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90s cartoons - the other "golden age"
First of all, I apologize for not making this shorter.
Now let's talk about another era of animation I don't really get the love for: the 1990s.
But first I gotta set something straight: my childhood (1983-1989) was actually pretty busy. During the day I was always doing things, so whenever I got to watch TV it was either a recording or else a cheap tape my mom bought at KayBee Toy Store, and always at night. And of course my nights usually got monopolized by the NES. It wasn't really until about 1991 or so that I made watching cartoons a regular habit--they're a good way to wind up for a day of school in the morning, and wind down when you get home. I went my whole childhood without ever seeing a single episode of Transformers or G.I. Joe, except when the former was repackaged as "Generation 2."
The point is, I actually discovered the 1990s cartoons first, more or less. I didn't start my love affair with the Eighties until about 1998 or so when I discovered those old video tapes again and started frequenting flea markets.
Getting to the point though, it kind of weirds me out that I see people talking about how great the 1990s was for American animation, and treating that decade as if its that much of an improvement over the eighties. Maybe its because I discovered them in reverse order, but honestly there doesn't seem to be much difference between the 1980s and the 1990s, and what differences I do notice are usually not in the 1990s favor, and what advantages I see other people touting are usually either revisionist history or outright ignorance. Most commonly I see people claiming that the 1990s was the first decade where cartoons could show physical violence, use words like "kill" or "die" or related terms, had actual continuity or plotlines, or was the first decade where cartoons were made specifically for adults--all of which is bullshit, as I can provide pre-1990 examples of all of these things.
Honestly it doesn't matter, because the huge problem was that the action-adventure shows were somehow not as imaginative or as fun as the 1980s offerings. Worse, they had to share airtime with "funny" cartoons like Eek the Cat, Animaniacs, The Wacky World of Tex Avery, Super Dave, Ren and Stimpy and other crap that tried really hard to be hilarious and often were just dumb instead. That stuff so overloaded the airwaves that it's the reason I became a gamer instead of an animation buff.
Not to say the 1990s didn't have anything good, but all the cartoons I really liked and which still hold up as an adult--Highlander, Peter Pan and the Pirates, Battletech, and Mighty Max--seem to have all been forgotten. Most of the stuff that gets remembered tends to be comic book or video game licenses, and... most of those are not as good as you remember. No, not even SatAM. That opens a whole new line of thought, but honestly this is going on far too long as it is. Once again I apologize for not finding a way to make this shorter, though I'm sure someone will post an either inane or hilarious "ITT" summary in about five minutes. Thanks for reading.
Comments
You are a HEATHEN!
Basically, all the 90s cartoons were just 'better' then the 80s.
Also, anime came over during the 90s too.
Also Megas and JL came out in the 2000s.
Anime was coming over well before the 1990s. Anyway, I was specifically talking about the quality of American animation in the OP, anime really has little bearing on that.
I'd like to respond to everyone else but all I can do presented with "well I like X and Y and Z" is either agree or disagree, and there's only three named so far that I would agree on.
I actually have a soft spot for Tiny Toons, too.
Nowadays, my favorite American cartoon is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which I'm thinking of making an IJAM topic about. But that one's gonna need at least a few hours of prep, if it happens at all.
And I'm having a hard time finding arguments in that post that aren't just "but 90s cartoons just aren't as good/funny/engaging".
A more important reason the 90s were considered an animation Renaissance was because in 1991 Nickolodeon started doing domestic Nicktoons instead of importing stuff like Danger Mouse and odd Russian Cartoons and Cartoon Network was launched in1992 taking the medium out of saturday morning cartoons being their main venue and increasing variety.
^I'll admit I've enjoyed some eighties cartoons, but they've all been surpassed. The G.I. Joe cartoon isn't as good as the Larry Hama comic, Transformers original isn't as good as Beast Wars, and TMNT got a much better and much more faithful reboot in the 2000s.
That goes both ways, as so far the only pro-90s argument I've heard is "well I like this show and this show and this show" and "I didn't like the eighties."
I did raise one objective fact though--most of the so called "advancements" the nineties are often said to have brought to the table actually had happened long before. Granted that doesn't say anything about the quality of the cartoons at all, but its something to work with.
