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

[Aurora]

My friends, let me tell you about an anime film.



Dead Leaves is a short anime film about two dudes who crash land in a city with no recollection of who they are and then wreak havoc on a town and are then taken to a prison facility on the moon. The animation and direction are very similar to Gurren Lagann (in fact this was produced by the same people as Gurren Lagann, Production I.G.).

Really it's fantastic and short so if you don't like it, hey, you only wasted an hour and if you did, well, it's easy to rewatch!

(Also I recommend subs like always because I am a snob)

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

I prefer Dead Leaves dubbed because it's really about the animation (the plot is ultimately just an excuse to take you from crazy nonsense action scene to crazy nonsense action scene) and reading subtitles means you're going to miss some of 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.]

I prefer everything dubbed so you don't have to listen to the Japanese.

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

I prefer everything dubbed so you don't have to listen to the Japanese.

I actually do prefer things dubbed in general (I don't mind reading subtitles, but I find that when they're up I spend all of my time looking at them rather than the action, plus I think it's hilarious how there are only like a dozen VAs in the industry so you get to keep going "oh hey it's Yosuke" every time Yuri Lowenthal shows up (which is all the time)), but while I generally don't really mind either way I just think Dead Leaves in particular works better dubbed.

[Pocketis she just gonna go booty booty]

[stuff about the Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon]

Oh wow. That's some impressive work for a Saturday morning cartoon. Not a lot of cartoons bothered to go with the "thick line" look back when everything was still done by hand. Another reason the '90s were the golden age of animation. It's kind of sad, though, knowing that Walt Kelly ended up spending the last years of his life trying to make a Pogo cartoon with the same brush-inked art style all by himself because none of the mainstream studios were willing.

Anyway, back on task: One animated film I think everyone ought to see is Hoodwinked. A rare example of an full-length animated indie film (it was made by a couple of recent film school grads and funded/distributed by the Weinstein Co.), it's the first thing Friendship Is Magic reminded me of because of how much they have in common: A setting that's a mishmash of traditional fantasy and modern technology and culture without feeling anacronistic for the sake of a cheap gag, writers who recognized that clever writing and humor are a better way to win over adults than shallow pop-culture references (I can only think of one in the entire film), a very self-aware attitude, and all original songs in a wide variety of styles. The worst thing about it is the animation, which is about what you'd expect from a CG film working with an indie budget that they mostly blew on casting, and it is genuinely distracting at times. Speaking of casting, Patrick Warburton is in it, being his usual hilariously sarcastic self.

Just don't go anywhere near the sequel. While Hoodwinked might have done poorly because it looked like a cheap Shrek ripoff, the sequel really is one.

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

I remember enjoying Hoodwinked when I saw it a while back, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the sequel turned out poorly.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Oh wow. That's some impressive work for a Saturday morning cartoon. Not a lot of cartoons bothered to go with the "thick line" look back when everything was still done by hand.

For what its worth early episodes of "Dexter's Lab", "Powerpuff Girls", and "Ed, Edd n Eddy" were cel-painted and they had thick-line style.

I have an animation drawing and cel of Mother Goose and Attila the cat. Apparently what they did was that they inked the animation drawing on paper with brush-pen, which was then xeroxed onto acetate cels and then painted.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Well, I'm not sure how it relates to ponies other than being animated, but I just finished Steins;Gate, a recently completed anime series that was getting some good reviews, and it's pretty darn fun. I don't want to ruin the plot, so I'll just say it's like the time travel cult classic Primer and a pulpy, light romance character-driven manga had a baby. The plot is clever enough - if occasionally a bit dragged out and a little flimsy if you start poking at the time travel - and the characters, while not incredible, are pretty well defined and often quite pleasant to watch bounce off each other. This is not an all-time classic, but it definitely says something that I felt compelled to basically watch it nonstop in my free time for the last four days (it also says something that it was light enough that I could chain episodes without having to stop and go mentally digest, as was the case with Cowboy Bebop). Strongly recommended for anyone shopping for a relaxing, fun sci-fi thiller.

Right now it's still up at Crunchy Roll.

[SharkMachineばか]

Heh, no one has mentioned Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z...

MOD NOTE: No.

[SirTopHatDark Internet Wizard<Chunky> tophat you lack mental faculties<KefkaFloyd> you leave a trail of destruction and nothingness in your wake, sirtophat]

So many of the youtube links posted in this thread are already gone.

