Last month we told you about an animator who made a super awesome Doctor Who Saturday Morning Cartoon intro. That animator’s name is Stephen Byrne, an artist who clearly loves all things geeky and misses the glory days of the great weekend cartoon series. He’s back now with an opening to a show he’s calling The Animated Adventures of Buffy.
This minute-long sequence is enough to reawaken our vampire-slaying bloodlust as it depicts a lot of action as well as a lot of excellent in-jokes for fans of this series and the other Whedonverse shows. For instance, eye-patched Xander is playing with both an Iron Man toy and a replica of Serenity. In one shot while everyone’s running, we see puppet Angel from that weird episode of Angel, and later in the montage we get a glimpse of both ghost Anya AND ghost Tara. Still sad about both of those deaths, by the way. And can we just talk about how, in any medium, an episode that would have depicted Buffy and Willow fighting laser-shooting robots on top of a moving train is a thing that simply must being in existence somewhere.
This makes us yet again long for what might have been with the aborted Buffy cartoon that was being developed in 2008 by Joss Whedon and Jeph Loeb. Personally, I think I’d dig Byrne’s version a bit more than the other, but that’s neither here nor there. At the very least, it’s one more minute of Buffy badassery to slightly fill our hearts, now eleven years since the series went off the air and ten since Angel.
You can find more of Byrne’s work on his Facebook page. Maybe he’ll do an animated opening for The X-Files or Battlestar Galactica next?!?
And, for a fun comparison, here’s that 2008 test footage.
GHOST TARA!
Why can’t this be real either of them. Kickstart exist use it mr. Wheadon.
Now I want a Buffy Animated series all over again…thanks for ripping open old wounds. 😉
BTW: You missed pointing out the scene with them on the dragon, which is likely Cordelia (Not Cordy, just a male dragon named Cordelia. Long story) from the Angel comics.
I would totally watch this.
Someday, Joss Whedon will come to his senses and realize that the world wants, nay, NEEDS a Buffy movie. He has the resources, and pretty much all the actors and actresses would come back in a heartbeat.
On a similar theme, have you seen the excellent “Saturday Morning Watchmen”? It’s full of subtle and hilariously inappropriate references (like Rorschach petting some German Shepherds), and perfectly captures the essence of ’80s animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
I never though of this before but i now suddenly want nothing else.
Dawn waist-deep in shrimp is the best part of this, clearly. Makes me miss Anya even more.
It looks more like they are taking it from the comic, which is just fine to me! Love it, love Buffy. Thanks for that!
I would probably watch either version because, well, BUFFY… but the 2008 animated series looks like it would’ve been especially awesome! Side note, did anyone else catch the big bad they were discussing in the 2008 test footage? Because I got a little geeky thrill when Giles started talking about the “Followers of Morgana,” considering that Giles is voiced by Anthony Head, who also plays King Uther Pendragon and father to the witch Morgana on the Merlin TV series! 🙂
http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Morgala
The 2008 test footage looks way better !
Okay, the animated series would have been cool!