My Gym Partner's a Monkey is a funny, clever, well-written, Cartoon Network classic, that holds up nicely as something very unique and original and I highly recommend it to any fans of Cartoon Network or any cartoons in general. The show is about a boy named Adam Lyon, who's mistakenly transferred to an animal school called "Charles Darwin Middle School", due to his last name. There, he's forced to become friends with Jake Spidermonkey, his gym partner and cope in such an absurd environment.
The premise of the show, being "A human boy who gets transferred to an animal school." tells stories that can only be told with that concept. Stories like this would be Adam getting injected with monkey DNA, Slips shedding his skin for the first time, and the entire school ganging up on and taking down a famous crocodile hunter. If stuff like that sounds like it could be interesting to you, then you'd definitely like where they go with these stories here.
All the animal characters are made of, generic high school tropes, mixed with animal jingoism. (i.e. a nerd in the body of a gorilla, a pretty girl in the body of a toucan, and a basket case in the body of a giraffe) to name a few of the main characters. Coach Gills, for example, is a tiny goldfish, who's acting like a rough and tough gym teacher, who has a deep, loud, screaming voice, that happens to be applied to a female character.
The casting for the show is excellent, as we have the voice acting celebrity himself, Tom Kenny, playing the titular character, Jake and he doesn't hold back on any of his talent. Then there's also the well known Grey Delisle, voice acting for Ingrid and Lupe, and Maurice Lamarche voicing Principal Pixiefrog. All of which are main/major characters and they capture the talent of these actors beautifully.
The show's worst criticism, regards the low brow jokes about Jake's butt. However, these jokes are cleverly done, gross-out humor, that's really no worse than anything you'd find in shows like Ed, Edd, & Eddy and early Spongebob, They do this just as much as they need to and they've even made several in-universe references to it. They've even taken jabs at the critics, which they refer to as "internet bloggers".
That brings me to the point that "Gym Partner" is actually a bit more meta than one might think, as they've done lots of fourth wall jokes, subtle self-criticisms, cliche subversions, once-in-a-blue-moon changes to the common plot formula, callbacks to previous episodes, sneaky adult humor, and references to outside media, that the older viewers are likely to understand and genuinely enjoy.
In short, wonderful show. It goes deeper than one might imagine, and it's always been and will be a fantastic Cartoon Network classic that every fan of it's genre can enjoy.
Overall, a Great Show
My Gym Partner's a Monkey is a funny, clever, well-written, Cartoon Network classic, that holds up nicely as something very unique and original and I highly recommend it to any fans of Cartoon Network or any cartoons in general. The show is about a boy named Adam Lyon, who's mistakenly transferred to an animal school called "Charles Darwin Middle School", due to his last name. There, he's forced to become friends with Jake Spidermonkey, his gym partner and cope in such an absurd environment.
The premise of the show, being "A human boy who gets transferred to an animal school." tells stories that can only be told with that concept. Stories like this would be Adam getting injected with monkey DNA, Slips shedding his skin for the first time, and the entire school ganging up on and taking down a famous crocodile hunter. If stuff like that sounds like it could be interesting to you, then you'd definitely like where they go with these stories here.
All the animal characters are made of, generic high school tropes, mixed with animal jingoism. (i.e. a nerd in the body of a gorilla, a pretty girl in the body of a toucan, and a basket case in the body of a giraffe) to name a few of the main characters. Coach Gills, for example, is a tiny goldfish, who's acting like a rough and tough gym teacher, who has a deep, loud, screaming voice, that happens to be applied to a female character.
The casting for the show is excellent, as we have the voice acting celebrity himself, Tom Kenny, playing the titular character, Jake and he doesn't hold back on any of his talent. Then there's also the well known Grey Delisle, voice acting for Ingrid and Lupe, and Maurice Lamarche voicing Principal Pixiefrog. All of which are main/major characters and they capture the talent of these actors beautifully.
The show's worst criticism, regards the low brow jokes about Jake's butt. However, these jokes are cleverly done, gross-out humor, that's really no worse than anything you'd find in shows like Ed, Edd, & Eddy and early Spongebob, They do this just as much as they need to and they've even made several in-universe references to it. They've even taken jabs at the critics, which they refer to as "internet bloggers".
That brings me to the point that "Gym Partner" is actually a bit more meta than one might think, as they've done lots of fourth wall jokes, subtle self-criticisms, cliche subversions, once-in-a-blue-moon changes to the common plot formula, callbacks to previous episodes, sneaky adult humor, and references to outside media, that the older viewers are likely to understand and genuinely enjoy.
In short, wonderful show. It goes deeper than one might imagine, and it's always been and will be a fantastic Cartoon Network classic that every fan of it's genre can enjoy.