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

About Young Justice: Brion did the world a favor by murking Bedlam and he had every right to do so since the man ruined his life and his country, sold his little sister into slavery holy shit, and had no plans on stopping anytime soon. To this day I am fucking baffled at how the team and the show itself treat him like he's an irredeemable monster for taking out the trash.
 

Anyone willing to bet how much @Vyse Inglebard is going to question what this has to do with making cartoons for children?
Oh, I know perfectly well that this has nothing to do with making cartoons for kids and EVERYTHING to do with getting Dana and the Twitterati's rocks off. Unfortunately for Dana and the Twitteratti, that shit's not profitable, which, when you really get down to it, is Disney's modus operandi. Ever wonder why they keep making live action remakes? Because it keeps making them money:
Beauty and the Beast grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing live-action musical film, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2017 (after Star Wars: The Last Jedi), and the tenth-highest-grossing film of all time.
The Lion King was theatrically released in the United States on July 19, 2019. It has grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide during its theatrical run, overtaking Frozen to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time. It also became the seventh highest-grossing film of all time and the second highest-grossing film of 2019.
Even more to the point, who gives a flying fuck at this point? These people go on and on about how it's "a pretty big deal" that Luz is the FIRST EVAR bisexual Disney character, and boy do I ever agree, Slick - as soon as I heard this news, all I could think was "big fucking deal". You can cry about "civil rights" and pretend propaganda is "progress" all you like over there, Dana, as if ancient Romans weren't ass fucking anything with olive skin in 2 B.C., but the simple fact is, you and your ilk (Sugar, Stevenson, et al) have been flying the rainbow flag for so fucking long kids all but instinctually ignore your shitty cartoons and watch anything the fuck else (see: the massive popularity of stuff like SpongeBob and Teen Titans Go! among that demographic). Not because they hate homos - Christ's sake, He-Man set the drapes on fire back in the 80s and kids were still watching it - but because kids (and emotionally arrested adults) want cartoons with fun, NOT a fucking sermon to give you an excuse to dislocate your own shoulders patting yourselves on the back in a Distractify article 18 people fucking read. I mean, what's the fucking point of this? What issues does this actually raise apart from privacy concerns about Amity's x-ray vision spell around Luz in the school gym's shower room?

Kids are actually pushing back against this unctuous bullshit in their entertainment, and best of all, they're doing it in the only way that actually works: Indifference. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at The Owl House's ratings for the last season, shall we?
The owl droppings.JPG

Consistently in the 300K-400K range. Not even a million viewers. The average ratings for the whole season is around 380K viewers. To put that into perspective, that's about how many views the Game Grumps get on their new videos:
gg video.JPG

Looks like kids don't "need" that LGBT+ REPRESINTASHUN as much as Dana and the Twitteratti think they do. Let's compare this to, say, how much Teen Titans Go! got for it's 2nd season:
the ttg difference 2.JPG

Holy. Fucking. Shit. It's not even close. Constantly hitting and surpassing the 2 million mark.
the ttg difference.JPG

You see why CN spams that show all the time now? It makes kids happy, and therefore IT. MAKES. THEM. MONEY. Something that The Owl House will never do, no matter how much alphabet sperging they do.

TL;DR: Kids don't find The Owl House bad because Luz and Amity aren't slurping each other's snatches enough. Kids find it bad because it's BORING.
 
While we're already at TOH - what are you guys' impression of it actually? It's really har to find discussions about this show that isn't about LGTB representation..

I managed to power trough the first season a couple weeks ago and man was it underdeveloped!
It feels like the only character the writers could somewhat connect with are the main three, all other characters just feel as props, their dialogue is so plain and impersonal, you could switch it around and there wouldn't be a difference. The main three are really the only ones that behave in ways that is unique to their personalities.

