by Conan Simmons – October 5, 2020 – 6:33 am
After approximately one year since the first half of the season premiered on Adult Swim the latest primordial animated adventure from famed animator Genndy Tartakovsky returns.
The continuing saga of a caveman, Spear, who has lost his family in a dinosaur attack, befriending a tyrannosaur, Fang, who has tragically lost her children in a separate dinosaur attack. The series picks up after a massacre of raging ape-men that have left Fang near death and unable to move.
Spear does everything within his power to protect her from all sorts of scavengers from vultures, jackals, armored insects and a pack of hungry wolves. The story is beautifully told using no dialogue, only visuals and sounds. Like most installments of this series there is no shortage of blood filled fights.
The use of colors, sound and lighting are the strongest points for this show. Bold use of colors make ‘Primal’ a delight for the eyes, even the red blood is effectively gory yet not off-putting compared to what live action may do. The use of sound to emphasize the danger of the world is very well recorded and is of great importance in driving the story in lieu of spoken dialogue. The lighting adds perfect harmony to the colors emphasizing feelings and emotions that Spear and Fang experience along their shared journey.
The animation is great quality and very much in line with Tartakovsky’s previous works, mostly ‘Samurai Jack’. The best moment of animation is with the first appearance of the jackal that slowly begins stalking Spear and the wounded Fang. The movement of the jackal is a bit more fluid than other characters throughout.
The editing is appropriately simpler than ‘Samurai Jack’ lending itself to the primitive atmosphere of the setting.
The series has already won 3 Emmy Awards, for character design (Stephen DeStefano), storyboarding (Genndy Tartakovsky) and art direction (Scott Wills). The first few episodes were even packaged into feature in an attempt to earn an Oscar nomination last year.
Though there is no dialogue, the grunts and screams Spear exudes are provided by voice actor Aaron LaPlante. The music score is by Brian Tyler and Joanne Higginbottom. Tyler often scores the films of James Gunn including ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Slither’ as well as many other notable horror and sci-fi films. Higginbottom is a frequent collaborator with Tyler on several film scores.