My Adventures With Superman is not a kids’ show. Oh, it may SEEM like a kids’ show, but the fans are watching for ADULT reasons. Himbo magical girl Clark Kent and spunky tomboy Lois Lane have taken the internet by storm, and let me be the first to tell you, the thirst is real.
On the surface, My Adventures With Superman is a kid-friendly origin story about the alien Boy Scout that will someday grow into the leader of the Justice League. Upon closer inspection, one realizes that the show is actually a horny shonen anime with barely disguised moments of fanservice. The “adventure” with Superman in question sure isn’t an innocent one, it is a SEXUAL ADVENTURE.
Allow me to give you an example …
On the surface, Clark Kent APPEARS to be an innocent Golden Retriever who is protecting his sweet little PG love interest from some lasers. Why did the lasers tear his shirt off? Easy answer! That’s what lasers do! It makes perfect sense! Nothing sexual here! Wait … but why did the lasers take Clark’s shirt COMPLETELY off if they were only hitting it at one angle? And why is he GLISTENING? DID THEY OIL HIM UP!?!?!!
Surely this is a fluke! It’s sweat! They’re in the woods! They’ve been hiking for miles! Clark is stressed out looking for his missing friend Jimmy and fighting robots! It doesn’t matter that his sweat is gleaming off of his rippling pectorals in a deeply erotic and totally R-rated way. It’s the exception that proves the rule! Right?
Allow me to present a second piece of evidence …
God lord, Lois! Where did you get those lats? And forget cake, you’ve got a whole bakery back there. This scene is supposed to be about Lois helping clark sew up his ripped jacket. She didn’t have to take her jacket off and give us all a collective anime nosebleed in the process. Why do you need to take your coat off to get something out of the pocket? That defeats the whole purpose of a pocket. At least the fanservice in this show goes both ways. The bisexual energy of My Adventures With Superman is palpable. I wanna have an adventure with both of them.
I’ve been a Cartoon Network fan for years. I’ve watched everything from Ed, Edd n Eddy to Adventure Time, but never in my life have I seen such belligerent sexual tension on a kids’ show. Not once. There’s certainly romance and even a little bit of lewd humor on other TV shows, but this? No … this is anime levels of suggestive lewdness. And that, my friends, is the reason why an adult animation studio like Adult Swim picked My Adventurers With Superman up. You want further proof? It’s also streaming on HBO—ahem, Max. Think of the other shows that Max streams. True Blood. Game of Thrones. Euphoria. All basically porn. Nothing about that platform is innocent! And neither is what the animators of Lois and Clark are doing to us.
Oh you’re not convinced? I’m just “reading into things,” am I? Well, I’m not alone. Take a look at the comments section of these videos. The uploader of the Clark Kent edit starts off strong by saying that they wished the robot had “aimed lower” when shooting those clothes-ripping lasers. Meanwhile, those on Team Lois are picking their jaws off the floor long enough to call her the the goat of all Lois Lane interpretations. Other than that, it’s a lot of “damn” and “I need him.”
Needless to say, Rule 34 artists are hard at working pumping out NSFW material starring these two. Fans have taken to YouTube posting fan-made edits of the couple getting busy in the break room of the daily planet. See below.
Still, to say that My Adventures With Superman is simply fanservice (glorious, GLORIOUS fanservice) would be a discredit to the show entirely. In a few short episodes, My Adventures With Superman has given audiences one of the best onscreen romances in recent memory, and perhaps the greatest Lois x Superman story ever told. Just after Clark gets his shirt shot off by a robot who is obviously thirsty for the hero as well, Lois asks him, “How’d you know you were bulletproof?” and Clark responds with the absolutely swoon-worthy line “I didn’t. I just knew that you weren’t.”
LIKE WHAT? THAT’S SO ROMANTIC AND SELFLESS. MY HEART.
In the comments sections of this YouTube video showing the same shirt-shooting scene, fans are quick to praise the emotional qualities of Lois and Clark, along with the physical. One points out the subtle decision to have Clark walk beside Lois rather than simply scoop her up and fly with her at super speed. “He’s letting her handle herself until he needs to step in to protect her,” says the comment. Others praise this version of Superman as a “selfless moral beacon” contrasting against other Superman stories where the hero is at best flawed and at worst tyrannical and evil. Superman is praised as a “vehicle for positive aspiration” by another user, and a third says that this moment in the show should serve as an example for what Zack Synder SHOULD have done in his interpretation of the character.
At its core, My Adventures With Superman is able to touch on what makes a romance story (and a real-life relationship between adults) work. The show serves as a marriage of the sexual AND the emotional, and makes fans FEEL for the characters both as sexual beings and as people. After all, the best kind of relationship is when you’re with someone who is both your lover AND your friend—a BFF that you wanna get NSFW with. Isn’t that what makes life worth living?
(featured image: Max)
