Why do modern cartoons suck so much? [my very first nostalgic rant]

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think the key word here is rewatch. As you've already seen and liked these shows in your childhood, you're predisposed to like them when viewing them now. If you watched the cartoons for the first time as an adult, I doubt you'd have the same reaction.

You've heard old people refer to "the good old days"?  This is the same phenomenon.  "stuff is crap now, not like when I was younger" is a common complaint throughout history.

Yeah, you're probably mostly right. I'm aware of the biases that inevitably come when one thinks about their childhood, so I might be exaggerating things a bit. In my defense, I must say there were also many cartoons which I disliked at the time and utterly loathe today (the David Feiss stuff comes to mind.. bleah).

I think there is also a lot of truth to Mint's explanation, though.

[Bacon King]

but this stuff looks like it's for kids under 5.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ahem...

but this stuff looks like it's for kids under 5.

I was speaking in purely aesthetic terms. As I said, I've never watched it so I can't judge on its content. But still, thank you very much for the nightmares I'll probably have tonight.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm generally familiar enough with anime to be able to have a rough idea of what people are talking about at least by reputation, but I had no idea what Knights of the Zodiac was before I looked it up and discovered that that's the title under which Saint Seiya was released in some countries. And I agree with you: Good times.

I could probably recommend some stuff if you really wanted me to (including stuff made within the past ten years or so), if you gave me some indication of what kinds of plot and thematic elements you'd find appealing. Although I'd be tempted to throw in some live-action Japanese film anyway because I'm me; Hausu is partially animated, at least...

Avatar: The Last Airbender was good as I recall, and probably deserved significantly better treatment than it got from the Nickelodeon people for most of the later part of its run; the sequel series is a disappointment and the film adaptation was an ungodly travesty, though.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm probably not in the mood/conditions to start watching something new right now - both because I'm not entirely done with uni papers and because I have some other plans for the next few weeks (including catching up with a few live action TV series). But I'll be happy to take your recommendations, and enthusiastically follow them whenever I'm in the mood for anime again (this happens about a couple times per year).

I probably have some preferences in terms of thematics, but I haven't explored the field well enough to be sure about them. As a kid what I watched was mostly "adventure"/"heroic"/sci-fi, but I think that would make sense for a kid (though I certainly don't renege this style now). I'm open to various stuff, though I might only watch one or two episodes and determine it's not my thing. My brother uses to watch (and read) a few of the most recent manga, such as Naruto or Bleach, but I wasn't really caught into these.

I think I saw the pilot episode of Avatar in my late childhood, it seemed pretty interesting, but for some reason I never managed to follow it regularly. I might go for this next. Also, what do you think of Sailor Moon? I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes as a kid, and being pretty caught up by the plot, and it seems to have an adult fandom (which, of course, is far from a guarantee in itself ), so I thought it might be worth a try. As for Saint Seiya (sorry, I should have known to use the original title, but I've been used to calling it I Cavalieri dello Zodiaco for a long time), it was really amazing. I was hooked up to it for a long time (watched up to the Neptune arch) and was thoroughly impressed. I was a bit troubled by its "roughness" (especially the moral dissonance surrounding widespread child abuse), but if I could bear it as a teen, I certainly can now.

[minionofmidas]

I prefer my cartoon characters inanimate anyways.

[opebo]

Come on, everything's only gotten worse in living memory, not just cartoons.

[LastVoter]

ctrl+F "My little Pony" was not dissapointed

[Flake]

There are a few shows that are good today, those are Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Disney's Gravity Falls.

However most of the shows today are really, really crappy.

One of the shows that I have a pretty bad opinion of is My Little Pony, a television show from The Hub (which many of its older viewers use the different kind )

There is no point to it, except that friendship is magic and can defeat anything. But shows need to go back a few years. Remember when Lizzy McGuire had dealt with eating problems or when Different Strokes had talked about child molesters and to not trust all adults? No shows go onto these topics that kids today desperately need to know, because we all know some parents today are too "busy" with "work" to teach kids about these topics.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Glad to see the Pony fanclub hasn't corrupted this thread yet.

Can someone summarize Regular Show and Gravity Falls, since they've been cited so many times? I'm too lazy to read through the Wiki articles...

[Grumpier Than Thou]

Glad to see the Pony fanclub hasn't corrupted this thread yet.

Can someone summarize Regular Show and Gravity Falls, since they've been cited so many times? I'm too lazy to read through the Wiki articles...

