Anytown is a pair of Canadian animated holiday specials that aired in the 1970s, created by Johnathan Rogers (under the pseudonym of John Leach) and Isobel Jean Rankin. The specials revolve around the eponymous town, which is occupied by multicolored characters.
The first special, The Gift of Winter (1974), explains how the season of winter obtained snowfall. The second, Witch's Night Out (1978), involves a witch who's depressed as she feels no one appreciates Halloween anymore. The voice cast for the former includes Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner; Radner is also heard in the latter (as a different character) along with Catherine O'Hara and Fiona Reid.
While the two specials were released on home video, they remained relativity forgotten until around the 2010s, when former Cal Arts student Jimmy Cross revived the series.
Anytown provides examples of the following tropes:
- Art-Shifted Sequel: The character designs for Witch's Night Out have more pronounced human-like qualities (Bazooey, Rotten and Malicious have noses; Nicely also has one, but only in some shots) and the backgrounds are more lively. Also the animation is much more fluid, even approaching Yellow Submarine standards.
- Butter Face: Malicious is incredibly curvy with large breasts, yet her face is goblin-like.
- Characterization Marches On: In The Gift of Winter, Bazooey is mostly depicted as someone who just likes to make sounds whenever he talks. In Witch's Night Out, he's more of a nice guy who is very friendly towards Small and Tender.
- Covers Always Lie: The characters featured on the covers for the 1990s VHS releases look nothing like they do in the specials.
- Fat Bastard: Rotten is quite hefty, and just as mean
- Fun Personified: Bazooey is a lively and jolly guy who loves to goof around. This makes him get along incredibly well with Small and Tender.
- Green and Mean: Malicious is fully green and fully nasty.
- Halloween Special: Witch's Night Out is this, involving a witch lamenting the state of Halloween and her magic wreaking some havoc.
- Haunted House: The Witch in Witch's Night Out lives in one. Goodly and Rotten picked her place for the Halloween party.
- Nice Guy: As his name suggests, Goodly is a good guy who acts an Only Sane Man to everyone else in The Gift of Winter. He is shown to be more haughty and self-righteous in Witch's Night Out, but is still overall a nice guy. His wife Nicely is similarly a kindly lady.
- Nonstandard Character Design: The Witch in Witch's Night Out is the only human-looking character in the special due to her natural skin color. But she's also more expressive in terms of animation due to her wearing a black robe.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Both specials have a moment where Bazooey drops his jolly jokester persona to be more serious. In the first special it is when he telling Small and Tender why Winter is so grumpy, in the second it is when he trying to convince thr witch to reverse the monster spell.
- Thanks for the Mammary: When Malicious is turned back from being a monster, one of the people who was holding her down is now holding one of her breasts by accident. It only happens for a split-second, though there is enough animation where you can see Malicious give him a glare.
- Those Two Guys: Rotten and Malicious are almost always seen together, although their exact relationship is never specified.
