SNAPSHOT
Oddballs follows James, a bubble-shaped boy, whose observations on life fuel his comedic rants at everyday annoyances and elevates them to laughably absurd heights. Along with his best friends Max (a talking crocodile) and Echo (a girl who claims to be from the future), James’ ridiculous schemes to question norms often result in disaster.Oddballs follows James, a bubble-shaped boy, whose observations on life fuel his comedic rants at everyday annoyances and elevates them to laughably absurd heights. Along with his best friends Max (a talking crocodile) and Echo (a girl who claims to be from the future), James’ ridiculous schemes to question norms often result in disaster. (synopsis courtesy The Futon Critic)
While it’s true we have only the briefest of teaser trailers on which to get the measure of the upcoming animated joy that Oddballs looks sure to be, it’s enough for you to feel like this is a show you want to watch, and that these are characters with whom you want to spend your precious, limited streaming time.
Helping in our confidence that this something wholly worth adding to your watch list – which if it’s anything like mine is big enough and long enough to ensure you will need catch up to everything on the list – is that Oddballs comes from the sure and extremely funny hands of YouTube animation darling James Rallison (his channel, the TheOdd1sOut, has 17.8 million subscribers who surely cannot cannot be wrong) who along with creative partner Ethan Banville, has come up with something that looks wacky and fun bit also emotionally meaningful.
Brought to Netflix in partnership with Atomic Cartoons, Oddballs comes with the funnest of launch videos too from Rallison who voices James and who has so much fun teasing what lies ahead that you get a clear sense the series itself is going to be one joyously long comedic riot.
Borne from COVID lockdown – “All the writing, storyboarding, designing, and voice acting has been done with little to no human interaction,” he explained. “I still have yet to work in an office. I just wanna lean against a water cooler and say things like, ‘Hey you see the game last night?’ Is that too much to ask?” (Cartoon Brew) – Oddballs looks like just the show to watch if we want to be reminded how good animation can be, why best buds matter and why a skewed view on the world can perhaps be the best thing going for us.
Oddballs releases on Netflix later in 2022.