If you like some freakin' Ponies, you'll love...

[Doctor Wheeze]

The person who first wanted me to watch it inevitably asked the Big Question: "Are Zuko and Iroh the best characters? (HINT: Yes, yes they are)" and yeah, I can only agree at least as far as Iroh goes. Zuko has a lot of moments that feel too ridiculous to be taken as serious characterization (like that campfire scene in episode 3-05 ), but he's still up there for sure. It's difficult for me to not like any of the major characters, really.

Zuko has by far my favorite line in the series though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vr9xPqGD8o
Saka's line is funny enough, but the deadpan "That's rough buddy" is what really makes it.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

Watching Tales of Ba Sing Se makes me all

Even ignoring that the episode was dedicated to Mako, Iroh singing was just poignant.

[FightingDreamerBrony For Life]

Well, I don't like the ANIMATION that results from the art style of Ed, Edd and Eddy either. I'm certainly not a bad graphics=bad game type of guy, but I do think if I find an art style unspeakably ugly, that will probably impact my enjoyment of something on a visual level.

As for smug and self-satisfied writing, that also ties into the tone, which again I feel is entirely free of nuance or subtlety. Everything in the show is spelled out in capital letters: "LOOK AT HOW FUNNY WE'RE BEING HAW HAW HAW!" It's the exact kind of thing that pissed me off about Kids Next Door.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

Well, I don't like the ANIMATION that results from the art style of Ed, Edd and Eddy either. I'm certainly not a bad graphics=bad game type of guy, but I do think if I find an art style unspeakably ugly, that will probably impact my enjoyment of something on a visual level.

As for smug and self-satisfied writing, that also ties into the tone, which again I feel is entirely free of nuance or subtlety. Everything in the show is spelled out in capital letters: "LOOK AT HOW FUNNY WE'RE BEING HAW HAW HAW!" It's the exact kind of thing that pissed me off about Kids Next Door.

The same, regarding KND. Though to be honest, Little Me also tried to figure out if some of the 2X4 technology could be replicated.

Also, one of the things that drew me into EE&E as a kid was the whole squigglevison thing.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I have mixed feelings about "Ed, Edd n Eddy". I loved the cartoony style, but I don't like most of the writing, either. I enjoy some episodes, though, like the one with the school paper. Also the finale movie. And Rolf is one of my favorite characters.

Some of the cartoony styles made it to FIM, since both shows share the same artists.

[Headless Horse]

I gotta admit I'm still really struggling to see much in common between EE&E and FiM. The animation styles couldn't be more different, the writing in the former (from what I've seen) is very encapsulated and episodic rather than expansive and ambitious as in the latter, and the characterizations are one-dimensional in a way that means nobody in the cast ever surprises me with something new the way ponies do all the time. It really feels like just another cookie-cutter kids-in-the-neighborhood cartoon with gross-out elements and dumbness jokes, a Beavis & Butt-head for younger kids.

I've still only seen a handful of episodes, I admit, but that's largely because every time I try to give it a fair shot it just kinda repels me.

I don't mean to toss a turd in the pool here; I'm perfectly happy to assume there's just something I'm missing and everyone else is enjoying just fine. It's just that I keep seeing this connection come up and it mystifies me.

[FightingDreamerBrony For Life]

I'm much in the same boat, Headless. There's just something off-putting about it now that I'm older.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

I really liked KND.

[ArtificerGoes well with All Natural Milk Naturally Flavored with Natural Flavors.]

I really liked KND.

It was a good show.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Can't say I cared about KND. It's a shame, because I do like Tom Warburton's art style. And his blog is really, really hilarious and also inspiring to me as an animation fan. Warburton was an animator at JJ Sedelmaier's studio, where they did a ton of "TV Funhouse" shorts for Saturday Night Live, and those stuff are great.

TL;DR version: Mr. Warburton is a great artist, but should leave writing and development to someone else.

[kefkafloyd]

I had mixed feelings on KND; I liked a lot of the ideas but the show kind of collapsed on its own weight. It missed far more than it hit, but when it hit, it was a bullseye.

I mean, these guys did an episode parodying the Animatrix. Gotta give them props for that.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

I'm just the biggest fan of Bad Guys in general. Villains are just super cool. And I don't take fun all that seriously, so, I love my villains cheesy as hell.

The Toilenator, for example, is just a perfect baddy. Hell, all the dudes from that show were cheesy gold. Especially The Cheese Shogun!