The Regular Show is about a blue jay and a raccoon who are friends and work at a park and they go on these super trippy adventures like the writers must be high 24/7 cuz it's just so f--ked up

All you need to know about the show lies within the show's creator's college thesis film, which is basically a more openly adult version of the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y894QNtX0VA

[Antonio the Sixth]

I see. Seems like the "silly fun" kind of cartoons which I really can't stand.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I see. Seems like the "silly fun" kind of cartoons which I really can't stand.

It's hilarious. The best part is that most of the innuendos fly right over the target audience's head. It's the new Spongebob.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's the new Spongebob.

Good to know. Excellent reason for me not to watch it.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Oh my, you don't even know what you're asking me.  I can think of two big reasons:

1. CGI; most computer animation I've seen is ugly and has flat, lifeless characters.  Traditional animation has a special magic to it that CGI animation doesn't.  When I was little, I always found it amazing how people could bring drawings to life like that, and it developed into a love of cartoons and animation for me.  Computer animation destroys all of this by simply having a bunch of geometric patterns and special effects slapped together to make it.  I have a book called The Illusion of Life, which was written by two Disney animators about how they animated their cartoons and films.  Animators today (at least Western animators) have mostly moved away from this concept.  Instead of the illusion of life, they want money.

2. Most cartoons have bad stories and are dumbed down to appease the kids.  They usually have some sort of gross humor (fart jokes, potty humor, etc.) and under-developed characters and plotlines.  They don't have much in them that older people (teenagers, adults, etc.) can identify with.  Most of them elicit very little emotion from me (even the opening scenes of Up); whereas films like Dumbo, Bambi, or The Fox and the Hound actually make me cry during certain scenes (or make me come pretty darn close to it.)

Bottom line: kids like it, and it makes money.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

It's the new Spongebob.

Good to know. Excellent reason for me not to watch it.

HP

[Boris]

Ahem...

but this stuff looks like it's for kids under 5.

I was speaking in purely aesthetic terms. As I said, I've never watched it so I can't judge on its content. But still, thank you very much for the nightmares I'll probably have tonight.

Yeah, it's aimed at stoners. A lot of the humor would go over a kid's head.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm probably not in the mood/conditions to start watching something new right now - both because I'm not entirely done with uni papers and because I have some other plans for the next few weeks (including catching up with a few live action TV series). But I'll be happy to take your recommendations, and enthusiastically follow them whenever I'm in the mood for anime again (this happens about a couple times per year).

I probably have some preferences in terms of thematics, but I haven't explored the field well enough to be sure about them. As a kid what I watched was mostly "adventure"/"heroic"/sci-fi, but I think that would make sense for a kid (though I certainly don't renege this style now). I'm open to various stuff, though I might only watch one or two episodes and determine it's not my thing. My brother uses to watch (and read) a few of the most recent manga, such as Naruto or Bleach, but I wasn't really caught into these.

I'll send you some recommendations of good heroic sci-fi adventure anime by PM after I've had a good night's sleep and consulted with a couple of friends of mine who are more immersed in those particular genres than I am.

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I could talk about Sailor Moon for ages but all I'll say for now is that it is absolutely worth a try, with a few caveats: Avoid the English dub of the anime like the plague unless you're in for a Garzey's Wing-type sick laugh (you've probably heard this advice already but it always, always bears repeating); the original form of the anime is good but plagued by production problems and creatively is somewhat out of step with Takeuchi Naoko's original ideas, with the best part of the anime on its own merits being probably the bulk of the second season through the bulk of the fourth and the movies associated with those seasons, the part that was directed by the always fascinating Ikuhara Kunihiko (The Mikado can back me up on the value of Ikuhara's work if he happens upon this thread; I have fond memories of discussing Ikuhara's Mawaru-Penguindrum with him via PM as it aired a couple of years ago); the original manga is a treasure and a triumph and entirely deserving of its reputation and influence.

[H. Ross Peron]

I'm probably not in the mood/conditions to start watching something new right now - both because I'm not entirely done with uni papers and because I have some other plans for the next few weeks (including catching up with a few live action TV series). But I'll be happy to take your recommendations, and enthusiastically follow them whenever I'm in the mood for anime again (this happens about a couple times per year).

I probably have some preferences in terms of thematics, but I haven't explored the field well enough to be sure about them. As a kid what I watched was mostly "adventure"/"heroic"/sci-fi, but I think that would make sense for a kid (though I certainly don't renege this style now). I'm open to various stuff, though I might only watch one or two episodes and determine it's not my thing. My brother uses to watch (and read) a few of the most recent manga, such as Naruto or Bleach, but I wasn't really caught into these.

