Review: Futurama “Reincarnation”

This was a great way to end Season 6 of Futurama. The episode was broken up into three parts, each hearkening back to animation styles from yesteryear. Although there was the common thread element of a comet made of diamond, each act had their own story.

The first act was known as “Colorama” and was my favorite of the three acts, mainly because i thought it was the most original of the three. The animation style was a nod to the black and white cartoons of the early 30s i.e. the old Mickey Mouse cartoons.  Its a bit of an acid trip segment with singing houses and smiling space ships but it was all about having a good time. The story tells of Fry trying to show his undying love to Leela, as a result Fry sees a comet made out of diamond in which he then flies into space to get the valuable rock and bring it back for her.

The next segment was called “Future Challenge 3000” and is a play on 8-bit video games with nods to Dig Dug, Space Invaders, and more. The story was kinda weak as it revolved around Farnsworth discovering the meaning to all things thereby brought to a screeching halt the thirst for knowledge. Stephen Hawking also guest starred but it seems as though he’s guest starred on every other major animated show, so I kind of didn’t care. Also, I liked the segment but i felt like it was done better when Code Monkeys was still here. (Maybe Comedy Central could make it happen, eh?)

Finally, we have “Action Delivery Force” which is presented to us in similar fashion to anime shows. In this I thought the dialog was funny but if there were any references to anime shows I didn’t catch them because I have never seen any kind of anime before. However the story( about wiggly aliens invading earth) was decent so overall all was a fitting way to end the episode.

In closing, I thought “Reincarnation” was a great episode and a nice change of pace to the other episodes and I actually think this could be like an annual thing for them similar to the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes for The Simpsons.  Overall this was a great season with more good episodes then bad and am looking forward to next season. Until then I’ll have to stick to the Futurama comics.