Pancaking in the name of Jesus!
Boys of Valor is a 2013 Christian animated series created by junior art school teacher Daniel Bryant (no, not that one), which was designed to combine animation and faith in a way not seen before. Featuring younger versions of Bryant and his six brothers, they work as a team of superheroes who battle evil and spread the word of God.
However, it bombed upon release due to numerous issues— including its atrocious voice-acting (with one of the brothers literally phoning in his performance) and editing, poor animationnote , and flat characterisation— and quickly faded into obscurity, only coming to attention after being reviewed on the internet. Nevertheless, it remains an interesting watch, even if just to get an idea of how not to do Christian children's entertainment.
For a more detailed review of the first two films, check out iRawss's reviews of them here
and here.
Boys of Valor contains examples of:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: One of the brothers pronounces the word "sword" this way—"The Word Of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged suh-woard."
- And then later on, we hear him pronounce "valor" as vay-lor.
- All-CGI Cartoon: As you can probably tell by the cover art above, it's a very badly-animated one at that. The movement is stiff and robotic (including all seven boys blinking at the same time), clipping is pretty much a regular occurrence, and there's even multiple bits where characters fly through the air and collide straight into the ground, remaining rock-still all the while.
- As the Good Book Says...: As it's a predominantly-Christian feature, this is to be expected. It's even used for incredibly minor instances such as falling over:'"Oh man, I've been knocked down. I've gotta get back up! The righteous man falls seven times, but he'll get back up!"
- Big Bad: The most recurring villains in the series are the Evil Bots. They're a gang of red, black and gold Bionicle-like robots with wings, overly-large heads and pitch-altered voices who like to laugh forcedly and do evil things for the sake of doing evil things.
- Damsel in Distress: Jack's sister Jessica, in The Rescue.
- Family-Friendly Firearms: Zig-zagged. In The Rescue, the Boys wield "Faith Lasers" that shoot laser beams — and make the obvious recorded sounds of toy guns — but bear a questionable resemblance to palette-swapped AK-47 assault rifles. Completely averted in Mr. Gun Control, in which one of the robots tries to use a pump-action shotgun to murder a child.
- For the Evulz: The Evil Bots are never given full motivations beyond this for their general jerk-assery, their evil plans hardly ever going much beyond:1. Commit random crime.2. Make no attempt to avoid attracting the attention of the Boys of Valor.3. Go with attracting said attention anyway on basis of "let them come to us so we can destroy them".4. Accordingly be defeated, often easily.5. Rinse and repeat with no changes in strategy beyond "evil, ha ha har" and the like.6. ???, PROFIT!
- Kid Hero: All the Boys of Valor. Their ages, though vague, seem to range from maybe 12 at most to maybe 5, but it's hard to tell due to their inconsistent face and body designs.
- Larynx Dissonance: Jessica is very obviously voiced by a man in a pitch-altered falsetto.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Yes. In a cartoon.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Mr Evil, the antagonist of The Rescue. His gang, the Evil Bots, also qualify.
- Never Say "Die": Death is never alluded to by name — although the antagonists do say that they will "destroy" the protagonists (and Jessica) a lot.
- Ninja: The boys sometimes wear all-over jumpsuits that resemble those of ninjas. They were originally a featureless gray/khaki color in the first volume, but later become colored in an attempt to diversify the boys, giving them somewhat of a resemblance to the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
- Random Events Plot: One of the big problems with the series is the atrocious editing. The plots bounce around all over the place, and often find themselves being looped, cut into with things like loading screens (in an animation) and re-used footage from the previous episodes.
- Real Men Love Jesus: All the protagonists are Christians and fight in the name of God."If any evil spirits try to come up against God's people, I will pancake them in the name of Jesus!"
- Show, Don't Tell: This is a major problem with The Spirit of Division. Although the villain (the titular Spirit of Division, even though he looks more like a robot) repeatedly says that he exists to "divide families, homes and marriages", he's never actually shown doing that — nor is he ever shown trying to divide the Boys of Valor beyond saying to do so. They then proceed to make no actual change to their strategy beyond that.
- Simpleton Voice: At least one of the robot Mooks with speaking roles in each short has this. Despite this however, they're often the only ones who correctly point out the big flaws in their superiors' plans. Very likely unintentionally in-universe, but still.
- Too Dumb to Live: The kid in Mr. Gun Control is told by the robot to stand still so the robot can shoot him. Rather than run away, he proceeds to stand still and tell the robot that they're in a school zone.
- Would Hurt a Child: The robots in Mr. Gun Control are shown to be perfectly okay with the idea of shooting children with shotguns, on the basis that they're fed up of constantly losing to the Boys of Valor.
- You Fool!: Declared often by the leaders of the Evil Bots (the Spirit of Division and Mister Evil), often in response to being told by a subordinate that something's wrong or pointing out a reasonable flaw in their strategy.Spirit of Division: You have to listen to me, you little idiot!
- Zero-Effort Boss: The Spirit of Division is defeated by dancing — something which even he's incredulous about.
