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Cartoon Discussion Thread

here's a good place for FRIENDLY, ENJOYABLE, and otherwise very GENERAL discussion!
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Bean
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by Bean »

I liked The Smurfs through season six as a kid, although they started to do that weird digital animation thing somewhere around then that just looked wrong. All the cartoons in the mid-80s from Hanna-Barbera did that though. Handy Smurf's the best, yo.

Inspector Gadget was pretty good in the first season, but that Corporal Capeman might just be the worst cartoon character in history. Scrappy Doo doesn't bug me anywhere near as much as that dope.

DuckTales was great. Gummi Bears were pretty good. TaleSpin was fun. Aladdin was awesome. Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers was mostly good. Yeah, Disney had things on lockdown in the late 80s and early 90s.
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metasomnia?
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by metasomnia? »

I liked Rocko's Modern Life, Ren and Stimpy, and later Spongebob Squarepants while growing up.

They had slipped a lot of adult jokes past the censors and the first two in particular tended to feel a lot like fever dreams in some of the more surreal episodes.

There were also Avatar: The Last Airbender and Megas XLR which were good pseudo-anime cartoons

Edit: Oh shit I knew I forgot something. Invader Zim and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy were the best nightmare-inducing cartoons ever. Thanks Platinum for reminding me <3
Last edited by metasomnia? 7 years ago, edited 2 times in total.
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PlatinumTriforce
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by PlatinumTriforce »

Spoilered because needlessly long:

Children's Cartoons
I was a Nickelodeon guy growing up. My three main favorites were The Fairly Oddparents, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and of course SpongeBob SquarePants. I wouldn't shy away from watching some of the other ones like Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys but I definitely didn't like them as much as the aforementioned three. However I didn't really like watching As Told By Ginger or Rocket Power, maybe because I was too young for those at the time (early 2000s, I was under 10). Danny Phantom was pretty good, though. When Avatar: The Last Airbender came out, it blew my mind in terms of TV shows at the time, and I watched every single new episode as soon as it came out for all of the years that it ran.

When I was younger I also didn't enjoy Cartoon Network all that much because the shows and their art style kinda freaked me out but by age 9 I was watching it just as much as, if not more than Nick. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends was pretty good, and of course I had to catch whatever the mid-evening block was called because it had the two main things I was into then, Naruto and Pokémon. Later I discovered Toonami, and they also moved Naruto to that time, so I was watching that too with whatever child/preteen-oriented anime they were showing at the time. Around 2007 or so is when Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack premiered, and they were kinda "guilty pleasures" for me because they had a lot of gross-out humor but were also still funny/clever in their own right. Toonami also got canceled shortly after that, which was pretty sad. Shortly afterwards Total Drama Island came out, and I really enjoyed it for its first two seasons but lost interest in it afterwards. Pretty much the same thing happened with Adventure Time. Star Wars: The Clone Wars was an excellent show for its time but I regret not knowing as much about Star Wars then because I didn't understand it too well when I was 10-11. (Around this time I was also being introduced to older cartoons by my father and grandfather like The Pink Panther and Tom & Jerry).

Around age 12, I went through a (very) brief Disney Channel phase and watched a lot of Phineas & Ferb before quickly realizing how predictable and stupid the show was and how even when it turned interesting for a moment, they tossed the situation out the window for something non-sequitur (which I enjoyed at first, but it got old quickly).

Right after this, I discovered Nicktoons Network and Boomerang, both of which were broadcasting (relatively) older shows that I never got the chance to enjoy, so I watched a lot of episodes of Invader Zim (I need to buy that on DVD or something) and watched Dragon Ball Z Kai up until the end of the Frieza Saga (I believe the special going on at the time was called "Invader Ball Weekends"). I also got into series like The Jetsons, Dexter's Laboratory, and more, but not as much as the ones on Nicktoons. I rarely even watched regular Nickelodeon anymore because all they showed were newer, crappy cartoons like Fanboy and Chum Chum and other ones they were trying to shove down the throats of relatively younger viewers. Plus, Nicktoons was re-running Avatar episodes with creator commentary, so that was even more reason to stay on that channel. I did however watch T.U.F.F. Puppy to an extent.

