Unpopular Opinions About Western Animation

[Shokew]

Good (and simple enough) cartoons are NOT afraid to be chaotic, silly, ridiculous, and/or crazy. Those who wish cartoons were more like today's anime, or simply more serious and dramatic seem to forget that, and worse still, drown out those who speak out against them. And that's all FACT.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

The Looney Tunes Show was pretty poor.

 

[Somar]

Timon and Pumbaa was the best show on the Disney Afternoon.

 

[Shokew]

The Looney Tunes Show was pretty poor.

I hate to be the guy who points out that THAT is NOT unpopular opinion - but yeah. I still agree wholeheartedly. I'll stick to the classics, thank you very much.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

I hate to be the guy who points out that THAT is NOT unpopular opinion - but yeah. I still agree wholeheartedly. I'll stick to the classics, thank you very much.

It had the worst interpretation of Bugs and Chris Chan Daffy (but somehow even more cringey)

 

[Hummingbird]

-South Park is ok in small doses. It's novelty wore off on me after a few seasons.
-Now that I'm older (and rewatched the show with some friends), Simon Belmot is now my favorite character on Captain N.
-The Batman's version of Joker did grow on me. I warmed up to the Rastafarian design, enjoyed the anti-authoritarian take on his character and his more mutual relationship with Harley.

The Goodfeathers and Rita and Runt weren't that bad. And I really did like Chicken Boo.

The Goodfeathers had their moments and as a kid, I thought Rita and Runt's friendship was sweet. Though Chicken Boo was a one-joke pony for me. As for Slappy, I've noticed that she was either one of your favorite characters or you just didn't like her. I'm in the former camp.

 

[Shokew]

As much as I like both of these cartoons, overall - Harvey Beaks AND The Loud House are NOT Nickelodeon's saviors like so many cartoon fans stupidly and carelessly delude themselves into thinking they are...

When Nickelodeon really gets off their asses and makes something truly as intelligent as Rocko's Modern Life or groundbreaking as Ren & Stimpy (regardless of my negative opinion on that example,too.), then we'll talk.

... And I love how people diss Sanjay & Craig, even though that was the type of show Nickelodeon was into making in their glory years... Can't please anyone, huh? Thanks, Tumblrfucks!

 

[Trombonista]

I don't watch Sanjay and Craig on a regular basis, but I do like it.

 

[IdaRita]

- I personally don't like many of current trends in American animation that most of people enjoy like art styles (a bit too similar to each other and very simplistic - I miss more realistic 2D shows that are not anime) and how almost any perfectly good show become darker and more complex in second season and then gain internet popularity. It's getting tired.
- I think nowdays western 80s cartoons are really underrated. Yes, many of them was made as kind of commercial for toy line, but this doesn't mean they can't be good or have really memorable episodes. I also really like animation style in many of them - western character desings, but animation made in Japan. Sometimes less fluid movement, but a lot more complex desings that I miss in new cartoons. I'm not saying 80s is the best decade or anything like that - but it's not really worse like people often pretend now.
- Huntik: Secrets and Seekers and early Winx Club are really good
- I love 2000s European animated TV shows. Italian and French, especially

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Autism ahead.

