What ever happened to real cartoons? (1 Viewer)

[Joe Tilley]

Every time my kids wont to watch cartoons anymore I just wont to scream,what ever happened to real cartoons? I cant stand the crap they come up with anymore this damn Pokemon or whatever & all this kill everything be a bad ass super loser junk.
I remember watching Tom & Jerry,Bugs & Daffy,Scoobie Doo,Andy Panda,Marvin the Martin, well you get the point the real cartoons IMHO anyway.
I just don't get it with the junk they put on tv anymore everything is fighting & killing, & people wonder why today's kids are so damn weired or mean not that I think that is where they get it all but still come on.I've seen some older cartoon's on cartoon network but I no longer have it & even when I did it was a rare occasion that I would see something on that wasn't totally screwed up.
I would just like to see some good old cartoons again on a sat or sun morning like I did so many times as a kid,I wouldn't even care if I'd seen them a hundred times before.
Oh well I quess I'll get over it:frowning:

 

[Philip_G]

they got axed for being too violent

 

[Kelley_B]

There are some really great cartoons out there:

Invader Zim is some of the funniest stuff I have seen in a cartoon in a long time.

SpongeBob Squarepants is just great all around.

Sealab 2021 is someting that I'm not sure I would want my kids to watch, but its great for adults as is anything on Adult Swim.

 

[BrianW]

My daughter loves cartoons (she wants to be an animator), but she absolutely hates the cartoons you describe. Nevertheless, she never has a problem finding good cartoons to watch. Indeed, there have been some great cartoons in production recently:

Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain, Freakazoid, Earthworm Jim (a great parody of the violent genre you describe), Spongebob Squarepants, Angry Beavers, Little Bear, Little Bill, Hey Arnold, Invader Zim, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Lab, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Cow and Chicken, The Wild Thornberrys (sp?).

And that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I, too, grew up with Bugs & Daffy and Tom & Jerry, but I also remember the utter crap I watched like Huckleberry Hound Dog, Touché Turtle, and Atom Ant. To be fair, there was a lot more crap back then, too.

That’s not to say that today’s best cartoons are not different – they are. But today the best cartoons have an element of reference humor and more complex relationship/circumstantial humor in addition to the straight-up physical humor that totally dominated cartoons of my day. Speaking for myself, I like the new cartoons. Certainly, the golden age is gone, which we were recently reminded of with the passing of Chuck Jones. But this is the first time, perhaps since the 1940s, that the good stuff in production has finally begun to outpace the bad stuff.

There’s a lot more than Pokemon, Digimon, and Excremon. With a little direction, your kids could be watching more intelligent stuff with a lot higher production values.

[Edit: Kelly beat me to it. For the record, I love Spongebob, and I think Invader Zim is absolutely brilliant.]

 

[Alex Spindler]

Excremon
That's priceless.
Good summary. I consider Cartoon Network to be the salvation of all North American cartoons. The networks are a dry wasteland of creativity from the few forays into Saturday mornings viewing I have made recently.

 

[Keith Paynter]

Damn, I aree - there's too much limited animation crap out there.

I know I'm going to push the buttons of a few people, but being a fan of classic full animation, I am totally put off by anime. Show that have made it to America such as Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Digimon and Dragonball Z are the worst things to come out of Japan. I understand there is a visual style to anime, but Dragonball Z is just loud music, triple-cell motion, and violence - far more assaulting and offensive than anything ever put out by Warner Brothers in animation's golden age. If you turn off the sound, it's just like watching an animated GIF file as mouths just open and close while the rest of the body cycles through two or three virtualy identically rendered frames

There are some good limited animation programs out there from Hanna-Barbera such as Dexter's Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls, but this comes from humor. If any cartoon is entertaining enough for both kids and adults it has some merit.

 

[Scott L]

Here are my favorites that are currently being made:

- Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
- Batman Beyond/Adv of Batman & Robin (90's)
- Spongebob
- Dexter's Lab
- Cow & Chicken
- Johnny Bravo (a lot funnier than you think, you really have to watch a whole episode through. The best one I think is when Luke Perry guest stars)
- Ed, Edd, & Eddy (kind of an acquired taste, at first I thought it was a waste of precious cartoon time but now I love it)

I have to agree these can't compare to characters like Scooby Doo, TMNT, and Bugs Bunny. I don't know what happened and I can't really imagine any of these cartoons being played 30 years from now like Looney Toons are. Anyone have an explanation or theory why? More talented and innovative animators back then? To be honest for the 21st century current animation doesn't seem all that advanced (besdies Batman) when compared to say Scooby which started in '69.

btw- don't forget Thundercats is on Toonami. And anyone else wish GI Joe would come back on?

 

[Mark Larson]

I used to LOVE Johnny Quest... animation that, for the time, looked better than anything i'd seen before!

 

[Robert_Gaither]

Actually my main problem with cartoons now days is that really all the new ones are infomercials for toys and when the toy sale slows down enough, it gets cancelled and a new cartoon comes out to do it all over again.