I'm personally very off-put by this Simpsons-style humor that got popular with Gravity Falls. This kind of forth wall-ish comments that characters do, that are designed to be quotable/memable but have barely anything to do with what is happening on screen. It's super disruptive, not funny (to me) and makes serious moments completely impactless.

Furthermore; what is this this show trying to be anyway? It starts of as a human girl being an apprentice to a wayward witch, then nothing happens with this plotline, then she goes to magic school, then nothing happens and we don't even see what she's learning there (or how), then some shit happens with the local government establishment, didn't seem to have much impact to the characters before the rescue mission, and I doubt it will after that.
They switch back and forth between Lily being a threat or a incompetent loser.

Which is basically my main problem with the show - it establishes shit but then doesn't explore it. This is especially grating with the concept and use of magic in this world, and Lus' relationship towards it. The fact that Lus cannot use magic in conventional ways and needs to find alternative usage of it is a cool and interesting concept, but we see almost nothing of it. Like how does she even participate in school activities? The school ended up being just a place where she meets her friends, nothing else.
Magic could be such an awesome plot device, it could be used as a extension of the characters, but it receives so little importance.

I wish Dana Terrace would have had more experience apart from Gravity Falls (dunno how long she worked on Duck Tales) because her lack in versatility really shows. She implements the same kind of story structure than GF and it doesn't work with the setting she had created.

Just as an extra point of frustration - the entire time I'm watching this show I'm silently thinking ''how cool would it be if the show was drawn in Dana's personal style''. It's such a missed opportunity *sigh*
I Imagine that a change in style from the norm would have had forced the artist on the show out of their comfort zone, and the show could toy more with camera angels and proportion for comedic and/or dramatic effect. The show could adapt a lot more show don't tell.

All in all TOW just reminded me why I stopped being interested in mainstream cartoons. They feel so dry, forced and emotionally held back.
Story lines feel strangely calculated, I have a hard time explaining it and I'm shit at writing in general, but something about modern writing in animation feels like it doesn't occur with the intent of what the character would be feeling (thus reacting), but as how the character's action can be argumented in a debate like setting.
Dunno, to me a great deal of engagement in a character comes in how much this character feels like their capable of independent thought. Like their actions are a result of their personality + situation, and their actions are unique to those.
 
While we're already at TOH - what are you guys' impression of it actually? It's really har to find discussions about this show that isn't about LGTB representation..

I managed to power trough the first season a couple weeks ago and man was it underdeveloped!
It feels like the only character the writers could somewhat connect with are the main three, all other characters just feel as props, their dialogue is so plain and impersonal, you could switch it around and there wouldn't be a difference. The main three are really the only ones that behave in ways that is unique to their personalities.

I'm personally very off-put by this Simpsons-style humor that got popular with Gravity Falls. This kind of forth wall-ish comments that characters do, that are designed to be quotable/memable but have barely anything to do with what is happening on screen. It's super disruptive, not funny (to me) and makes serious moments completely impactless.

Furthermore; what is this this show trying to be anyway? It starts of as a human girl being an apprentice to a wayward witch, then nothing happens with this plotline, then she goes to magic school, then nothing happens and we don't even see what she's learning there (or how), then some shit happens with the local government establishment, didn't seem to have much impact to the characters before the rescue mission, and I doubt it will after that.
They switch back and forth between Lily being a threat or a incompetent loser.

Which is basically my main problem with the show - it establishes shit but then doesn't explore it. This is especially grating with the concept and use of magic in this world, and Lus' relationship towards it. The fact that Lus cannot use magic in conventional ways and needs to find alternative usage of it is a cool and interesting concept, but we see almost nothing of it. Like how does she even participate in school activities? The school ended up being just a place where she meets her friends, nothing else.
Magic could be such an awesome plot device, it could be used as a extension of the characters, but it receives so little importance.

I wish Dana Terrace would have had more experience apart from Gravity Falls (dunno how long she worked on Duck Tales) because her lack in versatility really shows. She implements the same kind of story structure than GF and it doesn't work with the setting she had created.

