Jumanji (animation)

The following year after the 1995 American fantasy-adventure-comedy film came out, an animated adaption was made. Unlike the movie, it followed it own continuity. Like the movie, it followed Peter and Judy finding the game board. However unlike the movie, they end up sucked into the game where they quickly find out the dangers of it. Luckily along the way they meet Alan, a previous player who also got sucked into the game and can't get out as he didn't read his clue that the board displays after rolling the dice (those little rhymes that tell of the dangers to come). So Peter and Judy willingly come into the game throughout the series to try and help Alan either find his missing clue or an alternate way out.


 * Actor Allusion: Aunt Nora in the movie is a pretty normal woman, played by Bebe Neuwirth. In the cartoon, she's basically Lilith Sternin, in attitude and appearance.
 * Adaptation Expansion: even more so than the movie.
 * All Amazons Want Hercules: Jamazon Queen Gina wants Alan.
 * Amazon Brigade: The Jamazons
 * An Arm and a Leg: Captain Squint's wooden nose, in a nod to Moby Dick.
 * Axe Crazy: Pretty much everyone who lives in the jungle except for Alan.
 * Badass: All the Jumanji inhabitants - even Trader Slick
 * Badass Mustache: both Van Pelt and Von Richter
 * Baleful Polymorph: See Running Gag.
 * Bazaar of the Bizarre: Trader Slick and his shop. He'll sell and buy just about anything—in episode 3 he haggles for 57 pounds of fighting ivy, 1 1/2 leopord spots and a bottle of pollywog juice in exchange for a rope, a basket and a snake catching stick, while in episode 7 he asks for 500 Jumanji mangoes in exchange for saving Alan's life. The things he's sold in the series includes the likes of Jumanji Tracking Fluid (leaks out and creates glowing footsteps), a Get Out of Jumanji Free Card (good for one use only), the Slickomatic Chrono Repeater (rewinds the turn each time it's pressed), and Guunta (an elephant sized bloodhound).
 * Berserk Button: Jumanji itself is the berserker. Anyone who cheats or tries to destroy the game receives a horrible in-game punishment.
 * Butt Monkey: Peter who gets to be targetted for all of Jumanji's punishements, particular when it comes to being transformed into something else (which means he got to be a literal example in the first episode). Eventually Lampshaded.
 * Cross-Dressing Voices: A female voices Peter.
 * Cat Fight: Aunt Nora and Queen Gina.
 * Darkest Africa: More so than the movie, since they actually went into Jumanji every episode.
 * Death World: Jumanji. It's a miracle that the players survive even one episode.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Much moreso then the movie as the players are brought inside the game. The first episode clarifies this when Peter comes across a few toys in Alan's hideout which he explains, in a rather grim tone, were from "previous players".
 * The Fair Folk: The Manjis, who can vary between being allies of the gamers and their enemies, all depending on their mood, and who very strange customs and laws. For example, in one episode, Tribal Bob (the Manji leader) happily greets the gamers and ruefully explains they're standing on sacred ground, which means they must be killed. Cue the Manjis circling the three humans with spears raised until they all take a good long step to the left, at which they drop their spears and relax again. Alan explains that this patch of ground isn't sacred, while the other one is.
 * Gorgeous Gorgon: One episode has the gang meet a handsome adventurer who takes them all to his castle in the sky, with him trying to seduce Judy. They eventually discover he's actually a cold-hearted monster with a petrifying stare.
 * Groin Attack: Subverted, during the fight between Aunt Nora and Queen Gina when she nearly jab a spear right between Nora's legs!
 * Groundhog Day Loop: Though an artificially induced one, via the "Slickomatic Chrono Repeater "
 * Hey, It's That Voice!
 * Alan is Broadway and Patrick.
 * And Tim Curry is Trader Slick. And how.
 * Aunt Nora is Didi Pickles.
 * Professor Ibsen is JF Sebastian and EB Farnum
 * Van Pelt is Blight and Buzzard.
 * Captain Squint is Duke Phillips and Zed.
 * Honest John's Dealership: Trader Slick is somewhere between this and a Friend in the Black Market.
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters: the Manjis and the Jumakis are a lot nicer than the human Jumanji inhabitants.
 * It's debatable if they're actually inhuman, though. While the Manjis do look like frightening tribal masks with arms and legs, it seems that they can actually adopt humans into their ranks—the third episode has Peter almost join them permanently. The offer is made about 3:45 here, and the actual ceremony is shown at 4 minutes in.
 * Hungry Jungle:
 * Mad Scientist: Professor Ibsen. Curiously, instead of doing things For Science!, like most Mad Scientists, he instead creates all sorts of mechanical hazards because the game itself somehow tells him to.
 * He also acts as the game's anti-cheating measure: in one episode, Peter accidentally brings a laptop computer into Jumanji. When he somehow finds an access point and attempts to use it to retrieve a record of Alan's clue, Ibsen shows up, messes up the attempt and not only steals the computer, but nearly conquers Jumanji with it. The computer is destroyed in the process of stopping this, and they never got a replacement, probably because their guardians decided they were too irresponsible to take care of one.
 * Maniac Monkeys
 * Misplaced Wildlife: fauna from Africa, Asia and South America can be seen in Jumanji (justified because it's a board game)
 * Nice Hat: Van Pelt's Sola Topi (pith helmet), Von Richter's Picklehaube and Ibsen's Top Hat.
 * No Guy Wants an Amazon: Alan doesn't want to marry Queen Gina (because he'll be sacrificed afterwards).
 * Running Gag: Peter is often turned into a different animal for some transgression or other (or just Tempting Fate).
 * Someone Has to Do It: In one episode the gang manages to finally get rid of Van Pelt by luring him off a bottomless pit. Unfortunately, with Van Pelt apparently dead, someone has to take his place...
 * The Rival: Von Richter to Van Pelt
 * Shout-Out: Professor Ibsen has introduced himself as a "master builder".
 * Toothy Bird: not for comical purposes, but to make them more ferocious
 * The Unintelligible: The Manjis speak a language basically made up of staccato clicking, raspberries, spitting sounds, whoops and similar random noises. Despite this, the gamers all learn to understand it and Peter actually manages to pick up a working grasp of speaking it, having learned it from Alan, who's been studying it for the last 23 years. Despite its strange nature, it's evidently extremely complex—Peter comments once that they have over 500 different words for pain.
 * Jumaki language, meanwhile, is so alien that they need a Jumaki interpretator to communicate with them. It basically sounds like the occasional screeching noise interspersed with a lot of rasps and rumbles.
 * We Could Have Avoided All This: In the final episode.
 * Winged Humanoid: The Jumaki tribe are humanoid birds, with arms, legs and wings on their shoulders, who show up in episode 16.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: Every time Alan appears to be freed from Jumanji, he gets a few brief celebratory moments, before realizing that, for one reason or another, he has to go back.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: Every time Alan appears to be freed from Jumanji, he gets a few brief celebratory moments, before realizing that, for one reason or another, he has to go back.