The Adventures of The American Rabbit
| “ | "Well, after seeing this all the way through I can certainly understand how a kid who loved this film in the late 80's would grow up to make a webcomic featuring a cross between pikachu and sonic that goes nowhere. | ” |
| YouTube commenter satinsguard, upon watching this film. | ||
The Adventures of The American Rabbit is an insipid 1986 animated film directed by Fred Wolf (of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame) about Robert Rabbit, a bunny who is transformed into a superhero to defend his friends, family and land from pollution and the Mafia; all whilst parading around in quite possibly the most retarded costume in superhero history: a rabbit painted in the stars and stripes and wearing roller skates (even though he can fly).
The Adventures of The American Rabbit actually set the standards for Chris's perception of many things, including himself, America, storytelling, race (something that will become quickly apparent to any viewer of the film in question), honesty and respect for oneself and others (which, as in the movie, are given much talk for no reason whatsoever). His claims for being truthful, honest, and decent are almost certainly informed by the shallow cartoon's glossing over of the issues in a ham-handed, incomplete, moralizing fashion. Even the famous cover for Sonichu #0 is plagiarized partially, in an eerie subconscious fashion from a scene early in the film where the little rabbit goes out from his home village, encouraged by his father.
Robert Rabbit is also Chris's role model in life, on the level of Sonic the Hedgehog. In Chris's Wikipedia entry, he stated "they REALLY SHOULD HAVE MADE A TV SERIES of him."
Along with Filmation's Ghostbusters, The Adventures of The American Rabbit is another example that Chris's childhood was fed by obscure cartoons that no one's ever heard of. That or his parents regularly raided bargain bins for videos to keep young Christopher amused.
Influence
The Adventures of The American Rabbit may have had a tremendous influence on Chris's narrative style, as the film has numerous plot holes, a generic, mostly tacked-on moral message, moments that make you go "Wait, what?" (e.g. when the antagonist weasels take over the world by kidnapping two moose who are somehow responsible for the entire chocolate supply), and the use of anthropomorphic animals as heroes. In other words, key ingredients of your typical Sonichu comic.
What's truly startling, however, is how much of it seems to have influenced Chris outside the Sonichu comics.
A character in the movie has a speech at the rally against the evil gang in the movie that starts out - literally - the same way that CWC's Second Message does, with the Panda character leading off by saying that "they all should know him by now." Chris continues to view anything he does as automatically good, whilst anything anyone who does anything he doesn't like as automatically bad. This very simple mentality doesn't seem to be directly tied to this movie until you look closer at it: The Jackals can get away with tormenting and destroying as they see fit, just like several things that Chris has compared the same way. If you look closer, constant analogies between the horrible cartoon and Chris's almost-equally-horrible life become woefully apparent.
This includes Chris's tendency to play into conspiracy theories. In the Adventures of the American Rabbit, all problems stem from the same small group of antagonists, in much the same way that Chris views all his various stressors as part of a massive conspiracy to ruin his life. In many ways, The Adventures of the American Rabbit thusly provides one of the most compelling and disturbing looks into Chris-Chan's world-view outside his body of work. Such was the import the young Chris assigned this testament to mediocrity that it became the centerpiece of not only how he writes and even influenced how he talks, but formed a big part of how Chris views the world itself.
Possible influences on the Sonichu comic
Anchuent Powers/Legacy
In the story, Rob Rabbit is visited at birth by a wizened old rabbit, who keeps tabs on him throughout his life until his latent powers are revealed when he saves his family. He then appears in a wizard's robe and tells Robert that he has inherited the Legacy of the American Rabbit. This is very similar to Chris's Anchuent Prophecy, where he is the chosen one who gets superpowers, for no particular reason.
Shallow love interests
As soon as Rob meets the pink Bunny O'Hare, it becomes very obvious that the two are attracted to each other. Granted, unlike the Sonichu comic, American Rabbit actually remembers that it's supposed to be for kids so there's never anything more than a peck on the cheek, but this could easily have set the standard for Chris's idea of love at first sight.
Worthless side characters that all look alike
To be fair, he could have just as easily gotten this from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, but it's just as apparent in The Adventures of The American Rabbit as well. The band Rob travels with is called the White Brothers Band, a group made out of five white rabbits that literally look and sound alike. They get mentioned by name once, which could mean that Chris at least treats the Chaotic Combo a bit better than them.
Worthless side characters in general
Supposedly, besides attempting to make money to rebuild a bar, the characters traveling with Rob believe that they have a "duty to fight against evil," but out of all of them, only Ping, the Garfield-voiced Gorilla, actually does anything against the Jackal antagonists. In fact, he's probably more effective than Rob is, American Rabbit or not. This is mirrored in Sonichu, where everyone besides Magi-Chan is completely expendable, unless they are just waiting off to the side to dramatically leap in to save their friends, a la Darkbind Sonichu.
Worthless Law Enforcement
Rob's world has no meaningful law enforcement and the Jackals are free to terrorize, destroy, and threaten the global economy of Rob's world as they see fit. The Jackals' ability to get away with what they do in the cartoon indicates that, American Rabbit aside, there is no organized police or military force of any kind. This is analogous to the dystopian CWCVille, where Chris-Chan Sonichu and his Electric Hedgehog Pokemon are the only thing standing between the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens and the terrified citizenry of the ailing dictatorship, rather like things are for the bulk of Sonichu before CWCVille was revealed to be under martial law.
You know what, all the protagonists are worthless
With all his superpowers, Rob punches out all of two of the Jackals during the whole movie. Every other time he uses his powers is to save himself and his dipshit friends from another trap the Jackals have sprung on them. At one point, Rob is reduced to a blubbering mess, and has to be given a pep talk by the same wizard who was watching over him as a child before he can finally save the day once and for all. This worthlessness can be seen in both Sonichu AND Chris, especially during the earlier comics where Chris was always getting saved by Sailor Megtune.
A villain in a staff
Or at least, a villain ON a staff. The main antagonist of the movie, Vultor, is portrayed as a man entirely concealed in a gangster suit and hat, with a staff that doubles as a perch for his pet vulture. It's later revealed that the gangster suit and hat were filled with nothing but air, and that the vulture IS Vultor, and has been controlling the suit in a way that is never addressed by the movie. While Count Graduon isn't controlling Mary Lee Walsh, he certainly calls the shots.
Plot holes and loose ends
In fact, lots of things aren't addressed by the movie. The whole reason Rob and his band start to travel America is to raise money to rebuild a bar, but all the venues they plan to play at get destroyed, they lose their car, and even their instruments. At the very end of the movie they can't even afford to rent new ones, but this point is never addressed since the fact that Vultor has been defeated automatically means it's a happy ending. Not to mention the utterly retarded "chocolate moose" plot (basically, the villains take over the entire chocolate industry by stealing two chocolate-producing moose that are apparently the source of all the world's chocolate). Since The Adventures of The American Rabbit is just a single hour and a half movie made for children, it at least has an excuse, whereas Chris will either forget about plot points in Sonichu until he's reminded in the Mailbag, or have the story in his head all along and expect everyone else to magically understand it, and get angry when they inevitably don't.
See also
- Bugs Bunny
- Robbie Sonee, possibly named after the film's incompetent "hero".