In Japan they wait to be certain you're guilty before they actually arrest you, so when you get in trial the outcome is guilty almost 99% of the time so the trial itself is useless basically you're guilty for being on trial and not the reverse
@@jamesnubz Actually the American Justice System is "We don't care if you're innocent, we need to save face and look like we did our job, so you're going to jail/prison regardless."
Reminds me more of Beckett, honestly. They both have this amazing way of capturing skittish energy, while also being really darkly funny and exploring the human condition.
@@jesusshrek1271 They're quotes from Xavier in Season 1 Episode 4, where HE kidnaps these babies and has to find out who kidnaped them. While discovering who the possible suspect could be (himself) he starts rambling on saying the above quotes and a few others like "It seems the portrait has painted the artist" and "it appears the baby killer is about to kill a baby."
@@JoIjloL i know i have watched the episode but like what does choste and hunter ED mean. Is this some kind of *english* joke i am too *foreigner* to understand?
In the Buddhist community, especially in the west, it's not uncommon to find wanna-be "gurus" who act like Xavier, talking total nonsense and totally up their own ass with their 'wisdom'. Just one of the little reasons I love this show so much.
True that. Lot of philosophers talk out of their ass too. This show does satirize that common theme of pseudo intellectualism and how stupid it is even with the fake philosophical jargon and all the butchered english words.
Why not become one of them? They seem to be intensely popular with the 14 year old male and post menopausal female metaphysical seekers, would you not like to be not noticeably unfamous within your cohort?
Hmm. Haven't seen that much among Buddhists I know. Whether at the Japanese pure land, Tibetan, or Thai churches... Most give out teachings for free, and no groupies. Kind of middle aged to old people making a meager humble living. But it has been a big issue in Hindu-India-Yoga circles. That's been going on since before Hare Krishna started 50+ years ago.
10:55 if you saw this bit outside of the episode, you’d assume it was some shit about humans being a disease or something, but no. Xavier goes through a door and enters a world where things are reversed. He watches a car crash in reverse, and then immediately assumes that must mean that hitting someone with a car whilst driving backwards heals them. This show is a wild ride.
This analysis is very good. It sums the whole show up. But I love how this show was so ahead of its time. And even the fact that Snoop Dogg voiced a character makes this show even more mysterious. It are details like that, that makes me love this show even more.
I don't think I've ever heard someone impersonate the accent of "Different voicelines thrown together to form a sentence in a GMod animation" any better than Xavier in some scenes.
I like how you indirectly brought up the main difference between XRA and Rick and Morty, which is that XRA doesn’t tell you what to believe, it only warns of the dangers of believing anything blindly. Take the barcode man (who turns out to be Xavier) vs. Xavier: the barcode man wants to kill everyone who believes in God, but as soon as his own black and white judgement is questioned by Xavier’s philosophical ramblings, he gets impatient and shoots himself, ending the bit. I consider myself religious, but I felt like I could relate to the barcode man even though he has a completely different viewpoint as me, I also tend to get frustrated when I realize that I can’t pass judgment on others when my initial understanding of their beliefs conflict with mine. There’s other times Xavier tackles the concept of God and religion and everything else, and while I felt like I could take something away from it all, I didn’t feel like I was being mocked for believing in God (despite the fact that there’s an episode where they directly reference my church in a kinda negative light) But with Rick and Morty? The clip you showed in this video of Rick telling Summer there’s no God and that belief is a band aid sums up the show (I feel like) in an unfortunate way. Like I watched that episode (as it was the first one) wanting to experience the intelligent humor everyone was talking about, and all I got out of it was that I was going to be scolded for thinking differently than the creators of the show and a pretty funny story of Morty sticking a seed up his own butt. What Rick and Morty implies is that in order to be intelligent, you can’t believe in God, where XRA says that it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are if you don’t know who who you are. I love how the two seasons are about Xavier trying to find the truth about his parents, but because of 1. His own incompetence and 2. His unwillingness to see his own incompetence he “can’t handle the truth,” as the cool kids say, and because of this it doesn’t matter in the end if there’s a God or not (or literally anything for that matter, I’m focusing in religion because other than the spoon feeding of atheism in Rick and Morty I actually really like the show) if we’re not willing to act on that knowledge/belief in a good and positive way Of course I could just be some retired religious peddler who got his fees fees hurt by the pickle rick’s edgy and dark and intelligent humor. Golly I sure wish I had more brain cells to use because then I would fully appreciate the comedic escapades of drunk grandfather and his grandson who’s addicted to porn but like I actually like Rick and Morty like everyone else don’t @ me
In the Rick&morty episode ‘A Rickle in time’ I like to think Rick is only an atheist when his life isn’t in danger but will only fall flat on his face before God if he has utterly no means of escape. In that episode one could argue that God is real in the Rick and Morty universe because it appears he had his prey answered. In a way it this could be a very subtle middle finger to Atheism but I doubt that was the intent.
