The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

[Jhamin]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Actually' date=' Wheaton may have been forgetting the controversies of the 1980's concerning most of the syndicated cartoons of the period, which was based on the contention that it was something to be [i']very much[/i] ashamed of.

 

Either that, or he'd rather not think about them.

 

On the contrary, he (and I) were members of the target audience. According to IMDB Mr. Wheaton was born in 1972 and 10 years old when those programs aired. I myself was 8.

 

My entire generation grew up watching these cartoons (assuming you were allowed to watch TV. If you weren't my friends and I usually thought you were kind of opressed). I can't speak for Will, but as for me I knew all along that the shows were toy commercials. How could you not? But you still made your choices. It is hard to feel real shocked by the idea that afternoon cartoons are trying to sell things to your kids when you yourself dreamed of one day owning both Optimus Prime *and* Megatron.

 

In much the same way that children of the 60s have a hard time believing that Rock and Roll is Satan's music, most children of the 80s don't really buy into the idea that afternoon cartoon toy tie ins are evil.

 

Notice how many thirtysomething parents are now buying Transfomers for their Kids. And any guesses how many people will buy Pokemon stuff for their kids in 2030?

 

 

 

 

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a huge GI Joe and Transformers fan, and had lots of the toys. So it could be argued that the strategy worked. But I also watched Thundercats, Voltron, and the Wheeled Warriors. And I didn't own *any* of those toys.

And I still played in the dirt with my friends in the Neighborhood.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

On the contrary, he (and I) were members of the target audience. According to IMDB Mr. Wheaton was born in 1972 and 10 years old when those programs aired. I myself was 8.

 

My entire generation grew up watching these cartoons (assuming you were allowed to watch TV. If you weren't my friends and I usually thought you were kind of opressed). I can't speak for Will, but as for me I knew all along that the shows were toy commercials. How could you not? But you still made your choices. It is hard to feel real shocked by the idea that afternoon cartoons are trying to sell things to your kids when you yourself dreamed of one day owning both Optimus Prime *and* Megatron.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a huge GI Joe and Transformers fan, and had lots of the toys. So it could be argued that the strategy worked. But I also watched Thundercats, Voltron, and the Wheeled Warriors. And I didn't own *any* of those toys.

I was in college during that era, studying English and Theatre and catching episodes of Voltron when I was lucky enough to find a free TV set on campus. VCRs were a new and unproven technology, a video store had just opened in the school's town, each dormitory had only one, and other students mocked me for renting Godzilla movies and the Thundercats pilot.

 

And later on when I started going to SF conventions in the Portland area, a frequent guest was Steve Perry, who was in demand as an animation writer. The one show he refused to write for (and he was asked) was GI Joe, a refusal he said was shared with almost all of the other animation writers in his circle of acquaintances. Although selling toys was not a problem for him, promoting Cold War militarism was.

 

At the time I marveled that GI Joe was forced to build an entire episode on the hoary old joke that ends "I'm da Viper! I've come to Vipe da Vindows!" Today that episode is perhaps the best-regarded and most beloved in the original series' entire run. Shows you how much I knew....

[Brandi]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Well' date=' okay, it is better to go out while you're still on top then to hang around until you become a joke, but I stil think it's foolish to get rid of a show because "it's been successful for years".[/quote']

 

IIRC, if a show has 5 successful seasons, it has enough episodes to be syndicated-- which has a decent profit margin without the expense of creating new episodes. Disney is rather notorious for stopping production as soon as the requisite minimum number of eps for syndication has been reached.

[Haven Walkur]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

-The legion of superheros

 

Th...Th...That's meant to be the Legion? Oh no. Oh sweet lords of Story, NO.

[Jhamin]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Th...Th...That's meant to be the Legion? Oh no. Oh sweet lords of Story' date=' NO.[/quote']

 

I was a bit hesitant myself.

 

A lot of the people who did Teen Titans are apparently working on this. From what we can tell from the picture, everybodies costumes are correct in theme if not detail.

 

It may be time to accept that the Anime influence on American animation is here to stay.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Th...Th...That's meant to be the Legion? Oh no. Oh sweet lords of Story' date=' NO.[/quote']

 

Believe me, I've been trying to convince as many people as possible to NOT watch this pile of garbage.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Th...Th...That's meant to be the Legion? Oh no. Oh sweet lords of Story' date=' NO.[/quote']

 

Oh, you've seen my wallpaper then?

 

The Leigon's appearance in JLU illustrated the weakness of doing the traidtional version: it seemed like there were hundreds of them, and because it was a guest shot there was no way to tell or explain who any of the ones who were not central to the story even were. You simply cannot do a TV series with forty main characters.

 

Six looks like a nice little core around which to tell the story. And I saw something interesting in the way Superboy was drawn: see that smirk? He looks like the guy who's just discovered he's the top guy on the block and nobody can touch him. Like he has the one quality Superman does not possess: arrogance.

