Watching X-men 97 just makes me wonder why superhero animation has almost been entirely abandoned.
It's interesting because it was some of these cartoons that got us into comics.
You'd be surprised at how many people got into DC (for example) because of the Super Friends.
I remember how for years Marvel had such lackluster cartoons...
Marvel Entertainment lead by Jeph Loeb, who had an explicit mission statement of making cartoons for kids.
Result is Ultimate Spider-Man which was stupid as hell, Avengers Assemble being a MCU shill-piece, Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel Rising.
The latter of which with weak animation and art-style which if from what I hear is true the animators were under orders to not break the models during animation which is why the animation in all those shows is so cheap and stilted looking.
Well, I don't know how old you are (I'm in my mid-50s) but I tend to agree about Western animation, although I'd say there were still good cartoons in the 2000s, like JLU and the original Teen Titans.
It feels like sometime around 2012-2013, everybody just shifted three notches into the goofy end of the spectrum.
(It's a little trickier to evaluate anime since most of the stuff we get in the US comes from Weekly Shonen Jump titles. But there's a LOT more out there.)
Very true.
I think the original Teen Titans series got canned because it didn't move merchandise.
Although, i have to admit that Teen Titans Go is super popular amongst the kids. I think with streaming, the studios could do a bit more of young adult oriented animation but the US ultimately sees this stuff as kids entertainment. I know WB still puts out R-rated animation but my understanding is that it's something they'll stop.
Last edited by Username taken; 04-26-2024 at 06:08 AM.
I'm in my mid 30s so 2 decades younger, I do remember 90-early 00s being good, and yes Anime wise did get a lot of the popular stuff but even then it was still really REALLY good. And wasn't afraid to be.. serious? Treat the audience like they can handle more than just jokes and goofiness? Atleast toonami did that, but it just seems like shows are all about dumb toilet humor, like worse than before