It makes me laugh when something GOOD (and I mean good in the nebulous way, more or less pertaining to my own biased tastes) gets slammed all over the internet because of perceived controversy built over the term “WOKE” being thrown around like crazy. In any case, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, has to be one of the most (initially) overlooked shows I have ever seen in my life. It started out being heavily downvoted and lambasted to hell for its casting decisions, and when the show originally started at the beginning of February being thrown under the bus for how it portrayed Fan favorite characters and changed out their races or genders.
Funny enough, I went into the show getting ready to dislike it myself, but my dislike was more a result of heavy nostalgia for the 90’s show coupled with my annoyance of “teen” Spiderman being the norm for most Spiderman shows since Spectacular finished its run back in 2009(I feel like the world is ready for an adult Spiderman show! I mean look at the comics or the Insomniac games! It’s time!!! >:( ). Anywho, I was pleasantly surprised about this show. In fact, most people I’ve watched the show with or talked about it with seem to like it. All this to say that it definitely didn’t deserve all the hate it got before it released or even after it released. Its a solid show, and while it isn’t my favorite Spiderman show or even my favorite iteration of the character, it does do some interesting things narratively to tell some very compelling stories and takes its time(sometimes to its detriment but maybe also to its benefits considering how hooked I am to keep watching it) to build up its characters and its stories towards their inevitable conclusions.
First, let me talk about this show’s Look. I love it!
I know some people don’t like it and think it looks too choppy with the way the art style looks when things animate it, but I’ll be honest. I love the art style! Living in a post-post-post….post modern world where the predominating art style is either anime or anime adjacent. It’s not to see an art style that stands out from the pack and stands on its own. Adopting this cool 60’s style art meant to imitate the Steve Ditko art style of the original Spiderman comics, the art style really stands out in a unique way not only as an animated show but as a homage to Spiderman itself. Add that art style to the very cheesy opening theme for the show(which is literally a hip hop remix of the original 60s theme)and it sells itself so well as a fun romp through Spiderman. I love the intro as well BTW. It’s cheesy in the weird way that only kids who grew up in the 90s or early 00s will really understand fitting nicely alongside other cringe songs like the One Piece Rap, The intro to Beyblade or other shows of the time. Except no…this song is actually pretty good. The full song is full of little references to all type of spiderman media and I love listening to it by itself in the car. HELL, I sometimes even bump at the gym cuz it just gets you excited.
Next, I want to talk about the story of the show are what we have so far. The main story of this season is essentially 4 storylines that of which all intermingle with each other nicely. The first one is Peter being Spiderman and having Norman as a mentor. It’s kind of a crazy idea when you think about it, and I like all of the parallels it draws to the MCU series where Peter’s mentor is Iron man. You can see the gears turning where Norman is going to become evil, but the relationship between him and Peter is nice to see.
This is a good show yall! 🙂