The Hoagie solo episodes were clearly the best. They even put a Sepia colour filter on the whole thing as he, the grizzled PI/ex-hall monitor solved cases at the school, all the while doing the best noir narration he could muster.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

I gotta admit I'm still really struggling to see much in common between EE&E and FiM. The animation styles couldn't be more different, the writing in the former (from what I've seen) is very encapsulated and episodic rather than expansive and ambitious as in the latter, and the characterizations are one-dimensional in a way that means nobody in the cast ever surprises me with something new the way ponies do all the time. It really feels like just another cookie-cutter kids-in-the-neighborhood cartoon with gross-out elements and dumbness jokes, a Beavis & Butt-head for younger kids.

I wouldn't say EE&E has a lot in common with either, though I've seen almost nothing in the way of B&B. I see it as more of a comedy routine that plays off each episode's events, which is why the characters being pretty much molded from exaggerated stereotypes is something I actually like about it. (Hell, just the idea of Rolf is something that makes me laugh.) It could do without some of the dumb jokes that even most kids wouldn't find funny, but I'd hardly consider it to be composed of that stuff.

KND is also something I'd like to revisit. I vaguely remember a few things I found awesome as a kid, like Numbuh Two explaining how adults came to be.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I thought I'd talk about another old-school anime.

Anyone remember "Speed Racer"? With the campy animation and goofy character designs and all that? Well, the show's creator (Tatsuo Yoshida) actually had several shows attributed to his name and the animation studio, Tatsunoko. One of which was "Hakushon Daimao" (lit. Sneezing Genie, but the official English name for trademark purposes is "The Genie Family"). It's a comedy about a boy who comes across a bottle one day. Every time he (or anyone near it) sneezes, the genie comes out, having to grant wishes until the same person sneezes again, at which point he goes back to the bottle. Unfortunately the genie is an idiot and he messes up all the wishes or otherwise backfires.

Like "Speed Racer", it has the same, er, flaws, with weird character designs, limited animation, and ridiculous premise. However, unlike Racer this show is straight-up comedy where nothing is supposed to be taken seriously. The weird designs helps because it's a cartoony show.

Oddly enough, the show was dubbed to English by Saban, as "Bob in a Bottle". It came REALLY late, though. The original show was made in 1969-70, and the dubbed version came out in the '90s. It looked really dated, needless to say (it didn't help that the dubbed version SUCKED. I hated the synthesized music that they used, too)

Here are some clips

Opening and Closing

Click here to view video.

Some episodes dubbed in Spanish
(I actually have a few eps in original Japanese. If anyone wants to see them let me know)

Click here to view video.

Click here to view video.

Click here to view video.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I'm just the biggest fan of Bad Guys in general. Villains are just super cool. And I don't take fun all that seriously, so, I love my villains cheesy as hell.

The Toilenator, for example, is just a perfect baddy. Hell, all the dudes from that show were cheesy gold. Especially The Cheese Shogun!

The Hoagie solo episodes were clearly the best. They even put a Sepia colour filter on the whole thing as he, the grizzled PI/ex-hall monitor solved cases at the school, all the while doing the best noir narration he could muster.

What I remember most from those was that one live-action dramatization. Christ.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

T-They did a what?

[DarkMatter]

As far as connecting the Eds with Ponies, no, they don't have a lot in common but I can find a couple similarities. Both EEnE and FiM are cartoons that know they're cartoons and don't try to hide that by having silly slapstick, characters popping out from places they have no business being, etc. FiM has also got some of the best facial expressions I've seen since EEnE and the best use of sound effects. To each their own, but I still think EEnE is the best Cartoon Network original and watching it today still gets me to laugh.

As for Kids Next Door, I couldn't really stand it for some reason. The style bugged me, the characters bugged me, the writing bugged me--just about everything about it bugged me. I did like that episode that parodied the Animatrix though.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

Would FiM be improved through the use of fart sounds? Like, instead of the sheep sound when they are surprised, we get a fart.

[Baked Bads]

Would FiM be improved through the use of fart sounds? Like, instead of the sheep sound when they are surprised, we get a fart.

Sheep sound, best sound

[numsOic]

Fainting goat best pony.

No, I don't think My Little Pony would be improved by the use of fart sounds. Signed, numsOic.

[DarkMatter]

Are you implying Ed, Edd n Eddy used fart sounds? Because it didn't really and if it did it was scarce. Most of the sound effects in EEnE were things like animal noises, baby cries, and other strange sound effects like yodeling and screams.

But to answer the question: no fart sounds in ponies, please!

[Headless Horse]

I mean, that's, like, kinda the whole reason ponies are awesome. It's the opposite of what seems to be the pervading standard of everything these days, irony and gross-out humor and misanthropy. Ponies are like the anti-Shrek.

