Her commentary is often like this, quotidian observations filtered through her life in Japan and her personal experiences. 'Otaku room,' she quips when we're introduced to the squalid gamer den of a weeb-ish shrimp; another scene, of a goblin bombing a brutal job interview, makes her spiral off into recollections of her own similar failures, projecting herself into a world that seems too dense-too crammed full of little beasties-to fit her in it.
There is something about Smiling Friends that compels you to think like this. Its limitlessness works as a sort of Rorschach test, inviting you to spew your own experiences between the cracks of its joke-jammed mayhem.
The show is built upon a foundation of multimedia cross-cultural references, and it hyperactively mucks about with form and medium in the same way Bugs Bunny mucks about with Elmer Fudd: It dares you to meet it on its level, if you can.
The premise is simple enough: Four employees work in an office-shaped like a giant smiley emoticon-for a company whose sole purpose is to make others smile. What could be a sweet premise for a 2010s Cartoon Network feel-good show leapfrogs instead into a realm of oblique horrors and ghastliness.
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