Or we could drop this whole thing and all go Do the Mario.
Of those three I disagree most with the TMNT assessment.
Now, I liked the comics and I liked the 1987 cartoon. But I couldn't get into the 2003 cartoon. Yeah it was truer to the comic (though, it still made huge changes--it wasn't exactly a panel-for-panel adaptation). But it also had an awful BGM soundtrack, a gravelly-voiced always-angry Raphael, and a Michelangelo who was a total retard who goes out of his way to be annoying (as opposed to being merely carefree-without-being-blatantly-stupid in the 1987 series or having not much of a personality at all in the comics).
Personally, my dream adaptation of TMNT would be one that has the storylines of the comics, but with the BGM, art style (particularly circa the first season when it actually had a budget), character designs and voice actors of the 1987 cartoon, as well as some of the 80s toons' mythology integrated in. Cuz I mean Shredder is okay in the comics, especially later when he tests positive for worms, but it was James Avery's voice, MSW's redesign of his outfit, his "old married couple" relationship with Krang, and that he now drives the Technodrome and has interdimensional portals that really made him stand out as a villain. One thing the cartoon could have done better is played up his ninja background more, but well hopefully when I find a genie and get to rewrite reality...
I'm not really a believer in Golden Ages. There are good and bad cartoons from both periods, and any other you'd care to name. For me, the great development of the 90s was having cartoon series like The Simpsons or South Park which did everything a standard sitcom would do and had semi-serious points to make too.
The weakest aspect of the 80s was all the toy tie-in cartoons, but that, of course, includes some like Transformers that have huge fandoms and even some that I like (the aforementioned TMNT). So it's impossible to generalise.
Start of the cancer that would one day devour the Cartoon Network.
Powerpuff Girls
Same thing.
Ed, Edd, n Eddy
Which EE&E were you watching?
Batman
Mediocre show that gave birth to the awful DCAU.
Rugrats
Awful.
Animaniacs
Damned awful.
Tiny Toons
...What is wrong with you?
Freakazoid
Meh.
Edit: Frankly, Alan Moore is a hack, and if you seriously give his opinion that much weight, well, I don't know what to tell you.
Also: HEATHEN!
I'm not even sure what I said that you're responding to.
Thank you! ^__^
I never understood why eighties critics focus on toy cartoons, especially now when My Little Pony is one of the most popular and highly-acclaimed shows on TV, and when (as I mentioned in the OP) all the most remembered shows of the "superior" 1990s are also licenses.
If I'm honest, that makes me a little cynical of certain animation fans. It comes off like they just like whatever is popular. Batman TAS is a fine show but its not any better than Mighty Max. But Batman has geek cred and Mighty Max doesn't, so its "cool" to like Batman but not Mighty Max. That kind of shallow, superficial double-standard is why I don't care much for animation fandoms.
"highly-acclaimed"
[citation needed]
And then there's the drastic reduction in animated toy commercials that were the norm of the 80s.
Thing is, none of the 1987 turtles did anything that exaggerated (unless they got severely flanderized in the later seasons). IIRC the worst thing Michelangelo ever did was eat their entire cache of pizzas (which caused Splinter to have to hypnotherapy him). From what I saw, the 200X series blatantly exaggerated all their personalities, so Raphael went from being just a snarker to being angry all the time, and Michelangelo went from liking to have fun to jumping in front of surveillance equipment and doing attention-whore dances, and blatantly interrupting actually important activities for his shenanigans.
Don't get me wrong--I actually enjoyed the episodes I've seen of the 200X series. Just I didn't like it as much as the 87 cartoon or the comics. It's certainly about a million times better than the 2002 relaunch of He-Man.
But brace yourself, because the animated toy commercials are coming back! Mwahahahaha!
Like My Little Pony?
>:<
Unless you mean 'there are toys of this cartoon' in which case even fucking Adventure Time is a toy commercial.
Start of the cancer that would one day devour the Cartoon Network.
Powerpuff Girls
Same thing."
I, Princess Apricot, future leader of [DATA EXPUNGED], do so hereby decree that
vonBerlichingen is society's first living crime against humanity, and shall be forcibly ejected from Earth's atmosphere by the Holy Princess Gaurd.