Well Lord, we are only human!
— Quote from the satirical magazine Ludas Matyi that later became the series' motto
Gusztáv (Gustav, released in English as Gustavus) was a long running Hungarian series of adult-oriented animated shorts, created by Pannonia Film Studio's József Nepp, Attila Dargay and Marcell Jankovics and produced between 1964 and 1977. Starring the titular petty underdog Gustav and spanning over 120 episodes, the bizarre, dialogue and continuity-free shorts satirized the everyday topics of modern society, often veering into absurdism, dark comedy, slapstick and bordering a Sadist Show, showing life's harshness through its main character's misfortunes... all for a laugh.
Gustav, though ostensibly an everyman, had a wide range of talents, professions and obsessions, and would inconsistently be characterized as a womanizer, a husband, a father, a manchild, a jerkass, a schemer or Karmic Trickster, but mainly as a down-on-his-luck loser who always found himself in the middle of trouble.
The series was spun off from Nepp's earlier shorts Szenvedély
(Passion, 1961) and Holnaptól kezdve (Beginning with Tomorrow, 1963), featuring a proto-Gustav, and received a special episode titled Gusztáv és a Léda (Gustav and Leda) in 1971, commissioned by the government to popularize Hungary as a tourist destination. Gustav almost became his country's first feature length animated film star, but the literary adaptation Johnny Corncob was produced instead. In late 2019, Serbian theater director Kokan Mladenović updated the cartoon as a satirical stage play titled All is Gustav's fault.
With its universal humor and near lack of spoken dialogue, the series was easily exported to about 70 countries worldwide as television airtime filler, which turned it into a minor but global Cult Classic. In its native Hungary, Gusztáv's significance cannot be understated — not only was it the country's first major adult themed animated work, it served as a springboard for many animation talents who would go on to redefine the country's entertainment industry.
Gustavus and the Tropes:
- Absurdism: The series as a whole likes to delve into this, with the ridiculous amount of hardships Gustav has to face, his own cartoonish follies, or simply the amount of plain weird stuff that happens.
- Amusing Injuries: Being a comedy show with a lot of slapstick, these tend to crop up from time to time.
- Animation Bump: Animation quality varied greatly, especially when comparing the early theatrical shorts to the later television episodes, but the episode Gustavus and Society stands out with its unusually "rubbery" and highly expressive animation.
- Art Evolution: The first few seasons featured lively, bouncy Thick-Line Animation vaguely resembling the earlier UPA cartoons produced in America, and an occasionally more varied color palette for the sparsely detailed backgrounds. The specifics of the art style varied based on the animation director, until the establishment of a concrete in-house style in 1967. The post-1974, made-for-television shorts had thin, uneven lines, stiffer animation with lots of smear frames, generally more grotesque character designs, and more uniformly drab bluish gray environments with a tad more detail.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Used most of the time Gustav or a woman shows up nude, but sometimes it's averted for brief gags or if a character is looking at porn magazines.
- Parodied in the episode Gustavus Two Faces. Gustav's bath scene first features the usual cartoon censorship, showing only his butt. Then he gets out of the tub with his junk in plain view.
- Black Comedy: The series' main genre.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some of the official English episode titles have wonky translations.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In Gusztáv udvarias ("Gustavus is Polite"), Gustav points his cabin mate's attention to the audience and they hide behind a blanket to change into their pajamas.
- The Cameo:
- In József Nepp's short A yeti dala (The Song of the Yeti), Gustav cameos as one of the snowman's victims.
- Dr. Bubó from the concurrently produced Funny Animal show „Kérem a következőt!” shows up in the episode Gustavus Interiority Complex, as a human therapist, rather than an anthropomorphic owl.
- Depending on the Writer: Co-creator Nepp preferred to accentuate Gustav's negative traits, depicting him as a permanent jerkass, if not an outright sadist.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Proto-Gustav from the film Passion has a more angular design with rectangular features. Early Gustav proper had a cartoonishly oversized, rounded head, minuscule torso and large, oval eyes. His finalized form, redesigned by Marcell Jankovics, reinstated Proto-Gustav's more realistic body proportions but kept the noodle-limbs, outfitted him with rounded features and small, beady eyes.
- The Everyman: Gustav, or at least he mostly starts out as one. Then each short goes on to show how basic human nature or society's influence can bend and contort him.
- Express Delivery: In Gustavus Knows Best, a musician gets cozy with a nude woman hiding in a double bass case while Gustav is messing about with his french horn. A few days later, the baby's already been delivered... inside a small violin case of its own.
