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Daria the Complete Animated Series
When
you see high school through the eyes of an American teenager who has
mastered the art of sarcasm and dead-pan facial expressions, you can
only expect episodes of bizarre hilarity and whacky characters that make
teen-angst an experience you want to have again and again.
Daria – The Complete Series is a character-driven animation series that
will befriend those who appreciate pessimism as a form of humour, a way
of life, and a shield against the moronically insane. From her first day
of school to her later grips with adulthood, Daria is filled with
laugh-out-loud moments and witty one-liners that are balanced with the
more serious ideas of family bonding, friendship and simply getting
along with people who just aren’t your kettle of fish.
With her best friend, Jane Lane, and a couple of crushes on inconvenient
boys, Daria gets through her teens with a TV show titled ‘Sick Sad
World’ and a no-tolerance attitude for superficiality and idiocy. As an
outsider at school and the voice of cynicism at home, Daria’s experience
of adolescence is a test of survival as she finds herself wedged between
the anxiety-ridden antics of her father, Jake, the overbearing,
over-worked presence of her mother, Helen, and the fashion-club
popularity of her sister, Quinn, at school. Daria’s conflicts and
triumphs at home and in the corridors of Lawndale High then show
different sides of her personality that go hand-in-hand with growing up
and becoming the decent human being she wants to be deep-down. So while
it’s not in Daria’s best interests to care, the journey of high school
and the dramas that manage to reel her in slowly bring out aspects of
her personality that show she has more heart than her pokerface gives
away.
Throughout the seasons of Daria, the consistency of the series’
sarcastic humour and oddball characters surprisingly never gets old as
episodes expand and amp up the tense relationships, history and
distinctive traits of the incomprehensible and outlandish people who
populate Lawndale. In this sense, Daria is economical with its jokes and
cleverly develops its characters without making the series feel too
repetitive or dull. Endowed with distinctive looks, dress, vocal talent
and personalities, the characters of Daria interact and bounce jokes off
each other with a sense of humour that is as unique as their visual
construction. With 90’s rock, pop and a theme song that perfectly
captures Daria’s attitude, Lawndale is complete with a perfect
atmosphere for biting teen critique that is grounded in such a
particular culture and time, and yet, manages to be entertaining years
later.
Despite the fact that the series is based on teen experiences, it
doesn’t necessarily aim to win popularity points off a teen audience.
The series itself is a bit of an outsider, like Daria, in the sense that
it is more likely to gain a cult status, than a mainstream appreciation.
So if you can appreciate pessimism, cynicism and sharp sarcasm in the
midst of insane, moronic and utterly ridiculous characters, Daria may
just become your best friend for seasons at a time. |
