What Serious cartoon would you consider the best show?

[ilostmyplace]

Don't think the Macross thing is quite sorted out entirely.

While it fixes certain issues with the later Macross series, I think there's still issues with the original Macross and it's characters who were used for ROBOTECH. So a modern release of the original series (although ADV was able to get one done on DVD a while back) the movie: Macross, DYRL, the OAV/music video Macross Flashback etc. are still out of luck. Especially since DYRL has never had a proper English release, just an odd international dub and a badly edited VHS version released by FHE, "Clash of the Bionoids".

Macross Plus and some of the Macross Delta or Frontier stuff got some theatrical releases in the US lately but I'm not sure about streaming or other home media yet.

Kind of wondering where this puts Macross 7, since it features a few characters from the original (and one of the main characters is their daughter).

Thankfully both Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA were flops in Japan, which oddly led to the unrelated Bubblegum Crisis Anime. And Bubblegum Crisis helped lead to CyberPunk and CyberPunk 2077. Yeah, I know there would be others as well, but it was Bubblegum Crisis that got the ball rolling. That whole Exosquad/Robotech thing was Universal Studios gave up on Exosquad and let Playmate do whatever they wanted until their license ran out. That is how we got Exosquad/Robotech, Exosquad board game, 2 odd Exosquad PC ports, and a crapy Exosquad Sega Genesis game. The SNES version was canceled. But Universal Studios still keeps the Exosquad even though they have done nothing with it throughout the years.

But Harmony Gold has turned Robotech into a mess throughout the years. With so many Lawsuits.

[ilostmyplace]

Blue Eye Samurai is pretty damned good imo.

Damn right, you are. Still can't believe that it's both an American and French production.

[shades of eternity]

dcau looks down condescendingly.

[ChrisIII]

Thankfully both Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA were flops in Japan, which oddly led to the unrelated Bubblegum Crisis Anime. And Bubblegum Crisis helped lead to CyberPunk and CyberPunk 2077. Yeah, I know there would be others as well, but it was Bubblegum Crisis that got the ball rolling. That whole Exosquad/Robotech thing was Universal Studios gave up on Exosquad and let Playmate do whatever they wanted until their license ran out. That is how we got Exosquad/Robotech, Exosquad board game, 2 odd Exosquad PC ports, and a crapy Exosquad Sega Genesis game. The SNES version was canceled. But Universal Studios still keeps the Exosquad even though they have done nothing with it throughout the years.

But Harmony Gold has turned Robotech into a mess throughout the years. With so many Lawsuits.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting how BCG kind of evolved. Apart from the Blade Runner influence (Priss not only uses a character name but her hairstyles resemble the female characters-her real hair is pretty much Rachel's "Bumper bangs" look but with more hair in the back, her wig is pretty much her namesake's played by Daryl Hannah) , Priss is also partly based on unrealized concepts for some of Mosepeda's characters. The transforming motorcycle idea used a few times in BCG also owes a bit to that (An early concept for BGC would've had police with the transforming robot motorcycles, sounding a bit like Patlabor but more cyberpunk. Of course BCG has had a few AD police spinoffs as well)

[ChrisIII]

I'm not quite sure I'd call it a 'serious' cartoon (It's pretty much 90% action comedy) but Lupin III has a very interesting effect on American animation and some aspects of pop culture. Mainly it's Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro though.

-Inspector Gadget, before it sort of became a riff on Get Smart and Bond films, at some point was a sort of "Batman Beyond" version of Lupin III, Lupin the 7th or something.

-April O' Neil's reporter job and cartoon design in TMNT are based on Fujiko's look and "job" in Castle of Cagliostro.

-Great Mouse Detective and some of Disney's 90's rennaisance have been said to have been inspired by Cagliostro as well.

-The Castlevania games, although they originate in Japan (Where they're called Demon Castle Dracula, but Castlevania's kind of a more cool name if a bit silly), also have many nods to the design of the Castle in the movie.

[K7P5V]

G.I. Joe: Resolute

[Celgress]

The Boondocks, hands down.

Agreed, The Boondocks is my choice as well. Its biting social commentary on Black American Culture and General American Culture, more widely, is second to none.

[kcekada]

I'm a big fan of the Star Trek animated series from the 70s.

[ilostmyplace]

There are tons of serious death scenes in Exosquad. And If I look hard I can find a ton of them like this.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qD1Ax_g6nYY

But what can I say about the world's first American-made Japanese-Anime-inspired cartoon made way before Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And look both Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender are great shows and deserve to be on this list, but facts are facts, no matter how much fans and Universal Studios hate that.

https://uspto.report/Search/Exosquad

[K7P5V]

Not everything was a hit, but Young Justice had its moments

[ilostmyplace]

Before Teen Titans: GO came in a wrecked everything the Teen Titans show before it would get pretty serious.

[K7P5V]

^^^STAS could get pretty serious, as well...

[ilostmyplace]

Batman: The Animated Series was chock-full of serious moments just not as many death scenes as Exosquad. But Batman: The Animated Series did come out one year before Exosquad did.



Then there were the two Justice League shows.

[ilostmyplace]

The Original Jonny Quest had its fair share of serious moments. But then again it was prime time and in some cases, Jonny and friends were solving murder cases. There are no clips of Original Jonny Quest because of how old and hard it is to find any.

[K7P5V]

Yeah! JLU tackled the serious stuff, too.