Run monster run is a new professionally made indie pilot created by Alvaro Calmet and Zeppeline team. The team behind it has previously worked on the long ongoing show Solar Balls. The show swooped in after the TADC finale seemingly to try to pick up the torch, citing TADC directly in shorts as a main inspiration.
The show follows three monster children: The baby kaiju Zappy played by Angel Haven Rey, and the green alien Nebulor and the interdimensional squid Gloom, both played by Nathan Wagner.
They live at the T.E.D.I facility and get tested by the overseers (Jae Shinn). The overseers are militant researchers in hazmat suits looking to find out more about humanities threats by studying the children and killing them if needed. Their boss is the AllSeer (Yong Yea), a mysterious person only shown as a triangle watching through screens.
One day, the main trio find out about the dangers of T.E.D.I by hacking a television and they are forced to flee through the enormous facility.
The show feels like a kid series blended with Glitch productions and SCP and i think most people who like either would enjoy this.
Run Monster Run looks amazing
Run Monster Run over all looks really great all the way from start until the end of the episode. The show makes use of a limited framerate, a technique that the Spider-verse movies popularized, to great effect and as a whole the animation looks well. It’s a massive step up from what little I’ve seen from Solar Balls.
Design wise the main characters of Run Monster Run as well as the “overseers” are all very typically designed. It’s hard to say they look especially unique but its harder to say they look bad. I think they all are semiotically well chosen designs. The show has decided that they would use a 3 kinds of monsters: terrestrial, extra terrestrial, and interdimensional. I think the main cast reflects that well.
It makes perfect sense that Nebulor would be a little green man with a big head and whatever other alien features he posses. The same goes for the other characters as well. Of course a rough terrestrial monster would be a baby kaiju and that a shadowy interdimensional being would be an emo squid. The All-seer, some sort of shadowy governmental figure, is an upside down all seeing eye. It all makes sense and fits the story they want to tell.
The show as a whole has a kid show esthetic and it makes sense that it would portray it’s cast in that vain. If you aren’t into that esthetic then that’s understandable but the people behind the show clearly both know what they want to make and know what they are doing. Generally the show has as a whole received pretty high praises so I doubt that’s a big problem for them, at least for now.
Tightly written
It’s very noticeable that this is more than a first draft. Run Monster Run works with a lot of set up and payoffs within the pilot. as an example, in the beginning of the episode it’s mentioned that the character has to follow 3 rules: not break or remove their shock bracelets, not hurting humans, and not killing humans. While 2 of the rules are quickly broken accidentally by Zappy and Gloom, Nebulor didn’t break any and is generally the most loyal and meek of the bunch. It then feels cathartic when he later get’s to break the most taboo rule of murder near the ending.
In the start we also get to see the characters show of their powers or “quirks” as the show calls them. They are generally being used in low-stakes situations early on but later when they have to flee we get to see them in action yet again in ways that has previously been set up.
Run monster Run is generally just tightly and well written.
There are however some things that I find incredibly annoying in Run Monster Run. A personal grievance of mine are things like how Gloom resorts to self censorial TikTok language like “unnalive”. Outside of the implications of an emo alien using baby language it also serves to lower the tension. “Die” and “unalive” carries different tones and it’s hard to take it serious when people start talking like that.
I also get slightly annoyed at how the characters seem to be playing a little to much into their tropes. Nebulor is the from seeing the pilot the tropey Nerd-character ever and Gloom is a stock emo character. Zappy feels like the one that can have most of a personality but as of now don’t feel like more then a generally dumb kid with anger issues.
Some of these things can land very differently with different audiences and others most may not groan as audibly as I did when they hear Nebulor say “spare parts + time = cool random inventions”.
Who is this for?
When faced with this pilot there is one twist the show wants to deliver on. They want you to believe that this could be a children’s series up until it goes wrong. They go to pretty long lengths early on to make this feel like a show in the same vain as Paw Patrol although there are many gestures towards the darker plot up until they reveal the actual plot.
Although I think this is done well I feel that it generally is a little odd to make your main characters so very child like. The main trio is very kiddy and they play up tropes that you might see in any other kids show. Generally why that is done in children’s media is to give the children a POV character, a perspective they can relate to. Children generally have an easier time relating to other children or childlike characters since they lack the experience of adulthood.
This shouldn’t be a factor in this show. I’d be shocked if I got confirmation that their target audience are actual kids. I think maybe somewhere around 12 and up would be the lowest that they seem to be targeting but generally we are talking ages where small kid characters aren’t necessarily the norm. My general feelings when I started the pilot was trying to parse who the show was meant for. Run Monster Run might as well have been young children’s show when you haven’t seen it thoroughly.
At one point we are introduced to a the overseer 404 who is especially nice to them. I thought he might take the role as the guardian for the trio but instead he at the end decides that he hates them and seemingly gets crushed by rubble. I don’t necessarily think this is bad or anything, it’s hard to parse without knowing where it’s going and what it’s trying to get across.
I don’t think this necessarily is a fatal flaw with Run Monster Run. What I’m afraid of is that the decision cast will potentially be sort of shallow or unrelatable but I can be proven wrong when later episodes come out.
You can watch the pilot here
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