Fun, freewheeling antics in ‘Monkey’ and ‘Mikey’

Although they can be prey to the same sort of herd mentality that affects much of television programming, with one success spurring a field of imitations, cartoons remain television’s most reliable source of the strange, inspired moment, the left-field joke and pure visceral energy. Plus the colors are better. (Cartoon colors, one might call them.) This weekend sees the debut of two new series -- “My Gym Partner’s a Monkey,” which takes up its regular post on Cartoon Network tonight, and “Kappa Mikey,” which premieres Saturday on Nicktoons -- that are smart and lively and play cleverly upon their forms.

“Monkey” is the show more obviously targeted to kids, though as its 9 p.m. time slot indicates, not the youngest among them. Created by Tim Cahill and Julie McNally Cahill, it’s something of a companion piece to its Cartoon Network neighbors in the Friday night lineup, “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” (little human boy among exotic creatures) and “Camp Lazlo” (animals in institutional setting stand in for little humans).

Owing to his homonymic surname, young Adam Lyon has been sent by a clerical error to the Charles Darwin Middle School (football team: the Mad Cows), where his classmates are lions and bears and fish and penguins and so on, and where his best friend is the titular Jake Spidermonkey (voiced by Tom Kenny, who other days is SpongeBob SquarePants), a creature ruled almost entirely by impulse: Assigned to organize the files of the school secretary, he instead makes 50,000 photocopies of his rear end.

Animal behavior is, of course, meant to reflect human behavior. A snake’s shedding his skin, leading to a school-wide panic, becomes an extended puberty metaphor that ends with the showing of a kind of animal sex-ed movie that quite brilliantly parodies the out-of-date educational films some of us grew up with (“copyright 1952,” it reads). It’s not a joke that younger viewers may precisely understand, nor even older younger viewers, nor even some of younger older viewers. And neither is this:

“Did you see last night’s episode of ‘Yo Mama’?” says Jake. “That Truffles Duvall sure can dance.”

“I can’t believe you like her,” a gorilla answers. “Her dance stylings are so obviously derivative of the Fosse school.... I also detected a heavy Twyla Tharp influence.”

But they will have no problem with the many “monkey butt” jokes.

“Kappa Mikey,” which premieres Saturday night on Nicktoons, seems by contrast to have been specifically designed for adults and animation nerds. A domestically made anime, it exists in that parallel universe, earlier explored by “Roger Rabbit,” in which the stars of cartoons go home after work and lead other lives.

Created by Larry Schwarz (“Tortellini Western,” another cartoon cultural satire on Nicktoons), it’s an anthology of Japanimation styles upon which an “American character” -- Mikey, rendered in thick lines and inelegantly animated to emphasize his cultural difference -- has been imposed, in a bit of form following content. The show plays like a sitcom, an especially loud and fast one.

Mikey is an unemployed actor from Cleveland who, through a bit of helpful contrivance, travels to Tokyo to become the star of a floundering superhero anime -- making an enemy in the process of its former star, Lily, sweet on screen but hell off. (It’s a bit reminiscent, premise-wise, of the Tom Selleck movie “Mr. Baseball.”) One joke here is that all the characters in the show are, offstage, the opposite of the people they play: Mikey is in reality a goofy slacker; the Pikachu-esque Guano (one of the dumber jokes in an overall intelligent show) is also the show’s writer and director; the villain is just a big lug who lives with his mother; the tough girl is a hearts-and-flowers type who has a crush on Mikey.

There are also the workaholic Ozu, who runs the network, and his yes-man, called Yes Man. They are the only characters who speak in Japanese accents. This is for comic effect, and I am just PC enough to find that slightly disturbing, though what they have to say is mostly very funny.

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‘Kappa Mikey’

Where: Nicktoons Network

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Ratings: TV-Y7 (directed to older children)

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‘My Gym Partner’s a Monkey’

Where: Cartoon Network

When: 9 tonight

Ratings: TV-Y (all children)