Danger Mouse came out when I was either in high school or college; nonetheless, I watched, and enjoyed it, back then.
What I came to realize, on re-viewing, is that they had their own set of animation short-cuts (in addition to regularly re-using the same sorts of shots) – they very frequently hid the characters’ mouths when they spoke, so that they didn’t need to worry about matching animated mouths to dialogue.
For example, you’d often see this view of Danger Mouse and Penfold in the Danger Car, having a conversation. Note that DM’s mouth is cunningly out of view:
Here’s an episode, cued up to Colonel K briefing Danger Mouse and Penfold on their next mission. Note how often that the character who’s speaking is either off-screen, being shown from behind, or otherwise has their mouth obscured.
I was an early-anime kid. Loved Speed Racer, Kimba the White Lion, and Space Cruiser Yamato.
It’s funny, because I’m not a big anime fan now. I like some of the art styles (like Black Butler and Fruits Basket) but I don’t like the nutty-as-hell storylines.
actually, all those and a couple more were part of the underdog show … they were the in-between shorts
I remember one that was about a mountie and a french Canadian fox named savoir-faire which had the tag line “Savoir-faire is everywhere” shouted when the fox escaped
another one was some old explorer telling his adventures to another old guy … they were only a couple of minutes long and were basically a setup for some horrid ending line pun
All this talk has reminded me of Around the World in 80 Days, the 1972 animated series. It has to be filed under “Other” because it was made in Australia. I can still sing the damn theme song, Only 16 episodes, and even so I don’t think I saw them all.
Hehehe, I answered Rocky+Bullwinkle, but I did go back and watch the entire Starblazers and the Space Battleship Yamato series recently. As I described it to a friend when I was re-watching them: It’s not bad for a dramatic series, but it’s not great in its Sandy Frank incarnation unless you think “this is aimed at children”. Once you consider that, it’s almost art.
My vote was for WB, mainly because of Bugs Bunny – not just Bugs himself, but the other characters like Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam. I still appreciate them today, and when I visited NYC some years ago as an adult, I dropped into the Warner Brothers store (we don’t have them where I live) and stocked up on Bugs Bunny themed merchandise like ball caps and T-shirts. I even got an ornamental mantelpiece clock – very formal, except that instead of being framed by ornate carvings, it was surrounded by plaster casts of Bugs Bunny characters.
Rocky and Bullwinkle was another favourite, but for me that came later. Not sure if the TV show was chronologically later or I just discovered it later. AIUI, due to a limited budget the animation was farmed out to some crappy outfit in Mexico. As it turned out, the primitive animation was part of the show’s charm, something that South Park seems to have rediscovered.
Mostly forgotten today, but yeah, Top Cat brings back childhood memories!
There used to be a videostore here that had a Disney Silly Symphonies tape to rent, the old old black and white ‘Mickey Mouse’ short cartoons. And the ones with the sinister windmill and dancing skeletons. That collection seems to be hard to find now, though I haven’t looked that hard.
I remember liking some of the early Filmation cartoons like Journey to the Center of the Earth and Fantastic Voyage (does anyone else remember those?) I was also a fan of the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla. However, my absolute favorites were early anime translations like Battle of the Planets and Starblazers, possibly because of having had access to un-translated anime like Raideen and Dai Apollon on local channel 44 in Palo Alto when I was very young.
