Gruesome violence. Those two words sum up this series, because the entire basis for these cartoons is the idea that violence is funny, and that the more violence you have, the funnier the cartoon is. Well, at least violence toward cute fuzzy things that most people would normally find slightly annoying or--go figure--cute. There is nothing clever about Happy Tree Friends. The whole idea of each episode is basically to portray a stereotypical cheery cartoon, filled with fuzzy things, innocence, and general blind happiness, and then make those fuzzy things have horrific experiences involving lots of blood and screaming, resulting in each of them dying in some grotesque and disturbing way.

If you'll notice the reviews below, by giving it one-and-a-half stars I'm actually playing devil's advocate, here. The half-star comes from two things: One is that, on a basis of quality of animation alone, this isn't bad for a flash cartoon. The way the characters move is no better than any other typical web cartoon, but there is a style in the way they're drawn that seems professional to me.

The other reason is that, for all the episodes I forced myself to sit through that left me feeling bored, repulsed, or asleep (believe it or not, the episodes are so repetitive that I started to nod off), I seem to recall one or two occasions when a chuckle escaped me. I guess there must be a morbid side to me, after all. But if you have a morbid side, you should probably try to disregard it, and either way you should definitely try to disregard this series.

Just a "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M POLEMIC!!!" kind of series. No plots, just random murder from the beginning to the end.

It's so sad that web is a showcase for this kind of thing, while there's good stuff around that deserves achieve the huge fame of this piece of emptiness.

Awful sums this show up nicely. Violence with absolutely no point at all. It's overly gory and is just gross. The viewer sees overly cute animals with their intestines hanging out or blood gushing and the other character's drinking it. Avoid it, it's annoying and not funny in the slightest.

Whoever makes these stupid cartoons probably think they are being edgy. I really don't know.

I don't cringe when I watch this, I don't smile(I would be psycodic if I did) I don't make any face movement whatsoever. Its just a bunch of the most colorful fuzzy animals being tortured. But yet I don't feel sorry for them... Not funny. Yet, this is on TV... Perfect example of how TV is losing quality...

Waste of time. I don't care what the rating system says. ZERO STARS!

Cartoon violence is on the whole a thing that can be quite brutal, yet the reason that most of it is funny is because it is devoid of reality. When Jerry chops off Tom’s tail, the feline leaps into the air a short, sharp scream of pain is heard. Then he lands and the pain is over; tail is back on body, the chase renews. When Daffy gets shot in the beak, his usually reaction is more disgruntlement than pain as he picks up and replants his beak back on his face. When an object lands on their head a character smashes like china, but is back next scene as if nothing happened. It’s this distance from reality that makes it funny. In cartoons bodies renew, broken teeth are replaced. You see things that just can’t happen in real life and the character bounce back from it; that surreal factor gives it the humor.

Remember this line from Roger Rabbit…

“No he’s a toon, you can drop anything you want on his head he’ll shake it off…”

And that’s the whole point, violence minus pain is funny; it’s called slapstick and long has it been a tradition of humor on stage and screen (Hey live action series The Young Ones and Bottom turned pretend violence into an art).

Happy Tree Friends is different, by removing this simple principal it turns itself into something which is quite disturbing and utterly wrenched. Watching these characters in what passes for real pain isn’t fun, it’s unsettlingly.

The friends themselves all look like rejects from the Care Bears, including having little hearts for noses; apart from Lumpy who’s resemblance to Bullwinkle (both physically and mentally) is uncanny. Have the creators got something against these characters, maybe, though the truth is probably due to them wanting the characters to look as cute as possible. This was something that helped South Park, with its Peanut-like character design, but it had a cutting-wit and differential plotlines; and it also created the concept of killing one of its characters (the unfortunate Kenny).

Its inanity isn’t helped by its repetitiveness, watching nearly the same dull setup over and over again and anticlimactic, you know what’s going to happen; the character is going to die. There’s no variation on plot, or anything to keep you coming back unless your sense of humour is that sordid.

It a one trick pony, or should that be donkey; actually I don’t think it deserves to be compared to either quadruped.

NB: Oh yeah as far as I can tell, the TV series and DVD's are just made up of the web episodes.

Well this is a double first for me. The first time I've reviewed anything while the profile is still going up, and the first time, from memory, that I've dispensed two one-star reviews in a row.

And it's ironic, because despite being the polar opposite of 'Gerald McBoing Boing' in terms of content, it rivals and probably transcends it in terms of its annoyingness. In fact, this is probably the one cartoon which I actually study the TV guide so I can avoid seeing even a moment of.

I used to sit through it because (in Australia anyway) it was packaged with episodes of other things - one of which (Harvey Birdman) I thought was funny at the time. But eventually even this meagre enticement wore off.

What am I talking about? Well, very little really. The show is about cute animals being violently killed, while happy music plays in the background. That's it. The only variation is the ways in which the gag can be contrived to occur. None of this alters the fact that you can see it coming from several parsecs away, or that the whole thing is about as mature or funny as burning ants with a magnifying glass (in fact I'd be surprised if at least one of the characters in this show hasn't been burned by a giant magnifying glass at one point).

It must seem odd coming from someone who has given positive reviews to many subversive shows, but there's nothing subversive about this. It's just one puerile, crass, repetitive gag dressed up and served over and over and over. It has none of the wit, timing or unexpectedness of a Don Hertzfeldt short like 'Billy's Balloon' - and besides, that was one short, not a whole damn TV series.

I can honestly say I hate this show. I don't know if the US version includes the other segments which we used to get here with it, but they were all rubbish anyway - except Harvey Birdman, and you can get that by itself.

NB I've just noticed the version I've reviewed is listed as a web cartoon, but it is nonetheless a TV series which you can buy on DVD, and I don't imagine this would alter my rating in any way.