We Bare Bears is Daniel Chong’s animated sitcom for Cartoon Network, which ran from August 24, 2015 to May 27, 2019 across four seasons, based on his webcomic The Three Bare Bears. Three bear brothers, Grizz, Panda and Ice Bear, try to find their place in the human world of the San Francisco Bay Area, and they mostly fail, and the failing is the show.
Trailer, via Crunchyroll Store Australia.
The Bears
Eric Edelstein voices Grizz, the enthusiastic one, who believes every plan will work. Bobby Moynihan voices Panda, the anxious one, who is on his phone and in love with someone who does not know he exists. Demetri Martin voices Ice Bear, who speaks in the third person, cooks, fights and says almost nothing, and is the funniest character on the show. The three stack on top of each other to walk, and the bear stack is the series’ visual signature and its best running gag.
The World
The bears live in a cave outside the city and commute into a hipster Bay Area of coffee shops, tech offices and food trucks. Whether they are looking for food, trying to make human friends or scheming to become famous on the internet, the humor comes from three animals who have studied human culture closely and understood none of it. Chloe, a child prodigy and the only human in the main cast, is their friend and their translator. Nom Nom, a fame-obsessed koala, is their nemesis. Charlie, a Bigfoot, is their most exhausting companion.
Why It Works
Chong’s show is gentle in a way that is easy to underrate. The bears are outsiders trying to belong, and the series treats that desire with real sympathy even as it mocks the world they want to join. The technology jokes, about apps and viral fame and phones, date quickly and land anyway because the bears’ relationship to them is so sincere. Episodes are short and self-contained, and the best of them are small stories about friendship that happen to star bears.
The Pilot
The pilot premiered at the KLIK! Amsterdam animation festival before the series was picked up, and the show kept the festival-short sensibility: clean design, quick pacing, a lot of feeling in a few minutes.
Where It Falls Short
The formula wears. Grizz has a plan, Panda worries, Ice Bear saves the day, and four seasons of that structure is a lot. The human world is thin, a set of trends rather than a place. The show’s sweetness can tip into blandness, and the episodes that try for bigger emotion do not always earn it. And the bears’ stack, delightful as it is, is a joke the show tells a hundred times.
The Verdict
We Bare Bears is a warm, well-designed cartoon with a great central trio and a modest ambition it meets. It is comfort television for children and for the adults who watch with them, and there are worse things for a cartoon to be.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.