My Deer Friend Nokotan

Episode 3

Antlers up, class. Today's lecture will be on the phenomenon of "Goof Troop Time." I recommend you take notes, not just because this will be on the final exam, but because your patience will be put to the test and you'll need some way to steel your concentration.

My deer, esteemed colleague Nick Dupree is whom I first saw propose the concept of Goof Troop Time. Goof Troop was a 1992 Disney Afternoon cartoon—a series which A Goofy Movie retroactively gaslit an entire generation into thinking was good. Mr. Dupree's position was that Goof Troop Time be used to codify the core fallacy of Goof Troop itself: its astonishing ability to decompress the time its episodes take, minutes stretching into perceived hours of tedium. This phenomenon can be observed when you're sitting through an episode of a show, and are so certain it must be almost over, only to check the runtime and discover, to your astonishment, that barely five minutes have passed. Truly, the machinations of the fabric of our reality are incredible.

So question: What does this have to do with this week's episode of My Deer Friend Nokotan? Anyone? Come now, I know some of you must have been paying attention.

Come on, my lectures can't be that boring. Fine, fine, this one's a freebie. This episode provides several instances where Goof Troop Time can be freely observed in reality, like the curvature of the Earth itself from the correct angles. The episode includes the scene of Koshi dancing alongside one of the show's signature smooth CGI deer, which was originally clipped and looped alongside the OP in early promotion for the series. There, stretching it out into ten-hour loops was the joke. But here, what was originally those few seconds is revealed as over a minute and a half of reaching cringe comedy. Mountains rise and fall in that time. The waveform collapses in on itself, and the resulting quanta is a pocket dimension of desperation, deer, and dance moves lifted from that meme'd on the scene from Spider-Man 3.

Okay, pop quiz!

I have no idea how you will all do on this. I thought I was writing this as some sort of film school course, but now I'm giving out algebra tests? I am flying by the seat of my pants with these review framing devices. Truly in the spirit of Nokotan.

I'm not sure what else to tell you guys, Nokotan really was just lacking the juice this week. The show's thus far reveled in lengthening its jokes (generally well past the pace of the manga) but it usually had a sense for how to present them to make that decompression work. This episode is less so. Is it really funny to watch Koshi embarrass herself at the behest of a deer she's convinced herself is a transmogrified Nokotan when we can guess the anticlimactic punchline instantly? Some of her stupid songs are silly enough, but it's nowhere near the length it lasts.

Somewhere in there is a meta-aware joke about the show itself. Koshi attempts to take charge of the Deer Club and the additional members it gains in this episode, realizing that even short-attention-span shitposts need some sort of driving goals. But she finds none. New character Bashame can't even keep her defining quirks consistent, deftly swerving from sleeping a bunch, to wanting to learn how to be a deer from Nokotan, to investing her future in rice farming. There's no theme at all here! Koshi has proven herself a weak candidate for leading this club, and I think she should step down from the presidency.

The subtitles do include a bit where Nokotan bids farewell by saying "Arrivedeerci" which almost saves this whole episode on its own. But then the show had the nerve to plot out its long-term dedication to decompression such that it told me to "Look forward to episode 10" to arrive at an alluded-to punch line. See me after class, Nokotan.

Rating: John Deere American Farmer for Windows PC

My Deer Friend Nokotan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris doesn't want to burn any decent deer puns in the footer here, lest he need to use them in the reviews over the coming weeks. If you're really craving any extra aside goofiness, why not check out his Twitter or his blog? I think I saw some jokes on there the other day.