If you think you're supposed to think rick is always right you missed the point. The character is arrogant and flawed. Most of the conflict in the show stems from that.
The point of rick is that he is an asshole. You look at him and laugh at how smart he thinks he is for shoving his beliefs down everyone's throat. The problem with a certain section of the fan base is they don't see the adventures of a scared teenager and his crazy arrogant grandfather, they see the adventures of a scared teenager and the smartest man in the universe, and they want to be just like him.
@@zaneithdcoutts3073 The direction of the show though for s3 and s4 was pretty much "rick is right" where his literal "I am god" moment of fear and terror in others, even his own kids results in him being given a silly amount of importance and power. And by the show runners own admission Rick is the center of the show and there go so are his beliefs. It's one of the reasons I personally started to hate rick and morty more. At first it was just rick being an arrogant but powerful and free careless twat. Slowly he crawled to his ego and ideas being the end all be all of the show. It's one of the reason s3 was terrible. Because you had Ricks arrogant ultra nhilism looming over every episode while also every character was becoming just...awful and assholes. No one can take much negativity in a show. It's exthausting. EG: beth becomes a sociopath. Jerry who was shown to be willing to become a badass in the apocalypses literally gets called a parasite and acts cowardly and weak. Morty turns from niave optimisitc and moral to a guy willing to zap a guy for hurting his sisters feelings. They steer away from it a little bit in s4 but it still pops up literally in the vat episode where rick acts as the writers going "Oh, no. don't question me, morty. reee. Here's a forced horrible realization shoved in here"
The first time I've heard of XRA was literally yesterday when RU-vid recommended me to watch the Feminism scene when he said "I'll make sexism my bitch!". Thank you quarantine !!! 😂😂😂
My all time favorite quote from the show is when Xavier is attempting to get a soulgasm from a glue-addicted Vietnam veteran’s aura. “I came for nuttin’, and I got nothin’, like I never came...” Absolute gold
The biggest difference between XRA and Rick & Morty is that XRA (aside from its far greater assortment of batshit insane visual imagery) feels like it's talking TO its audience, while Rick & Morty sometimes feels like it's talking AT its audience. I enjoy BOTH shows, but I do feel that XRA is funnier and more intelligent, and while XRA and R&M both make it clear that neither of their main protagonists are good people, XRA actually indulges in openly mocking its own protagonist, and even the Fan Commentaries found on the DVD set point this out. Seriously, the "Fanmentaries" are absolutely worth listening to, as you rarely get to hear audio commentaries by fans. It's also worth noting that XRA never mocks the idea of belief (religious or otherwise) in and of itself, but rather it mocks and points out how people USE their beliefs, how their beliefs are used against them, or how they don't even actually practice what they claim to believe. Rick and Morty, from the three seasons I've actually watched (I have yet to watch Season 4 onward) seems to be more mocking of people having belief in general, although it's worth noting that Rick is the only one who is openly antagonistic towards others' beliefs, and he's shown to be a pretty shitty human being on multiple occasions, but the show never really seems to punish him in any way for pretty much anything he does (except for that episode where he was dumped by that collective hive mind thing that he'd been dating). Now, again, I've only seen seasons 1 through 3, so I don't know if anything has changed in season 4 onward. Also, I think XRA has more clever word play than R&M.
