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

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Basic Blond Boy said:
The show is great till you hit the cluster. A huge issue with the show is pacing and lack of payoffs, with the Cluster being most people’s reason for leaving. The show spends too much time on random comedy adventures to fully build up its main conflicts.
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Yeah, I think that was the point where I stopped watching it regularly. They had a whole arc building up the cluster as this world ending, gargantuan threat that would be multiple times bigger than the earth if it was allowed to form, and Steven just wrapped the whole thing up with "Hey, why don't you guys get along with each other and bubble yourself?", I still consider that episode to be the best cutoff point to stop watching the show, or maybe after Jasper and Lapis go into the sea, depending on how much you wanna see Peridot.

It's mostly remembered as the crying lesbian singing show, but I think people forget it had a LOT of traction back when it was just airing in like 2013 and was way different from the other new shows at the time. I think the main problem was that the writers didn't know who the actual audience was, and didn't understand that they were mostly there for the gem adventures and space stuff, not the town slice of life episodes and weird rape metaphors from venting writers. (Wasn't there that a whole episode about Pearl tricking Garnet into fusing with her after it was made pretty clear a few times that fusion was a sex thing?)
I'd go as far as to argue it was a fairly standard kids' show until Garnet was revealed to be a fusion and they started getting really weird about it.
 
Cave Fisher said:
Wasn't there that a whole episode about Pearl tricking Garnet into fusing with her after it was made pretty clear a few times that fusion was a sex thing?
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Yes, it was one of the worst subplots of the series and is typically referenced when going over the absurd politics of the show. The fact that they made a forgive your rapist plot was baffling, assuming you take the writers on their less-than reliable word that fusion was a metaphor for sex.

 
A Grey Cat said:
But after luz actually starts going to magic school it slowly becomes, "Dana makes her own Harry potter because she cant enjoy the actual Harry potter anymore because the creator has been persona non grata as a terf." Finally crossing the threshold into "wokeshit bad for everyone ' with the prom episode.
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Maybe it's because I usually hated cartoons solely about going to school as a kid, but man I couldn't IMAGINE writing a cartoon about falling into an entirely different world with magic just to have the protagonist go to School But Magic.
 
I second Steven Universe having pacing issues. It wastes too much time with filler and characters that just aren't interesting and don't end up matering anyway.

As for whether you’d like it or if it’s good, I guess it all depends on if you’re part of the so-called target audience or the real audience.

Real audience: College adults, specially liberal, and above who love super emotional shows with therapy sessions, Magic metaphors for real life relationship drama, and tears? Millennials especially. You’ll love this. Sugar and her team can deliver sometimes

But if you’re part of the supposed target audience, aka kids? Not a chance. It just doesn’t have enough action or humor. The fact it has a main character that's just too femmenine to appeal to boys doesn't help.

It's 100% written with a woke liberal women perspective. There's no way to sugar coat it.
 
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Mystery Spy said:
I will be extremely generous with Steven Universe to the point of getting rainbows.

It's surprisingly not as bad as you would think for a show made by super woke California women. It's also somewhat still relevant as evidenced by it still being referenced and showing in crossovers like the defunct MultiVersus. I do concede it has a fandom. But there's a catch.

Entire videos have been made on its faults so no need for me to repeat them. But its biggest sin as far as I am concerned is that it was yet another "kid's show" that neglected kids in favor of manchildren.

I am not even gonna complain about things like intentionally drawing women ugly to "avoid the male gaze". Again full on therapy sessions, not just for the characters but for the adults making the show to cope on things they lived (Ex: Sadie and Lars, the rape methaphors, and complaining about exes, getting over a past love etc). Is there an audience for those? Yes, I concede that. Do kids care about that? No way in hell.

If you watch the pilot, the one Genndy Tartakovsky directed, you will see the original idea was actually closer to a classic Cartoon Network show for kids. Steven was less of a pushover even. The final product? I just can't see an average 12 year old boy thinking Steven is cool. Ever.
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Basic Blond Boy said:
As stated above, the biggest issue with Steven was Sugar and team’s need to make Beach City vital. They wasted countless time on one-off nothing adventures rather than building upon their more interesting space invasion plot. Adventure Time suffered heavily from this as well, where it wanted to pivot to higher, more interconnected storytelling, yet would constantly hamper it with numerous comedy focused episodes that dilute the series. I think AT is overall better than Steven, but that is mostly due to AT getting its shit together the last few seasons (final episode not withstanding) to just create large arcs without bullshit in-between. Steven continued doing it over-and-over till they had to rush out an ending that satisfied no one.

Steven was pretty cool for its era. It took a lot of risks and had a lot to be intrigued by, but never had the proper follow through. It is arguably both the best and one of the worst creations from CN, though I think it would have been marked as the top had they just disposed of the filler.
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I appreciate the input.
So they wanted to build a whole world, but they simply cared more for that instead of telling a story. And when they did, they just wasted their time.
 
Basic Blond Boy said:
Yes, it was one of the worst subplots of the series and is typically referenced when going over the absurd politics of the show. The fact that they made a forgive your rapist plot was baffling, assuming you take the writers on their less-than reliable word that fusion was a metaphor for sex.

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So one of the main protagonists in the show is a rapist? What a great role model for kids!
Cave Fisher said:
I remember when I thought he would eventually grow out of that behavior and become a more active/heroic protagonist, then turned out to be wrong for the entire damn series.
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Steven is like that to destroy the le evil gender norms and toxic masculinity. Still, even if you wanted to make that point, wouldn’t it make more sense to have something like an ultra macho man that shows his vulnerabilities later on? It doesn’t really make sense to have a character that’s just always like that.
 
