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

[Doctor of Autism]

The Multiverse as a concept has been utilized for a long time, it just became tacky and poorly handled due to major superhero studios using it for cameos like the MCU, DCEU, and Sony to some extent.

Animation I feel is one of the few mediums I think can deliver on the concept of bizarre worlds, since it can easily be created in animation.

 

[A Grey Cat]

It's funny how Rick & Morty would end up taking over Robot Chicken's position of the most popular show on the network (and I'm only talking about ratings and the fact that they were Emmy nominated, so if anyone replies with The Venture Bros. or Boondocks, then you're cheating). Yet R&M and its crew were trying too desperate to execute many good ideas and the network keep delaying the show a lot. Both Robot Chicken and Rick & Morty are still on the air, but neither of them are ever as good as long ago.

Wanna feel old? Robot chicken has been on the air since the Bush adminstraion. That's rivaled only by spongebob and family guy which both premiered just as the clinton administraton was ending, and all of them are bested only by the simpsons. Which if you include their premire as tracey ulman show shorts has lasted from the regan administration, bush sr, clinton, w bush, obama, trump, and biden.


And much like those shows or really any long runner especially in animation. The problem is theyve been on so long and are starting to reflect our current culture...sometines a little too closely.

When robot chicken first aired a lot of its humor was targeted to gen x y...maybe some late stage boomers like those born in the 70s. Family guy was kinda right in saying it mostly poked fun at 80s culture like gi joe, transformers, thundercats and he man, with some early 90s humor and ocassionaly a modern joke sketch or two. (W bush as a jedi for ex) but nowadays? There are either a lot more 90s-2000s refferences or more jabs at modern pop culture. And almoat none of the mainstays when it was new, Ocassional shouts not withstanding.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

Fuck the Multiverse, Just focus on building one World instead

 

[TVB]

Wanna feel old? Robot chicken has been on the air since the Bush adminstraion. That's rivaled only by spongebob and family guy which both premiered just as the clinton administraton was ending, and all of them are bested only by the simpsons. Which if you include their premire as tracey ulman show shorts has lasted from the regan administration, bush sr, clinton, w bush, obama, trump, and biden.


And much like those shows or really any long runner especially in animation. The problem is theyve been on so long and are starting to reflect our current culture...sometines a little too closely.

When robot chicken first aired a lot of its humor was targeted to gen x y...maybe some late stage boomers like those born in the 70s. Family guy was kinda right in saying it mostly poked fun at 80s culture like gi joe, transformers, thundercats and he man, with some early 90s humor and ocassionaly a modern joke sketch or two. (W bush as a jedi for ex) but nowadays? There are either a lot more 90s-2000s refferences or more jabs at modern pop culture. And almoat none of the mainstays when it was new, Ocassional shouts not withstanding.

I'd say Drawn Together ages like fine wine. The show that made fun of SJW culture before said thing became a reality a decade later.

 

[Purple Threat]

I'd say Drawn Together ages like fine wine. The show that made fun of SJW culture before said thing became a reality a decade later.

Drawn Together is only good in short clip compilations. An actual episode is like maybe 2 funny scenes followed by crude humor and sex jokes.

It always just felt like it wanted to ape South Park without bothering to add more substance. Like if Cartman's ONLY trait was hating on jews.

And I'm pretty sure South Park and even Duckman had eps ragging on the no-fun police wanting to censor them.

Regardless, Drawn together is a guilty pleasure for me and it's really funny seeing zoomers discover it for the first time and have their heads explode at how unabashed it is.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

Drawn Together worked best when it at least tried to maintain the reality show premise, IE season 1. The actual writing throughout the seasons was still topnotch, but I liked it when the episodes still had reality TV as a framework for plots instead of later seasons' maybe one cutaway of a character sitting down on camera to remind you what the show nominally was, but unintentionally feeling like an albatross instead. I think the writers even admitted they basically gave up on the premise for pure wackiness anyway.

I remember 2004's animation via that and Venture Brothers well. Those first seasons were pretty tidily wrapped up in case they never got picked up again (thank goodness they did).