[Colton, M.D.You'll read everything I post,In this man's voice.]

Would FiM be improved through the use of fart sounds? Like, instead of the sheep sound when they are surprised, we get a fart.

Fun fact: Girls don't fart. Ergo, girl ponies don't fart.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Fun fact: Girls don't fart. Ergo, girl ponies don't fart.

They can burp, though, as Apple Bloom proved. So how about burp sounds instead?

[PinkemonIts SO limited edition! :'D]

So, I'm kinda thinking of stuff I used to watch on Nickelodeon and Fox kids/Jetix/whatever it is now that I still would enjoy(Which isn't a very obvious choice) and then I remembered this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KappaMikey

It's nothing special or amazing, really.
Just a silly fish out of water/dealing with an unfamiliar culture cartoon that makes fun of itself and cartoon and anime cliches. (For example, the main character gets all confused when his friends go into chibi mode or make other anime expressions, since he can't actually do it himself, being an american cartoon character.)

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

I remember that show. "Heh, they draw him differently because he's a Yank."

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

So, I'm kinda thinking of stuff I used to watch on Nickelodeon and Fox kids/Jetix/whatever it is now that I still would enjoy(Which isn't a very obvious choice) and then I remembered this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KappaMikey

It's nothing special or amazing, really.
Just a silly fish out of water/dealing with an unfamiliar culture cartoon that makes fun of itself and cartoon and anime cliches. (For example, the main character gets all confused when his friends go into chibi mode or make other anime expressions, since he can't actually do it himself, being an american cartoon character.)

Animation Collective is in my list of animation shit-list, next to Filmation and Sam Singer.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

I love details! Give us some details! Were they just really mean to their employees or something?

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I love details! Give us some details! Were they just really mean to their employees or something?

They've just made really, really shitty cartoons. I have no problem with limited animation (hell, most of my favorite cartoons have that), but those three studios were behind some of the absolute worst cartoons I can think of.

That said, Filmation was actually fair to its employees (Eddie Fitzgerald once told me he enjoyed working there even though their shows were garbage) and for all intents and purposes it was a good place for animation beginners to get their start. Animation Collective had its, um, problems, however.

I don't know the details of how Sam Singer fared with its employees (which consisted of artists from Disney and other major studios) but Jerry Beck once remarked that it was one of the worst places to work for, according to the animators he interviewed over the years. Look up Bucky and Pepito and Courageous Cat (created by Bob "Batman" Kane) to get an understanding of their animation "quality".

[PinkemonIts SO limited edition! :'D]

Meh. I probably have bad tastes then, but nothing else(that wasn't mentioned here as far as I know) really was that memorable to me, despite the fact that I have spent a lot of time watching cartoons when I was younger.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

T-They did a what?

I don't remember it very well, but one of the episodes with Hoagie as a detective had a dramatization of a scene he describes that depicts Kuki(?; I can't remember) as a fat man(?) in a hilariously unconvincing costume in black-and-white.

Anyways, I'm surprised this one didn't occur to me or anyone else before: Touhou.



In short, it is a series of shmups about poorly-drawn fantasy-inspired girls shooting each other with laser light shows.

What makes it worth caring about? Well first, there's the music. It's often well-composed and extremely catchy. Then there's the creativity. Most of the characters are based off obscure myths and monsters, usually portrayed as young girls, and always well-designed (if poorly-drawn). Not only that, but the (pretty difficult) bullet patterns are always quite a sight to see.

And then there's the fanbase. It's a lot like FiM's in many ways, in that it's mostly creeps and assholes, yet the ones that are neither are often some of the most creative and contributing fans, period. There's fanart, fancomics, fangames, the occasional fanfiction, fanmade music remixes, and even fanfilms. The good derivative works can range from heartwarming to heartbreaking to silly to serious to artsy to just fucking weird.

[Lazy]

artsy

Just gonna quote that and point out how good Bad Apple is and how everyone should watch it.
Fantastic animation, certainly worth watching through all 3:40. Don't turn it down because it is the animu.

Really, the MLP community may have turned out a lot of cool stuff, but it's nowhere near as much as has come out of the Touhou fanbase. Or bizarre stuff, for that matter. Fuckin' Yukkuris, man

[WylieCIDER CIDER CIDER]

I cannot believe we've gotten 8 pages into this thread and nobody's mentioned Teen Titans yet.



