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Just marathoned the last season of Kipo. Really great season and a strong ending but I'm still sad it's over.
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Oct 12, 2020 14:45
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Kipo, the show, the character and her voice actress are all really great. I actually still can't believe Karen Fukuharas range. Imagine if Kimiko from the Boys wasn't a mute and would suddenly talk in her overenthusiastuc voice. That's giving me a mental backlash. Anyway, this showbwas great and really heartfelt. Everything seemed so genuine. There wasn't really mean spirited humour and you actually felt bad when terrible things happened. Thus was definitely a highlight of 2020 for me. Yes this year felt incredibly long, but all three seasons came out during one year! Can I put each season in the yearly TVIV poll? Props for DreamWorks for hitting it out of the park like that.
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Oct 12, 2020 23:32
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Mokinokaro posted:Just marathoned the last season of Kipo. Really? Nice! Gonna watch it sometimes this week.
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Oct 13, 2020 02:29
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think it doesn't help that Bart's whole archetype as a mischievous youngster seems to be... kinda left behind as cartoon cliches go. I watch way too many cartoons and even I can't think of a direct counterpart in anything from the last decade, at least one which doesn't gain superpowers and has to struggle to balance their childishness against the responsibility thrust on them. There are better articles that explain some of the issue with the simpsons. One point I remember reading on SA like over a decade ago was that there is a cultural lag in writing experiences. Simpsons started mid to late 80's. The people writing the show went to school in the 1960's hence the scenes where they are watching film projector movies about the birds and bee s the teachers smoking, smelling the tests because they have dido smell. Bart the general had herman herman whose coded as vietnam vet, and grandpa whose a WWII vet. The yo yo team selling yo yo s Bart playing with cherry bombs. Homer goes to a video arcade to learn how to beat part at video games. The episode "the way we was" about how hommer knocked up marge was set in the 1970s and then they made a new version of how they met set in 1990s. another thing the simpsons did subvert sitcom trops like a "Very special XXX"
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Oct 13, 2020 07:40
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Ups_rail posted:
They were still doing this in the late 90s, when I was in Jr. High. I.. may have bought a few yo yos. The butterfly one, and the car wheel one. Jeez, selling to students in a captive assembly audience. What the hell, schools. Also The Power Team! Ripping Phone Books, smashing bricks all in the name of Jesus.
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Oct 13, 2020 08:50
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PicklePants posted:They were still doing this in the late 90s, when I was in Jr. High. I.. may have bought a few yo yos. The butterfly one, and the car wheel one. Yeah I remember those fundraisers and how they'd have the stage covered in all sorts of cool stuff that people could supposedly win, I don't think anyone at any school I went to ever managed to get anything more exciting than like a trapper keeper or something and like everyone else was lucky to get some pencils or gum or something
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Oct 13, 2020 09:57
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I giggled at the sight gags in the Animaniacs promo, and I have hopes that the series will retain some of its charm. I forgot this was even in the pipeline.
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Oct 13, 2020 20:15
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Finished Kipo Really strong show all-around. I can't believe how loving good the soundtrack was all the way through, especially in the epilogue scene. I'm kind of surprised they didn't end up finding an antidote for the Cure, kind of a bummer but also props for them not fixing everything. I liked that Emilia didn't turn at the end and was a motherfucker all the way through.
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Oct 14, 2020 03:06
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So I just watched season one of Tangled. That uh, sure was a tone shift in the middle of the season
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Oct 14, 2020 08:02
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I liked how the Tangled series continued themes from the movie, like in that first season, we get a supporting argument for why Rapunzel always keeps her promises with Varian's arc- the one time she has to break a promise, it goes so badly wrong in a kind of worst case scenario. I also like Ruthless Ruth giving the story behind the Snuggly Duckling a first chapter - it's unknown how long it's been since her situation, but it's obvious that the Snuggly Duckling wasn't as nice as it was at the start of the movie until some point after her. By the time Rapunzel gets there in the movie, it's a proper safe space.
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Oct 14, 2020 15:46
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A thing I like about the Snuggly Duckling and its associated characters is that when you get to The Bothers Hook, you think to yourself "Wow, Hookhand's actually kind of an rear end in a top hat," and then you realize that it's not just because he's let the success go to his head. Since leaving on his world tour, he's missed out on several months of Rapunzel's softening influence compared to the rest of the pub thugs, so he's still operating more or less at movie levels of brutishness.