Xavier holds his own beliefs, that's why he challenges others' views rather than directly discredit them. He bring a knife to a gun fight, and turns it into a fist fight, whereas Rick comes unarmed and disbands the fight because "who the hell cares".
I always believed that one good thing to punish Rick would be to introduce another insanely smart dimension traveler character. I mean, it's heavily implied that Rick has all his knowledge from those seeds in the first ever episode. If HE can access them so easily, why can't anyone else?
I think the main difference is RnM uses intelligent sounding speech to hide its stupidity and XRA does the exact opposite, using stupidity to hide its intelligent
I don't know which comments I love more: the "WTF THIS SHOW IS REAL I THOUGHT IT WAS A SHITPOST/MEME????" comments or the "wow I remember when this show traumatized me too!" comments.
i saw the argument scene in a markiplier video, looked it up, and just thought it was some weird animation someone made. similar thing happened when i got into gorillaz, someone posted a video about the orange juice meme and i looked that up, thought it was a funny fan animation, only to find out it was a clip from an official interview involving motion capture animation.
In terms of getting high while watching Xavier, I tried it both ways. Had a friend who I watched it with and for the sake of the endearing study we tested it out by having me get high for some sessions and stay sober for others. I can safely say Xavier is the perfect way to get past the philosophical paranoia stage of getting high. It will bring up the things that usually get you worked up when you're high, and will take a completely over the top comedic outlook on that thing. Letting you get a laugh out of the absurdity of the thing you were so concerned about.
Storytime! When i was 11 i went without sleep for almost 3 days just to see what would happen. After family guy ended the first elisode of XRA came on. After watching it i thought "yeah i gotta get some sleep". I then went to sleep and had only a few images of XRA in my mind. I legit thought i hallucinated it. Years later i was watching "Let me tell you about" on and they had an episode on this and i almost shit myself in surprise.
You couldve dreamt that and your family kept up the charade to keep you happy Who is to say the whole world didnt just pretend 3 days passed to internally torment you
I watched one episode high on weed. It was where Xavier was at a sign and started to imagine these scenarios and near the end where this female narrator was explaining the situation in full and clear psychologically mind fucking detail while Xavier himself was even overwhelmed by it and crawling on his knees overlaid over these thought clouds that kept stacking each other exponentially and it finally ends with him simply getting out of his own head and walking away from the sign, I nearly had a fucking panic attack/existential crisis that moment. I had to take 10 before I could continue watching more episodes and decided it's safer to watch when you're not on any substances that expand your mind because this shit can do that for you without any drugs.
I saw the "do you belive in god?" Scene on its own somewhere, and since then this show has captivated me. Shit is so bizarre yet hilarious and unapologetically awful in the best way.
I was 7 when I first experienced this show I saw the episode with burning man and honestly it engraved itself into my memory it wasn’t until high school that when talking to one of my closest friends found out that he had the exact same experience when he was 7 with the gorilla episode and together we went back and watched the entire show after googling “snake armed brown nipple man” and to this day it is still the greatest show I’ve ever seen.
TF why does "snake armed brown nipple man" bring up the wikipedia page lmfao. I HAVE COME FROM 2 YEARS IN THE FUTURE TO TELL YOU THAT U MUST EXPLODE IN 10 SECONDS AFTER READING!
