HE-MAN Meets FERNGULLY at Ithaca Fantastik Fest

Nova Seed

Nova Seed is exactly the kind of movie that makes film festivals like Ithaca Fantastik so worthwhile. Essentially He-Man meets FernGully, drawn in the style of an 11-year-old’s math notebook doodles, Nova Seed is a Saturday morning adventure cartoon about environmentalism. With a great sense of visual storytelling, propelled by a fun, 80’s-style original score, Nova Seed sucked me into its high fantasy comic book world and successfully delivered a message of protecting the environment at all costs along the way. The visuals are crude but slickly animated, and the designs somehow tap into a nostalgia for one’s own childhood cartooning, ultimately coalescing into a rather trippy visual style that calls back to the kinds of 70’s album covers that would get airbrushed onto a VW bus.

Nova Seed

This feels like the kind of thing I would have loved as a child, and still have a real appreciation for now as an adult, mostly just at the audacity of making such a thing. I’m not sure who it’s for, and I doubt I would have seen it outside of this festival, to come back around to my earlier point, but I personally had a great time with it and would recommend it if this sounds like your brand of weird.

Garrett Smith
Resident Funny Man / Film Geek
Garrett Smith is a Philadelphia based comedian and podcaster surviving on frozen pizza and macaroni and cheese. Follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd to see if he ever develops lactose intolerance, and check out his milky smooth voice on his podcast, I Like To Movie Movie.
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