Collection The Amazing World of Gumball

The Amazing World of Gumball is the most visually adventurous thing Cartoon Network has ever aired. The characters are 2D animation, the town is photographed, the puppets are puppets, the CG is CG, and all of it sits in the same frame without comment.

That collage approach is a joke in itself - a blue cat, his goldfish brother with legs, a balloon, a T-rex and a cactus all attend the same school and nobody finds the mismatch strange. The show uses it to escalate anywhere it wants, including into full stop-motion or 8-bit for a single gag.

The writing keeps pace with the visuals. Gumball's plans are elaborate and doomed, Darwin's sincerity makes everything worse, and Anais is smarter than the entire cast combined. The show is also unusually funny about its own format.

Elmore Junior High's supporting cast - Banana Joe, Tobias, Penny - are all built from single visual gags that somehow developed real personalities.

This collection covers Gumball, Darwin and their classmates.