Rabbids Invasion

Well! This is probably the worst title card I've ever made!

The Raving Rabbids. What else is there to say? You’re free to enjoy them, you’re free to despise them. Personally? I like them. They’re… I’m not sure how to explain it… A study on stupidity. They’re idiots, all of them. The rare few smart Rabbids would still be dumber than any American animated sitcom dad of your choice. Their utter lack of comprehension of human society leads them to screw up even the most basic of tasks, in completely unexpected and unpredictable ways. It takes a lot of creativity to ditch all logic and imagine how these creatures with failing knowledge of our customs, lacking in the IQ department, would approach each new discovery.

At least they're not the Minions.

Multiple games, a TV show, gag-per-page French comic books… the Rabbids have outgrown the Rayman series and took control of anything they could get their mitten-like hands on. A multi-media franchise. There's the games, of course, and I spent an entire month back in 2015 discussing no less than 4 Rabbid titles and the various mini-games they contain. And spoiler alert, two more Rabbid games will be reviewed this month. There’s a lot more to say about this franchise than you’d think.

I posted a quickie review of the French comic books here; at first, I was planning to add it to this review, but it would have made for a very long article. Go and look it up here.

Well, I can throw away my atlas now. It's become useless.

We can now start talking about the actual TV show, Rabbids Invasion. It was created by Ubisoft Motion Pictures and co-produced by Nickelodeon and Ubisoft Entertainment. Of note, while the Rabbids of the games are voiced by Yoann Perrier, those of Invasion are voiced by Damien Laquet, who does a mighty fine job in the art of lagomorph gibberish.

The intro sequence sets the tone: Hordes of Rabbids running around, dragging ropes, stringing up entire continents… zoom back and Planet Earth’s lands have been cut up and reshaped to form a giant Raving Rabbid. Well that’s a novel way of “taking over the world”…

No! Not the Statue of Liberty! I am fairly certain it doesn't
like getting tied up like this! ...Or maybe it does?

As for the series itself, you might think there isn’t much to say. You'd be mistaken. There is, indeed, more to be said about this silly little TV show about unintelligible alien bunnies than it seems at first glance.

Let’s not forget that the Rabbids are basically aliens. If we follow the plot of the first games, they appeared someday in Rayman’s world, kidnapped him and put him through a bunch of mini-games. Then they moved to a world "closer to reality" (Air quotes). As in, a world of shopping malls, humans, television and whatnot. Rayman went back to his home world, while the Rabbids stayed in the new world. And so we got Rabbids Go Home, which set the tone for the later games of the franchise – and for this show.

"This phone tastes bad, but not as bad as that Switch
cartridge I licked the other day."

What do aliens do? Kidnap humans to probe them? I think they’ve learned everything they could learn that way. Observe and experiment on humans? Now that’s more like it! Creepy when done by regular aliens, but let’s apply that to our cacophonic bunnies. They observe humans doing various things, like speaking on their smartphones, buying stuff in the supermarket, robbing homes (it all depends on what’s going on when they show up)… And so the Rabbids take note and experiment, by mimicking (poorly) what they just saw. They don’t comprehend the physics, logistics and reasons behind what they’ve just witnessed, so they try to copy it with their limited intellect. With comical results. Sometimes, there’s no human: The Rabbids just find a new object, obsess over it, and try to figure out how it works.

Yep. They think flip-flops are phones.

These two want a balloon. The kid won't hand it over.
I know I wouldn't.

The show seems to take place a few years after the Rabbids’ arrival on Earth. They’re loud, annoying, mimicking critters who wreak havoc, alone or in groups, wherever they go. And yet the humans just shrug and move on with their lives. That is, unless the bunnies are specifically targeting humans with their antics. It’s like some sort of apathy going on. “Oh look, one of them ugly bunnies got himself stuck in the candy machine. Oh well, I’m just gonna get my chocolate bar and go.” It’s as though the humans have given up on trying to chase away these hordes of annoying beasts, instead just accepting that they aren’t going away. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Mind you, when the humans become targets of the Rabbids' silly plans, they aren’t just going to shrug it off (though it varies whether the human resists or gives up against them).