One show that seems to hit close to the same feeling as MLP was My Life As A Teenage Robot. It was a pretty shortlived show, and spends some time focusing on school and disasters/enemies, but it's really lighthearted and silly in a similar way to MLP, IMO.



I can't seem to find a DVD or Youtube of it, but the some of it is on Amazon video here and itunes. Later seasons appear to be filezable, but if someone knows of a legit place to get them, I'd love to hear about it.

Edit:
Indeed. Also, the vast majority can be bought in English, e.g. here.

MLaaTR is great. A while ago I even ordered a shirt of it. 14-bis has lots of great art of it in DeviantArt. I made a giant minecraft statue of Jenny once I'll have to find.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

MOD NOTE: No.

Pretty much.

MLaaTR is great. A while ago I even ordered a shirt of it. 14-bis has lots of great art of it in DeviantArt. I made a giant minecraft statue of Jenny once I'll have to find.

I have to admit that while I gradually lost interest over time, the movie was pretty good, and I loved the retro art style they went for.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

MLaaTR is great.

This is good to hear since Rob Renzetti is running the writing side of FiM now. I actually was going to make a point when we were having the discussion about Faust making her departure crystal clear that I never heard *anything* about MLaaTR, good or bad, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it without coming off as overly pessimistic and derailing an already complicated conversation.

[DarkMatter]

So I'm not sure if this one has been brought up or not but...


Behold, Cartoon Network's longest running original series and my favorite CN original, Ed, Edd n Eddy created by Danny Antonucci. Yes, I liked this one even more than The Powerpuff Girls. Some people weren't able to get over the "squiggly" art style of EEnE and that's a shame because they were missing out on a really fantastic cartoon. What made the Eds so great was not only the writing, the animation, and the characters but, much like ponies does, it was a callback to many classic cartoons. Lots of slapstick silliness, wacky physics, and things not making sense. A cartoon that knew it was a cartoon and really ran with that.

It was also one of the last cartoons to feature entirely hand drawn animation--something that has sadly been lost in most animation today. And the animation was incredibly well done, with full fluid movements that really made the cartoon come alive. The cels were even all hand painted until the studio that did it was shut down, forcing them to go to digital painting (but the show remained hand drawn).

There were also the characters. The titular characters of Ed, Edd and Eddy were obviously the ones you connected to the most. Dimwitted Ed may be a complete moron but he has a big heart and an innocent nature that makes him almost like a big (smelly) teddy bear. Edd, or Double D as he's called by his friends, is to the Eds what Donatello was to the Ninja Turtles. He's the brains and the most rational of the group, though he somehow always finds himself getting pulled into his friend's nutty schemes. And then there's Eddy, the self-proclaimed leader, who is loud, whiny, and selfish. He's a jerk, but he's a likable jerk, and he does care about his friends more than he'd like to admit.

Then, of course, there's the long list of secondary characters like Ed's evil little sister Sarah (who is one of the few instances of the mean sister trope done well), her feminine best friend Jimmy, crazy foreigner Rolf, oddball Johnny who spends all his time with a plank of wood named Plank, the jerk jock Kevin, the girl all the guys want to be with Nazz, and plenty more. In the first few seasons these characters are kind of just there but as the show went on they really started to develop personalities and become as likable as the Eds themselves.

On top of that, several people working on FiM were also part of the Eds team back when it was running on Cartoon Network. James "Wootie" Wootton, "Big Jim" Miller, and Sibsy are just a few of the names you may recognize from FiM, all of which had a part in the production of Ed, Edd n Eddy. So if you used to dismiss the Eds for whatever reason, try watching it again. Season one is fairly forgettable so I would recommend trying anywhere from season two and beyond.

Though, I'm not sure HOW you will go about watching it seeing as it's never on Cartoon Network anymore, isn't on Boomerang, and has no good DVD release.

[Aurora]

EEE was probably my favorite CN show in the early 2000s. Can still whistle that theme.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I actually liked it because of the squiggly art style.

That and that weird fourth-wall episode.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

So I'm going to presume that some of us like "South Park"? I just watched the documentary where they showed how they make an episode in 6 days. Two things I noticed:

1. That has to be one of the most grueling production process in an animated show. Staff was shown sleeping at the studio overnight just so they can get the show delivered on time (few hours before it's set to broadcast)

2. Much of the voices are digitally manipulated. Cartman and Butters' voices sound REALLY different coming from Matt and Trey's mouths.

(yes, it takes less than a week to make a SP episode. By comparison shows like FIM or "Simpsons" are produced in the span of 9 months)

[MochaBean]

Aww man, I forgot about that! I was watching a documentary about Steve Bartman and the Cubs instead.