Just as an extra point of frustration - the entire time I'm watching this show I'm silently thinking ''how cool would it be if the show was drawn in Dana's personal style''. It's such a missed opportunity *sigh*
I Imagine that a change in style from the norm would have had forced the artist on the show out of their comfort zone, and the show could toy more with camera angels and proportion for comedic and/or dramatic effect. The show could adapt a lot more show don't tell.

All in all TOW just reminded me why I stopped being interested in mainstream cartoons. They feel so dry, forced and emotionally held back.
Story lines feel strangely calculated, I have a hard time explaining it and I'm shit at writing in general, but something about modern writing in animation feels like it doesn't occur with the intent of what the character would be feeling (thus reacting), but as how the character's action can be argumented in a debate like setting.
Dunno, to me a great deal of engagement in a character comes in how much this character feels like their capable of independent thought. Like their actions are a result of their personality + situation, and their actions are unique to those.
Season 2 makes Season 1 look like a masterpiece in comparison, and it's not even LGBT stuff (although the way lumity were literally forced to date because the obnoxious owl fucker was shipping them was cringeworthy to watch (yes, that really what happened)). Like, it's so poorly paced, characters come and go, old characters who should have had more development are barely there, some lore shit happened and we basically have another fucking story about two brothers fucking shit up, who cares even??

The REAL reason the show was nuked, as was stated above, is because kids weren't watching it and Disney dgaf about young adult twitter shippers as confirmed by Dana herself.
2021-10-21 20.56.01 www.reddit.com cb52e1e33898.png
 
Hey, Dana, you know what that's called? RUNNING A BUSINESS. Which is what Disney ultimately is. And what, class, does a business truly care about at the end of the day?

"MAKING A PROFIT!"

And if a particular brand isn't making any profit, what'll happen to it?

"IT'LL GET KICKED TO THE CURB LIKE YESTERDAY'S TRASH!"

Good job, hypothetical students of mine! You're now more knowledgeable about businesses than a 20-something year old showrunner at the most famous animation studio on the planet!

👨‍🎓: Should this depress me, Mr. Inglebard?

Yes, Jimmy. Yes, it should.
 
Season 2 makes Season 1 look like a masterpiece in comparison, and it's not even LGBT stuff (although the way lumity were literally forced to date because the obnoxious owl fucker was shipping them was cringeworthy to watch (yes, that really what happened)). Like, it's so poorly paced, characters come and go, old characters who should have had more development are barely there, some lore shit happened and we basically have another fucking story about two brothers fucking shit up, who cares even??

The REAL reason the show was nuked, as was stated above, is because kids weren't watching it and Disney dgaf about young adult twitter shippers as confirmed by Dana herself.
View attachment 2645548
I'm not sorry Dana. That a show like Big City Greens beats your show in ratings. Maybe because kids actually like that show. instead of your show that is only like by weird trannies and lesbos with short hair.
 
Weird reasoning to cancel a show, especially if there's more shows, made by the same studio, running with the same criteria. Also dunno why she's comparing serialization to anime, serialization in anime is usually shit (I hate story structure in anime).

Is hard for me to point down what Disney's 'brand' is right now, especially since they started producing shows with creepier element - but I have even more trouble getting what TOH 'brand' is.
The show has no set themes, plot threads that go nowhere and characters that have nothing to do. The only thing it managed to establish is a stinking relationship - a milestone in a show where a girl wants to become a witch despite being human, and fighting a oppressive emperor is that said girl entered a relationship... priorities man.

There is this interview Dana gave with Matt Braly. There are two things she said that stand out to me; one is that for the bigger part of season 1 she had 6 executives giving her, often conflicting, notes on her show (timestamp 13:00), the other thing is that Amity is the hardest character for Dana to write because she can relate to her the least, but Amity is a favorite of her team and the have lots of fun writing for her (timestamp 49:52).