The only humans who seem to constantly bear an interest in the invaders is a duo of researchers, John and Gina. They grab bunnies from a nearby junkyard, bring them to their lab, and put them through various experiments. Usually in an attempt to figure out the limits of Rabbid intelligence… which they reach pretty quickly.

I'm with Gina on that one. This looks like the kind of job in which
you end up face-palming a lot.

They'll need a LOT of experimentation to
figure out how to make a vinyl player work.
Once they've figured it out, that's when the fun starts.

Most episodes featuring humans just have them tending to their business of the day. When the Rabbids show up, they’ll become interested in what the human is doing, and they may try to replicate it themselves. It’s not the only type of story in these episodes. Here’s the usual ones:

A) Rabbids try to mimic human behavior;

B) Rabbids discover a new item and go through trial-and-error to figure out how to use it;

C) Rabbids have a set goal in mind, whether they want an item or wish to go somewhere;

D) One Rabbid is being belittled and mocked by the others, and tries to become friends with them;

E) Or the experiment episodes featuring John, Gina, and the bunnies they’ve got in their test chamber.

I have to give this show credit, the stories are simple. But then again, the episodes are seven minutes long, with three of them for a half-hour with commercials. As a result, the show quickly presents the setting, the characters, and the motive, and then fills the remaining time with slapstick and jokes, and a nifty little conclusion. While it frequently causes the episodes to lack depth, it fils the quota in jokes. Some episodes are deeper than expected, and carry pretty interesting messages. 

Look for the episode "Rabbid Test N98005-c: The Blue Rabbid".
Best episode of the entire show, I swear.

The Granny: Poor eyesight and curlers.
Stereotypes!

A side-effect of following an entire species as “main character” instead of a single, defined “main character” is how the focus is always on the Rabbids. “Well duh”, you’re probably thinking. Once again, let me bring the topic back to humans: Outside of fulfilling their role in the current episode, humans don’t do much. They’re rarely given a full-fledged personality, mostly because they’re meant to be replaceable. There’s the day worker, the granny and grandpa, the bratty child, the smart ones, the employees... All of whom are there to set the plot in motion or respond to the insanity brought by the lagomorph demons. (I might run out of figures of speech for the Rabbids sooner than I thought.) Once in a while, there’s an episode with some focus on humans, as a B-plot of sorts.

This is a full TV show, which means animating hours of CGI, so corners had to be cut. I understand that. Were we to get a CGI show based on, say, Zootopia (first example that pops in my mind, no particular reason), it wouldn’t be as impressive as the movie when it comes to image quality and detail. The same applies here. Don’t expect the highest caliber of 3D art in Rabbids Invasion. Setting? Pick one among a few. The fast food restaurant in the desert, the shopping mall, the beach, the junkyard, the test lab, the sidewalk, whatever. The Rabbids, that’s easy, they’re all basically the same (with a few exceptions).

This screenshot is from a Season 3 episode, and only the one
on the bottom right is a new model. The other three have
been seen with different haircuts, skin tones, clothes,
reshaped and remolded to fit any situation, endlessly.

Humans? That’s a bit more complicated. Uh oh... we need multiple character models and variants! (If this was a video, you can imagine a scare chord playing here.) Cutting corners extends to the human population of the show. The first two seasons feature a very small amount of different human characters in appearance. There’s only one human kid, he’s fat and he has poofy hair. The grandmother is always the exact same model. There are other humans who don’t really have anything to differentiate them, since they’re just there to fill the required role for the episode’s plot. Why should we need more than 6 or 7 character models? Take this one, change his skin color and slap a handlebar mustache on his face, there you go, new character. That woman? A new tank top and a dye will suffice. That’s if they even bother changing the character models ever so slightly, as most of the time the animators don’t. They introduce new human models in season 2, thankfully.

