As some King of the Hill fans denounced the reboot’s new digital animation style as “stiff,” “cheap” and looking “like ass,” others begged to gottdang differ, likening the show’s cel-animated early seasons to the visual equivalent of arguing with Boomhauer.
With the exception of the show’s title sequence, which was initially created using digital animation, King of the Hill’s first five seasons were all crafted using hand-drawn animation techniques. First venturing into digital ink and paint animation with Season Six’s “Bobby Goes Nuts” — or as Bobby would put it, “That’s my cel! I don’t know you!” — before permanently adopting the medium for Season Eight, several fans invoked the series’ earlier years in defending Arlen’s new crisp look.
“‘The new season looks like shit,’ meanwhile the old seasons…,” one user captioned a seemingly edited, pixelated image of Bobby on the show’s subreddit. “King of the Hill was never known for its animation.”
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Despite quickly going viral on r/KingoftheHill, others disagreed about the show’s early episodes, arguing that when it came to the show’s modernized aesthetic, to paraphrase Hank, those Arlenites still ain’t right.
“It’s not the quality of the drawing, it’s the method of animation,” one user commented, speculating that the reboot will employ techniques known as “puppet rigging” and “tweening.” “It’ll just take some getting used to on a show we’ve all watched and rewatched that (until now) has always used single-frame animation.”
To another fan, King of the Hill’s new look was an inevitable part of the show’s reboot. “I don’t deny that I prefer hand-drawn animation over the modern flash churn. But people are putting WAY too much on this,” they wrote, arguing that the show’s animation style is “not awful” but rather “inferior” to its predecessor. “It was going to happen this way, or it wasn’t going to happen at all.”
Besides, although King of the Hill’s hand animation may be its visual best, we should remember it’s still not perfect. At least this time around, we’re pretty sure Hank won’t be caught cooking with charcoal.
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