Okay, so it's safe to say you're all very familiar with JAZZA's PALADIN animated series here on Newgrounds. He's had pretty high scores on his more recent ones, and everyone seems to love them. But I don't, and I would like to explain that.

STORYLINE
So, the story of this cartoon is something like a hero on a quest to vanquish a tyrannous bad guy, who I guess is a demon or something. Now, that's about as generic as you can get with a fantasy story, but I'm not against being basic and simple. What causes problems is when that story is filled with things we've all seen before, like a having to fight a priest who has become a monster. It's supposed to be ironic, I guess. And having villains use children to apparently make it all the worse. How could anyone do this to a child? He's a villain, of course. And then the series' anticlimactic death scene and subsequent happiness cumshot on the world. If I were an ancient evil, I think I would know what holy weapons could kill me.

That little rant kind of took from my next point of interest...

CLICHES
The storyline, as I spoiled just above, is riddled with bad cliches I never needed to see a second time. Here are just a few from the latest episodes (because it would hurt to watch the older ones again):

- Wings bursting from a character's back. I hate this one so bad. You have no idea how many times I've seen flash animations that are going really well, and then someone has wings burst from their back. They're usually glowing, too. Thanks, Macromedia, for adding that fucking glow filter. I should probably blame Japan, however. They usually start this sort of thing.

- Deus Ex Machina. Most people probably don't know they've done this one. A lot of people don't even know what it is. Let me break it down: a deus ex machina is something where the plot or events are so fucked up and shit has hit the fan so hardcore that something, usually a device, is introduced at that moment to solve everything and fix the problems. Basically, this is used when the hero can't actually complete the task, but the story still needs to end on a happy note. Okay, so the sword was present from the beginning, but the sudden revelation of its potential power qualifies it to be in this category. I also think that the life restoring to the lend immediately and the instant casting of rainbows across the skies (literally) suggest a divine intervention.

- Villains who are evil because they are villains. Nobody ever does anything about this one. I see it in movies and game all the time, and yet it's the most aggravating. "Why is he doing these evil things?" "Because he's evil, duh!" It's like a bad argument. Occasionally people will say, "Oh, he's greedy and desires to take over the world" which is both dumb and cliche. Leave World-Conquering to the '80s cartoons based on toy lines. Don't use it as a true character trait. There aren't enough antagonists that are bad solely because they are on the opposite side of the coin from the hero. No one dares to suggest that the hero could be the wrong one. He's the hero; of course he's right. This cartoon promotes the idea that villains can be bad just because they're villains.

- Dark, red skies. Whenever evil takes over, the skies become red. What's the deal? Pick another color every once in a while.

There are plenty more cliches, but I should move on...

DIALOGUE
Unless I'm an idiot and this had intentionally bad dialogue, then JAZZA needs someone else to write this stuff. Sure, he got the point across, but it doesn't need to be so hammy. The Star Wars Saga had this problem too. I don't understand how this can happen. If it's being written for kids, that's okay. The Spider-Man movies were pretty silly, but it's okay because it's a comic book movie where this silly, pulpy talk is not only acceptable, but helps to get you in the feel of it. With PALADIN, it just threw me back again to the shitty cartoons I grew up on. Only this cartoon had ridiculous violence, which would suggest that he did not make it for my 7-year-old brother. We're smarter than we're given credit (well... this is Newgrounds...), and we don't need to be told what just happened and why it happened that way. We just saw it happen, we don't need it explained to us. We'll figure it out.

ART
Okay, this section very few people will agree with me on. So what? Fuck them. Nobody agrees with my distaste either, judging by the 4.45 the most recent one had. Anyway, there were some things that really bugged me about the way he drew his characters in most of the early episodes, and all but about half of the newest one. One, everyone's eyes are in their foreheads. Anybody who has taken an art class has one the upside-down egg, line down the middle, line through the middle, line three-fourths own, and line just below that. They teach us this for a reason. From the top of the head to the eyes, and from the eyes to the chin are about the same distance. Don't confuse your hairline for the top of your head. I'm, tired of people forgetting about the brain up there. This problem was reduced fairly decently about mid-mark in the final episode, but I sent him an e-mail about it just after watching episode 3, to which he replied to me that it was called "artistic style" or something, despite the fact that even Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse follow this rule.
The sides of people's heads still bothered me well throughout the series. Their jaw seemed to reach to the back of their necks, and their ears just sat wherever they wanted. Had JAZZA tried to follow those simple art rules, the series would have looked much better.

Uhh... I don't really have much more to complain about, or at least not that can be organized. Overall, I think that it felt too much like a bad '80s cartoon that had too much violence, or a parody of one, but just barely missing the mark. It loses itself between being too gory for kids and too dumb for adults. It seems to find an audience with idiots who don't really pick up on the errors of things and who give it too much credit. Still, the fact that I'm reviewing it more like a true series and less like a flash cartoon shows that it is still one of the more complete series on Newgrounds, which is a fair accomplishment. JAZZA obviously put a lot of time into it, which is a shame, considering all the faults that could have been easily written out in the beginning.