Drawing Lots and Lots of Little Pictures- A Cartoon Thread

[lincolnic]

Also: since the season is over now, I can safely say I enjoyed the whole new reboot. Hoping for more.

I love to be the bearer of good news, because the original show order was for two seasons. So there'll be at least one more!

 

[Bongo]

It's spelled "Gandhi."

 

[Sprite]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Gandhi is not coming back. Referring to him in that first episode:

I hate to be the bearer of conflicting news, but I found what I was remembering:

Still, Lord and Miller are taking a wait-and-see approach to the character, admitting to leaving Gandhi frozen because they were “indecisive” about how to handle him. “You don’t want to kill him or something, then have it just be over,” Lord says. “He’s still there, able to thaw out if there’s a Season 4.”

I’m more inclined to trust your quote, though. I imagine the showrunners’ “absolutely not” carries more weight than the creators’ “well maaaaaybe.”

 

[jpfriction]

In loved the new season but when I want to make myself chuckle I’m still thinking back to Gandhi flying out the door to rent american pie or that god damn skunk.

Try and catch me, biiittcch!

 

[lincolnic]

I’m more inclined to trust your quote, though. I imagine the showrunners’ “absolutely not” carries more weight than the creators’ “well maaaaaybe.”

At the very least, your article seems to confirm that even if they do, it's not going to be in the upcoming season either. It's not impossible, but I'd still be pretty surprised if they brought him back.

 

[Violentvixen]

Watched the Nimona movie. It deviates from the book in so many ways and I acknowledge that it makes for a better film, but I dunno, I liked the overall more somber tone of the comic way more. Still great fun to watch and glad I did though, and then reread the book.

I'm really bummed Dr. Blitzmeyer isn't in the movie. I loved her.

 

[jpfriction]

I picked up a copy of the book for my daughter’s upcoming birthday because she liked the movie so much. Looking forward to revisiting it.

 

[Kirin]

I should pick up the book. I had only previously experience Nimona way back in the day in webcomic form, and it was so long ago that my memories are incredibly vague so I only had a constant background feeling that a ton of details were different. Fun movie though!

 

[FelixSH]

Not sure if anyone but me cares, but there is a new season of Sonic Prime.

 

[SpoonyBard]

I'm really bummed Dr. Blitzmeyer isn't in the movie. I loved her.

The lack of Dr. Blitzmeyer was disappointing, though the way they structured the story there was no room for her.

It definitely made changes, and the way it ended felt tonally different from the comic. Though I wonder if that might have been due to Nate Stevenson just being in a better place now than they were when they wrote Nimona?

 

[Daikaiju]

The lack of Dr. Blitzmeyer was disappointing, though the way they structured the story there was no room for her.

It definitely made changes, and the way it ended felt tonally different from the comic. Though I wonder if that might have been due to Nate Stevenson just being in a better place now than they were when they wrote Nimona?

As art can often reflect the artist's mental state, that tracks.

 

[SpoonyBard]

The Futurama Re(re-re-)boot is now live and I saw the first episode. It was aggressively ok. Never came close to reaching the heights of the series of its best, but at the very least it stayed above the absolute nadir of the series too.

Smiled a couple times. Had one bark of laughter. (Asking an actor to ad-lib is like asking a... guy to..... five.)

And that's it!

(do we not have a Futurama thread?)

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I’d recently acquired an iPhone, my first smart phone if you can believe it, which came with three months of AppleTV. I used that to finally watch Wolfwalkers, the latest(?) movie from Cartoon Saloon, the studio behind The Secret of Kells. The movie is very good, carrying on Kell‘s intriguing exploration of Pagan Irish beliefs and denizens clashing with Christianity. It’s also a very cute and sweet movie, with some fancy animated flourishes amidst it’s obviously lower budget than Hollywood or even Japanese animated movies get.

 

[SpoonyBard]

A new trailer for Rick and Morty season 7 finally shows us the new voices for the titular characters, and they really damn close to the original.

I'm honestly a bit disappointed they didn't go the Solar Opposites route and just completely change them and give a proverbial middle finger to anyone who would complain but I guess Rick and Morty are way more established in people's minds than Korvo so they could get away with it there.

Anyway, more Rick and Morty if that's your thing!

 

[madhair60]

It is my thing, and I am very excited

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I felt the last season of Rick & Morty was very funny, but Justin Roiland “allegedly” being a violent abuser sucked all the fun out of the show for me.

 

[madhair60]

That’s completely valid. I tend to think of it as the product of a lot of talented people and by many accounts Roiland was barely present outside of voicing, but maybe that was damage control. I enjoy the show (and Solar Opposites) and am a coward, I guess!

 

[Mr Bean]

I finished watching the new Netflix adult prestige animated mini series Blue Eye Samurai and I have some thoughts.

