Good media that should never have been made

I sort of mentioned them in the Western Animation thread, but it is pretty clear that Teen Titans (2003), Avatar The Last Airbender, Total Drama Island and Adventure Time have all had disastrous affects on western television animation, even if I believe all 4 are good.

Teen Titans is the origin point for most shipping culture in western animation/ Tumblr, which many later creators would get their fanfiction writing start. It also did the darker plots that many man-children use to defect against watching a children's show. Batman The Animated Series can also be thrown in for this, along with others like Hey Arnold as now you have creators trying to make "adult" children's series where the show acts like those "mature" episodes you always see break top 10 lists.

Avatar just added to the damage Teen Titans caused. Shipping was strong for this series thanks to Zuko, and it overall became the main hub for the "animation is for adults" TM arguments. Where Avatar differs is that it had large world building, an aspect most cal-farts shows would take note of years later.

Total Drama furthered shipping culture but also got CN to experiment with more older-audience pandering shows, which gave way to the future of Cal-Arts.

Adventure Time is the grand-daddy of the modern animated shows. It had lore, a more adult-pandering edge, and would give opportunity to creators that would go on to create Steven and the like.
 
Haruhi S2, because while being good it fucked with the entire franchise's chances of a new adaptation since then.

Touhou and warhammer have the worst lores and fanbases imaginable, just let me paint my minifigs and gun down pixelated women in peace
What the FUCK did you just say about touhou you little BITCH
 
Last edited:
Adventure Time is the grand-daddy of the modern animated shows. It had lore, a more adult-pandering edge, and would give opportunity to creators that would go on to create Steven and the like.
I used to like the show as a early teen, but now i can't remember it fondly because every single "profesional" behind the newest shitty lesbian melodrama for Dobson like manchildren got their start from AT, or from a show that got their start from AT.
 
I used to like the show as a early teen, but now i can't remember it fondly because every single "profesional" behind the newest shitty lesbian melodrama for Dobson like manchildren got their start from AT, or from a show that got their start from AT.
I separate it and the other early 2010 CN shows from the rest. That era of AT, Regular Show, Gumball, early Steven, and others was such a good period for CN. It is a shame how that era brought the end. I just cannot find it within myself to see it as bad though. Too many good memories.
 
I separate it and the other early 2010 CN shows from the rest. That era of AT, Regular Show, Gumball, early Steven, and others was such a good period for CN. It is a shame how that era brought the end. I just cannot find it within myself to see it as bad though. Too many good memories.
It's hard to even see early adventure time and the latter seasons as the same show with how much the tone shifted, and reliant it became on plot and lore over more lighthearted stories and comedy. I don't think the late seasons are bad or switching to that direction was bad, but it's clear it set up a bad precedent for future show runners.
 
I will throw in another one.

Jak & Daxter
Fantastic series, but it is also the one that shifted Naughty Dog into being the company we see today. Prior to Jak, Naughty Dog was about making simple titles that used the hardware to the fullest, seen by both Crash and Jak 1. After Jak 1, they saw kids had no interest in cartoon platformers, then decided to change the rest of the series to be darker and more story heavy. This story approach would then build the new foundation of Naughty Dog that would lead to Uncharted then the Last of Us. Most of Sony’s movie games can be pinpointed as being products of Jak’s switch either directly or due to the success of the series it spawned. Had kids still liked colorful platformers, I wonder where Naughty Dog would be today, and really, Sony as a whole.

To not completely blame Jak, I really think the PS2 era as a whole is where movie Sony began. Ratchet & Sly were equally built on story, and I cannot leave out Twisted Metal Black. From outside of Sony studios, I am sure Final Fantasy and Metal Gear also influenced their direction.
 
Five Nights at Freddy's has without a doubt changed the entire horror/indie-horror landscape since it's inception. Almost every popular indie-horror game made since has always been overly convoluted with so much "lore" it'll make your head spin.
Case in point: Hello Neighbor. A game that started off with an interesting premise, soon butchered any potential they had in exchange for "deep" and "mysterious" lore so people like MatPat can jerk themselves off over analyzing any "story" this game has.

Obligatory:
1653492056088.png
 
Five Nights at Freddy's has without a doubt changed the entire horror/indie-horror landscape since it's inception. Almost every popular indie-horror game made since has always been overly convoluted with so much "lore" it'll make your head spin.
Case in point: Hello Neighbor. A game that started off with an interesting premise, soon butchered any potential they had in exchange for "deep" and "mysterious" lore so people like MatPat can jerk themselves off over analyzing any "story" this game has.

Obligatory:
View attachment 3318606
Not to mention stuff like Poppy's Playtime that is also trying to chase that trend with the typical "spooky kids stuff being scary" and even trying to make convoluted lore through NFTs before they backtracked.
 
Aliens was a great movie, but I'd argue it did a lot to push the dull-colored, cliche spouting, grizzled Space Marine trope in modern video games.

Saw was an extremely watchable movie, but the Torture Porn it inspired (including the later Saw movies) wasn't nearly as good.

The Harry Potter franchise can suck it for the whole "splitting up one story into two or more movies" trend. The whole point of movies is to deliver a complete story in a digestible package that can theoretically be watched within a day. If I wanted to watch a TV series, I would watch a TV series. Thanks to this trend, I'll never be able to watch a big-budget, Peter Jackson directed Hobbit movie without watching a fanedit that feels like a lot of important stuff is missing.

Sex and the City brought raunchiness on TV to a new level, and made urban women want to act like gay men.

Titicut Follies for getting mental hospitals closed. Now we throw crazy people into prison or let them rampage in the streets. The problem didn't go away. It's just spread out more...
 