- Loser Archetype: Though he occasionally comes out on top (usually at other's expense), Gustav is primarily this.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Apart from an occasional word or sentence here and there, which are hard to make out anyway, the show has no dialogue.
- Mind Screw: Counterbalancing the satire about realistic topics is the show's utter surreal wackiness, its experimentation with Toon Physics and unexpected bursts of explicit, dirty jokes.
- When pushed to his limits, a pissed-off Gustav can take off his head and beat it up.
- His way of growing a stubble? Eating a hair comb and letting its spikes stab through his face.
- As he goes from being a careless pedestrian to a similarly unhinged driver with no regard for public safety, Gustav's recklessness finally catches up to him when he accidentally runs over a man. His victim turns out to be himself from the beginning of the short. The two then start beating each other up for being road menaces.
- Mistaken for Cheating: In Gustavus is Jealous, Gustav develops obsessive paranoia about his wife cheating on him thanks to a Fortune Teller. He holds onto his suspicion even after they've grown old together and raised a whole family of Gustavs, and even when he's seemingly dead.
- Negative Continuity: Gustav's occupation and family status changes every episode. Most of the time he's on the lookout for hot women, yet sometimes he's not only married but has a child as well. In one episode, The Grim Reaper takes him away, only to show up fine the next. At one point, Gustav even lives in The Wild West; in another, he's living in an imagined future.
- Prospector: Gustav himself in Gustavus the Gold Digger.
- Reused Character Design: Gustav's bearded doppelganger would show up in a couple Mézga család episodes as Uncle Oscar. They even had the same voice actor.
- Ridiculously Fast Construction: Inverted in Gustavus Builds a Holiday Home. Gustav sets out to build a massive villa in no time, and ends up wasting his entire life and fortune making a small shed.
- Road Runner vs. Coyote: Gustav's burly Wild West adversary in Gustavus the Gold Digger goes through a host of Wile E. Coyote-style schemes to flatten, maim, run over or drug Gustav and steal his gold, all of which backfire on him in the expected fashion. In the end, he gets Gustav's loot anyway by beating him in a poker game fair and square.
- Sadist Show: Whether Gustav is on the giving or receiving end of said sadism, the whole show has a very morbid vibe and rarely do the characters escape the episodes unscathed.
- Satire: The whole series' main purpose, other than being generally funny, was to take as many jabs at society and its petty schmucks as possible, but also to showcase the plight of the everyman.
- Self-Surgery: To hide the fortune he made by winning the lottery, Gustav cuts himself open and sews the cash under his own skin. Unfortunately for him, the show's cartoon logic stops applying at that point and he passes out.
- Silence Is Golden/Speaking Simlish: The shorts for the most part have no dialogue other than mumbling gibberish or nonsensical sound effects (a la Peanuts' adult characters), though at times Gustav would mutter or yell something legible. He was "voiced" by comedians Alfonzó (József Markos) in most appearances and János Gálvölgyi in two episodes.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Gustav is infrequently shown raising a daughter who looks nothing like him, but in Gustavus is Jealous, he fathers five exact copies of himself... and still thinks his wife was cheating on him.
- Suddenly Speaking: While he did say a couple words or generic sentences here and there, Gustav would finally get to speak coherently in a series of TV ads for body hygiene products.
- Suicide as Comedy: Comes with the territory of a Black Comedy. In one scene, Gustav visits a noose shop, in another, he hangs himself with a carefully selected tie only to realize his apartment's ceiling isn't high enough.
- Sustained Misunderstanding: A dialogue-free variant. In Gustavus and the Other Man, Gustav and a random stranger are walking on opposite sides of a hedge and both grow suspicious that the other is stalking them, to the point that they do begin to stalk each other.
- Twist Ending: Feature so often that they're practically mandatory. Given Gustav's always-changing roles, they can be karmic or cruel.
- Tyop on the Cover: English spell checkers must have been in short supply, judging by some title cards.
- Gustavus is Daubind was probably meant to be Gustavus is Daubing.
- Gustavus Interiority Complex should be Gustavus' Inferiority Complex.
- Gustavus Invites Guestes should be Gustavus Invites Guests.
- Gustavus Two Faces should be Gustavus' Two Faces.
- Zany Cartoon: Every episode seems to have a normal setup about everyday hassles, but they quickly (d)evolve into absurd hijinks where the rules of reality only apply if they're in the service of comedy or Gustav's suffering.