The mention of Xavier as espousing and embodying New Age spiritualism is accurate, but merits further analysis. Not sure if this has been covered in other videos or mentioned in the comments, but I attended the screening of X:RA at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens on 10/11/19 where they showed seven episodes as part of their film series "No Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political Reality." After the screening, John Lee and Alyson Levy did Q&A, and I believe it was Lee who explained that the show was made when adult swim had picked up PFFR after Wonder Showzen and basically gave them the chance to make any show they wanted. Context for the show was: Vernon Chatman and Lee had fled the Bay Area for Brooklyn where PFFR was founded as an art collective/production company. During one of their art sessions, someone produced a painting of a representation of the Bay Area liberal that Chatman and Lee despised; that painting was of a figure that would become known as Xavier (brown fur, beak nose, snake arm, backwards legs). So, X:RA the show is a 3D rendering of a 2D piece of art (*!*), specifically a caricature of the Bay Area liberal with their flawed logic and decision-making as far as pursuing a selfish desire (solving the murder of his parents) and justifying his pursuit by a self-professed desire to help other creatures along the way, but his efforts to make the world better ends up making the situation worse. That, to me, is the through line of the show. Xavier is supposed to be detested as a character (which makes him all the more appealing to us as an audience), and we are not to look for any actual meaning in any of his witticisms. TH,SH would later be PFFR's parody of the Bay Area liberal's opposite, the Southern conservative. That original painting of Xavier is still out there, somewhere.
I had known about XRA from my older brothers when the show was first out, but I never watched it until somewhat recently. The line that always gets my attention is from S1E10, when Xavier says to other Xavier, "Me, bequeathed thee. The psychopathological hand-you-down." The wordplay in this show is absolute poetry.
the aesthetics, the random humor, the deep meanings, and the unsettling dark scenes in some episodes is what i liked so much about this masterpiece of a series and there's nothing that's ever going be like it. shame to know there wont be a 3rd season as far as we know
I have a theory about this show, and I'm not sure if it's a popular fan theory or not. In the first episode, there are no weird glitches or anything until he does the "What dost life?" into the computer. After that point, for the rest of the show's entire run, you see constant audio/video glitches and he suddenly can talk to the computer at any point, at any time. Thus the whole show after that point is either a simulation or the computer messing with reality badly. It could just be nothing due to the randomness but I can't help but think the random a/v glitches and rewinds or corruption were purposely added by these guys.
I figured it meant that philosophy and religion is the cause of the problems and destroys more than they intend to. Like how he thinks he is a good person. But he isn’t. And with how he can talk to the computer, it’s because he is orchestrating all of it. He just doesn’t realize it. Like for how religious people don’t question what they are actually doing.
I loved this show as a 13 year old without really understanding the nihilistic humor, but the absolute absurdity of every single aspect of the show was more than enough for me to think it was fucking hilarious at the time lol
The best gag from the show is the 16 hour time skip about who’d start the Shakashuri Blowdown because one Xavier said “Ladies First.” It’s just such a well-played joke that I cannot even be mad at it.
Even show's title has layers to it: "Renegade Angel" is the sort of self-important edgelordy moniker you'd expect a guy like Xavier to give himself. But if you think about it, "renegade angel" is also a term that can be used to describe the Devil. It's a fitting label for an individual who claims to offer guidance and salvation but actually just spreads misery and death. Another thing I like about the show is how it depicts the effects of trauma and suffering: so often in fiction you see victims of abuse who have been made wise and noble by their hardship, which can often feel like the story is inadvertently glamorizing the abuse. What we see of Xavier's background is traumatic to the point of being darkly comedic, and we see multiple situations where Xavier is called a "freak" and even attacked before he's actually done anything. But this suffering hasn't made Xavier wise, it's made him into a self-absorbed, out of touch weirdo who can't relate to other people and has no respect for their boundaries, especially when they're women. On a very basic level, XRA rejects the common condescending framing of "oh look at this miserable and noble soul, suffering beautifully so that we may watch and feel bad about it without actually changing anything"; it very aggressively shows us "Oh wow, Xavier's traumas have seriously messed him up, maybe society would be better if we worked harder to prevent people from getting traumatized like this." With regards to Rick and Morty, I think the primary difference is that Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have projected themselves onto Rick so hard that they don't have the courage to really challenge him (even when Rick is undeniably and obviously being a miserable toxic sad sack and the show is willing to acknowledge this, he's still depicted as the Smartest and Coolest Guy who is Always Right), Xavier Renegade Angel is completely unafraid to show us its titular character as a sad sack whose deep personal flaws actively and repeatedly prevent him from achieving any kind of victory. Also Xavier's shock humor is both actually shocking and actually funny, which helps.