While on the topic of characters, there’s a few recurring humans and Rabbids, so you will often see familiar faces coming back for an episode.

-John and Gina the scientists, who put Rabbids through various tasks, apparently so that they can find one smart enough to send on the moon – however, they are constantly flabbergasted by the stupidity of their test subjects. They have a lab next to the junkyard that serves as home for a colony of Rabbids, and another one in the Arctic for some reason. They’re the most developed human characters on the show. Their episodes tend to be really funny, and sometimes reveal a lot about our invasive protagonists;

-Timothy, the fat kid with poofy hair. I would never say such a thing about a real human child, but this is a fictional character, so I’ll be direct: Timothy is a bratty, annoying little shit, and usually deserves his comeuppance from the Rabbids whenever he gets it;

Rabbids will be amazed at every magic trick, ever.

-Alice, a young girl in Season 2 onwards who treats the Rabbids noticeably better than everyone else, and as a result they seem to appreciate her more;

-As for the Rabbids themselves, there’s Barranco. This is the Raving Rabbid from the first few games who had one blue eye and one red eye, and served as their army’s “general” of sorts. While the bunnies can be major jerks to each other, they’ll usually help a brother out if needed. Barranco is a full-on jerk. It usually blows up back in his face by the end of the episode;

That beard IS pretty adorable.

-Lapinibernatus, a Rabbid from prehistoric times (yes, really) who is much smarter than his degenerate descendants, and probably smarter than most humans too (yes, really), unfrozen from a block of ice in Season 1. He’s quickly annoyed by the sheer idiocy of modern-day Rabbids, and uses his intelligence to make a machine to travel through time and space out of a clothes dryer (yes, really). He appears twice in Season 1, and becomes a recurring character in Season 3.

The more I watch this episode, the more I think the Blue
Rabbids are a reference to customization options in the
game, and how the uncreative folks just paint their Rabbid
a single plain color.

Oh, and obviously the Rabbids themselves count, though they’re an entire species so each of them can show distinct personality traits, usually what’s needed to pull the plot of the episode forward. Some are dumber than rocks, others are a little smarter, some are devious, and others are cunning (well, as much as a stupid alien bunny can be), but they all share a few traits: They’re mischievous, they like stupid things, they adore mimicking what they see around them, and they love music and dancing. Oh yeah, the Rabbids are surprisingly knowledgeable when it comes to dancing. One episode shows them doing a dance battle involving Maori haka, waltz, Bollywood steps, and even Riverdance.

Because everyone knows that: Dancing doesn't require brains, it's about emotion... and groove!

Toilet humor has always been a staple of the franchise, from the protagonists’ love for pink toilet paper and reactions to fart noises, and it’s still a part of the series, though it’s downplayed. I mean, it’s still there, but it’s not a main focus. Slapstick is far more common.

Who needs a giant pile when you have a ramp?
And no viable vehicle to send upwards to the Moon?

Each season is mostly comprised of episodes with standalone plots, and yet later seasons introduce elements of the newer games in the franchise. There was no shortage of references to Rabbids Go Home so far, but Season 2 introduced a recurring arc in which the Rabbids become enamored with the moon and devise various plans to get to it. They think it’s their home world! Multiple episodes feature the junkyard, in which the mischievous lagomorphs have set up a tall ramp to try and fly to the Moon. And they’re surrounded by junk, which gives them plenty of ideas to achieve their goal. (Which they won’t.)

If your time-traveling clothes dryer gets destroyed by
your idiotic descendants, what do you do? Easy. Make
a new time-traveling machine out of an old TV!

Season 3 brings back Lapinibernatus and his machine, which can travel through time or around the world. It’s a reference to Raving Rabbids: Travel In Time, released for the Wii and Nintendo 3DS. It’s commonly used to travel quickly from place to place, though the season sees the bunnies going to other eras as well. A promising setup, and yet the show seems to have only three new locations: A suburb, the Arctic and the Prehistoric years. This season seemed to try and give more characterization to the human characters, which is a step in the right direction! However, this was the last season of the show.