Actually while I'm on the topic of YouTube gaming, I'd say Let's Plays as a whole have also had a huge effect on current gaming, and sometimes not for the best. These people like Markiplier, 8-bit Ryan, and whoever else are the deciding factors over whatever Hot Garbage game gets featured for the month/years (see: Bendy, Baldi, Friday Night Funkin, Fortnite, etc.) and have also been used as pure marketing tactics by companies to boost customer traffic to their games (see: Fall Guys).
 
Actually while I'm on the topic of YouTube gaming, I'd say Let's Plays as a whole have also had a huge effect on current gaming, and sometimes not for the best. These people like Markiplier, 8-bit Ryan, and whoever else are the deciding factors over whatever Hot Garbage game gets featured for the month/years (see: Bendy, Baldi, Friday Night Funkin, Fortnite, etc.) and have also been used as pure marketing tactics by companies to boost customer traffic to their games (see: Fall Guys).
I think it’s more accurate to say Pewdiepie is what screwed YouTube Gaming. Before him, let’s plays required you to actually play through a game. Now people switch games every week to jump on the popular trend, which was Pewdiepie’s thing. He is also what started the screaming at horror indie trash thing that Markiplier and others would latch onto.

Pewdiepie seems to be regarded as the end point of old YT, and honestly, he is probably one of the reasons why YouTube has gotten worse other than the Vine refugees and general corporatism.
 
I sort of mentioned them in the Western Animation thread, but it is pretty clear that Teen Titans (2003), Avatar The Last Airbender, Total Drama Island and Adventure Time have all had disastrous affects on western television animation, even if I believe all 4 are good.

Teen Titans is the origin point for most shipping culture in western animation/ Tumblr, which many later creators would get their fanfiction writing start. It also did the darker plots that many man-children use to defect against watching a children's show. Batman The Animated Series can also be thrown in for this, along with others like Hey Arnold as now you have creators trying to make "adult" children's series where the show acts like those "mature" episodes you always see break top 10 lists.

Avatar just added to the damage Teen Titans caused. Shipping was strong for this series thanks to Zuko, and it overall became the main hub for the "animation is for adults" TM arguments. Where Avatar differs is that it had large world building, an aspect most cal-farts shows would take note of years later.

Total Drama furthered shipping culture but also got CN to experiment with more older-audience pandering shows, which gave way to the future of Cal-Arts.

Adventure Time is the grand-daddy of the modern animated shows. It had lore, a more adult-pandering edge, and would give opportunity to creators that would go on to create Steven and the like.
Animated series such as the ones made in the 1990s and early-mid 2000s or any media from that time period you mentioned couldn't even be made or conceived in the current entertainment industry environment. The culture surrounding the creative community is so insular and dominated by far-left politics in addition to the lack of actual independent opportunities that exist makes things very extremely difficult. Stuff like Smiling Friends getting made is sadly an anomaly.

The reality as to why things are so bad has nothing to do with the reasons I just mentioned because they are just symptoms of the real problem: 6 multinational media conglomerates own/control everything in the mainstream. Even if someone were to create an independent media company that got mainstream success by itself it would eventually get bought out by one of the 6 media giants.

Screen Shot 2022-05-29 at 12.38.52 PM.png


If things are to really improve for both mainstream and independent media at all in America, all these companies need to given the Standard Oil treatment of 1911 and be broken up by Antirust lawsuits. Things are never really going to improve until that happens.
 
Code Lyoko, Captain N: The Game Master and plenty other Western animations about people visiting the virtual world started the thing that we all call "Isekai". And worst of all, most Isekais have the same weeb shit tropes like "fwendiship :3", huge breasts to capital on coomers and incompetent writing, all topped off with a eye candy artstyle (Literally Anime-looking shit).

Also I'm not fucking kidding when I'm saying this, not a single one of them is good, I like very few Japanese animations (I like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for example) because it's always cliché fanservicey and just downright incompetent and it pisses me even more that this shit was born from something that was very interesting and done tenfold better than the japs could (Jojo is proof that, if a Jap is not trying to appeal to literal coomers, they can actually make good stuff) have ever done.

BTW, decided to make a shitpost about it 2 months ago, wanted to bypass youtube's copyright claim shit, so I added dumb shit onscreen to "conceal" the clips.


The animations showing up on the right in this order: Sword Art Online (Probably the shittiest of them all TBFH), Shield Hero Rising, So I'm a Spider, So What?
 
Last edited:
Code Lyoko, Captain N: The Game Master and plenty other Western animations about people visiting the virtual world started the thing that we all call "Isekai". And worst of all, most Isekais have the same weeb shit tropes like "fwendiship :3", huge breasts to capital on coomers and incompetent writing, all topped off with a eye candy artstyle (Literally Anime-looking shit).

Also I'm not fucking kidding when I'm saying this, not a single one of them is good, I like very few Japanese animations (I like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for example) because it's always cliché fanservicey and just downright incompetent and it pisses me even more that this shit was born from something that was very interesting and done tenfold better than the japs could (Jojo is proof that if a Jap is not trying to appeal to literal coomer, they can actually make good stuff) have ever done.

BTW, decided to make a shitpost about it 2 months ago, wanted to bypass youtube's copyright claim shit, so I added dumb shit onscreen to "conceal" the clips.
View attachment 3332728

The animations showing up on the right in this order: Sword Art Online (Probably the shittiest of them all TBFH), Shield Hero Rising, So I'm a Spider, So What?
Isekais are older than hand writing. Humanity always had an obsession with new worlds that are better than the hard work they were born to.
 
You know, i never liked the concept of Isekai. That's why i felt so off seeing Inuyasha when i was a kid.
It's more better seeing a fantasy setting rather than your protagonist being a self-insert in another world.
And if i really want to self-insert in a fantasy setting, you can simply write a horrendous fanfic or creating a big ass novel with the protagonist not being obvious.
 
Back