-I don't really watch cartoons and haven't for awhile. Even older ones from my childhood I can't get myself to watch often because of my rackets on adulthood.
-That said, I still firmly believe Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is one of the more brilliant cartoons made in the 21st century and I'd say it tops just about anything right now.
-Invader Zim was never good. It had its moments but most of the time it was loud and cringey. It also groomed the MySpace wave of lolrandom retards and I firmly believe this is part of why internet culture from 2007-2010 was so fucking awful.
-While I never watched it religiously, I liked the early seasons of Adventure Time and if my younger brother was watching it I'd probably sit down with him. At first it felt like a D&D show, because anyone who's played an actual game of D&D knows it usually turns out like what you saw on AT. Once it started getting too shippy, I stopped caring.
-A vast majority of Disney songs are either unmemorable or totally lame, pollyanna nonsense. Two notable exceptions are "Bells of Notre Dame" and "Hellfire", which coincidentally come from the same movie.
-Speaking of Hunchback of Notre Dame, while it's got great personality it's also not that good. Barring the beginning and the religious themes it's just the same kind of saccharine "always be yourself!" and "don't judge others!" nonsense you get in most children's media since the 90s.
-Building on that I wish we could move past this "oh my god [X Movie] is so dark and adult it's really not for children!" mindset we get whenever a movie shows kids something a little darker. Bullshit. Hunchback is fine for kids and unless that kid is a pussy and/or autistic they'll have no trouble handling it. Children are resilient. Empire Strikes Back is beloved by kids of all ages and it's significantly darker than any Disney film.
-Treasure Planet is only okay, not the hidden gem people like to say it is. It's got good art style and music and the Long John Silver re-imagining was pretty cool but I think people grossly overstate its quality. It also had furries, which is bad. Fight me.

 

[Hummingbird]

-As a kid, I realized that Tom & Jerry is pretty much the same thing with about 5 different episode templates. Oddly, I also thought that the show was progressive for its time since I didn't know what the mammy stereotype was when I was 8. I just assumed this was a black woman who owned the house, ruled the roost and did it all on her own.

-While I never watched it religiously, I liked the early seasons of Adventure Time and if my younger brother was watching it I'd probably sit down with him. At first it felt like a D&D show, because anyone who's played an actual game of D&D knows it usually turns out like what you saw on AT. Once it started getting too shippy, I stopped caring.

That's what I liked about the early episodes of Adventure Time as well. There was a lot of fodder for gaming ideas in those seasons.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

-Building on that I wish we could move past this "oh my god [X Movie] is so dark and adult it's really not for children!" mindset we get whenever a movie shows kids something a little darker. Bullshit. Hunchback is fine for kids and unless that kid is a pussy and/or autistic they'll have no trouble handling it. Children are resilient. Empire Strikes Back is beloved by kids of all ages and it's significantly darker than any Disney film.

People often think kids can't take anything that's even slightly dark.

How wrong they are. A kid could comprehend Franz Kafka if they wanted to, really.

 

[AnOminous]

-A vast majority of Disney songs are either unmemorable or totally lame, pollyanna nonsense. Two notable exceptions are "Bells of Notre Dame" and "Hellfire", which coincidentally come from the same movie.

Alan Menken writes the good ones. Of course given your statement, he probably writes most of the ones you don't like, too.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Alan Menken writes the good ones. Of course given your statement, he probably writes most of the ones you don't like, too.

I'll admit most songs fit their respective movies. Which I guess says more about my taste on films than songs.

 

[IdaRita]

A few more:
- Call me hipster, but I really preferred when cartoons were less popular among adults and teenagers. People who liked them were more of genuine passionats, now western animation fandom became more and more like anime fandom and everybody knows how fucked up anime fandom is. When I was younger I wished for cartoons to be more popular and respected and now, when it became reality I regret that. I guess I'm just not fandom person. And the most popular thing is the more mad people get interested in that.
- I never considered Disney films dumb or sacharinne and find Disney Princess stereotype unadequate and 90% based on pre-war Snow White. I'm also a bit worried for modern Disney to became too willingful to fight this stereotype and for example completly avoid male love interest in movies, because "princesses are not independent then" or something. Of course it's only my small fears, probably not true.
- More historical cartoons or cartoons based on literature works would be nice. They were popular in Europe in 80-90 but seem to be dead now. As history enthusiast I like almost all series I watched from that "genre".
- Second season of Mysterious Cities of Gold was not that bad, season 3 seem to be really, really good based on leaked information and this is a series when continuation after years/rebood actually makes sense - continuation was planned from the beggining.

