Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

Has anyone here been watching Arcane? It's a damn good show imo. It's based on League of Legends, but I don't know anything about the game and I was still able to get invested in it. Another plus is that it's absolutely gorgeous- every frame looks like a moving painting or piece of concept art.


The main characters are written to be both likable and flawed, and the female characters regularly get the shit kicked out of them just like the male characters. Nobody's overpowered and the main characters have to fight hard for every single win they get. They also manage to write a class conflict without it being a very black and white "rich people are irredeemably evil and don't care about anything other than money while the poor are sweet angels who do nothing wrong ever" narrative. There's decent topsiders who are trying to help everyone around them and there's poor assholes who are making everything worse for everyone around them and hiding behind "Getting back at The Man™" to continue fucking their fellow poors over. The writers explicitly stated that they wanted to write a conflict that had a ton of shades of gray in it, and I think they've accomplished that pretty well.

It's pretty refreshing to have a modern animated show for adults that manages to simultaneously look good, have good writing, and avoid social justice bullshit. I feel almost spoiled.
 
Not a fan of Vi/Caitlyn (but to be fair, it was always a popular ship. Just ignore the fandom).
But yeah, story and lore aren't really that interesting, but the overall style, the soundtrack, the beautifully choreographed fight scenes...I dare say, it's probably the best thing I watched this decade, and I mean watched, not just listened to dialogues (facial animation is a bit inconsistent but I LOVE what they did with Jinx. Watching her subtle expression changes was such a joy!)
It's a huge win for animation, I'm tired of calarts shit.

Edit: Okay, I'm repeating myself, but I just love, love what they did with Jinx here. I was expecting another Harley Quinn self-empowerment bullshit, especially with how they keep marketing as cutesy psycho misunderstood woobie, but thankfully her craziness is portrayed as genuinely unsettling. She's no Harley, this bitch is a fucking Joker!
 
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Not a fan of Vi/Caitlyn (but to be fair, it was always a popular ship. Just ignore the fandom).
But yeah, story and lore aren't really that interesting, but the overall style, the soundtrack, the beautifully choreographed fight scenes...I dare say, it's probably the best thing I watched this decade, and I mean watched, not just listened to dialogues (facial animation is a bit inconsistent but I LOVE what they did with Jinx. Watching her subtle expression changes was such a joy!)
It's a huge win for animation, I'm tired of calarts shit.

Edit: Okay, I'm repeating myself, but I just love, love what they did with Jinx here. I was expecting another Harley Quinn self-empowerment bullshit, especially with how they keep marketing as cutesy psycho misunderstood woobie, but thankfully her craziness is portrayed as genuinely unsettling. She's no Harley, this bitch is a fucking Joker!
For your first point- yeah, I'm pretty ambivalent towards them, ngl. Apparently they're quite the ambiguously gay duo in the games so I'm not gonna complain about the showrunners being faithful to the source material. Though you're right in that the fandom (specifically on Tumblr and Twitter, little surprise there) is absolutely insufferable, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Jayce and Viktor. The amount of fujos I've seen frothing at the mouth because the writers "queerbaited" them by having two men who are obviously best friends and nothing more stay just friends is absurd.

I've also seen people try to say Vik is "queer coded" because he... *checks papers* .... was an outcast as a child, is socially withdrawn, and shot down his assistant when she tried to flirt with him. This completely ignores the fact that he's both crippled and very, very terminally ill, and is currently laser focused on trying to find a way to save his life. This explains his behavior far better than "he's a gay smol bean uwu" and actually fits in with his arc, which is all about his desire and struggle to overcome his disability and terminal illness.

And secondly, yeah, I love what they did with Jinx! You feel bad for her because her brains are kind of scrambled eggs at this point but you're still like "Oh, this bitch is CRAZY crazy." I also liked how they depicted her as always having been slightly off, which wouldn't have been concerning when she was just a kid, but then The Incident happened and she went tumbling off the deep end. That's more accurate to how schizophrenia/psychosis develops in people than a good chunk of depictions out there.
 