"Find That Prop!" Most of the time, it's not even hidden.

There isn’t much else to say about Rabbids invasion, really; this covers all. I should probably mention that another game came out in the franchise, called “Rabbids Invasion: The Interactive TV Show”. It’s exactly what it says on the box: This game is a collection of episodes from Rabbids Invasion, with some interactive elements from time to time. It makes use of the Kinect’s motion detection. I watched some gampley videos, and... it’s rather underwhelming.

Taken from this video.
Also, I should add that various mini-games overuse
sund effects while the episode is going on.
Especially the fart sound. Because that's always
pleasant.

At times, you’re asked to look for an item on the screen, and you get points when you indicate that you see it. Sometimes, the episode comes to a screeching halt to make you play a mini-game related to what’s going on with the bunnies. Presented by the grandma, these mini-games go on for a few seconds. And if you disliked the grandmother’s voice in the show, well, sorry; you’re going to hear it a lot. She’ll explain what you’re supposed to do: wave your elbows like a chicken, jump or run in place, scream at the screen, so on and so forth – nothing extremely creative. A few special episodes feature a racing mechanic in which you’re encouraged to run in place at certain points. This feels bland and useless. Oh, and you cannot skip the tutorials held by the grandmother, nor can you skip her scream of “Is everybody standing up?”, which she says at the end of each tutorial. And she’ll keep asking over and over, forcing everyone in front of the screen to stand up before moving on. Can’t have inactive viewers, oh no! It’s the video game equivalent of the Teletubbies or Dora the Explorer asking a preschooler to “participate” to the action, by yelling or pointing to something on the screen. Except, in this case, you HAVE to do it. Interactive TV? Interactive annoyance, yeah! You collect points to unlock new episodes and items to use as props and Rabbid disguises for a photography mode, and that’s about it. If you have to choose between watching the show and playing the game… watch the show.

I mean, it’s not high art, in fact it’s not the best thing ever, but it’s perfectly serviceable entertainment. Watch an episode, and you’ll get a few laughs. To give this show credit, it succeeds in being funny. While researching this show and looking for episodes online, I watched episodes I hadn’t seen before, and found myself genuinely laughing at times. Slapstick is difficult to describe as it’s all about timing, but this show does it right.

One of the very first episodes is about Rabbids mimicking
a break-in robber, and their antics end up causing various
things to the peple upstairs... a fake medium trying to scam
three guests into giving him plenty of money.

It’s not trying to revolutionize anything, it’s just trying to entertain. It doesn’t aim to be the best TV show of all time, and it’s definitely not the worst thing ever. The CGI animation is decent. It’s a bit of an issue that the humans aren’t given enough characterization, and that there aren’t enough human character models, but I understand this was necessary for a TV show. There’s some gross comedy, but it’s sparse and there’s more focus on other types of humor, slapstick in particular, which is fine. The writing is better than you’d expect it to be, with the plots usually focusing the Rabbids’ bone-headedness and stupidity in trying to understand and copy human behavior. There are many clever moments as well, outside of the comedy. Oh, and don’t bother with the game.

In another episode, the Rabbids try to figure out how to
make a photo booth work. It's strange, but they do eventually
figure out how to work most of the things they find.
It just takes a LOOOOT of trial and error.

There: All my points, summed up in two paragraphs. Now, this is where I’d normally announce a new list for the best episodes of the show, but I haven’t seen every episode. Thankfully, I don’t need to watch every episode. And I don’t need to make a Top 12 of episodes when those are only 7 minutes long and can be described in a few short sentences. I will make a new post to suggest a bunch of interesting episodes, but I won’t dedicate a full post to that. At the same time, this lets me explain what I meant when I said some episodes had surprising depth to them. Here's the list, by the way: Read it, have fun.

And so, this closes my review of Rabbids Invasion. Join me next Friday as I review… Rabbids Rumble, for the Nintendo 3DS!