#maybe rounded skintone animal is in rn i have no idea

[thepringlesofblood]

ok so arthur right??

i was talking to my dad yesterday and I casually mentioned the PBS kids show ‘arthur’ (the one with the fist that became a meme) and he was having trouble remembering it so i was like ‘y’know, arthur the aardvark?’ and he still didnt get it so I looked up a picture of him 

and he goes ‘if he’s an aardvark, where’s his snout’ 

for reference, this is the punk we’re talking about

no snout. basically an orange dude w/ mouse ears 

this is an aardvark

huge snout. not orange. giant tall ears like a naked bunny. wtf 

so i’m like ‘well yeah, but aardvarks are kinda weird lookin and not very common, but i swear the other animals on the show look like their animals’

so i look up the other animals and #1 they all are varying shades of skin tone, no frogs or birds or anything, and #2 it took so much fucking digging to figure out what each person’s supposed to be, and I grew up my whole life thinking they were the wrong animals. 

according to the wiki, there’s 8 main characters. Arthur and DW are both aardvarks, so the 6 remaining are francine, muffy, alan/brain, binky, buster, and mr. ratburn. 

let’s start nice and easy. arthurs whole family are aardvarks (and all of them have the same ‘orange-ish person w/ mouse ears, no nose, and human features’, what about francine?

so here’s our girl francine 

she basically looks like a normal cartoon person, except her mouth is like an otomatone. as a kid, i assumed she was a monkey, because people told me she was a monkey, and i was right. but there’s so so so many layers of anthropomorphizing here. she’s just a person with a protruding lower face, basically. it works, but it is so so minimal. the lil nose slits are in most arthur characters so they don’t read as different or specific. 

next we have muffy. similar situation. 

again, but even more anthropomorphized. her lil monkey facebump thing is even less pronounced, her ears look fairly human (for a cartoon), you could even make an argument that she has kind of a nose. I had no idea what she was as a kid. I legit thought she was just a person, and that this was how people looked in arthur world. 

that might be on me, since there are people who Just Look Like People in arthur world - buster’s dad is literally just A Human Man w/ bunny ears and the canon typical Nose Slits

behold, a man. 

but still. artistic license, it’s a cartoon, so I thought muffy was just a Person. 

there’s also the opposite end of the spectrum, where shit gets a bit wilder. 

what the hell is binky. y’know what I thought he was, when I was a kid? 

a hippo

seriously, he’s got the weirdly spaced teeth, the tiny lil ears, big craggy face, he’s larger than everyone else which makes sense bc hippos are gigantic. he’s not the same color as a hippo but everyone in the arthur verse is kinda skin toned so i didn’t think much of it

but

do you know what he’s supposed to be??

a bulldog

what. the hell. 

i just 

????

why is his jaw so gigantic??? this is a bulldog, for reference

if he’s a bulldog...why is he one of the very few arthur characters to get a DEFINABLE NOSE??

IT’S NOT A SNOUT. IT’S NOT EVEN A LIL DOG NOSE. IT’S LIKE AN EGG SITTING ON HIS FACE. NO WRINKLES. WEIRDASS EARS LIKE MOTORCYCLE HANDLES

only thing i can kinda see is the busted ass teeth. but like his whole head is a weird triangle in the wrong direction. I’m so confused. I’m so afraid. 

ok 

but get ready

for the ultimate weirdest interpretation of an animal

a l a n 

aka brain 

looks pretty much like arthur, right? except for his lil triangle nose instead of 2 dots, and slightly darker skintone, this is just like arthur. heads a bit more egg shaped but i think that’s a joke on how he’s real smart so hes an egghead or whatever. 

so, you might think, oh, he’s another small mammal like an aardvark, right? with that cute little pink nose, maybe a hamster? a mouse? 

no. no he’s not

according to arthur.fandom.com (the wiki site for the show)

he is

a fucking 

BEAR

thats right ladies and gents the ferocious bear before you, clearly indistinguishable from an aardvark

WHAT. THE FUCK. 

WHY

just to prove that I’m not shitting you 

https://arthur.fandom.com/wiki/Alan_Powers

HOW

THe fUCk

is This Lil Twerp the MIGHTY BEAST!!!! that is Bear. 

and you know the worst part? 

It’s evident. that the Arthur team. Knows how to do anthropomorphizing right. 

exhibit a?

B U S T E R

look at this motherfucker. the teeth. the weird lil triangle nose. the ears. he’s so clearly a fucking bunny. simple, but effective. clear, but not excessive. this is why you get a spinoff, buster. this is why you get all those ‘postcards’ series and the best games on PBS kids go. because out of everyone in town, you’re the only one who is instantly recognizable as the exact animal they’re supposed to be. no doubts, no qualms, no questions. just a good ol fashioned bunny. 10/10 

honorable mention, of course, goes to our only other recognizable main character. 

mr ratburn. what a legend. maybe it’s cheating a bit to have ‘rat’ right in his name so you know what he is, but god damn does his design deliver. take a closer look at that snout! whiskers, lil pink dot nose, vaguely triangular headshape, mouth at the very end, squinty lil eyes way back up on his head- you may not like it, but this is what peak rat performance looks like. remy ratatouille wishes he were this cool gay elementary school teacher. the sad thing is he looks more like an aardvark than arthur does, and he’s a rat. 

so

let’s review

out of all of the 8 main cast

two (2) 

are recognizable as animals on sight. 

arguably muffy and francine are recognizable but like so vaguely

so

75% of the main cast are Rounded Skintone Animal with Weird Ears

and then we got buster baxter and mr nigel ratburn over here carrying the show in terms of animal anthropomorphism done right. absolute madmen, true legends. 

god what a weird part of zillenial childhood.