Part of it may be that there are just so frickin’ many of them these days. When I was a kid you had three major networks and the majority of your cartoon viewing was Saturday morning. Now you’ve got Disney channel, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, etc. and they’re showing cartoons (or kid-oriented live action shows) pretty much around the clock. Just like with the cable news channels, you’re not going to be able to fill every minute of a 24 hour day with quality content.
Sorry. What I meant is that I feel like older cartoons were more calmly silly, more subdued and slow paced, while newer ones are bright and flashy, with lots of quick cuts and one-off jokes (like Bosstone said). Failing that, the stories aren’t about…I don’t know, getting a cookie without anyone noticing. They’re all about saving the planet by strapping a jet engine to your roller blades or something (exaggerated, but you know what I mean, yeah?).
Also, I think you might be right – our dissonance probably comes from having different definitions of “x-treme.” Whatever our definitions may be, give me the old Tom and Jerry or early episodes of Rugrats over a kid on a skateboard launching a rocket ship any day.
And not just kids’ cartoons either. “Family Guy” is also based on that–most of the show’s humor comes from the cutaway scenes. There’s also a lot more meta-humor and references. Even earlier “The Simpsons” seems very different to the recent episodes. There’s a frenetic pace to the newer ones that you don’t see as much in the older ones which stick to a somewhat realistic narrative.
I can’t see how it works for Naruto at all.
Sure, Naruto seems kind of weird and maybe even “X-Treme” if you look at it compared to American cartoons, but it’s a run-of-the-mill anime in basically every respect. It doesn’t even begin to register on the anime weird-o-meter.
I also have a really, really hard time seeing Avatar in that light.
I thought “Billy and Mandy” was for adults?
But cartoons have always been about saving the world. Since you said Doug and Rocko were from your childhood, we must be about the same age. Do you not remember TMNT, GI Joe, Transformers, Captain Planet, MASK, He-Man and a bunch of others. Our childhood was built on telling us that if we ate our vitamins we could save the planet.
I know what you mean, but again, these cartoons don’t really exist outside of a nostalgic adult’s pining for the good old days. And Tiny Toon Adventures (also from our childhood) invented rocket roller blades.
I’m sure that Calamity Coyote invented them. And if he did, he was just following in the footsteps of his mentor, Wile E., the king of unusual cartoon inventions…that fail.
Yeah, you’re right, and I agree 100%. Not to be overly difficult, but when I was a wee lass I only saw one of the cartoons you mentioned (Captain Planet), and even that one was pretty infrequent. I realize of course that that’s a personal quirk, as people around my age (22) would almost assuredly remember TMNT, GI Joe, and Transformers before Foghorn Leghorn. My parents were much, much older than average when I was born and I think I ended up watching the old classic Warner Brothers’ and Hanna-Barbera cartoons more than most kids my age at the time in part because of that. Nicktoons (isn’t that what the Rugrats - Doug - Rocco - etc. block was called, back before Nick Jr.?) were about as crazy as I got.
Maybe that’s why my memories are a little more skewed towards quaintness than would otherwise be expected for someone my age. Heck, I remember when Tiny Toons first came out in syndication and my mom and I had a good long rant about how they were “messing with the classics” or something like that 
I guess I always was ridiculous about my nostalgia, even when I was too young to have any properly built up!
You feel like such an old man? From this you cannot be much older than me (in fact you sound younger), and I am not an old man!
My opinion is actually quite opposite from yours with regards to the shows you listed. Rugats, Doug, etc are more like the newguard, while Spongebob represents the old-school Looney Toons type cartoons.
I think Avatar is pretty cool and the Transformers sucked (heresy among my generation.) I now think Scooby Doo sucks - though I loved him when I was a kid - but the Powerpuff Girls are great. Conversely, I still think Ducktales was a great show, and there are dozens of cartoons on now you couldn’t pay me to watch.
On the average, I don’t think much has changed. Most shows suck, a few stand out as decent, and a very select few are really good.
I’m 26.
Well, no, not really.
What it is, is a fairly run of the mill shonen fighting anime - a genre which is defined by being ‘x-treme’.
Compare it to, for another example aimed at a similar audience, One Piece, which is…approximately equally violent, but it’s Warner Brothers style silly violence, with no attempt to be badass-cool.
Or, to compare it to stuff aimed at a different audience, Pokemon doesn’t even come close to being ‘x-treme’, nor does the far more low-key violence of Death Note.
And going back a few years…Sailor Moon? Cardcaptor(s/ Sakura)? I can’t think of a single ‘x-treme’ shojo series.
Robotech, Voltron, the Gundams… War stories all, so, fairly violent, but generally lacking in the qualities that fit the definition of ‘x-treme’.
Fullmetal Alchemist? Almost there. Some episodes are heavy on it, but mostly, it’s far too low-key or goofy to take that label for the whole series.
Of course, there are plenty of other examples of anime that ARE as ‘x-treme’, or more so, than Naruto, but it’s far from the only mode, even among those that get North American television play. (All of the above examples have.)
