to expect from this type of show, even the characters that seem
relatively put together make mistakes.
If you are expecting Bertie to be always sweet and pure, you will be quite surprised.
But with these two comes the rest of the cast; a few of which have their personalities centered
around being pretty terrible to women.
That means that you will see characters that exist almost solely to showcase harassment
in the workplace, harassment outside of the workplace, the struggle of being listened
to as a female, body positivity, and a few other hot topics.
And while, yes, all these things are huge issues for women all around the world, many
of these characters were able to be stopped by just calling them out.
I don’t think it is that simple in real life, and in the end all it does is just make
it seem like some of these problems have an easy solution.
This of course could just be the beginning, and things could be expanded on in Season
2.
This will definitely be a huge turn off for some viewers, but even from the marketing
of the show it is clear it will get into stuff like this, so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise.
But one aspect of this show that I enjoyed was just how zany this world could be.
Besides the fact that even the plants have regular human anatomy, I loved seeing all
the different species showcased.
There are so many types of birds and it was really cool to see how many were represented.
Additionally, the world these two live in has crazy things like huge animals that serve
as trains, or dogs owning more animal-looking dogs as pets.
The show also loves to play around with its transitions between scenes, and occasionally
it will utilize other art styles to show what characters are thinking.
All this helps to make the show distinct and I like the fun vibe it goes for most of the
time.
But as I mentioned before, this show can get serious.
And when I say serious, I mean that we learn things about certain characters that completely
change how we think about them.
And that is one of my favorite aspects about this show.
Looks are very deceiving, even if it takes most of the season to get to that point.
But would I watch this show if I wasn’t dedicated to watching almost every Netflix
cartoon?
Probably not- it sexualizes almost everything, sometimes the characters do things that I
find completely illogical, and it can get just plain weird, which makes me hesitant
to watch.
But for others that like something a bit cruder and slice of life, I would recommend it to
you, especially if you are a woman.
I feel like it’s very important to have women’s voices heard, and that means there
should be female showrunners of adult cartoons, even if not all of the shows they make are
to my liking.
I know for a fact that there are so many women that enjoy cartoons *cough* Voltron fandom
*cough*, so the more that companies learn this, the less often we will get disappointed
everything we end up liking was actually made for young boys.
Not that there’s anything wrong with cartoons made for children- far from it because they
avoid many of the pitfalls adult animation has- but I mean to say that there is a big
of enough audience for shows to be made for more than just children and men.
And Tuca & Bertie is an example of this, even if it is still going for the more mainstream
Netflix audience.
I can’t personally say how enjoyable this show will be for men to watch, especially
when many of the characters that are shown being in the wrong are male.
But it’s not completely one sided, and there are some great male characters as well as
terrible female characters.
I would say this show is more something to watch if you don’t really have anything
else on Netflix to binge.
But the show will be out really soon, just a few days after this review is released,
and I am interested in seeing what others are thinking about it.
Let me know in the comments section your thoughts.
And if you enjoyed the video, make sure to give it a like and subscribe so I can continue
to do video reviews!
Also make sure to check out my other Netflix show reviews.
For those that want more stories centered around female characters, feel free to check
out my reviews of She-Ra season 2 and Carmen Sandiego season 1!
I have also reviewed shows like Castelvania and the Dragon Prince, which you can find
in my Review playlist.
Thank you for watching and have an animated day!