Basic Blond Boy said:
Get ready Owl House bros, Dana’s here to drop a new series reminiscent of every mascot horror of the 2010s

Seriously, getting some real FNAF vibes from this…

The trailer intrigued me a bit at the start, but once it cut to the cyberpunk shit, I can feel myself losing interest. I was sort of hoping for an American McGee vibe, but it quickly lost steam.
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I am really hoping this has an interesting hook to it because aside from maybe baby's first body horror, this doesn't look like it has much to offer that a million other sci-fi fake reality stories don't already.

I don't like being so cynical but it's hard to give a shit when every damn show to come out of Glitch, or the internet in general is a virtual reality/somethingpunk/theory bait clusterfuck. This includes shows I like, like Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, which felt the need to include fake augmented reality and hidden lore. The original shorts did the idea fine, I wish they would ease up on this stuff.

I really hope Dana Terrace has something good up her sleeve, because everyone is hyping this up as her unfiltered, without the watchful eye of Disney over her shoulder (but still marketable enough to sell plushies :3) so if all she's got is the same cyberpunk story and the same plot points and theories that every story like this does, consider me underwhelmed.

Also why are so many god damn pilots getting dumped onto youtube this year??? jesus christ.
 
Mystery Spy said:
I second Steven Universe having pacing issues. It wastes too much time with filler and characters that just aren't interesting and don't end up matering anyway.

As for whether you’d like it or if it’s good, I guess it all depends on if you’re part of the so-called target audience or the real audience.

Real audience: College adults, specially liberal, and above who love super emotional shows with therapy sessions, Magic metaphors for real life relationship drama, and tears? Millennials especially. You’ll love this. Sugar and her team can deliver sometimes

But if you’re part of the supposed target audience, aka kids? Not a chance. It just doesn’t have enough action or humor. The fact it has a main character that's just too femmenine to appeal to boys doesn't help.

It's 100% written with a woke liberal women perspective. There's no way to sugar coat it.
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I remember thinking it was okay for the first season. But when they started having lame relationship drama and singing every other episode I stopped watching. I came back to watch an episode when I heard that a character was voiced by the guy doing the Carl voice from Aqua Teen, but his character was literally just shamed for being wrong holding on to the past with his farm and airplane, get it cause liberals wrote this and he's southern!

What a bunch of horseshit. The premise and first season weren't bad, it only turned out how it did due to the showrunners.
 
Niggerphobe said:
How would you guys rewrite Steven universe and other tumblr shows
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First of all, I'd rewrite it to focus on the action and not the gay relationship stuff. Secondly, even if I was going with the idea that Steven didn't grow up quite right or whatever in the Future series I wouldn't have the conclusion be him finding his feelings. I do have to say I might be biased, or not know exactly what happened later on, because I didn't watch past the first few seasons, but it seemed to just focus on gay Tumblr stuff as opposed to actually making a good story.

It reminds me of Adventure Time, I tuned in years after I stopped watching and the episode was about a candy guy mourning his wife who comes back as a zombie, but the twist was he was a bad boyfriend all along or something. That's what steven universe felt like for all it's run, as opposed to adventure time just being like that towards the end.
 
Niggerphobe said:
How would you guys rewrite Steven universe and other tumblr shows
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Gonna comment so someone can remind me to sit down and write out shit later when I'm not super out of it with the flu. I'm only talking about Steven Universe because I'm a fan who followed the entire show as it aired and that was Hell on Earth.
Show would be better if Steven was a girl. I've always thought him being a boy was a massive cope used to try and get boys to watch the show. They would have watched it so long as it was action and magical girl oriented. TONS of boys watched PPG back in the day because it was violent and full of action. They also watched Sailor Moon back in the 90's too so that's why having a little boy protag for a western magical girl show always felt like a cop out to me.
 
Whatisgoingon said:
I heard that a character was voiced by the guy doing the Carl voice from Aqua Teen, but his character was literally just shamed for being wrong holding on to the past with his farm and airplane, get it cause liberals wrote this and he's southern!
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"welp, we have a lot of new eyes on the show this week with the Aqua Teen crowd coming through, what's our plan to keep `em watching?"
"tell them they suck!""
BRILLIANT
 
XYZpdq Jr. said:
"welp, we have a lot of new eyes on the show this week with the Aqua Teen crowd coming through, what's our plan to keep `em watching?"
"tell them they suck!""
BRILLIANT
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It really sucks, I don't know anything about Carl's VA other than I think he was one of the co-creators of Aqua teen, but it felt very deliberate, like they thought they needed to have him do the Carl voice to "deconstruct" it or something. The entire episode was focused on that character learning everything he was holding on to was bad, and I decided that I'd never waste my time on steven universe past that.
 
Niggerphobe said:
How would you guys rewrite Steven universe and other tumblr shows
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Don't change anything with the setting and the gems
but make Steven the complete antithesis to the gay bullshit all the gem Bitches get up to.
A straight man stuck in a Bitch-made tumblr world

Imagine some kidney stone gem bitch going on about their retard drama lore mid fight.
Then you got Super Straight Steven going "shut the fuck up pussy, no one wants to hear that loser"
Have the whole show be about being forced to work with people you fucking hate for the greater good.
anyone can get behind this premise.
 
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ShiftyBoi said:
I am really hoping this has an interesting hook to it because aside from maybe baby's first body horror
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The hook is "FUCK YOU DISNEY! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!" but I wouldn't call that interesting.

People are still so furious over Owl House getting cancelled and refuse to entertain the idea that maybe it just wasn't as popular as they thought.
 
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