That fandom nostalgia is a helluva drug. Mix it with updated norms and politics and you’ll get 10,000 word essays on why purple-hair Dr. Sattler can’t use a hyperdrive as a weapon because it’d make Star Wars unrealistic.
I haven’t watched the others, but yeah, Teen Titans Go was hard to get into because of nostalgia fever. After a few episodes I saw it for the new thing it is and not what it was, and yes, it fucking rocks.
The whole Timmverse lineage had this lovely radio-drama tone. It was all PG at worst, but the characters took it seriously. Compare Michael Caine in that Muppets adaptation of A Christmas Carol: he played it completely straight even though he was co-starring with felt.
The goofy self-aware responses to all that are at least as jarring as the tryhard grimdark responses to it. Better - but still odd. At least they’re not trying to out-edge the show that did Heart Of Ice in its first season and dropped Batgirl onto the hood of Jim Gordon’s car.
The best thing is that they’re made by people who grew up on the same stuff. Like OK KO is this wild blend of Looney Tunes and 90s/early 2000s Shonen and I love it.
It’s not so much that they cut it in half to 30 minutes, but more that so much of it is copy paste content. Having Anderson .Paak or Feist on is cool, but they got them to record 5 minutes then put that same 5 minutes in what felt like 6 episodes of the season for some reason. So much of it is 2D animated now where it used to have way more actual human interaction. It feels very aged down. Idk, it’s not awful by any means and the inclusionary aspect remains, but it’s not close to the same quality in my view
Part of that is because their mission statement isn’t literally regarded as radical anymore. When Sesame Street launched, and really up through the early 90s, it was radically progressive to have a kid’s show that tried to teach kids things, and more specifically targeted inner-city kids by using surroundings they would be familiar with. Most of us grew up with Sesame Street just being on the air normally, and most of us here didn’t live through the Senate hearings on public television. It’s a minor miracle shows like Sesame Street and Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood are regarded as mainstream and boring now.
My daughter was watching - I guess it was the current Mickey Mouse (?) - cartoons on Disney+ a couple nights back. These include Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc.
Only none of them look like the standard toons anymore but look like Disney had inbred sex with Ren and Stempy.
Even the humor and art is similar to that same style drawn by Kricfalusi where the characters all seem to be borderline psychotic and all the humor is based on shock value.
Company plays off nostalgia for easy money. This doesn’t actually bother me because on the flip side of this is that the best quality cartoons have been made in past 20 years and it’s not even close.
People always say that it’s just because the shows aren’t made for you anymore and that’s actually the problem but not the way you think.
The shows are quite literally dumber. Cartoons used to have content for parents as well as the kids. Like sneaking in adult jokes that would fly right over a kids head. Now cartoons are just about capturing attention through flashy colors and constantly changing scenes.
Put on a cartoon made decades ago and the whole family can enjoy it. Put on a modern cartoon and anyone over 12 can’t stand it
Signs of the times, there was usually only 1 tv so they had to make the media touch everyone. Now a days they can actually make media just for kids, since the parents can watch something else.
Yeah it’s not the cartoonist. It’s the media corporation they operate through.
It’s not a secret that media outlets heavily influence what is aired on their channels. Hell they determine what they air in the first place. That and the FCC is a govt agency that determines what is or is not appropriate for public television. And with half our govt trying to strip education it’s not that far of a stretch.
The actual cartoonist is usually on the lower end of the power dynamic. You make what they tell you to make or you don’t work for them.
Listen old man, you’re just forgetting the forgettable cartoons of your generation. Nothing has changed. If anything there is simply likely more art being made now, but in the same proportions of high-vs-low quality as before.
I mean you remember the the greats of the 80s and 90s, that’s what makes them the greats! But how often do people talk about looks at Wikipedia The Little Lulu Show or Extreme Dinosaurs? As we go on, the good will be remembered and the rest will fade into obscurity.
Plus, kids have low standards. I remember begging my parents to take us to see Good Burger in theaters and I loved the hell out of it. Upon watching as an adult… yeah, it was terrible. That’s not too say that shows shouldn’t try to make good content for kids, but I do feel like a lot of adults don’t realize how little it took to entertain them as a kid.
They used to do that, they still do too, but they used to too. You think they played the theme song to Cheers in Adventure Time for the kids? This has some real old man yelling at clouds energy.
Adventure Time is really underrated. As an adult it’s hard to watch the hallucinogenic drug addled animation, but if you close your eyes and put your hands over your ears for the screaming, you’ll find it’s very well written
I don’t know about anything being hard to watch in it, I find every season enjoyable. The entire team, including the offshore animators, did a wonderful job. You can feel their hearts in it. Idk about it being underrated either, its so popular they keep going back to the setting in miniseries.
I swore I was too, but I guess I was actually in high school during the first episode. It is without a doubt my favorite show. I run a dnd campaign set in future Ooo from the series I love it so much.
I personally find it was a hell of a lot better when they were getting to the end and things weren’t just Fin and Jake randomly screaming while on an adventure to do something absolutely random.
You mean shitty remakes made to capitalize on the parents that want to share their nostalgia with their kids, there are plenty of excellent shows for kids nowadays and frankly I’m jealous, there’s plenty of variety of shows that don’t treat you like you’re dumb (there’s still pepa pig style of crap tho).
It’s like the marvel garbage, they make it for people who are addicted to their stuff and so will buy it regardless of quality and even buy more into it when they can complain about a brown character or something.
Edit: I wanted to add: shitty reboots don’t magically make the originals disappear, yet people treat it like that. Find new stuff, don’t be old man yelling at cloud.
Peppa pig is FILLED with jokes for the parents. It was one of the few shows I could watch with my toddlers because of all the jokes between the narrator and the parents. I wouldn’t watch it now because the sentences and narratives are meant to match the life experience of kids up to about gr 1-2, but it was a great show.
Everyone loves when mr bull digs up the road zooms out to all the cars in the traffic jam honking.
I distinctly remember all the cartoons I used to watch had some elements of maturity and sometimes even quite complex science as well, in fact I remember quite clearly when i was surprised how a bunch of friends ‘fell apart’ because of ‘ego’ and had to balance their friendships as well as their own desires, probably one of the best things that i have ever watched
Nowadays tho i see a lot of kids just browsing bullshit reels all along which serve no purpose other than kill time, and a lot of the ‘cartoons’ have just become some superhero and big flashy colours and whatnot
I think there’s a lot of element of nostalgia in my rant but I do genuinely believe that kids and people in general are just becoming dumber
Add comment