It fills me with the warm broth of happiness to see people talking about this show, and to know others appreciate it on the same level as myself. I've had so many people watch episode 1 on my recommendation and then swear they'd never touch it again.
tbh the way that character moves around and the way he just grunts or we say just says one thing to make sentences or a language does seem a lot similar to Chin Chin and pink guy. Maybe he saw this show lol.
The best gag in this show is when that black goop is attacking the city and whoever it runs over turns into a skelleton then it grows big and cover all buildings, trees and even the sun and they all become skelletons.
I seen this bitch when I was young and I repressed my memory, blew it off as a fever dream. Suddenly, about 2 days ago on June 1st 2020, RU-vid recommended a clip from this show and I immediately got war of 1812 flashbacks. Ngl, I got a small chill up my spine. Today, I seen you analysis of it and now I'm willing to give this one a try again.
I believe Xavier has "ugly" art for a reason other than just "being adult animation": It relays the artist's own discomfort with his own body - with being human. If you read Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, the discussions of how to cook children show Swift's discomfort with the grossness of being human: The vileness of viscera and shit. In Xavier, we see that same obsession with the grossness of the human form and human behavior. Themes like racism police violence, the Holocaust, childbirth, are not just there for a laugh: The artist is laying bare the gross, vile nature of society as it actually is. This obsession with the grossness of being human often arises from traumatic childhood experience - seeing a car crash, being molested, that kind of trauma. I have the same body discomfort, so this show really reached me.
I mean being literally any biological animal is disgusting. Your a giant mass of pulsating cells and spiralling DNA. Deeper than that a load of electronic energy clashing against itself, crushing itself and exploding, heating up and cooling down. It's pretty fucked. Being human is a curse because although aware of your own existence and pretty smart, your forced to take on a shape which is so easily damaged, destroyed or corrupted. Your power is limited because of it. The body needs constant fuel. It needs to wash itself out because of all the waste it produces. Possibly a miracle of creation but a vessel of torture nonetheless. But hey pain builds character.
This a perfectly executed review. I don't think anyone can describe this show better. Good work! Like the show, I'm suprised this video hasn't got more viewers.
That last watching suggestion is probably the way to go. I've rewatched XRA sober, drunk, and high alone and with friends and it was always an amazing show, but if you're watching it blasted with friends it makes it 5X funnier
This is by far the best take on this show i've seen so far. I've always held this show dear to my heart because of it's unrelenting surrealism. I'm someone who buys into a lot of spiritual principles and the show also serves as a reminder of what can happen if i don't also attach myself to rationality within my personal belief structure. I've always seen this show as a work of art which may be pretentious but your explanation makes me feel like you may feel similarly. Great content! You earned a sub here :3
I...just discovered this show and it's weird. It doesn't really mock anyone's beliefs and simply let's viewers know that others think differently and that's OK. It's deep, weird and just meant to be a fun ride. Would saying that God doesn't or does exist be fair? Would it just be a shallow victory, only benefitting those who think that way? Winning isn't everything. It's not about winning. It's about fun. Enjoy the ride!
SpongeBob always did gross-out stuff, I wouldn't say the toenail scene was that different, it's only significance is probably that a phobia-like fear of nail injury is relatively common
The difference is in the duration for one thing, the worst of the Gross-out era SpongeBob episodes tended to linger on unpleasant shots or concepts. Whereas the Stills from episodes such as "Just One Bite" or "Jellyfish Hunter" are brief. Another important factor is empathy, even when SpongeBob's front half is ripped off in "Squid on Strike," it's less disturbing than the scene from "House Fancy" because there's no impression of pain or discomfort, and it's reset quickly, another important factor in Cartoon Slapstick.
@@Square1production you've got a good point there with the "no reaction" thing. If a person sees something endure some kind of injury, but it doesn't react, the person wont care nearly as much. Screaming, anger, and tears from another humanoid causes your empathy to kick into overdrive a lot of the time, so the second a cartoon pulls that, the immersion is broken and now it's just physically painful to watch. Why anyone thought seeing Squidward writhe in pain would be funny to kids is beyond me.