Both of this statements just confirm to me that Dana has not yet had enough experience to run a show. Nothing of this made easier with WFH change.
She seemingly had such a weak grasp of what she wanted her show to be that she got thrown off track by the many notes (to be fair, that IS a lot of executives) and she created a character for her show she doesn't know how to write for and let's her staff handle it.

I haven't seen Amphibia, and I don't wan't to, but it's weird listening to Matt next to Dana, because he seems to have such a better understanding of what the themes and character dynamics in his show are. It's so obvious that Dana didn't have no clear Idea at all about her show when she pitched it.

There is also this segment about writing in the interview, where they both say that they have never written a script before starting their shows, they we're both story-boarders, and they're of the opinion that boarding is similar to writing as you have to write all the dialogue and decide how things happen.
However, I'd disagree with that. Writing an episode based on a premise of the writer, than write a big scale world with consistency. They're separated parts of the pipeline for a reason. Both cool professions tho!


I'm frustrated because it's not as tho TOH didn't have potential, it just got fucked over by incompetence due to lack of experience. Like shiiiit. I would like to see more searching for a cure for Eda, I wanna see more interaction between Willow and Amity after they repaired their friendship (which was suuuuch a big deal at some point), I wanna see the kids interacting more to see how they work off of each other, how their personalities compliment each other (or go against), I wanna see more of Lus searching for alternative ways to do magic. They've got this island full of adventure and new things but they rather fuck around at conventions and play magic rugby or sth.
What is even Lus' goal in this show? What is her conflict? What motivates her? She want's to learn magic, isn't satisfied with Eda's lack of teaching, then goes to school to learn it, but doesn't learn anything she does could use. Then the door get's fucked and we have entered a conflict at last, she has a goal now and it even has to do with learning about magic, at the same time some other guy is making a portal she can potentially use without doing anything...

Season 1 has laid such a weak foundation of this world/story/characters that it seems impossible to build anything meaningful out of it. Why should I care about any of this characters? why should I care about the villain? Why should I care about the relationships in this show?

Stuff in this show just happens, without proper built up, without introspection - and mistakes never seem to carry much consequences. Eda loses her powers and status as most powerful witch, nothing changes for her, Lily gets kicked out the coven even tho she poses' a lot of potential dangerous knowledge about the coven, so what, no consequences, Lus cannot go home anymore, nothing changes really.
 
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Disney's TV shows haven't really had a brand since the Disney Afternoon. Unless their brand is basically the same type of creator-driven shows as the other kids' networks.

(I'd dispute that she hasn't had enough experience to work on her own show as well, but that's a different topic.)
 
Yeah, Disney is pretty versatile in their TV shows, that's why the executive's comment seems kinda strange to me. But that's the official statement that was given to Dana, anything else would be just speculation, and It doesn't help the situation.

It's very unfortunate that TV production works that way tho. This along with many other facets of it.
 
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Disney's TV shows haven't really had a brand since the Disney Afternoon. Unless their brand is basically the same type of creator-driven shows as the other kids' networks.

(I'd dispute that she hasn't had enough experience to work on her own show as well, but that's a different topic.)
Really, the 90s was one of the last eras where a studio was largely defined by the art styles of shows they put out (CN's post-Adventure Time shift into bean mouth shows aside). Disney in particular had most of their shows stick to a traditional Disney visual style. The only exceptions to this during the DA era were Gargoyles, which was driven by Greg Weisman's sensibilities in both visuals and storytelling, and Bill Kopp's Shnookums and Meat, which had a lot of Ren and Stimpy expats on board (and from what I heard, that was part of why the execs canned it after one season). But then they bought Doug from Nickelodeon and got big ratings for it, and from One Saturday Morning onward, they've been content to allow their show creators to pretty much use their own styles for the shows, with only a very few series based on movies or the shorts sticking to the traditional Disney designs.