 

[A Wumpa Fruit]

I can´t believe I find this thread today, I´m an idiot, finally I can rant about the absolute shitty rotten state of western adult modern cartoons

 

[Mr. 0]

I remember 2004's animation via that and Venture Brothers well. Those first seasons were pretty tidily wrapped up in case they never got picked up again (thank goodness they did).

WHERE CAN WE GET A HAIRCUT?
And ammo for THIS?

 

[Space Police]

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I wanted to share this beautiful rendition of Hellfire in Latin.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

*laughs with bold and brash*

 

[Willi Tokarev]

Does anyone remember this gem?

 

[anustart76]

View attachment 5365392

*laughs with bold and brash*

To be fair Squidward went crazy and left at the end

 

[Fluoxetine Man]

Does anyone remember this gem?View attachment 5365418

You can get the whole series with original broadcast music here.

 

[Shidoen]

View attachment 5365392

*laughs with bold and brash*

Squidburbia

 

[SFINAE]

Umami's Interface was mentioned in this thread a couple years back. There's a sequel now called Safe Mode, where the story continues inside the giant baby thing that contains the Interface.

Spoiler: Episodes

The art style is very distinct from Interface. Interface featured a relatively realistic (but simplistic) art style with many references to classic art. There was also a lot of film grain effects and audible static added in to imply that it's a recording. In Safe Mode, the film grain and static are gone and replaced with a very abstract art style. At times the whole screen becomes a Picasso painting. Proportions are deliberately out-of-whack to make it clear to the the viewer that this isn't reality and everything is inside the Interface.

The animations are also brilliant imo. Everything feels like a fever dream which is what I think he was going for. The black parts of the scene constantly move around like a child's drawing.

The music is created by Hexsystem (Umami's music name), which is par for the course for his works. The genre is all over the place depending on the episode and so is the mood (more on this later), although most of the time it's synthesizer music. I personally really enjoy the music, with my favorites being Temporary Paralysis, Comfort in Numbers and Garbage Plate.

The episodes don't really have a set length, and they've steadily been getting longer. The latest episode (episode 6) is 13 minutes compared to the first episode's 4 minutes and change. I think we'll have a similar situation to Interface where Justin wants to have an ending and thus creates a 20 minute final episode where all plot threads are resolved.

Spoiler: The plot so far

The plot is kind of weird so far tbh. It picks off from where Interface ended, after the giant baby thingy ate Mischief and fell ill because of it. We're introduced to the character of Smear whose exact job title is unclear but is shown to have some authority over the Interface. We're told that the Interface is in Safe Mode and that's why everything looks so weird. The Administrator (who is our good friend Joseph Greetings) asks him to turn off Safe Mode which Smear then refuses, saying that they would all be destroyed if Safe Mode were off right now (presumably due to Mischief).

Then we're introduced to Lana, who seems to be a young girl kind of filling the sidekick role for Smear, and Snooze Button, which is the potted plant that acts as the comic relief character. Smear then gets into his car and drives off to a yet-unknown location.

In the third episode we have Smear driving on a highway alongside Snooze Button. Then this large ping-pong ball thingy starts going around destroying stuff (he looks similar to the ball with the face we saw back in Interface episode 16, which was left as an unresolved thing, so maybe this was intended). Eventually, it hits Smear's car, and sends it flying. Lana teleports to the car crash and makes fun of Smear for using a car instead of teleporting.

The fourth episode is when Umami starts introducing some Current Thing:tm: attributes to the story, which I don't really like but it's relatively tame. Smear monologues about how war is Le Bad and how even in the Interface peace couldn't be achieved, and then faces off the plastic army, who are pissed about their plane getting destroyed in the previous episode and blame Smear about it. Smear sneaks away while the colonel and general are arguing.

The fifth episode is yet more Current Thing as Umami makes a reference about how AI is going to make everything fake through Smear and Lana's dialogue. Basically nothing happens in this episode so I'm skipping the events.