I really wanted to see it too.

[Aurora]

Can anyone still like South Park at this point? It kind of baffles me.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

I haven't watched South Park consistently in several years, but I definitely respect them point blank admitting the show was getting stale, which the Simpsons never had the balls to do, and trying to mix things up with the closer of last season and opener of this one. Although my inner pessimist says that mixing in dark drama elements is probably ultimately going to go about as well as the Simpsons trying to take on the new wave of reality shows in the late 90's/early '00's.

While it takes months for the show to go through the process, FiM episodes are produced roughly 1/week when they're rolling. The schedule is unusually fast and Faust cited it as a reason for leaving the show.

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I haven't watched South Park consistently in several years, but I definitely respect them point blank admitting the show was getting stale, which the Simpsons never had the balls to do, and trying to mix things up with the closer of last season and opener of this one. Although my inner pessimist says that mixing in dark drama elements is probably ultimately going to go about as well as the Simpsons trying to take on the new wave of reality shows in the late 90's/early '00's.

Some years ago I was listening to the commentary for a Season 3 episode and they were pretty blunt about how the show had become terrible and stale around the turn of the century.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

It's their thing, really. For example, they often say in interviews that the early episodes (seasons 1-4) suck. When they did a "best of" DVD few years ago the oldest episode on the set was from season 5 ("Scott Tenorman Must Die")

In the documentary, right after they finished making "Human CentIPAD", it showed a clip of Trey saying "this is the worst episode ever". Apparently it's normal; he say that for every episode they make.

[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.]

To be fair, Trey and Matt seem to have that "Pride = Hubris/Smug" thing, as we've kinda seen it in their episodes. Best case, they really want to make a good show, so they are extra hard on themselves. They really don't see it as good enough, and they kick themselves about it. Or, like what happens in their episodes, they may fear that being anything other than totally humble, to them, is the same as saying "Look how much better I am than you!"

[Daionus The 23rd:3]

I was talking about The Simpsons.

In any case, that's interesting to hear.

[The great MPinke Torte das Pony.---]

The last two Seasons of South Park have been pretty bad and formulaic though. I used to like it, but now I just want them to find some cool way to end it.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I will say that the show is very hit-or-miss. If you see how the show is being made it's pretty obvious as to why. But it can still be amusing from time to time.

The show's going to continue at least until 2013, bringing the total to 17 seasons. I'm amazed that it lasted this long. I was 7-years old when the show began. I still remember all the hype the show got when it debuted, and I think I even saw the second episode when it aired the first time. And now, I'm actually old enough to watch the show...granted, I still watched it when I was a kid. My parents were pretty loose about these things, thankfully. Probably because we're from Japan and the stuff that's on Japanese kids shows make "South Park" pretty tame by comparison...

I wrote about the documentary on Facebook, prompting a reply from a FB friend who works in animation. He said that his friend and co-worker worked on the show for one season, saying that it was the most stressful, awful job she ever had in her entire animation career (they work on "China, IL" FYI.)

[Headless Horse]

In the early DVDs of the first few seasons, they had a gimmick where they introduced every episode with "And now we come to our favorite episode of South Park..." —Every episode.

Man, those DVDs were great. They had so much obvious fun making them. "Look, it's our Indian friend, Indian Companion!" "*points* Something coming."


(Also I was in college when "Spirit of Christmas" was making the rounds as one of the very first viral things on the Internet. Our social calendar had June 13th listed as "Download SOXMAS.MOV Day".)

15 years

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Since someone mentioned "Teenage Robot", I thought I'd post this, a 2003 interview with creator Rob Renzetti.

http://animondays.blogspot.com/2011/09/ ... -part.html

There's a FIM plug at the end.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Some years ago I was listening to the commentary for a Season 3 episode and they were pretty blunt about how the show had become terrible and stale around the turn of the century.

Yeah, but that never really made it into the show, unless you count things like comic book guy wearing a "worst episode ever" t-shirt during the elf jockey episode. Probably they didn't have the creative control that Trey Parker has, but still. It's nice to hear that the writers were at least aware that things went south.

It's their thing, really. For example, they often say in interviews that the early episodes (seasons 1-4) suck.

Here's an Entertainment Weekly piece from last week where they single out seasons 1-3, and then add a bunch of season 4 episodes to their "worst" list. It really is a different show up until around the time the movie comes out. There's virtually no satire besides one-off celebrity jokes and it's more about being as random and offensive as possible. (Not to be a broken record, but I think this may be a major reason they have such a viscerally negative reaction to Family Guy.) The first episodes I thought were a big departure came around the time of the sex ed and 9/11 episodes in season 5.