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Oct 14, 2020 17:11
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Doing an episode a day for Kipo. Aside from the main plotline, this is also a masterclass in cat behavior. Also, I never thought I'd see a K-pop narwhal group? pod? feature prominently, but this show loving goes all in on its side characters.
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Oct 15, 2020 02:51
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I already miss Kipo. Such a great show. I remember how someone once wrote how it would be absolutely necessary that Kipo would be depowered for season 3 because otherwise she'd be OP and could just crush everyone. Turns out, the biggest challenge is to explicitly not do that, just because it would be easy. Standing alone in my fire. You're not alone. Heroes on fire. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 09:44
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Lindsay Ellis has am interesting take on Animaniacs in this series of tweets. I dont remember enough about the show to say with 100% certainty that she's right (the pop culture jokes and references didnt translate well to an Italian audience) but it seems to track with what I remember. https://mobile.twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1315471045067857921
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Oct 15, 2020 10:30
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cant cook creole bream posted:I already miss Kipo. Such a great show. That's not necessarily true - the megajaguar thing is incredibly risky for her to do because she nearly gets lost in it psychologically and has to fight for dominance with it. It's not so much an I win button because she could lose everything just as easily.
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Oct 15, 2020 10:56
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Not as much by season 3. She seems to have mastered it.
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Oct 15, 2020 11:02
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Yeah, I didn't know it was already up, I hadn't heard anything about it. I'm watching it now, onto episode 2.
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Oct 15, 2020 11:20
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I will give kipo credit for just having a beginning, middle, and end. Also why does lindsay have beef with animaniacs? I didnt care much for freakzoid or road rovers, but having slapstick cartoon could be funny.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:57
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Ups_rail posted:I will give kipo credit for just having a beginning, middle, and end. It's actually a twitter thread, click on the tweet and she explains herself. But here's a part of it that sums it up I feel. https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1315475602053365760
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Oct 15, 2020 16:45
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Electric Phantasm posted:It's actually a twitter thread, click on the tweet and she explains herself. The criticism here is starting from the premise that they're supposed to be the same as Bugs Bunny.
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Oct 15, 2020 17:16
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It's a fair assessment. I would say that I don't really think that the "Animaniacs go to somebody to mess with them" bits are the total of what the show is, even though that's a big chunk of it. I've felt uncomfortable at how mean some cartoons got in the 90s before, so that's definitely a thing. They do usually try to make the guy they're bothering into a jerk somehow, but that still gets into weird hot takes. It's one thing to go "Saddam Hussein, what a fuckin' jerk" but Michelangelo as a big muscled jerk (who's probably a reference to some actor) is weird. Einstein was a weird case because they ended up helping him in the end. The main villains of Mr. Plotz and Ralph the security guard are pretty safe targets, although Dr. Scratchandsniff is sort of an archaic take on psychiatry that's nestled in the stereotype of the dangerous mentally ill from Reagan defunding institutions and turning them onto the street. There's a sort of laziness to the format of just rapid fire jokes without really caring much about context, and I think there's also an aspect of Animaniacs being itself extremely nostalgic for classic slapstick which also got extremely mean. 3 Stooges is hard to watch sometimes, and I think there's some Abbot and Costello bits that are just Abbot beating the poo poo out of Costello. We're sort of in a renaissance of sincerity and empathy right now, but maybe there's room for some meaner comedy to provide catharsis by attacking real-world villains.
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Oct 15, 2020 20:15
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I demand more of the Warners making GBS threads on historical figures that all sound like Kirk Douglas.SlothfulCobra posted:although Dr. Scratchandsniff is sort of an archaic take on psychiatry that's nestled in the stereotype of the dangerous mentally ill from Reagan defunding institutions and turning them onto the street. Dr. Scratchandsniff is like the one person the Warners really like.