I guess, but their stuff still exists and we can watch it and enjoy it even if they're all dead. The problem is there will probably never be anyone on the level of the best 2D animators of the past working in animation ever again.
Nah, there'll always be talented 2D animators around, even of that calibre. Problem is that there's no opportunity for them to work in 2D no matter the talent, so they probably don't bother to master their skills.
i know a bunch of folks that work with ToonBoom professionally, and they're generally pretty bummed out about it - because even tho it's faster, more efficient and in demand, they miss to draw. What joy is it to animate in 2D an not drawing?
With that I mean to say that there isn't necessary a problem with animators not wanting to hone their drawing skills, but it isn't what studios want to invest in. Which is a fucking shame.
I would kill to see Kung Fu Panda animated in 2D, especially because of Nico Marlet's fantastic character designs!
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Nah, there'll always be talented 2D animators around, even of that calibre. Problem is that there's no opportunity for them to work in 2D no matter the talent, so they probably don't bother to master their skills.
i know a bunch of folks that work with ToonBoom professionally, and they're generally pretty bummed out about it - because even tho it's faster, more efficient and in demand, they miss to draw. What joy is it to animate in 2D an not drawing?
With that I mean to say that there isn't necessary a problem with animators not wanting to hone their drawing skills, but it isn't what studios want to invest in. Which is a fucking shame.
I would kill to see Kung Fu Panda animated in 2D, especially because of Nico Marlet's fantastic character designs!
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The real tragedy is seeing what Frozen and Moana could've been had the 2D route they tried to do with The Princess and the Frog been successful enough for The Rat's liking:
Edit:
Wreck-It Ralph too:
 
The real tragedy is seeing what Frozen and Moana could've been had the 2D route they tried to do with The Princess and the Frog been successful enough for The Rat's liking:
Edit:
Wreck-It Ralph too:
Frozen probably would've been better 2D animated since I don't think that really benefits from being 3D, but Moana is superior being CG IMO. The water alone is phenomenal.
 
Squidward: "Nobody gives a care about the fate of labor so long as they get their instant gratification..."


Spongebob: "That was a good speech squidward, you practically had them eating out of your hands!"

Krabs: "But they didn't! Did they Mr. Squidward!?" Cause they were too busy eatin outa mine! I wish you two had gone on strike earlier! Thanks for attracting all these payin customers! Without Your signage and your sloganeering!"
 
i know a bunch of folks that work with ToonBoom professionally, and they're generally pretty bummed out about it - because even tho it's faster, more efficient and in demand, they miss to draw. What joy is it to animate in 2D an not drawing?
The real problem is all of the for-profit art schools who pull in students pretending that TV/movie animation is "art", when really you're just another gear in the machine putting together a consumer good. Thing is, with kickstarter/patreon/whatevs, I don't see why more animators don't get together and make their own thing.
The more you start to watch Boris & Natasha, you start to wonder why you never Russian spies in cartoons anymore.
Theres always General Specific.
 
The real problem is all of the for-profit art schools who pull in students pretending that TV/movie animation is "art", when really you're just another gear in the machine putting together a consumer good. Thing is, with kickstarter/patreon/whatevs, I don't see why more animators don't get together and make their own thing.
It's prohibitively expensive to do much more than a short or a pilot unless you have backing from a company?
 
For your first point- yeah, I'm pretty ambivalent towards them, ngl. Apparently they're quite the ambiguously gay duo in the games so I'm not gonna complain about the showrunners being faithful to the source material. Though you're right in that the fandom (specifically on Tumblr and Twitter, little surprise there) is absolutely insufferable, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Jayce and Viktor. The amount of fujos I've seen frothing at the mouth because the writers "queerbaited" them by having two men who are obviously best friends and nothing more stay just friends is absurd.

I've also seen people try to say Vik is "queer coded" because he... *checks papers* .... was an outcast as a child, is socially withdrawn, and shot down his assistant when she tried to flirt with him. This completely ignores the fact that he's both crippled and very, very terminally ill, and is currently laser focused on trying to find a way to save his life. This explains his behavior far better than "he's a gay smol bean uwu" and actually fits in with his arc, which is all about his desire and struggle to overcome his disability and terminal illness.

And secondly, yeah, I love what they did with Jinx! You feel bad for her because her brains are kind of scrambled eggs at this point but you're still like "Oh, this bitch is CRAZY crazy." I also liked how they depicted her as always having been slightly off, which wouldn't have been concerning when she was just a kid, but then The Incident happened and she went tumbling off the deep end. That's more accurate to how schizophrenia/psychosis develops in people than a good chunk of depictions out there.
One of the reasons Vi/Cait is so annoying is because they already made Diana/Leona canon as a couple and now it’s like they’re making a whole bunch of the ladies in the game gay. Nami is poly now, Rell is bi, Neeko is lesbo—it’s just getting obnoxious at this point.
Would have been refreshing for the pink-haired punk Vi to be straight.

Besides that the show really blew my expectations away. Animation was incredible and it feels like it’s impossible to find a beautifully rendered and designed fantasy world in tv anymore—so this was great to see.
 
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