The last two Seasons of South Park have been pretty bad and formulaic though.

I agree, but you should at least check out "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers" since they go right after that fact and kinda sorta do actual character development. I actually don't know what to make of the end of "Ass Burgers" since it winds up with things going back to normal on the surface, but Stan sneaking alcohol to make it through the day and Sharon resigned to a mismatched marriage for the sake of routine... are they going to keep referring to this stuff going forward, are we supposed to take any of that seriously as reflecting their mentality at the moment? I don't know.. I also thought Dances with Smurfs from season 13 was pretty clever.

He said that his friend and co-worker worked on the show for one season, saying that it was the most stressful, awful job she ever had in her entire animation career (they work on "China, IL" FYI.)

Now that I'm 30, all nighters are basically torture, completely impossible without massive amounts of chemical assistance. Some of those guys are in their 40's and 50's, and to have to pull more than a dozen all nighters in a year, with your schedule completely dependent on somebody else who's depressed as hell by the end of it... yuck.

[The great MPinke Torte das Pony.---]

I agree, but you should at least check out "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers" since they go right after that fact and kinda sorta do actual character development. I actually don't know what to make of the end of "Ass Burgers" since it winds up with things going back to normal on the surface, but Stan sneaking alcohol to make it through the day and Sharon resigned to a mismatched marriage for the sake of routine... are they going to keep referring to this stuff going forward, are we supposed to take any of that seriously as reflecting their mentality at the moment? I don't know.. I also thought Dances with Smurfs from season 13 was pretty clever.

Oh, I've seen those episodes and I know that it was basically the developer's commentary on the show itself. But making fun of the fact that your shit is getting stale doesn't excuse it, it just means it's time to stop. Go out with a bang and leave it be.

[MochaBean]

But making fun of the fact that your shit is getting stale doesn't excuse it, it just means it's time to stop.

The vibe I get from Matt and Trey these days is that they want to stop, but they're under contract for two more years so they have to muddle through.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Hmm, maybe we should move this to another thread? Or is this the open TV discussion thread as well as a recommendation thread?

Anyway, Trey Parker wanting to quit doesn't really square with signing a new contract through 2013 several months ago. And how I feel about them commenting on things getting stale kind of depends on where they go from here. If that was a one-off and we get maybe a couple of references for the rest of the season, as I'm kind of afraid is likely, then yeah it was fairly pointless. If the personality changes we saw actually impact the plotline and tone of a large subset of future episodes, then it will go down as a worthwhile experiment. Probably a failed experiment, but at least a respectable one. The next fading decade-plus blockbuster comedy to try it could be fairly panned for not learning from South Park's example, just as South Park at least tried something rather than sliding into irrelevance like the Simpsons.

But then I'll concede I'm far on one side of the "do subpar later seasons diminish the achievements of a formerly great show" argument.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

So anyone watched "Regular Show" Halloween special? First two segments were okay, but the third was great. Really scary, with characters being killed off without actually showing blood (although Muscle Man got skinned alive)

I was surprised to see Muscle Man not only hold a gun, but actually fire it. When was the last time they showed a real gun in a kids cartoon?

[NumerosixDon't annoy Donald Dash!]

The vibe I get from Matt and Trey these days is that they want to stop, but they're under contract for two more years so they have to muddle through.

Just fuck it up, it will be funnier.

[Abby NormalGIFT TANK]

I was surprised to see Muscle Man not only hold a gun, but actually fire it. When was the last time they showed a real gun in a kids cartoon?

I remember Spectacular Spiderman showed real guns and people fire them for a time but I don't recall which episodes in the first season have them. After a while it went back to laser guns of the 90s but at least they looked like weapons.

[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.]

Probably a failed experiment, but at least a respectable one. The next fading decade-plus blockbuster comedy to try it could be fairly panned for not learning from South Park's example, just as South Park at least tried something rather than sliding into irrelevance like the Simpsons.

This line of thinking tastes like this:



How about, instead of the ultra-irritating "irrelevance" line people like to use about TV shows they dislike, one can just say "Starting to go downhill." Or "Is failing to capture the magic that I felt it had in earlier seasons." I don't think any of us are claiming that Simpsons or South Park, having gone on as long as they have, still have the exact same same feel that made us first tune in, but to claim they they are now bad (and implying that they should stop making them) just seems so smug and petty.