My problem with violence in cartoons is that they show people being fired upon by weapons and no one dying, getting hurt, or maimed. They also don't show the after affects of such violence and how it relates to the other survivors (japanese anime does to a certain point but then these are showed on adult swim so the lessons most likely won't go to the ones helped the most, ie children). We wonder why children in our society are violent and disrespectful and I believe shows that promote bad behavior and no reprecussions have a slight subliminal effect on kids as it tells them that most likely punishment really isn't there.

 

[Chris Beveridge]

Basing anime off of what you see on TV broadcasts in the US is like basing US movies by what you see on broadcast versions of movies. These things are just heavily edited, and usually fairly dumbed down from their original.

I'm not saying Pokemon is really cool or anything, but things like Sailor Moon are radically changed from the original. Lesbian lovers become affectionate cousins, villains get turned from men into women because they're effiminate looking, etc.

My daughter watches a lot of anime cartoons. Of course, I can't see many parents letting their young'ns watching Rurouni Kenshin like we did or Cowboy Bebop. But she really loves Cardcaptor Sakura and the ghibli movies.

I've never seen a two year sit idle for 90 minutes to watch any movie before, never mind an anime movie (My Neighbor Totoro) that's only in Japanese with subtitles. Yet she sat there fascinated by the visuals.

 

[LewB]

I just got done watching my favorite movie star Bugs Bunny in the annual 'June Bugs' marathon on the Toon network. I just love that wascally wabbit!! I found myself laughing out loud at cartoons I've seen many times before
For my money you can't beat the stuff that was made for release to theaters, with cells painted by people and sounds and music that were also made by real people, not computer generated. These productions were meant to entertain folks, not be a commercial for toys and cereal!
I did notice at least one bit of editing that made me mad. In the cartoon where Duffy finally upstages Bugs by swallowing a laundry list of dangerous stuff (Gun powder, TNT, Nitro, Uranium, etc. then swallows a lit match) the cartoon was edited to remove all the stuff except for the uranium. I guess they figure that kids can't get their hands on uranium, so they can't get some to swallow.

 

[Leroy]

I know a lot of people like'em, but blame Transformers for pioneering the cartoon/toy tie-in (or at least being successful with it).

I used to watch Saturday moring cartoons all the way up unitl ABC dumped the bugs bunny/road runner show.

I agree that w/o Cartoon Network there wouldn't be a whole lot of good cartoons today.

 

[Joe Tilley]

I do think there are still some good ones out there that alot of you mention,like spongbob,Johnny Bravo,Dexter's lab,& I used to be a big fan of Pinkie & the Brain,but I don't ever get to see them anymore.I think the only decent cartoon I see on regular tv anymore is Buzzlightyear,other than the cartoons for just the kids like Little Bear & such. My biggest deal I quess is I'm used to seeing cartoon's on regular tv channels & they no longer really do that,except the anime junk that I hate so much.

I quess I will just have to break down & get cable again even though I don't wont to (I get better picture on my antenna than my local service provides & I get it free)But I quess that's what you have to do to get the things you wont.

 

[BrianW]

Joe, can you get DirecTV? DirecTV costs me only $30/month (no premium channels, and no sports packages) and easily gives me the best picture available in my area for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon -- way better than cable.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I just don't get it with the junk they put on tv anymore everything is fighting & killing

As opposed to classic Looney Tunes, where Elmer Fudd is always trying to blow away and eat SENTIENT, TALKING ducks and rabbits? Where Wile E. Coyote falls off cliffs, and blows himself to bits with the dynamite intended for Road Runner? Where Bugs pulls Mr. "Super Genius" and his whole dynamite shack in front of an oncoming train for laughs?

There was once a computer game using the Animaniacs characters. The advertising on the box had some politically correct spew about how the Animaniacs were perfect for their non-violent game philosophy.

Only one little problem. On the Animaniacs show, the title characters went around dropping ANVILS on people's heads. Now they lived in a cartoon world where this was merely painful as opposed to downright homicidial, but still, Ghandi they weren't!

 

[Paul_Fisher]

The best cartoons ever were He-Man, the Smurfs, the Gummi Bears, and Transformers...

It brings a tear to me eye to see all the crap on TV today...

 

[Jesse Skeen]

REAL cartoons were the short-subjects shown in movie theaters before the main feature- this has all but died out except for the handful of family movies that have come with 5-minute cartoons at the beginning.
BTW He-Man and the Smurfs brought tears to MY eyes, though they're kinda funny now in a retro sort of way.

 

[Jeff Pryor]

Beavis & Butthead and Southpark: The Best Cartoons Ever Made.

 

[Marshall Alsup]

He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe, MASK, The Real Ghostbusters, Duck Tales, and The Tick.

Now those were real cartoons! I DO NOT understand the appeal of anime cartoons to todays kids.

-Marshall

 

[Adil M]

He-man, Voltron, Thundercats, GIJOE, Smurfs, Gummy Bears, Transformers, (thick manly voice) Jem and She-ra were liked by my sister too. :b
Tom and Jerry
Popeye
Inspector Gadget (remember the joke)
Jetsons
Scooby DOOooooo
Flintstones
DuckTales
Talespin
Chipmunks
AND HEATHCLIFF

Now we have the Simpsons and Southpark