Xavi Masdeu is passing the rice. He lives in Barcelona, he has just won a design award and he lives with his girlfriend, but thirty and maturity are great for him. In the middle of the crisis, his partner breaks up with him and he can only find comfort in his friends at the studio and in his aunt Paquita. Sometimes not even at that. because Xavi, the protagonist of ‘Past Rice’ (‘Arròs covat’) is an asshole. And championship.
From work to home, and from home to work
It is possible that when you start ‘Past Rice’ you won’t stop remembering the designs of a telephone company. It’s normal: its creator is the same, Juanjo Sáez, who with a fanzine line and more similar to a sketch than traditional animation, he manages to create fabulous characters whose feelings we can notice beyond each frame. They’re just faceless faces, but therein lies a large part of its success: with just a few eyes, a few eyebrows or even the movement of a nose you can recognize every feeling. It has merit.
That the series begins with an original song by Manos de Topo is no coincidence: just like the Catalan group, ‘Arroz Past’ is very bitter, very strange, very funny…and it’s not for everyone. Juanjo Sáez created an emotional tidal wave for Xavi Masdeu, a character who neither knows how to behave like a functional adult nor how he could. and all of it without ever losing a narrative between the absurd and the realistic tone in which there is room for everything from international celebrities to others inspired by the Barcelona underground scene, such as shitty DJs.
Maybe ‘Past rice’ sounds familiar to you even if you didn’t live in Catalonia in 2009 because it won the Ondas award to the best program broadcast by networks that are not national in scope. Nothing bad. The truth is more than ten years have passedbut the first season is still a bombshell at all levels, with a very special humor, an enviable personality (those vocal sound effects) and a recognizable and unique character design. Also, each episode is a little over ten minutes long. How long has it been since you were surprised watching a series?
It’s going to happen to you
The first two seasons of this Spanish animated series, something that is already rare, are in a state of grace: everything seems to fall into placecreativity flows and the characters are as frustrating as they are human. Xavi doesn’t stop making mistakes and of being a toxic person, but we are there to accompany you on the journey. However, the series makes an irreparable flaw at one point by introducing too many changes to the series.
‘Past Rice’ works because it is within an ecosystem: all changes do it within a frame. Xavi always has the confidence of his aunt Paquita, he will always have a certain freedom in love, he will always live in Barcelona, he will always be able to count on his friends. However, in his eagerness to show the mental tsunami that being in his thirties can be, the third season you are wrong demolishing this framework, expanding, removing and modifying without giving the viewer time to understand what Xavi is going through.
It never becomes bad or catastrophic, but it is true that ends, paradoxically, when the rice has already gone a little, and it shows that even the creators themselves are already with their heads elsewhere. Don’t let this put you off: it’s still a fabulous experience that you can polish them in two afternoons. How many Spanish animation series for adults have been made in recent years? For that alone, it’s worth a look.
I go to bed like an ensaimada
After being broadcast on C33, ‘Past rice’ went through TNT, reached all of Spain on DVD and is now available on Filmin, both in Catalan (without subtitles) and in Spanish. don’t be afraid, cases like ‘Plats bruts’ are not repeated and its terrible adaptation outside of Catalonia: the Spanish dubbing is done by the same people and has the same intonation and the same desire. Even Manos de Topo re-recorded the opening song in both languages!
As a series from 13 years ago, there are parts that have not aged as well as they should, but it continues to maintain a vigor and creativity worthy of admiration in a native audiovisual world in which everything seems to be at times in a state of stasis. I invite you to take a look at the life of Xavi, Paquita, Luz, Sonia, Lluis and Ricard and how trying to navigate some difficult waters on their way to maturity.
And all this, as serious as it may seem, without stopping laughing Not in a single episode. Even the most dramatic moments have their trademark joke incorporated. And it is that ‘past rice’ It’s a happy place to let go and learn to forgive a character as imperfect as he was lost in his thirties. Who knows: maybe it’s time to give it a second life.