Pinpointing Adventure Time’s oddest moment is a fun, if fruitless, pursuit. Just skimming the surface of the absurdist animated program’s six seasons so far, heroes Finn the Human and Jake the Dog have encountered a witch threatening to suck them into her “bottomless bottom”, candy-coated zombies, and a frightening dark lord named the Lich, who recently transformed into an adorable giant baby.

Although the series’ magical Land of Ooo has its fair share of weirdness, Jeremy Shada, who voices Finn, notes that the show, deep down, is a coming-of-age story for youth.

“Obviously, Adventure Time is frickin’ crazy,” Shada tells the Straight on the line from his California home. “You have all this crazy stuff going on, all these dark creatures of this postapocalyptic world. But when you strip it all down, it’s really just this kid dealing with growing up.”

It’s a fitting narrative for Shada, who began voicing Finn when he was only 12. Rewinding a bit, Nickelodeon rejected an Adventure Time pilot featuring Shada’s older brother Zack as “Pen the Human” in 2007. Before Cartoon Network launched the series, producers renamed and recast the character, thinking Zack’s voice would have matured too much. Interestingly, when Jeremy landed the role in 2009, his bosses missed the family connection.

“No one realized that I was his brother,” Shada says with a laugh. “They just thought they got super lucky and, coincidentally, I sounded just like the original.”

Now 18, Shada has been allowed to grow with Finn. His cartoon counterpart is still an excitable sword-swinger in short pants who fights alongside an anthropomorphic dog with a penchant for pancakes, but there are also more down-to-earth problems to deal with. See, for instance, a heartbreaking failed romance with the fiery Flame Princess, or the confusion of finally meeting his long-lost dad, only to discover that the guy is a shifty, manipulative deadbeat on the run.

“At first, they were bummed that Finn’s dad was kind of a jerk and not a great person. He left, and he’s this selfish guy,” Shada says of the fan reaction to Stephen Root’s cowardly Martin the Human character. “But I think the great thing about it is that it shows a relatability for a lot of kids that don’t have great relationships with their parents.”

Though stand-alone story lines have the shape-shifting Jake discovering what it’s like to live as a brick, the mutt has also seen some arc-altering changes. Most noticeably, he squired a mixed litter of pups with Lady Rainicorn, who, as you might imagine, is part rainbow and part unicorn.

Shada also points out that benevolent Candy Kingdom ruler Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch) has been revealed to possess “almost dictatorish” tendencies, while the Ice King (Spongebob Squarepants’ Tom Kenny) has morphed from a go-to villain into more of a “Craigslist roommate” nuisance. It all points to Finn reanalyzing his outrageous surroundings and realizing that sometimes you can’t always take extra-sweetened royals or disappointing parental figures at face value.

“It’s kind of an analogy for life in general and having to grow up and go through teenagehood, because he’s experiencing all these different emotions, and the world is becoming more complex,” Shada theorizes. “It’s him trying to figure out exactly how to do the right thing and figuring out what the right thing actually is.”

Jeremy Shada will be appearing at Fan Expo Vancouver April 3 to 5 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.