Exploding Kittens – From Card Game to Netflix Latest Animated Series | Review
At first glance, the existence of Exploding Kittens is an eyebrow-raiser. The series is based on the massively successful card game of the same name, whose Kickstarter in 2015 remains one of the platform’s most heavily-funded campaigns and single-handedly built the foundation for what is now a table top empire. Designed by Elan Lee and Shane Small and featuring crudely-drawn illustrations from Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal, the game has players drawing from a deck of cards in the hopes of avoiding a deadly “exploding kitten,” all while sabotaging their friends in hopes they’ll take the blow. It’s a silly yet addictive game, but without a semblance of plot or characters (minus the zany creatures populating the cards), one has to ask: what does an Exploding Kittens series even look like?
The answer? Not much like the game, as it turns out. The series begins with, of all things, God (voiced by Tom Ellis, ironically best-known for portraying the devil on Lucifer), whose slacker mentality has left the world lazy, violent, self-absorbed. Hard to imagine such a timeline, this critic said with a beleaguered sigh. In an attempt to rehabilitate him, a board of heavenly officials banishes God to Earth in the body of a bearded, overweight tabby cat – our first and arguably only direct connection to the source material – until he can successfully answer a human’s prayer. The human in question is Abbie Higgins (Suzy Nakamura), an abrasive mother who believes her family is growing apart. God, now deemed Godcat, must put aside his arrogance to help bring them together, however things get complicated when his arch nemesis, Beelzebub (Sasheer Zamata), is similarly sent to Earth in order to literally make his life a living hell.
Exploding Kittens Season 1 (L to R) Mark Proksch as Marv, Tom Ellis as Godcat, Ally Maki as Greta, Suzy Nakamura as Abbie and Kenny Yates as Travis in Exploding Kittens Season 1. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
On its face, this narrative framework feels a bit cobbled together, like if Good Omens were produced by Adult Swim except it needed to be about cats. It reeks of yet another desperate ploy to fuel a streaming service’s content mill, in this case the Netflix welcome page, with content that has just enough brand awareness, in this case a popular card game, to meet a bottom line. However, as it gets underway, it becomes clear that Exploding Kittens has little interest in pandering to the already limited built-in audience. In fact, it can be argued that the nine-episode series, created and developed by Inman and television producer Shane Kosakowski, isn’t even a direct adaptation of the original game; there are no “exploding kittens,” ironically enough. It instead feels like a spiritual expansion, channelling its morbid sense of humour and gross-out art style without ever feeling like a product of it. The series gets to tell its own original story and, by extension, carve out its own space in the ever-increasing landscape of adult animation.
Each episode sees the characters finding ways to more fully integrate themselves into each other’s lives, from Abbie and her husband, Marv (Mark Proksch), working to rekindle their marriage, to daughter Greta (Ally Maki) and helping her brother, Travis (Kenny Yates), overcome an online troll who won’t let him forget a viral video clip of him messing up a performance of the hokey pokey at a school talent show. Most notable is the enemies-to-frenemies narrative between Godcat and Devilcat, which takes a number of surprising turns across just one season. Though the drama is all fairly on-the-nose, it serves as a solid antidote to our polarized times, which the series directly reflects. Amidst all of its hilarious one-liners poking fun at everyone from Uber to Elon Musk to online streamers is a series that believes we all can stay connected even against forces that strive to keep us apart – including our own personal demons, pardon the pun.
Exploding Kittens Season 1 (L to R) Tom Ellis as Godcat and Sasheer Zamata as Devilcat in Exploding Kittens Season 1. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
For fans of adult animation, Exploding Kittens’ hand-drawn 2D art style fits right at home with other popular Netflix staples like BoJack Horseman and Big Mouth, though its thick line work and minimalist shading veers closer to classic Cartoon Network programs like Regular Show or Chowder. It’s no surprise Brian Sheesley, an animator who cut his teeth on those very shows, serves as co-executive producer and directly advised Inman on how to adapt his unique style to a more heavily-scaled yet modestly-budgeted series. He and the entire animation team at Ontario studio Jam Filled Entertainment have done quality work, even if it loses some of the finer detail from the original game cards. From moments of body mutilation to others of apocalyptic destruction, the show’s animation never fails to capture Inman’s imagination and satisfy the juvenile hilarity of the assignment.
Though by no means a masterwork, Exploding Kittens may represent a best-case scenario as our industry attempts to fully cash-in on toys and games as IP. We want our favourite story worlds to come to life before our eyes, however we don’t want them to feel beheld to the source material when little of it comes from a narrative place. That said, we also don’t want to lose what made us love them in the first place. Inman and Kosakowski have found a solid middle ground here, running wild with their own unique idea that goes far beyond the original game yet checking off just enough boxes so that it still feels like an Exploding Kittens experience. Though day one fans likely won’t be revisiting the series as much as the game it’s based on, the series makes for an entertaining season of television that has just enough of its own merit to rise above the pandering, hollow exercise many would have assumed it to be.
The entire first season of Exploding Kittens is now available exclusively on Netflix.