Thankfully the sixth episode is a return to form as we finally progress the story. We're finally in the city. Smear meets the Administrator who tells him that he's now plan B as he has failed to fix things under Safe Mode. We meet the Flying Lotus ghost which says some nonsense and enters Club 404. He then enters after him to vent (?) and have a drink, and chats with the ball of faces thingy. Apparently under Safe Mode, operating a bar is illegal, and everyone is using a proxy to avoid repercussions (the proxies, I'm assuming, are those human figures with the masks). In the back room we meet the Flying Lotus ghost and a woman who's apparently from Rochester (in her past life?), and the Flying Lotus ghost gets told off for being annoying. Finally, Smear is ambushed in the bar by a couple of proxies and takes them out (I liked the abstract way the action scene is presented here). The Rochester lady then finishes Smear off and the episode ends with a cliffhanger.

The mood can swing very dramatically between episodes. Episode 3 and 4 feel like they're from different shows. I don't mind it that much but it was a bit jarring at first.

I'm overall enjoying the series so far. Umami makes music and animation livestreams sometimes which are fun to watch. I'm hoping that it's gonna be as good as Interface, at least.

 

[Purple Threat]

Kind of late to respond to this post, but I'm watching it right now, and so far, episode 4 is the one I like the most. Call me a turbo-autist, but I love multi-universe shit done like that. And I like prismo's character. Edit: I also think it's kinda funny that it all started because some guy wanted to write fanfiction,

I was already hesitant to watch Fionna and cake, but the minute he started mentioning multiverses I tuned out.

Spoiler: AT sperging

I was a huge fan of Adventure Time s1-3 but then s4-5 wore me down and s6 sealed the deal. I liked it when it was just silly adventures in this creepy world with nonsensical humor, but now they have to have lore and over-arching plot to explain every detail of the show.

Remember that episode where Jake lost his powers to a witch and they spent the ep trying to recreate when he first got them because he's too much of an asshole to just apologize to the witch? Just a silly episode.

Well now he's actually an alien re-incarnated in the form of a dog and the planet's pressure makes his alien DNA stretchy or whatever bullshit they came up with.

That's what Fionna and Cake feels like. What was just a cute genderbent gag ep is not only canon but actually it's on a separate layer of the multiverse.

Ice king didn't even write the fanfiction. It's just some weird mini-verse that was torrented into his mind palace or whatever.

Shows can't be subtle or have dumb gags anymore. Everything has to be connected or part of a bigger picture.

Most of my anger is just sour grapes from seeing people enjoy a show I used to like. But from what I saw it just looks like if AT had a Bee and Puppycat crossover.

 

[TVB]

View attachment 5365392

*laughs with bold and brash*

literally 1984

 

[Higgs Bonbon]

The Multiverse as a concept has been utilized for a long time, it just became tacky and poorly handled due to major superhero studios using it for cameos like the MCU, DCEU, and Sony to some extent.

Animation I feel is one of the few mediums I think can deliver on the concept of bizarre worlds, since it can easily be created in animation.

very rarely do any of them actually deliver on that though, because making a completely alien world that isn't just a tiny human civilization or for Dr Strange to fall through for three seconds takes actual effort

90% of multiverse shit is some flavor of "our world but everyone wears silly hats and we can kill major characters without consequence"

 

[Niggerphobe]

The end of Fiona and cake surprisingly has no sequel bait

 

[A Grey Cat]

The end of Fiona and cake surprisingly has no sequel bait

It also has the gender bent versions of marceline and bubble gum as a gay couple....because of course it does. To be...fair as fair as I can, it was obvious they'd go that route since it's pretty much ingrained into the AT mythos no matter what versions of the characters you use, and it's not as heavy handed as you'd think it'd be especially when Fiona and cake is meant to be a tv 14 version of AT. It just showed them holding hands and walking down the street only for Fiona to comment on it.


For comparison sake..the highly hated Velma which is running on the same streaming platform shoved two nameless background gay teenagers in a dank and dismal public high school making out as a background joke.....insert the "writer's fetish" image here.