Dirtbags is a new animated pilot the online animator Fazzyboi. The concept is very much inspired by old 2000s online animation like Eddsworld, and MTV shows like Clone High, Downtown, and Undergrads. Featuring many direct references and the general art style seems directly inspired.
The show is about the titular dirtbags, Kyle (Rayvhin) and Riley (Tarik Verasso), two brothers who gets bored and decides to go to hell. Kyle is the destructive older brother who is impulsive and uncaring while Riley is a more or less a naïve pushover. The whole show takes place somewhere in the 2000s.
After failing to get his friend to play with him over msn Kyle doesn’t know what to do, Riley tries to come up with other ideas but Kyle shoots them all down. Kyle decides that they should go to hell using a magic ouija board. They get transported to the seedy city of hell and realize that they left the ouija board on earth leaving them without a way to get home.
Fazzyboi is an online animator from Honduras who has been making Eddsworld fan-animations since a couple years back. What shocked the most when looking him up was learning that he apparently is a 15 year old (given that the info on his socials are updated). This makes the show a lot more impressive in my eyes given that there can’t be a lot of practical experience. It’s curious to me that someone who is presumably born 2011 would base a show on 2000s stuff. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, you can certainly enjoy art before your time, I just find it sort of odd.
Dirtbags: Referential or emulation?
When you watch the Dirtbags pilot you are directly bombarded with a bunch of posters from 2000s bands and games, the art style is very much inspired by MTV shows, the characters are doing the Clone High “hands of sincerity”, and so on. I think if all you want is a nostalgia kick then Dirtbags will probably do it for you. It certainly is a blast from the past in many respects.
I feel like there has been a lot of tries at creating the “the misadventures of guy and dude” with stuff like hellbenders, Aron or Kogan, and Eddsworld. Shows and concepts that really isn’t about anything except making jokes. There don’t need to be a problem with that but if you are going in to this expecting an overarching story I think you need to change your mindset. The end of the episode seemingly drops the whole hell storyline. If I’m wrong and the next episode of Dirtbags continues where the pilot left off I’d be very confused.
Comedy is always somewhat subjective but to me it didn’t leave me gasping for air. Many jokes where rather cliché and didn’t speak really speak to me. I can see a younger version of myself laughing at this but as I am now, it’s all a bunch of stuff I’ve seen before and I think the pacing could be a little tighter. You might like it though and I recommend you watch it if you like stuff like old Eddsworld.
I feel like what brings most people in is the art style and although it is pretty roughly animated at times I can sort of look past that given who made it and how it was created. Although the Dirtbags pilot didn’t really “wow” me, I’m really curious and look forward to what Fazzyboi will do next and how that builds and improves on what is already there. If we were grading on a curve this’d be an A but there are still some bumps needing to get buffed out.
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