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Oct 15, 2020 21:23
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I remember wacko realing wanting to pee and carrying a toilet everywhere. I wonder if there are any animaniac s drawings on deviant art. I wonder but I will not go look
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Oct 15, 2020 22:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's a sort of laziness to the format of just rapid fire jokes without really caring much about context, and I think there's also an aspect of Animaniacs being itself extremely nostalgic for classic slapstick which also got extremely mean. 3 Stooges is hard to watch sometimes, and I think there's some Abbot and Costello bits that are just Abbot beating the poo poo out of Costello. We're sort of in a renaissance of sincerity and empathy right now, but maybe there's room for some meaner comedy to provide catharsis by attacking real-world villains. I'm not saying anybody's take is really wrong, but I think a lot of people are examining the show with the eyes of an adult, when ultimately it's a show for kids*. And I'm not trying to dismiss all criticism when I say that, but I also think a lot of people underestimate how much kids enjoy simple sight gags and wacky characters torturing each other. There's a lot of very well written cartoons (and I guess maybe live action shows? Do Nick and Disney still do sitcoms? Are they ever actually good?) these days that appeal to all ages but there's a lot out there that people old enough to post on these forums would probably deem garbage but kids will gobble up anyway. I suppose there's a conversation to be had about whether or not watching characters torture one another is ultimately good for kids but *That said, my personal take is that the problem with specifically reviving Animaniacs is the same as reviving any long-dead property, that via specifically marketing to/triggering adult nostalgia, it's billing itself as a cartoon for adults rather than a kids' cartoon that maybe adults can like too. Which, I suspect, is going to disappoint viewers if it fails to meet the (probably impossibly high) standards that live in their memories. Or, worse, it can play specifically to adults (and probably still fail to meet their standards) and end up alienating the actual kids that it should be for. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 16, 2020 01:12
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TwoPair posted:(and I guess maybe live action shows? Do Nick and Disney still do sitcoms? Are they ever actually good?) It's a few years old now, and oddly enough is also partially banking on nostalgia, but I thought Girl Meets World was pretty decent as far as Disney sitcoms go.
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Oct 16, 2020 03:02
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The original Animaniacs was leaning pretty heavily on appealing to kids through their parents too, what with all the constant references to pop culture from the last few decades. Not to mention how heavily the show pulls from classic comedy routines. A lot of kids' entertainment winds up being repurposed stuff for adults, and it exists in the same media environment. If the rest of kids' media is teaching lots of empathy, meaner comedy is gonna have a harder time catching on. A lot of the time being smarter with entertainment pays off. I guess also I'd like to say that it's a really cool thing that OKKO could find the sincerity to celebrate KO's dumb youtube videos, and that's a really cool thing compared to Animaniacs referencing William Shatner's goofy singing and being all "look at this dumb jerk who's terrible at singing" because it was before the collapse of irony, and if you enjoyed William Shatner singing (which let's be honest, the original 1978 video is real fun to watch) you had to be really negative about it. I guess Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart gets a lot into "meaner" humor, but it also bounces the mean-ness around a lot, so there isn't so much the thing of one character being ground down or one character grinding everyone else down, and even then it constantly goes back to sincerity. Mao Mao's greatest moments of strength often come from sincerity, and the Torbiclaun episode also found a way to positively celebrate a dumb funny video.
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Oct 16, 2020 03:29
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Bringing back Animaniacs as a nostalgia piece is kind of weird because it is largely a backward-looking cartoon made by adults missing the kind of stuff they grew up with in the 60s—it’s kind of like the Simpsons in that regard. It makes sense when viewed with the nostalgia current 30 years ago, and I don’t think that stuff is really in living memory any more. I would argue that the psychiatrist and his nurse were extremely archaic even then and only recognizable from the pop culture of 40-50 years earlier. All that poo poo’s like 70 years old now.
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Oct 16, 2020 03:38
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SlothfulCobra posted:The original Animaniacs was leaning pretty heavily on appealing to kids through their parents too, what with all the constant references to pop culture from the last few decades. Not to mention how heavily the show pulls from classic comedy routines. A lot of kids' entertainment winds up being repurposed stuff for adults, and it exists in the same media environment. If the rest of kids' media is teaching lots of empathy, meaner comedy is gonna have a harder time catching on. A lot of the time being smarter with entertainment pays off. Mao Mao balances it in an interesting way, because it's generally the heroes who are the mean ones so you tend to get the sincerity from Orangusnake and his crew. I like that while the characters he works with weren't his first choices, they were just what was left over when Mao Mao accidentally killed 90% of his crew by tilting the ship and causing them to fall to their deaths, he still treats them as if they were. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 16, 2020 03:55
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Funky Valentine posted:I demand more of the Warners making GBS threads on historical figures that all sound like Kirk Douglas. Yeah, there's a big theme with the Warners being mad little bastards who enjoy driving everyone crazy indiscriminately but escalate things real hard if someone acts like a jerk. IIRC, one short has them getting a taste of their own medicine with a Sound of Music style nanny who was too saccharine for them to stand but they couldn't chase her off because she hadn't done anything wrong... so they bring in Slappy Squirrel, who's far less discriminate about raising hell for the hell of it.