It's Robin (minus Batman) as leader, with Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, and Starfire as a super-team who lives in a giant T-shaped headquarters and saves their city from villains and stuff. It's got a funky limited neo-anime animation style that takes some getting used to, but I was a huge fan of it back in the early 00's when it came out. For a cartoon aimed at kids, it tackled some pretty heavy themes- betrayal, death*, and destiny- that sort of thing. There was an ongoing arc in the final season that had to do with Raven being sent to Earth to serve as a portal for her demon father (and source of her power) to take over the planet that was pretty relentlessly dark.

Oh, and also Tara Strong was the voice of Raven. Raven had a really low voice, though, because she was angsty and half-demon. Imagine Twilight Sparkle has a really bad sore throat and is angry and sarcastic about it, and that's Raven. (There's actually several scenes where Raven's using magic to levitate books around herself in her room, and she's the most anti-social one of the team. There's definitely some parallels there.)

They even got Wil Wheaton to come in and voice Aqualad for a few episodes.

You can watch Teen Titans on Boomerang late at night, it's worth throwing a couple episodes on the DVR to check out if you've never seen it before. Do yourself a favor and don't go searching Youtube for it, though- WB pulls down full episodes, so all that's left is mostly fan-created music videos set to slideshows of even-worse fanart. The only reason to watch -those- is to realize how good we have it with ponies by comparison.

Oh, hey, speaking of Teen Titans fanart: Have a seven-year-old piece by our own Artrix, which came up entirely coincidentally while I was GIS'ing "teen titans" so you don't have to:





*comic book death- the dead character comes back later on in the series. It's played pretty straight at the time, though.

[Headless Horse]

Oh, and also Tara Strong was the voice of Raven. Raven had a really low voice, though, because she was angsty and half-demon. Imagine Twilight Sparkle has a really bad sore throat and is angry and sarcastic about it, and that's Raven. (There's actually several scenes where Raven's using magic to levitate books around herself in her room, and she's the most anti-social one of the team. There's definitely some parallels there.)

Considering how high-pitched her Bubbles voice is in PPG, I'm really super-impressed by Tara's marketable range.

[LordNeufArtilleryman]

Would FiM be improved through the use of fart sounds? Like, instead of the sheep sound when they are surprised, we get a fart.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I'm sure all of you are familiar with "Ren & Stimpy", but has anyone ever saw "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures"? This show was John K's breakout show in the animation and was quite revolutionary in the 1980s when the show debuted. It actually LOOKS like a cartoon, which was radical notion back in the 1980s.

It's not perfect. Some of the episodes are lame, and the Taiwan animation studio really had hard time animating the very spastic animation poses that the US artists provided, but it definitely revolutionized the TV animation industry and started the silver age of cartoons in the 1990s.

Here are some episodes

Click here to view video.

Click here to view video.

But this one is my favorite, a scathing satire of cartoons that was on TV at the time. I love the slam at "Real Ghostbusters", here presented as "Gagbusters", a group dedicated to erasing fun and appeal from animation. To understand this you have to realize that John K and co. HATED working on those 1980s cartoons.

Click here to view video.

The entire run is on three-disk DVD set. It's worth it, IMO.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I read about that episode somewhere once. Even better than I thought.

[MochaBean]

I loved Mighty Mouse back when it ran, it and Garfield were the only two cartoons my dad would actually sit down and watch with me on Saturday mornings. Bakshi being attached to it pretty much doomed it from the start sadly, because he was so notorious by that point that the watchdog groups were just salivating at the chance to catch him in a slipup - real or imagined.

Fun Fact: It was one of Bruce Timm's first shows as well!

[reidransom]

MLP has cute, magical animals and begins with M.

Madoka Magica has cute magical animals and begins with M.

I'm so sorry. It was part of the contract...

Sorry for quoting a post from a million years ago, but being between semesters and all I needed something to do, so I watched this and damn, way darker than I expected for a magical girl show. Really good though.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Bakshi being attached to it pretty much doomed it from the start sadly, because he was so notorious by that point that the watchdog groups were just salivating at the chance to catch him in a slipup - real or imagined.

Alas, yeah.

Funny story. During the summer of 2010 I met Mike Kazaleh, who worked on the show. He told me that he and the rest of the staff used to place bets on who Ralph was going to fire next. Apparently Bakshi had the knack of firing anyone who pissed him off, which was easy to do, only to get a phone call next morning asking "why aren't you at work?"

When explained that he fired him the day before, Ralph would retort "well you're un-fired! Now get in here!" It got to the point that being fired by Ralph was a paid day-off, since he never actually took anyone off the payroll.

So Ralph is either the best boss in the world or the worst.