Same thing with WB, though it was more of a dichotomy rather than just one style. There were the comedy shows like Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, and then there was Batman and the DCAU. But after the launch of Kids WB and the subsequent failures of Histeria and Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain, they started doubling down on action shows for a while, while the few comedies they put out (Detention, Mucha Lucha, the first season of Johnny Test) tended to experiment more towards different art styles, and more traditional-looking comedies tended to reflect non-Looney Tunes animation styles (Krypto the Superdog was designed like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, while Tom and Jerry Tales went back to a style in line with the MGM originals). Even the pure action cartoons started to experiment with different animation styles after the success of Teen Titans. It wasn't until The Looney Tunes Show that we started getting series that looked like Looney Tunes cartoons, and even then Wabbit/New Looney Tunes adopted a very different visual style. To say nothing of the visual abomination that is ThunderCats Roar.

As for Nickelodeon, they deliberately never had a unified art style, because the execs that greenlit the first Nicktoons wanted shows that didn't look anything like one another. The closest they got to a true house style was the Klasky Csupo shows, and once they went away, that initial goal was more or less realized - just as everyone else abandoned the idea of the house style, which seems like a borderline obscurity these days.

At least, on TV. With movies, each of the producers has a distinct style of both animation and storytelling that at can at least make them easy to tell apart. It wasn't like that during the Disney Renaissance, where everyone and their mother was trying to ape Disney.
 
Yeah, Disney is pretty versatile in their TV shows, that's why the executive's comment seems kinda strange to me. But that's the official statement that was given to Dana, anything else would be just speculation, and It doesn't help the situation.

It's very unfortunate that TV production works that way tho. This along with many other facets of it.
The dumb executive is a stereotype, yes, but a lot of stereotypes are based in fact...

Really, the 90s was one of the last eras where a studio was largely defined by the art styles of shows they put out (CN's post-Adventure Time shift into bean mouth shows aside). Disney in particular had most of their shows stick to a traditional Disney visual style. The only exceptions to this during the DA era were Gargoyles, which was driven by Greg Weisman's sensibilities in both visuals and storytelling, and Bill Kopp's Shnookums and Meat, which had a lot of Ren and Stimpy expats on board (and from what I heard, that was part of why the execs canned it after one season). But then they bought Doug from Nickelodeon and got big ratings for it, and from One Saturday Morning onward, they've been content to allow their show creators to pretty much use their own styles for the shows, with only a very few series based on movies or the shorts sticking to the traditional Disney designs.

Same thing with WB, though it was more of a dichotomy rather than just one style. There were the comedy shows like Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, and then there was Batman and the DCAU. But after the launch of Kids WB and the subsequent failures of Histeria and Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain, they started doubling down on action shows for a while, while the few comedies they put out (Detention, Mucha Lucha, the first season of Johnny Test) tended to experiment more towards different art styles, and more traditional-looking comedies tended to reflect non-Looney Tunes animation styles (Krypto the Superdog was designed like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, while Tom and Jerry Tales went back to a style in line with the MGM originals). Even the pure action cartoons started to experiment with different animation styles after the success of Teen Titans. It wasn't until The Looney Tunes Show that we started getting series that looked like Looney Tunes cartoons, and even then Wabbit/New Looney Tunes adopted a very different visual style. To say nothing of the visual abomination that is ThunderCats Roar.

As for Nickelodeon, they deliberately never had a unified art style, because the execs that greenlit the first Nicktoons wanted shows that didn't look anything like one another. The closest they got to a true house style was the Klasky Csupo shows, and once they went away, that initial goal was more or less realized - just as everyone else abandoned the idea of the house style, which seems like a borderline obscurity these days.

At least, on TV. With movies, each of the producers has a distinct style of both animation and storytelling that at can at least make them easy to tell apart. It wasn't like that during the Disney Renaissance, where everyone and their mother was trying to ape Disney.
No one has ever written a history of the Disney Afternoon that went after Goof Troop, so I don't have a source to give you, but in the mid-90s Disney was deliberately trying to produce TV shows that weren't in the Disney style.