Teen/Young Adult-Oriented Cartoons:
Finally, when I was 13 and getting bored with cartoon humor in general, I decided to try out the more mature shows that played on CN's night block, [adult swim]. This pretty much completely changed my viewing habits and before I knew it I was watching Family Guy, American Dad!, Robot Chicken, Squidbillies, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (and its later re-named seasons) whenever I could stay up to do so. I stayed in this phase for about 2.5 years or so, and because of that I unfortunately missed out on The Legend of Korra because I was "too cool for kid cartoons" then. But [as] also had its anime Saturday nights, which had effectively replaced Toonami and introduced me to two of my favorite TV shows of all time, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I also got to catch some good episodes of Bleach every once in a while, but I could never really understand the relatively slow-moving story too well after being thrust into it with no context. Later of course, Toonami actually returned (and I saw it happen live and freaked out) but unfortunately, as it was doing so, my favorite shows got pushed out of the time slots and eventually got replaced with the lineup they have now. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great block (SAO is debatable) but when I was 15 going on 16 and entering the latter half of high school, I started watching television less and less and was pretty much getting all of my entertainment from Internet videos. The only shows I watched in the last two years of high school were dramatic live-action shows that had new episodes every week (so it was more like a few hours per week rather than many hours a day like it used to be).

So yeah, that was pretty long-winded and unnecessary, but that's my somewhat abridged history with my favorite cartoons, both child and teen/adult-oriented. I guess the main two things I left out are that when I was 17 I marathon-watched Cowboy Bebop so that I could get the full story without any interruptions and that about a month ago I marathon-watched Death Note because it was a series I missed out on when it was on [as] because I was too young.

Things I still need to do: Purchase all of GITS: SAC and 2nd GIG & Invader Zim and marathon-watch Legend of Korra when I have the time.
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by HamsterZerg »

You guys know how The Powerpuff Girls got an anime? Yeah, how long do you think it'll be until Ben 10 gets an anime?

Fun Fact: The Powerpuff Girls was originally intended for adult audiences.
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Bean
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by Bean »

The best cartoons are the ones that can be watched and enjoyed by people of all ages. Kids might not understand the jokes, references, or serious material to its fullest extent, but it's still innocent enough for them to watch. Batman: The Animated Series is a good example of this, but there are comedy-based cartoons that do it right, too.
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by arcade999 »

When I see the ''modern'' cartoons, I just want to run in a forest and climb up a tree, to finally never get down. They are all based around dumb stuf like ''sharing'' or friendship'', and oh my gosh it is truly unwatchable. Sure, it is for young kids you might say, but they are these shows are really underestimating kids minds. Back in the time, they were really cool kid shows, like batman and thunderbirds, but now, because they would inlude stuff like guns and stuff, pediatricians would litterally jump on their table and rip their hairs off because it doesn't enter the new standards.
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Coryman
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by Coryman »

For me, it was mostly early 2000s stuff (Spongebob, fairly odd parents, etc.), plus a bunch of other shows that I would watch if they came on but honestly I can't remember 90% of em.
Later on (as in around grade 8) I started watching adventure time, and was pretty into that for a couple seasons, but it got too abstract for me.
And... I'm just gonna be honest here. I had a sick week and barely went to any lectures (this was literally last week, I'm first year university right now), so I've basically done nothing but watch the marvelous misadventures of flapjack (and a few Halloween themed Muppets but those don't count)
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aka Cthulhu
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by aka Cthulhu »

Anime was a lot more common around here as a kid. Kinda still is, since quite a bit of the non-cable stuff here has anime more than western cartoons.

Regarding western cartoons, one thing I miss are the old Looney Tunes stuff. I think it's been like forever since they aired here. Still remember the first two Looney Tunes cartoons I watched; first was when Bugs found himself on a bullfighting ring. The gag where he goads the bull with the cape and makes the bull run into an anvil got me hooked. Next short I watched was Bugs as Super Rabbit, where he goes off to join the military for WWII in the end. Didn't even know what WWII was back then.

For semi-recent stuff, Transformers Prime was pretty neat. Honestly, don't have any memories of the original cartoons, and back when Beast Wars aired here I didn't get to catch most if not all the episodes. So Prime was pretty much the first Transformers series I got into (which lead me to reading Transformers: MTMTE - awesome series, by the way, highly recommend it), and I gotta say it was pretty good. The follow-up series Robots in Disguise, not so much. The more light-hearted tone the series had felt a bit lacking compared to the situation in Prime which ended up rather dire at times.

Also, one thing I miss. SWAT Kats. Getting cable for the first time, and getting Cartoon Network, SWAT Kats was the first cartoon on that channel that I saw.
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Re: Cartoon Discussion Thread

Post by Coryman »

Just remembered- my brother used to love Oggy and the Cockroaches, and for some reason I hated that show. Looking back more recently, I can't imagine why.
And like Cthulhu said, Bugs Bunny, but most of it was old recordings my dad made
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