Drawing Lots and Lots of Little Pictures- A Cartoon Thread

[jpfriction]

My daughter has watched all of the available ladybug several times through but she did recently start over and I was also surprised to see the first episode not be an origin story. Ladybug’s great gazoo patiently explaining how her magic earings have a time limit at the halfway point must have been enough to get the point across.

I like how bonkers the villains get. Hawkmoth has style.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Fine I’ll watch Hell Comes to Frogtown: The Cartoon

But regarding your spoiler, both Last Action Hero and Digimon spring to mind

 

[Octopus Prime]

I think it was a whole arc, but I don't recall specifically

 

[MetManMas]

Not counting a couple of other times Tai ended up back there, Digimon Adventure spent like 10 to 11 episodes straight in the real world. Considering the average anime arc is about 13 episodes that's a pretty significant amount of time for a reverse isekai arc.

Granted, the show itself was 54 episodes long, but still...

 

[Daikaiju]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1399389504335720449

 

[Octopus Prime]

So I did watch the first episode, and came to the conclusion, based on that episode, that it’s a little bit of Gravity Falls, and a little bit of Big City Greens, but not as good as either.

But it does have a girl suplexing a giant mantis.

 

[Daikaiju]

Keep watching.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I’m gonna, it’s an inauspicious start is all

 

[Purple]

I really liked that first season* of Rick & Morty during the many high points where it was simultaneously creating high-concept sci-fi stories and also taking the piss out of them, but then somewhere in that second season it started doing less and less of those and instead turned into "bad meme grandpa's always right" and I fell right off.

*except for that godawful ones that just uses aliens to explore "ha ha, women are different from men!"

There's the one episode of that stripe I find I have to defend on the grounds that:
- It is a very explicit Farscape cast reunion and I am an easy mark there.
- At least half the episode is an extended deep-cut Zardoz reference and damn it, having been forced to sit through that movie more than once I have to empathize with any writer who's also been through that hell.

 

[Daikaiju]

 

[Exposition Owl]

:froth::froth::froth:

 

[Octopus Prime]

I watched the first episode of Centaur World on Netflix.

I feel like going in as blind as possible is a good idea here but… umm… this a good’un.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Has anyone watched Jellystone? Because I had doubts about its quality after watching CH Greenblatt's last show Harvey Beaks, but it seems to be well received by those who've watched it.

 

[lincolnic]

Has anyone watched Jellystone? Because I had doubts about its quality after watching CH Greenblatt's last show Harvey Beaks, but it seems to be well received by those who've watched it.

I've watched two or three episodes so far and was pleasantly surprised! And I don't have any particular nostalgia for those Hanna-Barbera cartoons either.

 

[ArugulaZ]

I caught some footage on YouTube and dang, this show is total chaos. Definitely not one for the purists, as some of the characters have markedly different personalities from their 1960s debuts. It's disappointing that they made Yogi Bear an insufferable douchebag, but I do appreciate that Snagglepuss is the town's media personality, and has a Dana Snyder-powered voice that finds a comfortable middle ground between the original character and... uh, any character Dana Snyder has ever played.

 

[Octopus Prime]

It's disappointing that they made Yogi Bear an insufferable douchebag,

...well

 

[ArugulaZ]

I mean, like worse than usual. There's no park ranger to keep him in check, and although Huckleberry Hound is the mayor, he's much too passive to pull him back from the brink of total dickishness. In one episode, Yogi destroys half the town to make a tourism video. In another, he eats the entire town. And to think someone made him a doctor! I'll take my chances with the cancer, thanks.

 

[MetManMas]

It's disappointing that they made Yogi Bear an insufferable douchebag

Considering he's regularly been the leader and/or star in countless Hanna-Barbera ensemble features and spinoffs I can kinda see why someone might want to adapt him into an insufferable douchebag.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Finished Centaur World

Was not expecting goo-Cthulhu .

Glendale was the MVP, clearly

 

[Octopus Prime]

Oh there is no contest.

Replace him with Comfortable Doug in season 2, please

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Just letting people know I'm hosting a contest to determine the top 25 cartoon characters of all time (as decided by talking time). Please do take part. I think it would be neat.

The Top 50 Cartoon Characters Nomination Thread - A Terrible Strain on Talking Time's Wrists

Probably something like trans rights or sphere grids but in the meantime, we like to entertain ourselves with cartoons as we weight to be flung through time off of our mortal coils. And who makes up these time killers? Characters! Unless the cartoon is rather abstract or is about a tree growing...

talking-time.net

 

[FelixSH]

Rewatched single episodes of a few shows:

