Shoebox Zoo

I discovered Shoebox Zoo quite recently, nearly 18 years after it originally aired (as of the time this review was originally written). Truthfully, I went into it with very low expectations, and was very hesitant to check it out at first, but my curiosity was piqued and so I ended up deciding to watch it. Much to my shock, I ended up enjoying it quite a lot, so much so that I’d even rank it among my favorite shows of all time. As such, I wanted to make this review in order to share my thoughts on some of the main aspects of the show, among other things.

To start things off, I’d like to talk about the central focus of the show, the titular “shoebox animals”, since I firmly believe the show did a tremendous job with them. They’re incredibly fun characters and add so much life to just about every scene they’re in, and while they primarily adhere to one defining personality trait, on top of initially being quite secretive and mistrustful, each of them goes through their own little character arcs (with some being more subtle then others), making them feel quite fleshed out by the end.

The animals are further bolstered by the clever editing, superb voice talents and surprisingly great CGI animation that go into making them possible in the first place. Everything is so well done to the point that, for a majority of the scenes, I genuinely had a hard time believing that the CGI creatures weren’t actually there, despite being fully aware that they most certainly weren’t. In contrast to this, however, are the CGI used for for the magic spells cast by several characters throughout the story, which look quite dated and rough barring some minor exceptions. While some might find that a tad bit immersion-breaking, it didn’t really bother me all too much, and didn’t hamper my viewing experience in any way.

Moving on to the actors, I greatly enjoyed their usually over-the-top and hammy performances, with some of my personal favorites being David McKay’s role as the lova...