-Building on that I wish we could move past this "oh my god [X Movie] is so dark and adult it's really not for children!" mindset we get whenever a movie shows kids something a little darker. Bullshit. Hunchback is fine for kids and unless that kid is a pussy and/or autistic they'll have no trouble handling it. Children are resilient. Empire Strikes Back is beloved by kids of all ages and it's significantly darker than any Disney film.

I agree.
Also darker =/= better/more mature.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

- Call me hipster, but I really preferred when cartoons were less popular among adults and teenagers. People who liked them were more of genuine passionats, now western animation fandom became more and more like anime fandom and everybody knows how fucked up anime fandom is. When I was younger I wished for cartoons to be more popular and respected and now, when it became reality I regret that. I guess I'm just not fandom person. And the most popular thing is the more mad people get interested in that.

You're not a hipster when the kind of people who seem to be enjoying modern animation are basically hipsters themselves.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

It doesn't help that most of these cartoon lovers are all the same- pretentious hipster millennials with a beard (men's case) whose only interest in cartoons is Steven Universe/Gravity Falls/Adventure Time/Avatar the Airbender and Disney/90s "Disney knock off" films. They're all basically Lewtoons multiplied by a hundred.

With Disney fans, I've found there's a huge difference between the (let's face it, mostly) women who are interested in your Disney Princess/Renaissance films and the (let's face it, mostly) men who worship at the altar of Ward Kimball and Frank Thomas.

Not even cartoons, but just short movies based on classical stories would be fun. The few I've found on Youtube of Oscar Wilde's works and French Lit. are quite nice and quite accurate to the source material (which is a rare thing nowadays with "animated adaptations").

The 1971 Canadian version of "The Selfish Giant" is terrific. Myself, I'd love to see someone adapt, say, Andersen's "The Story of a Mother" or "The Shadow" into an animated film. Now that would be unforgettable.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

Well there's always an exception (the male hipsters i've mentioned- eg. Lewtoons), but yeah, that's kinda how it goes. It's a shame the Walt Era Disney films don't get as much love from these kids just because the films aren't as "progressive" or "cool" enough as their precious 90s or current "omg so subversive" movies.

There's a lot of stuff in the Walt era that ought to be better known. Ward Kimball's hilarious space films. The great stop-motion work of Bill Justice. Have you seen "A Symposium on Popular Songs"? That one's a terrific cartoon.

Andersen's stories are just so beautiful, I'd pay good to see someone adapt most of them into an animated series. They're heartfelt and quite clever.
That version of the Selfish Giant is so lovely! There's also this 1975 adaptation of the Little Mermaid that is quite sweet and it has very nice animation for the time.

Denmark has an animation industry, doesn't it? Surely they've done it by now. Maybe the Japanese?

Well, at least we have The Daydreamer in any case.

Do you mean the Toei version or the Canadian version? They're both really good...

 

[Hummingbird]

Andersen's stories are just so beautiful, I'd pay good to see someone adapt most of them into an animated series. They're heartfelt and quite clever.
That version of the Selfish Giant is so lovely! There's also this 1975 adaptation of the Little Mermaid that is quite sweet and it has very nice animation for the time.

This could count as an unpopular opinion on the subject, but I remember my sister saying that Andersen would've disliked Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. Sure he would like the animation and the songs, but the fact that the film ignored one of the original story's main points and religious themes would have not sat well with him.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

This could count as an unpopular opinion on the subject, but I remember my sister saying that Andersen would've disliked Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. Sure he would like the animation and the songs, but the fact that the film ignored one of the original story's main points and religious themes would have not sat well with him.

It should be remembered that Andersen never considered himself to be a children's writer. He was a writer, period, and wrote many things other than fairy tales - even though they were what he was best at. In Denmark he's considered their equivalent to Shakespeare.

In Denmark itself, actually, when they heard about the Disney film, they were actually pissed about it. Ron Clements found himself apologizing to the Queen of Denmark (who took it all in good humor). Even when the film came out in Danish, and the critics softened their tone (saying it was a fine film so long as you ignored the original), it still wasn't a big hit there.