A Glitchy Submission on the Front Page: Yay....
Congratulations! You SUCK, Evan! You completed a Flash Project and then deleted it before realizing there are noteworthy bugs. A triumph of the ages, for sure.
You set out to touch upon a touchy subject and made a submission that requires us to slough through YouTube for the "Real" version. If there is a "turf war" over content and distribution across various sites on the net, then this cartoon adds to the garbage. It happens when Kongregate gets developers to design content exclusive to its site and release inferior versions throughout the interwebs in an effort to pull in players and thus traffic and advertising revenue. That's a war in and of itself. So triple-foul goes to Evan Huber for touching upon war, failing to add anything new to discussion, botching the Newgrounds submission (and getting Front Page?) and perpetuating a war for the attentions of viewers and hence advertising revenue. Aren't we all happy now? Yes, because we've learned nothing from a cartoon about war!
Also, anybody who fails to release the proper, complete version consistently across all venues is bad enough, but to DELETE the original file is just horrible, horrible form. Perhaps this is on Front Page as an example of what not to do. I have never seen anybody openly write in Author's comments that they deleted the original project file (or deleted anything of a serious artistic or intellectual endeavor, period) after throwing it on a site for all to see. Do journalists, artists, novelists, or programmers routinely delete their material? No. Their relatives do so when they're embarrassed by it (look up de Sade). Under most circumstances, they archive them, digitally or otherwise, retaining originals of sketches and drafts and whatnot because sometimes, ya gotta revise a little here and there. Posterity. Sentimental value. Leaving behind a history for others to follow. Evan should invest in CDs, an external hard disc drive, any kind of rewritable storage to pack projects into, if he fears his computer's memory storage is shaky. Why anybody who pursues Flash animation as a hobby or profession chooses not to purchase something so simple and affordable is beyond me.
All this and I haven't even summarized the submission's contents. Well, I really don't have to. "Every War in History Ever" is a gratuitous smash-fest of why wars start. Ha-Ha. It's also bogus and wrong. It only covers matters of political opinion and does not take economics or prestige into consideration, or even matters of family and nations. It's a mad rush to get everything squared away under a megabyte that ultimately fails to deliver on its promise and leaves nothing but a hokey and abrasive aftertaste in the minds of viewers. It's not meant to be incredible, and it is meant to be open to interpretation, but it isn't very funny either, so the general consensus will likely be: "the author should strive to do better technically," and "I interpret this as a one-dimensional stint of hand-waving."
Either way (often both), Static Bunny skewered himself. He ought to aim higher AND keep his project files archived before he decides to delete the original file. I mean, come on: it's hard enough to try to get a message across, but it only damns you if you come off as a hack AND sloppy. If this cartoon hopes to spin off as a series of topical short cartoons, then the sequel better transcend the miserable outcome of "Every War in History Ever."
Despite misgivings, even something that fails this bad should be recommended to the Politics section since it IS still relevant. Even though one may argue that the notion is open to interpretation and the animation sucks by intention, it is a more objective note to say this cartoon could have been done a whole lot better and saying otherwise is like claiming the grapes are sour, or you're copping out so you don't get beaten to death by the pigs among the Review Crew. It's not extraordinary, was never intentioned to be, and thus it "succeeds". For that, I give "Every War in History Ever" a four out of ten.