@@buhbo3250 This is, amusingly, what happens with little kids. If a toddler falls onto the ground and its mother/father comes at it running "OMG ARE YOU OK DID YOU GET HURT", the baby will go "oh shit I'm in danger" and cry, which ends up teaching it that any fall is 'very dangerous' and it must cry.
It was just so gratuitous and realistic and disgusting. Never cared for those moments in Spongebob. Gratuitous, drawn out, realistic, disgusting. The couch repeatedly getting dropped on Squidward's foot with a "BONK" and him chastizing Spongebob would've been waaaay more paletable. Trying to make it so realistic and visceral just felt meanspirited and disgusting.
As someone who used to watch late night Adult Swim shows religiously as a kid, you are doing god's work my man. This show is now one of my favorite things ever and as a kid I wasn't able to understand much of it, but with how weird and unpredictable it was I still was entertained by it. It hasn't crossed my mind much in over a decade but this video got me back into watching it again and it was very rewarding to come back to it with a fully developed brain and finally be able to really appreciate it for what it was. Great video you honestly deserve more subs, and thank you for reminding me and many others of this rare gem.
I'm so glad I stumbled across this video. Fucking loved this show. It seems to have really slipped under the radar and gone unappreciated for the most part. I too distinctly remember the exact moment I first saw this show. I had just smoked some weed and was laying in bed scrolling through channels and stumbled across the episode where the crazy homeless guys aura comes out and Xavier has "a spirit-gasm, in her chasm". Holy fuck I almost pissed myself.
I have no idea why or how this was recommended to me, but I am so glad that it was. I never got into Xavier, even though I heard of it (it looked very, very weird and I thought my time could be spent better), but this gave me the extra push to go on and watch it. Can't wait to watch through more of your videos!
The first time I saw this show was age 16 with a couple of high school friends. We decided to take LSD at one of the friends moms show houses (she's a realtor) and stay the night there experimenting. We'd planned the night so that at the peak of the trip, they'd introduce me to the show. I'll never forget that night. I've never laughed so hard and been so captivated by a show since. Truly a life changing experience
*looks into the distance as an eagle screams* Are we not all giving a lecture to no audience, even when we talk to ourselves? *somewhere, a gong rings*
@@off_Planet JP is a pretentious pseudo-intellectual, he's also a sexist justifying himself with esoteric fanfiction (which is absolutely hilarious if you think about it).
I think Xavier is a little bit deeper then people would care to admit. It's just that people want to be hit over the head with utility. If it's not useful then it's not interesting so it has to be funny for people to digest it. I'll just chalk this up to different strokes for different folks
I was 14 when Xavier was on tv, and it was my favourite back then and still holds up today! So many crazy shows back then we were lucky! Not a load of people I chat to here in England watched adult swim in 07, (it played on bravo in the evenings here) hell I even watched space ghost coast to coast as a kid when it would play at night on Cartoon Network :) Anyone else from the U.K. watched adult swim back then?
Good review, but I don't think you quite captured the kind of circular logic Xavier's humour runs on. It does a good job bringing up a concept, intermingling it with some other concept, running it off a tangent in a completely insane direction and then connecting it back to its original starting point with some silly quip or a clever observation. This structure works both in its small-scale dialogue writing and in its large-scale episode themes, and I think it is a core aspect of what draws me to the show: the ability to put _some_ amount of structure into utter insanity without coming off as grating or trying too hard. Xavier makes this shit look easy.
So many animation jokes. For example, the reason his legs bend backwards is because of inverse kinematics (or IK for short). Basically, the position/rotation of a child bone determines the position/rotation of every other bone in the hierarchy. The knee uses a point, or a target, in a 3d space to determine which way is forwards. That is how IK legs work, and are very convenient for animation. Xavier's knees are pointed backwards because the knee targets are behind him. The animators were probably messing around and kept it because it fits Xavier's off-kilter personality.
The people who made this show also made Wonder Showzen, I would love to see your analysis on it. Wonder Showzen is hilarious and tackles intense themes often
