Doesn't the guy in this picture's face scream Creepy Good?
Sinful was a web series created by Conner Dean, also known as GlazeSugarNavalBlcok, that was supposed to be a Darker and Edgier twist to Object Shows that has a lot of Deconstruction.On an island known as Kamitang, a population of a critically Endangered Species of 'wild objects' - known as meatouls - are threatened by a whole chunk of their habitat being destroyed by machines run by a group of objects. This group of objects is lead by a black belladonna berry, named Mutakasir, who seems to be searching for contestants to compete in his show. He captures one of the fleeing meatouls (Hana) and places him on his show with fifteen other objects.
Sinful itself was made to deconstruct multiple object show clitches, most notably Jerkassess and the Depraved Kids' Show Host. This show gives the main focus to Hana, who deals with the harsh challenges alongside fifteen other contestants - notably Thurl, a kind spool of pink thread, and Bonne, a careless potted bonsai tree - all while undergoing a trek near the Despair Event Horizon. The show itself is based on the Seven Deadly Sins, and each episode is named after each of them.
However, production on the show was ceased before the first episode could even get released, and was replaced with a fictional nature documentary series named Gikumo.
This dark series contains examples of...
- Abusive Parents: Bonne would reveal to have this later on.
- A Hero Is Born: Type 1. The first episode begins with Hana as a baby.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Do we need to go over this again? Now thankfully it does subvert the cliche of objects being named after their species, sort of.
- Anyone Can Die: And worse, no one can come back. Made even more apparent in "Envy" when Thurl, the show's deuteragonist, gets killed off.
- Armless Biped: Bonne and Joy are this (so far).
- Anthropomorphic Food: Mutakasir the belladonna.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Mutakasir literally deforests a chunk of the meatoul's habitat, captures a meatoul, and makes him compete on a show where he's treated harshly by most of the other contestants. Worse, he forces the contestants to eat parts of hunted meatouls as a challenge, when there's a freaking meatoul as a contestant! Where's PETA when you need them?!
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Hana's name is "flower" in Japanese.
- Mutakasir's name is "breaker" in Abriac.
- Bloodless Carnage: Played both straight for the civilized objects, whose fatalities and injures translates to real life inanimate objects when they get punctured (e.g. Torrance’s body is made out of wood), and downplayed for the meatouls, who bleed out only white-colored blood called "yan."
- Eject the Loser: Eliminated contestants suffer a horrible, permanent death via a giant laser that Mutakasir activates by a hidden button on his watch.
- Darker and Edgier: This miniseries was to aim for a PG-13 (or in this case, TV-14) rating and a much more serious and tragic take on the competition formula that has been often dominated many object shows. This was discussed by the
creator behind making this, explaining that the said formula was severely over-saturated, enough to make it increasingly stale and basic in many shows out there. - Deconstructed Character Archetype:
- Unlike most of the object show hosts, whose "sadistic host" archetypes are Played for Laughs, Mutakasir is depicted as a money-hungry, furious, and oppressive overlord who enslaves the contestants (with Hana included), and is Played for Drama.
- This show deconstructs the bossy team captain archetype with Torrance, the torch. He is shown as aggressive, heartless, and domineering towards the other contestants, especially Hana. Like Mutakasir above, Torrance has no hesitation to treat these contestants severely as slaves, constantly pushing them around and therefore playing a role in Hana's downfall.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In “Wrath”, after Hana has killed all of the remaining contestants on the show, he slowly returns to his devastated homeland before staring up into the night sky, feeling proud that he finally ended this whole nightmare by avenging those who showed sympathy for him. That is when he heard a voice from within the trees, which then reveals to be the few remaining meatouls (including his childhood friend, Olip) that escaped the forest destruction. Overjoyed, Hana reunites with them as the remaining meatouls advance towards a better future for the population.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A trait-wise example for the meatouls, Hana’s kin.
- The group mentality of meatouls functions like that of great apes (human ancestors included), and predators such as lions and wild canines. To elaborate, they are excellent tree-climbers and build nests either on the tree tops or on the ground like the former, and they have a carnivorous diet and hunt in groups like the latter.
- The way their sapience are displayed and how they understand civilized objects also translates to cetaceans such as dolphins. As Hana puts it, there are two types of civilians they understand; good-natured people (which includes tourists, hikers and campers) are identified as "tiens," whereas bad people (including poachers) are identified as "kumos."
- Mook Horror Show: Doubles with Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Near the end of “Wrath”, after breaking free from the straps and being mistreated by the contestants for too long, Hana finally takes off his mask and slaughters the remaining contestants left to right in a pretty brutal fashion.
- Narrator: The series is narrated by Hana (Conner Dean), which is fitting because the dialouge is written as if it is a novel or audiobook.
- Nature Is Not Nice: Hana and the rest of the meatouls may look adorable enough, but underneath their masks, their true faces tell a different story. They are entirely predators, they kill herbivorous wild objects in order to survive, and even refuse to back down from a fight.
- Nice Girl: Thurl is one of the few contestants who don't mistreat Hana, and she's a gentle and friendly girl.
- Shown Their Work: As noted from Mix-and-Match Critters above, this show has quite a lot of detail of portraying the lives of wild objects in the style of real-life animals.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Or "non-civilized object" in this case. Unusually for an object show, the lifestyles of quadrupedal objects living in the wild are executed in a natural and realistic fashion instead of being Played for Laughs. Yet these objects still show human levels of sapience, like speaking in fluent English. Justified by the creator who states that the wild objects are not your average animal you’d find on Earth.
- World of Jerkass: Nearly everyone competing in this "show" qualifies, as most of the time, our main character, Hana, is constantly treated like trash by them. At the extremes are Thurl, a gentle pink spool of thread, and Bonne, a careless bonsai tree who eventually reveals his backstory later on in the series.
