Concept

The season follows the adventures of Finn the Human, a human boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape, grow, and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, wherein they interact with the other major characters, including: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, BMO, and Flame Princess. Common storylines revolve around Finn and Jake discovering strange creatures, dealing with the antagonistic but misunderstood Ice King, and battling monsters in order to help others.^[1] This season's main story arc, however, deals with Finn discovering the true identity of his human father, and his subsequent attempts to reconnect with him.^[2] The season ends with Princess Bubblegum being deposed by the King of Ooo (voiced by Andy Daly), and Finn fighting the primordial cosmic space demon Orgalorg (the actual identity of Gunter the penguin).^[3]

Production

On January 28, 2013, during the middle of the show's fifth season, Cartoon Network officially announced that the show had been renewed for a sixth season.^[4] In July 2013, storyboard artist Jesse Moynihan revealed that production for the sixth season had begun.^[5] This season's episodes were produced in a process similar to those of the previous seasons' episodes. Each episode was outlined in two-to-three pages that contained the necessary plot information.^[6] These outlines were then handed to storyboard artists, who created full storyboards.^[7] Design and coloring were done at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California, and animation was handled overseas in South Korea by Rough Draft Korea and Saerom Animation.^[8][9][10] While almost all of the animation for the show is done through these studios, two episodes were written and animated entirely by guest animators. The first, "Food Chain", was helmed by noted Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa, and was entirely animated by Yuasa's own studio.^[11] The second, "Water Park Prank", was directed by David Ferguson.^[12]

The season was storyboarded and written by Andy Ristaino, Cole Sanchez, Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Graham Falk, Derek Ballard, Moynihan, Yuasa, Adam Muto, Kent Osborne, Lyle Partridge, Bert Youn, Madeleine Flores, Jillian Tamaki, Sam Alden, Sloane Leong, Brandon Graham, and David Ferguson.^{[lower-alpha 1]} "The Prince Who Wanted Everything" marked the return of Youn—a storyboarder during the show's first, third, and fourth seasons—to the series.^[13] He had left after the first season for mandatory military service in his native South Korea, and returned during the third season.^[14] He once again left the series after the conclusion of its fourth season to focus his attention on Studio Spiyo in Seoul, South Korea.^[15][16] However, Youn returned to work on "The Prince Who Wanted Everything", although it was a "one-off gig", and he subsequently took a job working on Over the Garden Wall.^[17] The sixth season of Adventure Time also marked the final season that both Andy Ristaino and Cole Sanchez worked as storyboard artists. Ristaino revealed in a podcast that, once the season was finished, he was "burnt out".^[18] He did, however, return as a background designer for the seventh season.^[18][19] Sanchez, on the other hand, left the series to become a supervising director on Long Live the Royals.^[20] He eventually returned to the series as a supervising director for its eighth season.^[21]

This was the last season of Adventure Time to feature Nick Jennings as the series' art director; he had originally been brought on at the start of the first season at the behest of Cartoon Network, and had served as the sole art director for five and a half seasons.^[22] Following the show's sixth season, he left to work on the 2016 reboot of the Powerpuff Girls.^[23] He was replaced by Sandra Lee—also known as Sandra Calleros—who had previously been the series' background paint supervisor.^[24] Both Jennings and Lee were credited as art co-directors starting with the thirty-third episode, "Jermaine".^[25]

Broadcast

For the first five and a half seasons, the show aired on Monday nights. However starting with "Breezy", the show began to air on different days; following "Breezy", many episodes aired on Thursdays,^[81] although the season's seventeenth episode, "Ghost Fly", aired on a Tuesday night as a Halloween special.^[82] Following several months without new episodes, four installments—"Everything's Jake", "Is That You", "Jake the Brick", and "Dentist"—aired back-to-back on November 24, 25, 26, and 28, respectively.^[83] Likewise, the final six episodes of the season aired during the week of June 1, with the two-part season finale airing on June 5.^[84]