I'll send you some recommendations of good heroic sci-fi adventure anime by PM after I've had a good night's sleep and consulted with a couple of friends of mine who are more immersed in those particular genres than I am.

Would this happen to include Legend of Galactic Heroes?

[Bacon King]

Most of them elicit very little emotion from me (even the opening scenes of Up)

what seriously

are you just an android incapable of feeling human emotions or what

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, Up was an absolute masterpiece. No question about that.

I'm probably not in the mood/conditions to start watching something new right now - both because I'm not entirely done with uni papers and because I have some other plans for the next few weeks (including catching up with a few live action TV series). But I'll be happy to take your recommendations, and enthusiastically follow them whenever I'm in the mood for anime again (this happens about a couple times per year).

I probably have some preferences in terms of thematics, but I haven't explored the field well enough to be sure about them. As a kid what I watched was mostly "adventure"/"heroic"/sci-fi, but I think that would make sense for a kid (though I certainly don't renege this style now). I'm open to various stuff, though I might only watch one or two episodes and determine it's not my thing. My brother uses to watch (and read) a few of the most recent manga, such as Naruto or Bleach, but I wasn't really caught into these.

I'll send you some recommendations of good heroic sci-fi adventure anime by PM after I've had a good night's sleep and consulted with a couple of friends of mine who are more immersed in those particular genres than I am.

Thank you very much! Note that here's no need to be too specific in subject matters (the slashes that I put were more disjunctive than conjunctive), I wouldn't want to close myself up into a single genre.

I think I can go with Sailor Moon next, then! I'll try to see how the Japanese version is - although I admit I don't much like watching subtitled shows/films when I'm not proficient in the language (it took me a while to even start with Anglophone works). Italy is generally known for its high-quality dubbing (among other things, they translate directly from the original version rather than using the English version as a shortcut) so that might be an option too.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm probably not in the mood/conditions to start watching something new right now - both because I'm not entirely done with uni papers and because I have some other plans for the next few weeks (including catching up with a few live action TV series). But I'll be happy to take your recommendations, and enthusiastically follow them whenever I'm in the mood for anime again (this happens about a couple times per year).

I probably have some preferences in terms of thematics, but I haven't explored the field well enough to be sure about them. As a kid what I watched was mostly "adventure"/"heroic"/sci-fi, but I think that would make sense for a kid (though I certainly don't renege this style now). I'm open to various stuff, though I might only watch one or two episodes and determine it's not my thing. My brother uses to watch (and read) a few of the most recent manga, such as Naruto or Bleach, but I wasn't really caught into these.

I'll send you some recommendations of good heroic sci-fi adventure anime by PM after I've had a good night's sleep and consulted with a couple of friends of mine who are more immersed in those particular genres than I am.

Would this happen to include Legend of Galactic Heroes?

Of [Inks]ing course it would. I don't even need to ask anybody else about that. Legend of Galactic Heroes is a spectacular achievement. My only worry is that it seems like it might be a little difficult to find.

Antonio, I looked it up and it seems like the Italian Sailor Moon dub, while technically well done, is heavily censored, though not as much or as blatantly as the English dub. A lot of the lesbian and transgender themes of the original, for example, were actively disallowed from making it into other languages (to the extent possible; a lot of the English censorship, at least, was unbelievably clumsily done), and some of them are pretty important to an understanding of what's going on. Also Rei is way different in the anime compared to the manga and manga!Rei is generally considered a better-written character, but that's true of every language.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, I looked it up and it seems like the Italian Sailor Moon dub, while technically well done, is heavily censored, though not as much or as blatantly as the English dub. A lot of the lesbian and transgender themes of the original, for example, were actively disallowed from making it into other languages (to the extent possible; a lot of the English censorship, at least, was unbelievably clumsily done), and some of them are pretty important to an understanding of what's going on. Also Rei is way different in the anime compared to the manga and manga!Rei is generally considered a better-written character, but that's true of every language.

True, I did not consider that. Of course it should be expected that Italian TV would censor (though, interestingly considering everything, it tends to be a bit less prudish than others, at least from my experience). I'll go for the original subtitled version, then - which is probably also easier to find on the internet. I probably don't have the patience or interest to read the original manga, though. From my modest experience, I haven't much enjoyed the manga format.

I looked up Legend of Galactic Heroes and it seems pretty interesting. I'll give it a try some day too.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Most of them elicit very little emotion from me (even the opening scenes of Up)

what seriously

are you just an android incapable of feeling human emotions or what

That scene was certainly sad, but not enough to make me cry.  Did you read the very next statement after that?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Yeah, Up was an absolute masterpiece. No question about that.

I didn't think so.