Animation is the art of the impossible, though it often settles for the ordinary. Much of adult animation simply translates into drawings what could be shown in live action: humans in human environments. Which is fine. Some great series fit this description, like "King of the Hill" and "Bob's Burgers," for example. Still, there are endless possibilities to explore, so it's good that Adult Swim, the network that once produced a series whose protagonists were a meatball, a milkshake, and a bag of potato chips, continues to innovate aesthetically.
"The Elephant," which premieres Friday on the network and Saturday on HBO Max along with a documentary about its creation, "Behind the Elephant," is an animated version of the exquisite corpse, the old surrealist game in which three artists contribute the head, torso, or legs of a single figure, folding the paper so they can't see what the others have drawn.
Directors: Ian Jones-Quartey, Mike L. Mayfield, Patrick McHale
Writers: Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, Adam Muto
This project features four fabulous animators across three acts: Pendleton Ward (creator of "Adventure Time"), Ian Jones-Quartey ("OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes"), Rebecca Sugar ("Steven Universe"), and Patrick McHale ("Over the Garden Wall"), to create something that not only had never been seen before, but that none of them had seen until the independently produced parts were put together. They are all veterans of "Adventure Time," as are Jack Pendarvis and Kent Osborne, who conceived the idea, acted as "game masters," and share story credit with the animators.
The exquisite corpse was also used in the character design. It invariably produces monsters, albeit funny ones, which explains why the character—let's call her The Character—in Ward's act has a cactus for an arm and a giant pink foot instead of a leg. In Jones-Quartey and Sugar's act, she has robotic arms, fishnet stockings, and a "music button" on her chest (the city comes alive when disco music plays), and in McHale's, a television for a torso.
The Character is considered the same person in each act, and through the changes that occur within each act, identity, death, and reincarnation are the central themes of the series. She is always different, yet always the protagonist. (And seemingly female). Which is not surprising if you've ever seen "Adventure Time," where even every villain is also a protagonist. Ward handles the first act; Jones-Quartey and Sugar, who are married, worked together on the second; and McHale closes the work with Act 3. Ward's section is easily recognizable by its style, a mix of the unsettling and the spontaneous, present in both "Adventure Time" and the psychedelic "Midnight Gospel."
Sugar and Jones-Quartey opt for a New Wave aesthetic, very different from their usual styles, and McHale experiments with various approaches until his character, who arrives hoping to escape this cycle of endless reincarnations and cease to exist, settles for a time in a realistically depicted snowy city—New York, I would say—conversing with a lonely inventor. McHale also introduces, for a few seconds, the elephant that gives the work its title, in a timely reference to the parable of the blind men who imagined the animal as a different beast depending on the part they touched.
Each animator (or team) integrates their perspective into the work—and the very nature of the work—in their narrative. Ward's character, who is born on screen, wonders, "What am I? I'm not sure." In the second section, Sugar and Jones-Quartey's narrator character says, "I could feel my existence stretching in both directions, into the nothingness before everything began and into the nothingness after everything ends. And if everything has a beginning and an end, then this was just the middle."
By handling the moving conclusion, McHale brings coherence to the whole; given the fragmented process and the shifts between and within each section, it is surprisingly cohesive and purposeful. But metamorphosis is the essence of animation. If "The Elephant," described by the network as "a creative experience," had premiered before its release, it would undoubtedly have joined four other animated series—three from Adult Swim—on my list of favorites for 2025. It deserves a second viewing, and you'll want to watch "Behind the Elephant" to learn more. You might even want to watch that twice as well.
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