Larva (Korean: 라바) is a Korean computer-animated comedy television series that features two larvae as the main characters.
This cartoon provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: A lot of plotlines parody preexisting works like Frozen (2013) and 300
- Animals Lack Attributes: Subverted in that Red and Yellow have visible buttholes quite often.
- Artistic License – Biology: Zig-Zagged. The Larvae have eyes and tongues which they use as a replacement for arms for their limbless body.
- Ass Shove: With how bad Yellow's farting can be, not all that unexpected it happens in "Gum Fart".
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the Larva Rangers two-parter Larva Island episode, Ivory explains that because Red and Yellow were absent, Grey and the other predators easily defeated the remaining Rangers and dumped their mecha's while Red and Yellow's lie dormant without their riders. After the tale ends with Ivory's frail frame sending him to the island, he bursts into tears with everyone. Mango couldn't believe what happened while Red & Yellow were horrified that their friends were in danger and they couldn't help them.
- Bald of Evil: The debut episodes of the Silvers showcase their baldness. It's so bad they can blind anyone. The animatic credits shows that they were born bald.
- Bittersweet Ending: The finale of Larva Island. The raft on which the gang travel on drifts apart sending them all in opposing directions, resulting in Clara finding a new herd of seals, Chuck finally making it back to civilization, and Crabsformer reuniting with his girlfriend on the island that Mango managed to save. However, the abrupt separation meant none of them were able to have proper sendoffs among each other, and furthermore, Red and Yellow are still stranded at sea, only making a gamble of which direction to go.
- Fortunately, the ending of the movie implies that they made it back to the sewers...
- Bland-Name Product: One episode has Yellow playing with an Expy of Pop-up Pirate.
- Bolivian Army Ending: Nearly every episode ends as this but the best example of this would be in the episode "Welcome Larva"
- The Bus Came Back: The predators, led by Grey the rat, return in the "Larva Rangers" two-parter episode of Larva Island for one final battle.
- Butt-Monkey: Everyone in this show can count at some point, but Red and Yellow are the BIGGEST in the show.
- Character Development: Black's tendency to beat up Red and Yellow seemed to decrease over time, and sometimes be friendly towards them. Red becomes more level-headed in "Larva Island" as he starts a relationship with Mango.
- The Chew Toy: EVERYONE.
- Camera Abuse: Red occasionally hits Yellow with a straw, so hard in fact, that Yellow hits the screen.
- Companion Cube: In "New Friend", Yellow makes friends with a inanimate teddy bear.
- Company Cross References: The Larva Kids channel's rendition of 'Humpty Dumpty' features Egg Man, a character from TUBA's other work Rotary Park as the titular egg.
- Christmas Special: "Christmas and "Christmas" are both this.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Red is a massive victim to this.
- A Dog Named "Dog": The characters are named after their body colors or what they are.
- Downer Ending: Too many episodes to list from having this.
- Dumb Is Good: Yellow definitely qualifies.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first couple episodes, the larvae had lighter colored eyelids
- Eaten Alive: A very common problem for Yellow and Red, but easily solved by just going right through to come right out the other end, such as when covered in oil in "Oil".
- Gasshole: Mostly Yellow and on MANY occasions has been known to use it to his advantage.
- Gainax Ending: Most episodes have these.
- Gross-Out Show: There are plenty of Toilet Humor and/or gross-out traits (especially Yellow being the trope codifier) in this show.
- Harmless Freezing: Red and Yellow are frozen in "Ice Road" and aren't hurt after they're unfrozen.
- Jerkass: Red is this most of the time. But at times, he can be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold before being toned down all together in Larva Island.
- Interrupted Suicide: In one episode, Red meets a fairy-like creature and falls in love with it. Each day, the Fairy dies and Is replaced with another fairy whom he also falls in love with. This eventually drives him to suicide by jumping into a hungry chameleon's mouth, only to be saved by the ghosts of the dead fairies.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Violet is a huge ghost slug with a LARGE mouth full of shark-like teeth.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: The two main protagonists never grow out of the larvae stage, as the name of the show implies the immaturity of an insect. This is double subverted when the Larvae grow wings and fly out of their vent into New York City, their wings fall of almost immediately after they enter the home they would spend the remainder of the series in.
- Out of Focus: Violet, he only appears in one episode of season 3.
- Shout-Out: Numerous. Highlights include-
- The end of one episode has Brown parody a rendition of "Let It Go" from Frozen (2013)
- Larva Rangers. Nuff said.
- In "Beach Volleyball", King Mud and his team reveal that his lips and their fins are covered by spares that weigh a lot to enhance their training. Similar to how Goku does this to make him stronger.
- Yellow-Terminator. Could it be any more obvious?
- Also, Larva Of The Rings.
- "Kung fu" has an extended shout-out to Hero (2002) with red and yellow having an imaginary battle against each other.
- There're also Larvengers and Larvatar.
- The Speechless: None of the characters can really speak aside from their voices, sounds & gestures they make, with the one and only exception being Chuck.
- Strictly Formula: Almost every episode is either about the main characters trying to survive some sort of obstacle/predator/misadventure or them fighting over food.
- Staring Contest: There's an entire episode based on this trope.
- Simpleton Voice: Yellow has this compared to all of the characters, even while he usually has no dialog.
- Sliding Scale of Animal Cast: Since Chuck is a main character in Larva Island, number four.
- Swallowed Whole: Since chewing never seems to happen and the main cast are all very small.
- They Killed Kenny Again: The main characters often die or about to die near the end of many episodes.
- Toilet Humor:
- Yellow can be considered the cause of this.
- Also, there's Brown, the dung beetle.
- Too Dumb to Live: Yellow, though this makes him all the more nicer and is shown to have some intelligence and talent.
- The Silvers are a pair of incredibly dimwitted birds with special powers because of their extremely shiny bald heads that were usually covered by the pieces fruit on their heads.
- Tragic Villain: "Life of a Rat" revealed that all of the predators are at the brink of death due to starvation (which is the reason why they hunt the larva so desperately) and will resort to splitting into small pieces of cheese to each other in order for all of them to just barely survive.
- Terminator Impersonator: The Yellow-Terminator, of course.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: The episode "Lala Island" from Larva Island is the bleakest episode up to date. Just after a random dance number from the new characters, it immediately darkens when we see Yellow in manic depression from being away from Pink. At one point, he ends up returning to New York and reunites with all the others from past seasons before going to Pink. There was a reason Black tried to prevent Yellow from see the truth: When Yellow arrived, he discovered that both Pink and Brown are '''married.''' And they have a daughter.
- Verbal Tic: The Silvers, a pair of balding pigeons, have distinctive tics. Yah-Silver (the one with the banana) caws "Yaw" and Uhh-Silver (the one the melon) caws "Wuh".
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Every character has experienced this trope at least once in the series.