[Yuls]

I'm surprised that this one didn't come up in this thread yet.

Phineas and Ferb is a pretty excellent cartoon that shares many of the qualities that have developed the substantial fringe demographic audience for FiM: clever writing, well developed characters, an easy going feeling, jokes and references that only older views will get, and occasionally addicting songs with the addition of one important question:

What are we going to do today?

The show usually- but not always- uses a fairly formulaic style of having an A and B (and occasionally C) plot with each episode, the A plot featuring Phineas, Ferb, and their cadre of friends building or doing something to fill up all the time they have in their summer, the B plot featuring Perry the Platypus and his mad scientist nemesis Dr. Doofenschmirtz, and the C plot occasionally focusing on the teenagers when Candace, the older sister of Phineas and Ferb, is not trying to bust them to prove to their mother that they really do get up to all these crazy things.

Since an early episode, every episode features at least one song that is usually plot or character related.

An example episode where the separate plots converge more than they normally do while breaking up the usual formula is Vancessassary Roughness, which features most of the characters that feature in most episodes- Phineas and Ferb, Perry, Doofenschmirtz, and Vanessa, Candace and Stacy, and Baljeet and Buford. The only major character missing is Isabella, Phineas and Ferb's friend who leads the Fireside Girls (who seem to have mastery over everything from husbandry to advanced engineering when the two boys need extra hands).

Another, Swiss Family Phineas, follows the typical formula, with references that most of the generation it is directed at won't actually get.

For whatever reason, most, if not all of the episodes, are on YouTube and Disney shows no sign of getting them removed.

[Doctor Wheeze]

I was surprised to see Muscle Man not only hold a gun, but actually fire it. When was the last time they showed a real gun in a kids cartoon?

Somehow this surprised me even more than the gruesome deaths. Being skinned, pulped into ectoplasm, burned, drowned, or decapitated is one thing, but firing a real gun is basically unheard of.

Whole episode was amazing though.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Phineas and Ferb is a lot of fun, fast-paced, and surprisingly slapstick-heavy at times for Disney channel, and they do a lot of creative stuff to fit the formula each time, although the formula is repetitive enough (especially with so many boxes to check in an 11-minute episode!) that I found myself pretty satisfied after watching maybe a half dozen episodes. Still definitely worth checking out. That and Adventure Time are the only other current animated kid-friendly shows that strongly click with me.

How about, instead of the ultra-irritating "irrelevance" line people like to use about TV shows they dislike, one can just say "Starting to go downhill." Or "Is failing to capture the magic that I felt it had in earlier seasons."

So yeah, I'm guessing "irrelevance" set you off, especially since I was going easier on the show than some of the other commenters. I'm certainly not trying to claim that anyone who still loves the show is stupid (which is "stop liking what I don't like"), I just drifted from the show starting around season 12 and like I said I've restarted watching since they pulled the tone change last season and I commend them for trying stuff rather than hanging it up as many seem to want even if historical odds strongly suggest they won't fully recapture the magic. We can go with the other terms if you want if "irrelevance" bothers you, but it's also true that shows that get a bit stale don't tend to have the same impact on culture or comedy that they once did. They still continue to have some impact, but it is also on a downslope.

Sorry if my comments on this topic come off as a downer. I find watching the trajectories of various comedic approaches (and artistic production and cultural trends in general) to be fascinating both on the upswing (e.g. ponies at the moment) and on the downswing, and for the record South Park and Simpsons are easily my two favorite shows of all time by pretty much any metric.

[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.]

So yeah, I'm guessing "irrelevance" set you off

It wasn't so much as . I guess it is one thing to say the show is bad, as many can and do, but, "irrelevance", to me is just worse. It is like saying "don't even try to make anything good, because people will just think what you do doesn't matter anyway."


Also, N'thing Regular Show. I just get mesermized whenever it is on.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

So does anyone remember those Pat A. Ventura cartoons from Cartoon Network years ago? Stuff like Yuckie Duck, Sledgehammer O'Possum, or the remake of Tex Avery's "George & Junior"? There seems to be alot of love-and-hate thing going on with them, mainly due to the rather "extreme" cartoony style, heavy gross-out gags, and the spastic (poor) animation. But I can't deny that the man has talent.

However, I think this may be his best work. For the final episode of HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" show they decided to make it a cartoon, and brought Ventura (and Bill Kopp) to animate it. The end result is an extremely funny (and extremely disgusting) retelling of Three Little Pigs.

You can watch it on my blog. Just be warned that it's not for little kids.