But that’s actually beside my point, as even were it typical of all anime, it would be ‘x-treme’ by most reasonable definitions.
Aw, man. Disney Afternoon was the top of the heap. Ducktales, Talespin, Chip & Dale, Darkwing Duck, you can’t beat them for quality. USA Saturday Morning came pretty close, though; those were 90s cartoons done 80s-style. Street Fighter and Wing Commander came right out of GI Joe’s playbook. Sonic the Hedgehog, Reboot…
FTR, I’m 26 too.
Hello, fellow heretic.
Transformers was embarrassingly bad, looking back on it. Though, as a kid, I loved it, despite being able to spot out some of the worst continuity gaffes and illogic.
Same goes for GI Joe.
I think Steamboat Willie was drug induced.
More on topic, cartoons were not for children in the beginning, so that’s part of it. The rest is cherry picking data in a data rich environment. Veggie Tales (one of my favorites and I’m not particularly religious) is excellent, witty, well paced but no frenetic, and both older and current. Compare it to the Horton movie and well… actualy… the Horton movie is both types of cartoon and while appreciable by children, really for adults.
I think the time honored test of a ‘great’ cartoon is that adults get it and kids like it. Rocky & Bullwinkle, Warner’s Bros. wartime shorts, Rocko’s Modern Life, the japanese version of Pokemon (No, that show is most deffinately not intended for children).
To semi hijack/semi analogise: The best year of Saturday Night Live always seem to be those of ten or so years ago when you talk to people. Why? Every show from the beginning of that show has one, maybe two good episodes and the rest is usually rather poor. Watching a current episode gives you mostly poor bits, but a best-of typically rocks 'cause it cherry picks the data.
-Eben
I own the manga. :o
Foster’s and Billy & Mandy are two of my favorite current shows. I liked the Powerpuff Girls, and a bit of Dexter’s Lab, but they don’t seem to be around much. Spongebob and Fairly Oddparents are good too. And of course I love the classic Warner Brothers and MGM stuff.
Ren & Stimpy was one of my favorites as a child. (The blessedly brief re-introduction on SpikeTV was pathetic though.) I didn’t care too much for Doug or Rugrats. I also loved ABC’s Saturday Morning lineup, especially Reboot. Bump in the Night was pretty cute, too.
I haven’t watched many other current cartoon shows extensively; I find the “X-treme” and 3D-based shows very unappealing.
I think the cartoons of this generation are much better than most cartoons I grew up with. I love some of the toons my son has enjoyed these last 9 years he’s been alive. Spongebob Squarepants is awesome. Dexter’s Laboratory rocked. And I’m a bigger fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender than my son – this show is distilled awesome. Billy and Mandy is okay, and sometimes has some great satire. Naruto is meh, but better than Yugi-oh! or Pokemon (yes, very weak praise, sorry). I’m sure there’s more worth praising, but my boy has been on a live-action TV kick lately (Teen Disney, mostly).
Yes, the style is more frenetic in some of the cartoons than you may be used to. But anyone who has watched the WB catalog wouldn’t be a stranger to frenetics.
When I was a kid there was Scooby Doo, which was great. But it was also all of, what, 16 episodes? Then we had WB cartoons from the 50’s and 40’s, endlessly rerun. And not much else good that I recall. A bunch of Hanna Barbera lameness, like Josie and the Pussycats. Ok, The Flintstones was pretty good, as was The Jetsons. But there was a lot of really awful worthless stuff, like Superfriends and other lame superhero garbage.
Did someone seriously cast Captain Planet as a worthy cartoon? Really? :eek:
We watch a fair amount of Disney Treehouse, and it’s all pretty calm, tame stuff. Watch an episode of “Handy Manny” sometime. He gets a call, goes and fixes someone’s door or something, and that’s the show. A really frantic part might be where he has to walk back to Kelly’s hardware store to get a gasket. All the shows are calm, not violent, and extremely well produced. Same goes for a zillion shows I could name: Pocoyo, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, any Wiggles series, and so forth. VeggieTales, already mentioned, is outstanding, even if you’re not really religious; the winks to the adults are often hilarious.
“Captain Planet” was embarassingly awful, and there were lots of pretty nutty cartoons in the past… Christ, who can possibly accuse any cartoon today of being more of an acid trip than Spider-Man?
These shows are all 1)educational and 2)intended for preschoolers, most shows of that fashion tend to be slow-moving and have simplistic plots.
Good humor needs room to breathe-comic timing is all a part of that, pregnant pauses and such. Classic Warner Brothers cartoons are prime exemplars of that, latter day Simpsons, and a lot of the other cartoons discussed here, not so much.
I think you’ve got it backwards. It’s the ADULT cartoons that are more nonsensical and shrill.
At least the ones on Adult Swim. I can hardly stand any of the ones that originated and play on that network.
Don’t they censor Naruto and several of the other animes when they port them over the Cartoon Network or other American channels?
I feel like that would heavily detract from many of those series in terms of character development, plot, etc. Plus the voice dubbing is terrible! I watched a rather serious episode of Naruto in the US once, but couldn’t take it seriously at all because of the ridiculous voices.