 

In short, he looks like he is going to need a reality check if he is ever going to be the hero he is destined to become. Who better to give him one than the Legion of Super-Heroes? Who better to teach him that powers beyond mortal men are the one thing that does not make you a superhero?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

Believe me' date=' I've been trying to convince as many people as possible to NOT watch this pile of garbage.[/quote']

 

Don't take this wrong, but I wish you the level of success at this task you had with Teen Titans.

[Jhamin]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

I've got to agree with Michael here.

 

I didn't care for the new version of Teen Titans at first, but it *really* grew on me. Based on that alone I will be giving this at least 6 episodes to grow on me. I also plan to actually watch the episodes rather than just view the inevitably lame commercials.

(The actual Teen Titans shows were way less annoying than the early commercials which seemed to be an amalgam of every mention of pizza from the first season)

 

The animation style is not to everyone's liking. But it is here to stay. Animation, like all other things artistic, is about choices.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

The Leigon's appearance in JLU illustrated the weakness of doing the traidtional version: it seemed like there were hundreds of them' date=' and because it was a guest shot there was no way to tell or explain who any of the ones who were not central to the story even were. You simply cannot do a TV series with forty main characters.[/quote']

 

But why did it have to be drawn by five year olds?

Why couldn't they continue with the JLU style and artwork, just take Supergirl and the Legion ... heck, they've got Brainiac and Bouncing Boy, they could use the same characters, just draw them competently and use the JLU writing staff to do a good action show instead of an 'action-comedy'.

 

I'm probably so ticked off because I had high hopes that it would be Supergirl and, not Superboy and, and that it would follow the Justice League as an installment of the DCAU. I was expecting Teen Titans to be Dini/Timm quality, not a Japanimation ripoff, and I was disappointed.

[Haven Walkur]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

I don't watch the new Teen Titans cartoon anymore; it's too painful...and I'm a Titans fan from the early '80s.

 

The first and worst offender in the cartoon -- that quasi-anime style. I like intelligent anime (Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Ninja Scroll), but anything that makes use of those ridiculous "stupid-deformed" faces loses my respect very quickly. It's farcical!

 

I know the "enormous eyes-immense mouths" trick is the short-hand that some Japanese animators use to represent sudden strong emotion, but here in the West, that kind of thing is reserved for funny cartoons.

 

In an animated superhero program, it's absurd and embarrassing to watch. Each time one of the Titans (or their foes) suffered a "face mutation" in the show, I cringed and had to look away in disgust.

 

That sort of animation trick makes the characters (who are in fact supposed to be heroes) look repulsive and ridiculous -- and completely robs them of dignity.

 

Yes, the Titans are comic-book superheroes, but let's not push the suspension of disbelief to the point of insult, shall we?

 

The secondary offenders in this unbearable piece of animated offal are the apparent age of the Titans, and the way in which they're characterized.

 

I take issue with the way the animated Titans look -- oh come ON, they're the Teen Titans, not the Prepubescent Pixies! With the exception of Cyborg, they all have the secondary sex characteristics of middle schoolers...which makes them very unconvincing as superheroes dealing with adult villains and issues.

 

I also really take issue with the way several of the characters have been reduced to vehicles for cheap laughs, particularly at the expense of Starfire ("Ooh, the stupid Tamaran princess sings these really awful songs, and she cooks really nasty food, too,") and Beast Boy ("Watch Garth take another pratfall as he changes into a flying form and tries to land").

 

So when someone assures me that the people who DID ALL THIS to the Teen Titans in their cartoon are also responsible for the immanent animated Legion of Superheroes, all I can say is, oh no, oh please no.

 

Better no Legion at all than THAT.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

"Too angular. Way too angular. No way is that design going to look good in motion."

"Airships? Why the hell would a modern police department be using airships?"

"A girlfriend? They gave the Joker a girlfriend? That is so lame! And how in the world could he possibly do the voice?"

 

That is the sort of thing that would have been all over the Internet in 1991 had the Internet been what it is today then. Nobody knew for sure then that what Dini and Timm were doing would work -- or that Batman: the Animated Series would be anything more than a quickly-forgotten movie tie-in, rather than the show that would revolutionize TV animation and restore its credibility as a dramatic form.

 

There is no doubt that the test of time has been kind to it. I believe the test of time will be equally kind to Teen Titans. My point being that it would be all too easy in this age of instant pre-release criticism to completely disregard, out of hand and sight unseen, whoever turns out to be the next Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, the next Brad Bird, the next Genndy Tartakovsky -- or, to be more precise, the first (fill in the name of America's next great animator).

[Haven Walkur]

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network

 

...There is no doubt that the test of time has been kind to it. I believe the test of time will be equally kind to Teen Titans.

 

No comparison between the mess that's Teen Titans and the animated Batman/Superman series, Mikara; no comparison at all. And as I do like the Dini/Timm animation style, we'll have to agree to disagree.