In addition, several episodes aired internationally prior to their domestic debut: "Evergreen" was broadcast on November 10 by Cartoon Network in Brazil,^[85] "Astral Plane" was uploaded onto Cartoon Network's Brazilian website on December 24, 2014,^[86] "The Visitor" first aired on February 3, 2015 on Cartoon Network in South Korea,^[87] and both "Friends Forever" and "Jermaine" aired on Cartoon Network in Latin America on April 6, 2015 and April 13, 2015 respectively.^[88]

Ratings

The season debuted on April 21, 2014, with the two-part episode "Wake Up"/"Escape from the Citadel". Together, both episodes were viewed by 3.321 million viewers and scored a 0.7 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States, which means that the episodes were seen by 0.7 percent of all households aged 18 to 49 years old were watching television at the time of the episode's airing.^[89] This marked a slight decrease in viewers when compared to the previous season premiere "Finn the Human"/"Jake the Dog", which was seen by 3.44 million viewers,^[90] but it marked a massive increase of almost one million viewers when compared with the previous season finale, "Billy's Bucket List".^[91] The premiere was also the most-watched Cartoon Network telecast at the time of its airing among children aged 2–11 and 9–14, as well as with boys 2–11 and 9–14. It also marked a 153 percent increase in overall demographic ratings when compared to the same time the previous year.^[92] The season hit its nadir with the seventeenth episode, "Ghost Fly", which was seen by only 1.3 million viewers and scored a 0.2 percent adult 18–49 Nielsen rating, meaning that it was seen by only 0.2 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the episode's airing.^[93] The season concluded with the two-part episode "Hot Diggity Doom"/"The Comet", which, together, were seen by 1.55 million viewers. The episodes scored 0.4 percent adult 18–49 Nielsen rating.^[94]

Reviews and accolades

The season received largely positive critical reviews. Eric Kohn of IndieWire applauded the two-part season opener, "Wake Up" and "Escape from the Citadel", for taking a darker turn in regards to the series' storytelling. Furthermore, he noted that the storyline concerning "Finn's cursed sword arm—an ingredient that has festered in the sidelines for weeks—reaches a beguiling new state."^[95] Likewise, Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club complimented the episodes for being full of harsh realizations concerning Finn's father and the vulnerability of his body; he ultimately concluded that "the developments of these two episodes dramatically alter the series' status quo to give this season an added boost of momentum from the very beginning."^[33] Each episode was also graded by The A.V. Club with a different letter grade; the season received two C's, twenty-two B's, and seventeen A's.^[96]

The A.V. Club named the series the 27th best television series of 2014, noting that, "The ongoing sixth season has ventured into even more dangerous emotional territory: parenthood. Coupled with deep dives into the history of Ooo and the increasing visual confidence of episodes like the surreal, breathtaking 'Food Chain,' Adventure Time appears ready to use its considerable heft and years of laying narrative foundations to do some of TV's finest storytelling about grappling with the past and accepting the responsibilities of adulthood."^[97] The site selected "Food Chain" and "Breezy" as stand-out episodes from 2014,^[97] and it later named the season finale "The Comet" one of the best TV episodes of 2015.^[98]

Masaaki Yuasa and Eunyoung Choi were both nominated for an "Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production" Annie Award for their work on "Food Chain".^[99] "Food Chain" was later selected for competition at the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival,^[100][101] On April 23, 2015, it was announced that the series had won a Peabody Award for Best Children's Programming.^[102] At the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2015, the episode "Jake the Brick" won a Primetime Emmy Award for Short-format Animation, and Tom Herpich won an Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Emmy for his work on "Walnuts & Rain".^[103][104] At the 2016 Annie Awards, the writing staff for "The Diary" was nominated for an Outstanding Achievement, Writing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production award, and Herpich was nominated for an Outstanding Achievement, Storyboarding in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production award.^[105]

Full season release

The full season set was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 11, 2016.^[148]