The Mask

If you grew up watching TV in the 90s, you surely remember the image of that flamboyant yellow suit and those absurdly white teeth gleaming on the screen. Released in 1995 riding the wave of the resounding success of the 1994 film starring Jim Carrey, The Mask: The Animated Series expanded that universe in a completely insane and chaotic way, becoming an absolute classic of Brazilian mornings. The cartoon had 3 seasons (with 54 episodes in total) and achieved something rare: maintaining the frenetic and elastic pace of the film, functioning as a huge homage to the classic and exaggerated animation style of the 40s and 50s (with bulging eyes, jaws dropping to the floor, and hearts bursting out of chests). One detail that many people only discover later is that the original Dark Horse Comics stories are extremely violent, dark, and bloody. In the comics, the mask's wearer isn't exactly a hero; he's a psychopathic anti-hero who kills criminals and police officers in cruel and bizarre ways. The animated series strictly followed the lighter tone of the film: it took the premise of Loki's magic mask and transformed it into pure slapstick comedy and surrealism. Stanley Ipkiss remained the unlucky, shy, and kind-hearted guy who, upon putting on the artifact, unleashed his repressed desires and became an unstoppable force of nature—but focused on playing pranks, dancing, and saving Edge City. While the 1994 film focused on ordinary human mobsters, the animation went all out and embraced science fiction and superpowers. The most striking elements that dictated the dynamics of the episodes were: Pretorius: The true archenemy of the Mask in the cartoon. He is a brilliant and bizarre mad scientist who removed his own head and placed it on robotic spider legs (which connected to a larger android body). He was constantly trying to steal the mask to understand its power or creating absurd plans to destroy the city in the name of science. Walter: Straight from the comics, Walter is a gigantic, monstrous, and completely mute henchman. He is bizarrely indestructible and immune to pain, being the only villain capable of exchanging blows on equal terms with the Mask. One of the biggest curiosities of the cartoon happens when Walter manages to put the mask on his face: it simply doesn't work on him, falling off immediately afterward, because he doesn't have any "repressed personality" or hidden feelings for the artifact to amplify. Milo: Stanley's faithful Jack Russell dog continued to be one of the highlights of the show. Smarter than most humans around him, Milo frequently saved Stanley and, in some episodes, put on the mask to transform into a green, buck-toothed "superdog." To close the show's run with a flourish, the series finale was a historic crossover with the Ace Ventura animated series (another iconic Jim Carrey character). In the finale, Milo's brain is swapped in an experiment, and The Mask must team up with the world's craziest animal detective to sort out the mess, uniting the two biggest powers in animated comedy of that decade.