Spicy City: 1997 Ralph Bakshi failed attempt to make an adult animated show.

[thisithis]

Spicy City had everything going for it, premiering next to Todd McFarlane's Spwan on HBO, and coming out before Shout Park. It ran for one season and was never heard of again. Sex, Drug use, lots of nudity, and not forgetting graphic violence, this show had it all. Hard to say what took it down, Ralph Bakshi refusing to add more writers to the show, or Ralph Bakshi claiming HBO deliberately sabotaged the show from the word go. The show was highly controversial, but when the show went away much like Exosquad, even those who saw the adult animated show couldn't even remember the show. Even WB refuses to put Spicy City on any streaming app. So, it's now a part of the growing list of animated shows only a few will remember and no one will ever see again.

 

[thisithis]

Yeap, still hated after so many years.

 

[Pooky]

It's too obscure to be "hated"

 

[thisithis]

It's too obscure to be "hated"

Obscure??? No, it's like Ralph Bakshi took "Heavy Metal" and merged it with "The Twilight Zone" with some original elements from the original Cyberpunk tabletop game.

 

[harry580]

I feel like spice city would have worked if it not not mistreated by hbo or maybe it would have worked as a movie to complete with heavy metal

 

[thisithis]

I feel like spice city would have worked if it not not mistreated by hbo or maybe it would have worked as a movie to complete with heavy metaAt least it came out when Todd McFarlane's Spawn started. Another adult show

At least it came out when Todd McFarlane's Spawn came out, another adult-animated show was a troubled production but at least more seasons—3 at least. and not forgetting the lawsuit Todd McFarlane had with Neil Gaiman, but that is another story.

 

[Pooky]

Obscure??? No, it's like Ralph Bakshi took "Heavy Metal" and merged it with "The Twilight Zone" with some original elements from the original Cyberpunk tabletop game.

I meant Obscure in the sense that it's a work 99.9% of all people have never heard of, hard for people to hate it when they don't know it exists. Although, yes, like most of Bakshi's work, it was never going to catch on with a post-70s mainstream audience.

 

[Classic Speedy]

I get the feeling that Bakshi's heart wasn't really in this show, which is reflected in only a measly two paragraphs about it in Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi, while his films got significantly more written about them. That, and it must've killed him that the animation was outsourced to Korea, where it came back largely looking similar to most cartoons of the time period. (not bad, mind you, just lacking that personal touch that, say, his What a Cartoon! shorts had) I feel like he was already shifting towards his painting career by this point and all these TV gigs were just to pay the bills.

That said, it's been a while since I've watched it but I don't remember it being that bad of a series. I definitely appreciate that it's one of the few adult animated series from America that isn't a comedy, and the futuristic setting gave us some interesting plotlines like the human prostitute who can't compete with virtual sex and androids.

And goes without saying but Raven is quite the looker.

 

[Pooky]

It was a little too late to cash in on VR hype, a little too early to become part of "internet culture".

The scenes in VR looked kind of like Hammerman with all the stuttering; I get it, it's supposed to represent buffering, and it's cute, but it's also kind of a cheat and now feels dated.

 

[Golden Geek]

I was surprised to see it's legally streaming...in Australia, that is, on their Binge service. HBO has seemingly tried to completely bury it for decades.

 

[Mejo]

I think this show was a bit too ahead of its time. Nearly 20 years later, Netflix premiered a show titled Love, Death & Robots, which utilized a similar concept of an adult animated anthology series but received much more praise than Spicy City and even won an Emmy.