Danny Phantom - Still a very enjoyable show, with a lot of neat action and a nice sense of humor. I understand, why I liked this show so much when it was new.
My Life as a Teenage Robot - I do like the artstyle, and it's not bad, but I feel like it aged worse than Danny Phantom. Don't even know why, exactly, but it just felt goofier and less meaty, or something. Which might just be me, not liking classical cartoons that much, which this show seems to draw some of its ideas from.
Starla and the Jewel Riders - Uh, honestly, considering what it is (a 90s cartoon for girls), it was pretty enjoyable? Like, there are way too many cute animal companions and the writing is very 90s, but...there is also a bit of continuity, the heroes are magical girls, who actually fight and can be somewhat badass (not too much, but, again, 90s) and the CGI was probably pretty nice, at the time - I remember loving it, when I watched this show as a kid. I honestly could imagine watching more of it.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Adult Swim is teasing a show called Learn with Pibby, which starts out as an educational series in the vein of Dora the Explorer or Nihao Kai-lan, but quickly goes sideways when a roaming glitch swallows up all the other Cartoon Network characters (but not DC's; they're replaced with expies) and transforms them into digital zombies. The formerly cute, abstractly drawn lead loses an eye in the chaos, and hardens into a cartoon-slaying bad-ass.

I'm seeing a lot of people getting excited about this one, but honestly, the concept leaves me cold. We've seen a lot of this sort of thing in the 21st century, whether it's gore porn featuring cuddly cartoon characters (Happy Tree Friends) or zombies (The Walking Dead) or Warner Bros. shitting on its stable of Hanna-Barbera stars (much of what was on Adult Swim in its early days). I'm not sure what the point is to this series... it's advertised on YouTube as part of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and there are rumors that it's marketing for an all-star fighter similar to the one Nickelodeon released earlier this year. Whatever the motivation is for this, count me out.

 

[JBear]

I'm not interested in this at all, but I think it's fascinating that it's allowed to exist.

 

[Daikaiju]

I'm not interested in this at all, but I think it's fascinating that it's allowed to exist.

Yeah. I think that's the best I can say as well.

 

[MetManMas]

I'm not interested in this at all, but I think it's fascinating that it's allowed to exist.

Exactly. We've seen this same ol' "corrupt something adorable into something mature by way of horrible violence" thing time and time again...But even if it's far from the first or last time at least Time-Warner is open to allowing stuff to be done with their enormous roster that you wouldn't expect.

Whether it's a gory Scooby-Doo/Supernatural crossover, or realistic Elmer Fudd in an issue of Batman, or that social justice Flintstones comic.

 

[Sprite]

I think it looks fun and earnest in a way that "what if kids show but violent" stuff usually isn't. It's a mishmash of old ideas but I'm into it. Fat Cat lady better survive.

 

[gogglebob]

On one hand, my initial reaction is absolutely that this is more "edgy for the sake of edgy" of a certain kind that I am outright tired of. As has been said, Adult Swim made its mark doing practically this exact thing. And Adventure Time specifically was already something that did not shy away from "corrupted cartoons" as a concept. Those gooey mutant zombies that skulked around AT? Seems similar to "glitch" Finn/Jake, and thus makes me think this is something that is trying to reframe something that already successfully reframed itself. Adventure Time got darker as it went, while this feels like it was created by someone who sees no difference between (vaguely mature) Finn the Human and (eternally goofy) Fred Flintstone. I can see some shadowy executive in a boardroom chomping on a cigar and shouting the characters of Adventure Time, The Jetsons, and Steven Universe can all hang out together because "they're all cartoons, right?"

That said.

If I think about it for a little longer (and I think about cartoons a lot, natch), Adult Swim earned its reputation with its Sealabs and Birdmans twenty years ago. A significant chunk of that programming was directly lampooning the Bush administration, and that political period feels like it was approximately seventeenbillion millennia ago. Adventure Time itself premiered in 2010, and, if you were target demo 10 when it first hit the airwaves, you're 21 now. And it makes me think that, in the same way being an adult and judging a kiddy cartoon from the perspective of an adult is wrong (see: practically any contemporary animated reboot of an established "to sell toys" franchise and "fan" reactions), I feel like judging this as "been done" or "not creative enough" or "edgy for the sake of edgy" in my own mind is doing a disservice to the college "kids" that are probably going to eat this up with a spoon. I don't mean to imply anyone else in this thread is unfairly judging this show like I am, but, from a personal perspective, I kind of feel like this isn't "for me". I had "my" Harvey Birdman defending Shaggy and Scooby in court, the next gen can have a Nick Jr. expy dealing with Corrupted Finn & Jake. It's their turn to swim with the adults for the first time.

 

[ArugulaZ]

I guess that might be what this comes down to... Pibby isn't made for me, or my generation. Millennials and zoomers grew up with the high drama of Steven Universe, so I guess that's the approach they'll be taking with their HB crossovers. Do I like that direction? Not particularly. Is the decision out of my hands? Yep, pretty much. Am I upset enough to do anything more than impotently gripe about it on forums and social media? Not particularly. It's Hanna-Barbera, a line of cartoons so cheap the characters wear ties to hide their lack of necks. I could die on that hill, but there's probably not enough dirt there for me to be buried underneath it.

 

[MetManMas]

I acknowledge that there's the generational gap and all, but also I am so tired of seeing loads and loads of shows and comics and games that are all into torture and murder and Poopy Gore Land and horrible people being assholes.

Like, I get that this is and always has been Adult Swim's M.O., but it'd be nice to see a lot more mature cartoons that are actually mature, you know?