Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years

Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years is an American CG-animated television series that premiered on Paramount+ on March 4, 2021. The series is a spinoff of SpongeBob SquarePants, featuring the main cast as aged-down children attending a summer camp, and is considered a prequel to the original series.

Plot
A 10-year-old SpongeBob goes to a summer sleepaway camp called Kamp Koral, with younger versions of his friends.

Why It's Heading Off To Summer Camp

 * 1) Great voice acting, just like the main series it's based on.
 * 2) The theme song is catchy.
 * 3) Despite some lighting issues, the animation is solid and captures the expressiveness of the main show's recent seasons.
 * 4) The characters are still decently lovable as always.
 * 5) * In fact, the show introduces two new characters (Nobby and Narlene), who are great additions to the cast.
 * 6) ** In fact, they even got a chance to be featured in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode themselves.
 * 7) * SpongeBob, Patrick, and Sandy have extra charm to them. For example, SpongeBob still has his love for jellyfish when he tries to catch them for good grades, Patrick has funny behavior such as when he takes one of SpongeBob's jellyfish to make toast with jelly, and Sandy is a little dumb and clumsy to make her funnier.
 * 8) * The show even introduces a baby version of Pearl Krabs which is decently cute.
 * 9) The designs of the characters look cute.
 * 10) Hilarious, well-done gags.
 * 11) Kevin C. Cucumber has a recurring role, and his first major role since the SpongeBob second season episode "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic".
 * 12) The time cards are carried over from the main series, and are still hilarious as ever.
 * 13) As with the main series, the APM tracks are used here, and the show still has a fitting Hawaiian-esque soundtrack.
 * 14) Unlike mh:terribletvshows:Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go!, mh:terribletvshows:Bob the Builder (2015), mh:terribletvshows:The Powerpuff Girls (2016), and mh:Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon (despite the former being created by the same guy who made the original Ren and Stimpy), it somewhat respects its source material and the formula set up by it.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some minor retcons such as Sandy meeting SpongeBob as kids when they actually meet each other as adults in "Tea at the Treedome", which was explained in the episode "Kitchen Sponge" as Sandy's adult self sending her younger self to Kamp Koral to prevent Plankton from stealing the Krabby Patty formula.
 * 2) * Another inconsistency is that in the regular series Squidward is older than SpongeBob and Patrick and is a similar age to Mr. Krabs. This can be proven in “The Curse of Bikini Bottom” when SpongeBob and Patrick refer to him as “Old Man Squidward” and Squidward having worked at the Krusty Krab long before SpongeBob.
 * 3) Sometimes, it may be too similar to Camp Lazlo.
 * 4) The animation, while still solid, isn't perfect and has some issues.
 * 5) * It can be a little off, dim, and uncanny, and can give people a negative impression on the look of the animation.
 * 6) * Despite the character designs being cute, they don't really match up to their Sponge on the Run designs.
 * 7) * The lighting looks quite off due to bad light rendering.
 * 8) While the voice acting is good as mentioned above, all of the characters have the same voices as their adult counterparts in the main show, despite the fact that they had kids do the voices in Sponge on the Run. Why couldn't they do the same thing here?
 * 9) Like Uncle Grandpa, Some people may not like this show.

Reception and Controversy
When Kamp Koral was announced, a lot of people did not take the then new spin-off well and expected Kamp Koral to be bad due to rumors saying "Hillenburg did not want any spin-offs to be made or connected with SpongeBob", especially to the point where the spin-off received many negative reviews and feedback on IMDb before it was ever released. Two years later, the complaints mostly subsided once it was revealed that Hillenburg knew about the series before he died in 2018, and what he actually said in one of his interviews is that "he didn't see any potential spin-offs for SpongeBob", not that he has a dislike or bias against spin-offs in general, which proves this whole "Hillenburg was against spin-offs" rumor was all a big misunderstanding from the start.

Since then, the show received mostly mixed to positive reviews from critics and fans of the original series.

Trivia

 * According to the official SpongeBob timeline, Kamp Koral is likely set between 1996 and 1999.

Videos
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