Inspirations: Maple Town

Munch Chunky was inspired and influenced by a few different things, most of which stem from my early childhood. A lot of what inspired and influenced me was animation and this one in particular had a very lasting affect on me. The animated series Maple Town is one of those shows, quite possibly more influential than even Battle Beasts. I'm serious, in the late 80's this show an anime series imported to nickelodeon, as many of them where back then, crawled its way into the impressionable brains of me and my little sister. It was sweet fairly innocent and inoffensive fun and adventures featuring now this is the catch a town of cute, little, anthropomorphic animals.

   

now my little sister and I were kids who ran around in the forest near my childhood house with my friends pretty much every weekend if not almost daily, so I was no stranger to using my imagination adventure. I was able to really relate to these animal kids running around getting into mischief everyday, and it didn't hurt that they had a toy line that went along with it either. YES, I KNOW IT WAS TECHNICALLY FOR GIRLS!
but i had three sisters and no brothers so whatever, i played with dolls on occasion if i didn't want to play by myself.

these kids are LITERALLY running through the hillside.

see this pic? this make my brain dance.

the point is that this wonderful little show was giving me a very everyday story with true heart, yeah looking back at it now the american dubbing was poorly translated and most of the time poorly read, but you can see that it had heart under all that horrible localization. but it's that heart that stuck with me and serves as one of the pillars of story to me. it's not enough for a story to be awesome action and even awesomer characters all the time, for me a character has to have heart, a lead character at least. even if it's deep down inside, it should pop up every now and then and inspire or inform something positive in action. Now when i call it "very everyday" that's not an insult, I think that there should be a healthy degree of the mundane in a story in order to balance it out and make the fantastic elements seem more amazing in contrast for both the viewer and the characters involved. this is what Maple Town did for me, it injected my brain with how adventurous and interesting regular everyday life could be to write about, in a time when i was absolutely eating up anything that had a gun, sword or magical/mutant powers and a catch phrase. ha ha

but because of that, I found a harmony in my story telling, I know that it sometimes looks discordian and that I want to do one more than the other and it's true I want to do regular, mundane, apple picking adventure stories like Maple Town but I can't deny the adrenaline fueled face punching adventurous side of me that just wants to jump through a window, then a brick wall, then a lift up a flaming car and bench press it. rawr. :3

seriously tho, if I thought i could tell a story about three kids just running around in the hillside near there town all day I would definitely do it. But since I can't deny that part of me that also likes mystery and paranormal, magical circumstances then Munch Chunky will have to do. and I'm happy with that. It's possible that my crippling weakness to all things cute and adorable as an adult has its roots in shows like this that ran on nickelodeon when I was a kid. painting my heart and brain with a sugar sweet candy coating of hopefulness and happiness. oh, stop rolling your eyes, you made it this far. it's almost over.

who knows... maybe when I'm an old man with grand kids I'll tell a few stories that are purely about little bunny kids and their silly little normal adventures in an ocean side town somewhere. maybe.

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MORE INSPIRATIONS: APPLESEED, BATTLE BEASTS, DRAGON WARRIOR