Animated Series/Films • Page 2

I can't believe I forgot to list OG Simpsons and Futurama haha. both easy locks for my top 5, this is what I get for posting at 3am

also I've never heard of The Great North before, definitely curious. will add it to the list

 

Thank you for linking me to this thread! I am very happy to be in here. Funny enough, my son has been getting into a lot of anime as of late and he definitely picked it up from me and that has led to me sharing a lot of things I used to watch as a kid. A few years back I got him an old Mighty Max set on Ebay because I LOVED Mighty Max as a kid and I had a feeling he’d like it…which he absolutely did. We then started collecting the old sets for him including the ones I used to have (my mother sold all of my sets in a garage sale years ago when she sold our childhood home along with most of my other toys and it silently broke my heart). That then led to me showing him the cartoon series which he instantly gravitated to and also got me to thinking about the trajectory of my viewing habits as I grew up. When I saw this thread my first thought was, “I should talk about Mighty Max and what it meant to me” and then I saw this post.

And yeah, exactly this. I used to wake up early every morning on weekdays to catch every episode and, looking back now, I have this feeling that Mighty Max shaped my love for serialized, darker storytelling in animation. That final run of episodes when (spoilers I guess?) the ramifications of the prophecy about the Mighty One become terrifyingly clear and Norman and Virgil both die horrifically and then Max stands his ground alone against Skullmaster while turning back time to do it all over again is a final denouement that never, ever left my head. I thought about it often for years. The serialized nature of the original Duck Tales series also had my attention (give me all the Bubba and Trixie time travel shenanigans I don’t even care) and the love and devotion that the new Duck Tales series showed for its predecessor (let alone for the entire 90s Disney afternoon block) was so satisfying. I’ll forever be disappointed they got cut short right when they seemed set to really take off with a new modern iteration of that same expanded universe. The handling of Darkwing Duck alone was nothing short of brilliant.

Big City Greens was mentioned in here as well already and I’ve got to echo that suggestion. I watch it all the time with my kids and I think Tilly might be one of my favorite animated characters. If you’re a fan of The Simpsons, check it out. It’s always felt sort of like The Simpsons Jr. meets Beverly Hillbillies. I’d make the Simpsons comparison particularly because the show is genuinely really clever, hits you with some surprisingly emotional beats and arcs (I also fucking love what they’ve done with Gloria’s character), and much like the vaguely located Springfield, Big City is big city anywhere and it’s populated with citizens that establish some truly lovable world building.

Back to the anime intro, my son started off with Pokemon (of course) and it has dovetailed from there into so many other series. Recently I got him to sit down with me and watch Digimon, which I always personally preferred when it came to the television series. Pokemon clearly reigns king as a long running, dominating franchise, but Digimon sits perfectly in that same darker storytelling vein that Mighty Max rested in for me. And unlike Pokemon, the characters are allowed to grow up and the story ends and often kind of tragically. Take the ending of Digimon Kizuna (Last Evolution) when Tai and Matt realize that growing up means they have to let their Digimon go and it’s the saddest goddamn brush with adulthood as a child who grew up with this series. One of those rare instances where I actually prefer the way the English dub handles the scene because they allow the entire sequence to play out in silence rather than the Japanese version with the song playing over it. It just feels so much more emotionally crushing. Jump to 1:26:14 to see the scene in question:

Anyway, all this to say that I guess I’ve always tended to gravitate to the darker end of storytelling in animation because it just always felt more honest to me; like I wasn’t being spoken down to. That bled over to my live action viewing habits and often left me feeling like the odd duck in my family because no one else shared my interests.

 

I had quite a few of these toy sets, but only saw a few episodes of the show and didn’t know until recently how it ended. Wild stuff, talk about swinging for the fences

 

I've gotta add Big City Greens to my list for sure. maybe DuckTales too, I never saw the original so I may be missing context, but there's enough talent in that voice cast and Gravity Falls alum on the creative team to have me curious

on the subject of stuff from our formative years, I genuinely think I can blame most of my personality on Courage the Cowardly Dog lol. my love of animation, horror and the combo of the two absolutely stems from it (and some other great shows from that era like Grim Adventures and Invader Zim for sure)

I mean the fact that kid me could just sit down at dinnertime and watch something like this on a show intended for children is buckwild lmao:

 

I started going back through Home Movies because I saw it was on hbo max. I only went through that series once years ago when it was on Netflix and it got pulled off the platform before I could rewatch any of it. Really enjoying the rewatch, definitely holds up.

 

I heard the new Dragon Age show is gays

 

Did anybody watch the third season of The Dragon Prince and feel a little…let down? I think the only storyline I really felt invested in this time was Amaya, Janai, and her traitorous brother. Something about the writing felt…off?

 

Call me a weirdo, but given that this is a music site, maybe I'll get some slack...

Justice League was always second tier to me because the score was nowhere near as good as that of Batman: The Animated Series (or the Superman series for that matter.)

BTAS had what sounded like a full proper orchestra, and JL had what sounded like a score made on a computer. Always made it feel lower rent.

Add to that, when DC went to doing direct to video releases, everything felt like a flash animation (not a The Flash animation), and it was a bummer.

EDIT:

To compare...

Just pulling random bits. Feel SO different.

 

new Spider-verse trailer looks insanely good. the first film still probably has the best animation I've ever seen, personally. the combination of hand-drawn stuff and computer-rendered blows my mind every time, it's like I literally can't process all of the visual information. goddamn that's a movie

 

the Axe Cop cartoon is sooo funny and underrated

 

so uhh I guess the new Owl House special has leaked? more than two weeks before its airdate, wow

 

Wait what? so now I have to avoid spoilers? (also oh no they worked so hard on it and it's not going to be seen as intended)

 

Probably more like “oh no they worked so hard on it and it’s not going to be seen when the suits scheduled it for.”

I need to watch more of that show

 

I mean yeah I guess it's more of an issue when someone records a movie at a theater and that's how it's leaked

And yes, you need to watch Owl House. Everyone should watch Owl House.

 

Everyone should watch Owl House [2]

and yeah, I'm bummed this happened to the cast and crew (it got uploaded early to iTunes in Canada or something like that?) but there's no legal way to watch the show where I am until it goes up on D+ like three months later lmao. unless Disney decides to upload it to YouTube with no warning or fanfare like they did for the last special that is. the execs already messed up this show so much I don't think the leak is really gonna affect much (what are they gonna do, cancel it again?)

 

I guess if the leak gets downloaded a bunch of times the execs can see how popular the show is and be like "oh, we fucked up" again

 

Finally getting caught up on Owl House and can third that

The Halloween Scooby Doo special from last year is so good

 

while we're on the subject, just stumbled on this cool interview and found out that the animator for Hades (one of my favourite games ever!) also worked on The Owl House and even Spider-Verse. awesome stuff

https://www.thegamer.com/spencer-wan-interview-studio-grackle-hades-the-owl-house/

 

Dana seemed really upset about the leak, but has since deleted the initial tweet and made another post with comments turned off

 

i hate netflix so fucking much, jesus christ

 

The current state of streaming content is a mess. It is both financially unsustainable, and creators are being treated like garbage. And it's all to follow down an unprofitable route unless you're the only game in town.

Fuck.

 

download everything while you can, honestly, or buy physical copies, if possible. and then keep streaming until it gets inevitably canned, if that makes you feel better.

 

Uh oh...

Fuck this trend of cancelling animated shows for no good reason

 

Aww. Meant to start watching that one soon. Still going to