Hello and welcome to Multiversity’s coverage on the new Hulu animated show from Marvel studios called Hit Monkey. It’s a bit of an obscure character to get its own series, but it’s got a story and a badass action sequence that hooked me from the moment I hit play.
1. Visual Style
The show’s visual style isn’t your typical 2D animation, but it isn’t 3D like a Pixar movie. It’s more of a combination of both. For anyone familiar with the Paper Mario video games, it’s very reminiscent of that, with the character being able to add depth when turning around or in the small instances we get in this episode of being chased by other characters. Floyd County Productions is the company behind the animation, and for those unfamiliar with their work, it includes Archer<./i>, Chozen, and animated sequences for It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and The League. Hit-Monkey is filled with explicit language, sexual themes, and plenty of gratuitous violence, so it definitely fits the bill for this company. Take off the Marvel tag, and it would fit into any streaming service’s adult animation category.
2. Who Is Bryce?
The main protagonist of the show, other than the Monkey, is the hit-man known as Bryce. Not knowing anything about the comic this show is based on gives me an open mind to see the goofy, sarcastic, and borderline-evil character as a guy I can relate to and follow. Jason Sudekis gets to kick off his nice guy shoes from Ted Lasso and cut loose playing a heavy drinking, gun-toting, crazy killer for hire.
With intro episodes of a show, the layers to a character are tough to get to, and it mainly presents the face value: the audience doesn’t get to know too much, if anything, about his past. In this case, Sudekis gives us a character that loves what he does but is fully aware that he is in a business that he would much rather not be a part of. There’s a strong line that gives the audience that clue by saying “Don’t pick one [a gun] up in anger, and you’ll never put it down.” That line, combined with him picking up a picture of a family, presumably his own, lets us believe he’s talking about himself.
3. The Poltician
Now, this first episode takes place in Japan because Bryce got a contract to take out a politician on the ballot who is riling up the people with talks about the elite, taxing the rich, and overall creating problems for the people who don’t want change. While the assassination itself is a brief scene, it also introduces the audience to a couple of characters that will show up in the rest of the season.
There is the campaign manager Shinji, played by George Takei, and his niece Akiko, the politician’s speechwriter, played by Olivia Munn. In passing, Shinji mentions that he has been friends with the politician for 30 years, and so it gives a more profound pain to the character when his friend is killed. This scene is more of the catalyst for the show rather than to provide some more details on these characters but perhaps a bit of right place during the wrong time for what Shinji will do with his political aspirations.
4. Revenge Is The Name of the Game
The considerable force behind both Bryce and the Monkey is revenge. Bryce is double-crossed by the men who hired him to kill the politician and ends up dead. The monkey, who was skeptical about his tribe helping Bryce ended up slaughtered by those same men. Bryce’s spirit will help guide the monkey along his journey for revenge for his people, while it seems like the spirit cannot move on until he can find the closure needed to let him into the next plane of life. The title says it all: Hit Monkey . It appears to be a TV version of Shoot ‘Em Up with a monkey in the lead role. Hopefully, it can be a well-balanced show with the mix of the other character arcs and motivations.
5. Where’s That Fourth Wall?
In the show’s final moments, Bryce’s spirit is next to the Monkey and says, “Told ya this was going to get weird.” This line has that Deadpool breaking the fourth wall vibe to it. The monkey can’t talk to humans, so Bryce’s spirit will continue being the comedic relief of the show and say things to the monkey but be talking to the audience. Bryce’s role has shifted from the man in the driver’s seat to the passenger with the road map. The show feels like it has that “Hold on, just go with me for a second” kind of vibe, because even I got a little thrown about how a monkey will take charge and unload weapons with precision targeting. However, in the show’s opening sequence, we see the monkey hunting down a man and killing his entire squad of goons, so he’s going to get practice at some point.
