Meet the first Amazon animated adult cartoon

Last year, Amazon Prime studio launched its first animated adult cartoon –`Undone` created by using the rotoscope animation technique.

A profound narrative about the life of Alma – a 28-year-old girl who withstands emotional and mental peculiarities. All with difficulty which is then forced to make a choice and review her life.  A fantastic season of a real-life story. Made in an unreal style.

This is not as simple as might seem at first glance.

All the characters are portrayed by famous actors. Alma Winograd-Diaz plays Rosa Salazar, well known for her role in Alita: Battle Angel and a cameo appearance in American Horror Story;

Constance Marie plays Camila Diaz; the ghost father Jacob Winograd, Bob Odenkirk from Breaking Bad; Siddharth Dhananjay in the role of Sam, Alma`s boyfriend; Angelique Cabral appears as Becca Winograd-Diaz; and many other actors you may recognize by their habits and gestures.

Apparently, the crew in ‘Undone” was as epochal as the cast:

Director Hisko Hulsing, the Dutch animator, creator of two winning short-stories `Junkyard` and`Seventeen`. Two co-workers, Raphael Matthew Bob-Waksberg ( BoJack Horseman) and Kate Purdy (Cougar Town, BoJack Horseman) met this story’s overall expectations.

To drive away, give up and live as if nothing had happened

So, what is in the plot – merging, rejecting, regretting, hanging over and, finally, becoming exhausted with life. All illusions are merged with reality, and both time substance compete in the unconscious. Causing the inner power impulses our main character has felt.

Eight episodes each 25 minutes long seemed to be food for thought without being bland, but quite a deep rethinking of what we sometimes experience, driving it away, giving up on it and trying to live as if nothing had happened.

From her early childhood, Alma lived with deafness, so she probably took in much more through other sensations.

One day, she had an accident with which all the interesting plot developments began. Her father’s ghost, a scientist, an experimenter, started coming to her with attempts to open her subconscious and hidden gifts.

The interweaving of the child’s history, beginning when she was a small girl, exposed to the world, with no barriers to friendship, loving and enjoying life. She fell into a society where she needed to get tougher, installing a cochlear implant to study in a regular school. Closing herself in a shell and in the end, becoming Alma, who didn`t find love.

Both concepts, reality, and illusion, make us think about the fact that absolutely everyone in our past life has moments that might be changed. Trying to renew the past in the mind and hundreds of times create different solutions, speeches, actions, and so on.

If only we could return in time, act in another way and not pay such a high price for our mistakes.

How often do we have regrets?

On the other side of reality are the lines of Alma`s sister, Becky, and her uncertain marriage to Rich Reed. As a kind of social compensation for her lack of wellness, Alma`s boyfriend Sam and the mother of the girls, as members of a church who are trying to find answers and become useful to their family in their own way.

Each hero, passing through his or her own transformation, concludes that there is nothing more important than the truth, and no matter how hard we try to survive our mistakes, either with the right lessons or not, anyway the time loop will tighten more until we grasp a simple truth – acceptance.

That was what Alma says twice: a feeling that she was `stuck in a time circle`, and that what the law of life is – we would stumble upon the same stones, without changing our behavior in certain situations. But how could it be changed when the details are always difficult to see, moreover we have no super abilities to travel in time?

Accepting is the answer. Accepting reality as it is. However, Alma has been fighting that.

Animation as the best way to tell this story

A sudden disaster or an unexpected event sometimes helps to clean out the `mind- spam` and start life from scratch. What happened to the main character – an accident and a coma, memory loss, the ability to see events from a new perspective, sometimes by observing them, in a state of partial amnesia, rather than actively participating.

Exemptions from duties, gaining freedom to recognize your inner talents, hearing the genes of ancestors and identifying yourself as unique.

In general, it’s not a very simple series, but colorful or fantastic and, perhaps, the animation is the best way to tell this story. There is a whole galaxy to build, existing and non-existent storylines.

The second season will be released in the autumn of 2020. So there’s a lot of time to think over the philosophical idea of ​​the first and the possible concepts of the second season because the final is still open.

P.S. Wait, have you ever asked yourself what in your life could be your `Undone’?

Photos: Screenshots from Undone animated series

Support us!

All your donations will be used to pay the magazine’s journalists and to support the ongoing costs of maintaining the site.