The Good

• The animation is very good. The fight scenes especially are fluid with interesting cinematography that takes advantage of some of the weird angles you can do with CG
• The fight choreography is interesting and varied
• The voice cast is stacked and the major players are Japanese or Japanese-American. Standouts include George Takai and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
• The backgrounds deserve a shout out for being pretty uniformly beautiful

The Bad

• The gender politics are messed up. I get being a woman in 17th century Japan would have been hard, but the show leans super heavily on the Madonna / Whore dichotomy. For example, all of the major supporting female characters end up working in a brothel at some point including the literal princess. Related - there is a lot of gratuitous nudity and sex scenes. I can think of one or two that could be argued work to advance the characters, but mostly it’s there for titillation or shock value. For example (spoiler in case you don’t want to know specifics) the big bad explains part of his plan while engaging in some sex tourism in a brothel in the middle of being serviced. It could have happened in the carriage and nothing would have been lost.
• The gore. Just lots of dudes getting chopped in half with giant sprays of blood and organs

The ???

• The tone is all over the place. It feels like it wants to be a cross between a Kurosawa and a Tarantino film but it just doesn’t mix well. One episode will have a very well rendered traditional puppet show as a framing device with a samisen and wood block score, and the next will be a psychedelic fun house with a Japanese cover of For Whom the Bell Tolls during the big fight scene. It couldn’t or wouldn’t pick a lane and it just kept pulling me out of the story.

Overall I enjoyed it but it’s definitely not for everyone. It ends on an obvious cliffhanger hook for additional seasons so don’t go in expecting a complete story.

 

[FelixSH]

I saw Elemental, that new(?) Pixar movie. Interestingly, due to stuff, I saw it the first time without sound. And it worked really well! This movie, like many other animated ones I guess, are visually so expressive, and the story so simple, that I got all the major beats, and even smaller ones. I did enjoy it.

Later on, to get all the context, I watched it again with sound. And, uh, I kinda enjoyed it more without. That's partly, of course, due to that one being the first time I saw it. An immediate rewatch can't help but feel lacking. I just think that the writing doesn't seem to add too much to the movie, maybe? At least for me, I guess.

Still, it looks amazing, and it's a very cute film with a nice storyline. Worth watching (is there a Pixar movie that isn't?), but felt a bit by-the-numbers, for a Pixar movie.

Also saw Moana the same way (without sound). I had already seen it in the cinema, when it was new, liked it a whole lot (including the songs). And, again, it worked really well without sound (except for the songs, I missed those). You really get most of everything just by seeing it. The water looks absolutely beautiful in this one, it's insane. And I love, how it seems like this overstylized, cute pig will be the mascot, and then it's this broken, super-adorable rooster.

That one has a really fascinating mood, even without any sound. It's, of course, another version of the archetype, where the kid lives in paradise, but due to growing up, has to go out into the world, where scary stuff is waiting, but also offers it the chance to show its worth. But here, due to the home being a relatively small (paradisic) island, it feels really lonely, in a way. And when she is out, at sea, there is just nothing. No civilization (at least no peaceful one, there is only the ship of creepy coconut-spirits), everything is kinda dead. Having this play on the ocean helps a lot with that, it sells the loneliness, and how vast it is.

Also, I was wondering a gain - when she leaves the island, she looks back, and it gets captured by darkness. Was she leaving just in time? Would she have been lost, together with rest of the world, if she had stayed ten minutes more, and being taken by the darkness?

 

[Rascally Badger]

New season of Hilda is on Netflix. It remains wholly delightful.

 

[Mr Bean]

I can listen to SungWon Cho rattle off nonsensical names all day.

 

[Violentvixen]

I can listen to SungWon Cho rattle off nonsensical names all day.

Yeah, I was delighted to see this. Also someone pointed out that the way the chess board is set up means that Mordecai can't win, which is a very cool little detail.

 

[Mr Bean]

I’m guessing as part of their Oscar push, Netflix just dropped Nimona onto YouTube so everybody can see it.

If you haven’t seen it I recommend it, it’s pretty dang good.

 

[Kirin]

Oh yeah, it's good stuff! Been too long since I read the original webcomic for me to remember how wildly it diverges, but I think the decisions they made here worked out real well for a self-contained movie of a reasonable length.

 

[Violentvixen]

Oh yeah, it's good stuff! Been too long since I read the original webcomic for me to remember how wildly it diverges, but I think the decisions they made here worked out real well for a self-contained movie of a reasonable length.

A lot. It definitely makes it a better movie and spectacle but I vastly prefer the book's plot and resolution. And I hate that they cut Dr. Meredith out as I liked her a lot.

Definitely watch it though!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

For some reason, I kind of decided to drop everything and watch The Ghost and Molly McGee. So... it's a good show, but not a great show. I thought I might be getting into something akin to the other Disney comedy/adventure series but really this is much more like a sitcom. And that's not "bad" but I feel like I've been to so much of Disney's other stuff lately, I'm a little let down. The one thing I will say is it's got a fun premise (a ghost curses a girl to be haunted by him forever and her reaction is "yay, eternal BFF") and Dana Snyder, AKA Master Shake, is the ghost. Still, though not bad, I'm not going to go out of my way to recommend this one.

 

[jpfriction]

Sounds a lot like the grim adventures of Billy and Mandy.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I just watched Nimona last night, and really enjoyed it. Makes me want to get the comic and check that out now

 

[jpfriction]

It’s a little different, unsurprisingly. Still great but I think I actually liked the movie better.