Invincible continues to be a gripping and engrossing animated show with the stakes higher this season than ever before. The plot is refreshing and a great new addition to the superhero genre.
Invincible is a Superhero TV show based on the aforementioned comic, where a 17 year old kid named Mark Grayson inherits superpowers from his superhero father, Nolan Grayson, AKA Omni-Man.
The show just came out with its 8th and final episode as of writing, with yearly seasons reported to be in development by the creator, Robert Kirkman. This season was really good, and I would honestly go as far as to say it’s the best season yet story-wise.
Invincible has no problem with giving characters depth. The show continues to dive into Mark’s rocky relationship with his dad and even brings in a new factor: Oliver Grayson. Oliver is Mark’s step-brother who is half-Thraxan, which is a praying mantis-type alien. Oliver’s relationship with his dad up until this season has just been pure admiration, but it changes once he meets Nolan. Oliver overhears Nolan talking to Mark’s mom, explaining that Nolan had never actually loved Oliver’s mom. Oliver is crushed and resents his dad a lot after that, but when there’s a threat to Earth off-planet, Oliver has to team up with his dad to go take it down, where they end up spending a lot of time together before facing the threat. Seeing Nolan apologize to Oliver and seeing them growing closer was very heartwarming and added a much needed depth to Oliver’s character. Up until then, Oliver felt very much like a side character to Mark. I’m very glad they’re turning him more into his own character.
The voice acting in Invincible is phenomenal, and that carries over to this season. They spend a lot of the budget on very good voice actors, and it shows. I am a big fan of a lot of the voice actors in this show and it’s really cool to see them carry these roles beyond what you would normally expect. All of the main characters, Nolan Grayson, Debbie Grayson, and Mark Grayson, are played flawlessly by J. K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, and Steven Yuen respectively. I couldn’t imagine anyone else in their roles.
However, the animation has been bad since the beginning of the show, and it unfortunately seems like it’s continuing to get worse, with some scenes being comparable to pictures sliding across the screen. The show has a multi million dollar budget per episode and is backed by Amazon, and yet still manages to have among the worst animation in any animated series I have ever seen. There is one scene where a character disappears without any explanation, which was likely an animation error. Another scene had the main character drawn as a different, somewhat similar looking character. These mistakes and the low quality animation may be due to Invincible’s yearly release schedule which is somewhat short for an animated show, leaving the animators with less time to work on the show. However, it can’t be denied that the animation is still just comically bad, which is sad because this show deserves better. Fortunately, the story is still so good that it carries the show, for now.
Overall, despite the poor animation, the 4th season pushes the characters to their limits and broadens out the Invincible universe. However, Invincible still has flaws that need to be fixed. In an interview, the creator of the Invincible comics said that he wants the show to run for 7 to 8 seasons to cover the entire comic, but I unfortunately don’t see myself watching the next 3-4 seasons if the animation quality continues to get worse.
People who enjoyed The Boys or any DC or Marvel movies would probably enjoy this show. It’s on the darker side of the superhero genre, and I would not recommend it to anyone who is sensitive to pretty extreme gore and graphic violence. The show goes very overboard at times and would definitely upset more sensitive viewers.