At first this came out in the execution, with stuff like Raw Toonage, which was in the self-aware humor style best exemplified by the WB cartoons of the 90s (but not exclusive to them). But then it came out visually. Gargoyles was obviously inspired by the post-BTAS trends in action cartoons (I would argue that it took BTAS' penchant for using unconventional voice selections), and Shnookums and Meat was obviously in the Ren and Stimpy mold - but that's because they hired ex-R&S guys to work on it, including the great Lynne Naylor.

Then along came One Saturday Morning, where they gave into the creator-driven style of cable animation. Where a lot of the Nicktoons and Cartoon Cartoons were wacky, R&S-inspired stuff, the One Saturday Morning cartoons were more sedate in the model of Rugrats and Hey Arnold. And no wonder - the biggest hit from that block, Recess, was created by two ex-Rugrats people. Oh, yes, and they also had Doug, but those episodes sucked.
 
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You know it's funny because for what I know that along with The Ghost and Molly McGee and other shows, The Owl House actually got a fucking billboard on Time Square announcing the premier of the show....all of them except Amphibia, which you can tell it's the only current Disney show that the executives truly don't give a fuck about. The fun part comes in the form that despite all the bumps on the road, Amphibia still got a better deal than TOH and will probably be better remembered which is just insane considering that Disney was really banking on TOH being Gravity Falls 2 (Well, they wanted that first with DuckTales but we all know how that ended...).
Given how Disney XD is death with the normal channel following on a similar way (at least outside of the US) and their next shows focusing more on comedy than deep lore, I guess they are done trying to recapture that lightning.
 
Hey, Dana, you know what that's called? RUNNING A BUSINESS. Which is what Disney ultimately is. And what, class, does a business truly care about at the end of the day?

"MAKING A PROFIT!"

And if a particular brand isn't making any profit, what'll happen to it?

"IT'LL GET KICKED TO THE CURB LIKE YESTERDAY'S TRASH!"

Good job, hypothetical students of mine! You're now more knowledgeable about businesses than a 20-something year old showrunner at the most famous animation studio on the planet!

👨‍🎓: Should this depress me, Mr. Inglebard?

Yes, Jimmy. Yes, it should.
You know it's funny because for what I know that along with The Ghost and Molly McGee and other shows, The Owl House actually got a fucking billboard on Time Square announcing the premier of the show....all of them except Amphibia, which you can tell it's the only current Disney show that the executives truly don't give a fuck about. The fun part comes in the form that despite all the bumps on the road, Amphibia still got a better deal than TOH and will probably be better remembered which is just insane considering that Disney was really banking on TOH being Gravity Falls 2 (Well, they wanted that first with DuckTales but we all know how that ended...).
Given how Disney XD is death with the normal channel following on a similar way (at least outside of the US) and their next shows focusing more on comedy than deep lore, I guess they are done trying to recapture that lightning.
For better or worse, three seasons is today’s goal for most streamers. I haven’t seen much Owl House myself, yet the way it’s been talked about here really sounds like it’s being written character-first. A serialized story is being told, as most series from that era tend to be, yet it’s not like that story is planned to have a hard end, and the way it’s been talked about by Terrence herself implies if allowed to they could go for quite a while longer, with spin-offs and books and so on and so on.

On the other hand, Amphibia was stated multiple times to be a three-season show. When deciding what to renew, a show asking for 20 more episodes to get a satisfying, planned from the start conclusion of the series is far easier a choice then the one asking for basically “how many do you want it to have?”
 
Man, I forgot this show existed. Last time I watched it, Archer was still in a coma and it was seeming like they were on a steady decline. Have the recent seasons been worth watching?
He’s out of the coma(and in-universe he was in it for three years), so the past two season have been him adjusting to essentially being gone for those three years(and how everyone has changed since then) while also trying to get back into proper shape. I’d say they’re worth watching.
 
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