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Oct 16, 2020 04:24
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I watched a few Animaniacs episodes last night for the first time since, well, broadcast. There’s so many references to old Hollywood that would barely register to kids’ parents, let alone the kids. Being able to google the names Slappy lists off is a massive help. Like she mentions Lionel Hampton, who was a big band pianist/xylophone player big in the 40s/early 50s.
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Oct 16, 2020 13:19
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Bringing back Animaniacs as a nostalgia piece is kind of weird because it is largely a backward-looking cartoon made by adults missing the kind of stuff they grew up with in the 60s—it’s kind of like the Simpsons in that regard. It makes sense when viewed with the nostalgia current 30 years ago, and I don’t think that stuff is really in living memory any more. totally Agree I was in elementary school in the 1990's and remember when Nickelodeon started airing loonely toons. They would sometimes have the old buster black and white cartoons, along with some shorts from WWII like the little man from the draft board. But kids have well....no taste? Now I wonder what would be the best in a bad way revival? him what about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjOtXzGiWIc
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Oct 16, 2020 13:40
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BioEnchanted posted:Mao Mao balances it in an interesting way, because it's generally the heroes who are the mean ones so you tend to get the sincerity from Orangusnake and his crew. I like that while the characters he works with weren't his first choices, they were just what was left over when Mao Mao accidentally killed 90% of his crew by tilting the ship and causing them to fall to their deaths, he still treats them as if they were. Mao Mao also generally makes it pretty clear when the protagonists are behaving badly, and why. Mao Mao is a toxic masculinity engine because his dad never loved him, and Adorabat is a terrible cop because she delights in violence and worships authority figures.
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Oct 16, 2020 14:02
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Rand Brittain posted:Mao Mao also generally makes it pretty clear when the protagonists are behaving badly, and why. Mao Mao is a toxic masculinity engine because his dad never loved him, and Adorabat is a terrible cop because she delights in violence and worships authority figures. It was really nice that Mao Mao ended up getting therapy for what his dad put him through, and it's not treated as a joke. Therapy being a huge help for you is a pretty great message for kids.
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Oct 16, 2020 17:35
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I wish cartoon network made their shows more easy to watch. Been wanting to check out Mao Mao, but I don't have a cable provider so my only option seems to be going through seedy websites.
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Oct 16, 2020 17:46
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Electric Phantasm posted:I wish cartoon network made their shows more easy to watch. Been wanting to check out Mao Mao, but I don't have a cable provider so my only option seems to be going through seedy websites. CN is available on a bunch of platforms like Hulu or HBO Max (albeit with a bunch of weird gaps). Nickelodeon on the other hand...
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Oct 16, 2020 17:58
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I like when Mao Mao is warned sometimes before the other characters get mean, like Badgerclops gives him plenty of time to own up to being scared of puppets, and when he keeps denying his fear, Badgerclops warns him that he's gonna start playing with him with the great line "You know I *have* to do this, don't you?" It's like "This is your last chance to stop being an rear end, or I'm GOING to punish you for it."
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Oct 16, 2020 18:20
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I also appreciate episodes like "Ultraclops" having the message "if you push someone too far, what they wind up doing is your fault."
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Oct 16, 2020 19:44
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I love the episode with Orangusnake et. al living inside the trojan couch after abandoning the plan to attack whiel the sherriff slept in favour of freeloading off their resources. I just love that the villains are horrified by the hero's behaviour. I love Orangusnake being all "They have to stop fighting at some point... I mean, they are friends... right?!  "Also with Kipo (season 3) I liked the episode with Wolf's sister. It was interesting that she was in a really impossible position, essentially a similar one to what Wolf went through 5 years ago due to her cowardice - stuck in a terrible situation with her only way out being hurting someone she loved, and this time SHE's the one terrified of Wolf. She basically had to decide whether she was more afraid of Amelia, or wolf. Either way, she'd be pissing one or the other off and would be facing either the Cure, or being skinned. It was also neat that it was essentially her realising that she'll never have a relationship with Wolf again because of what she participated in and would have had to live with that if Amelia hadn't shot her in the back. There was literally no way she was ever going to come out of that situation positively and she knew it. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 16, 2020 19:51
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Speaking of that episode, a interesting moment that isn't returned to: One of the first things out of the sister's mouth is that Wolf is now using that name. We know from the first episode that Kipo gave her that name, but it's interesting that the sister probably knew an old name that Wolf has rejected. I wonder what it was...
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Oct 17, 2020 02:42
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Finally got around to watching seasons 2 and 3 of Infinity Train, and I gotta say, I was right to think that it would be missing something after the mystery was mostly explained in season 1. Like the personal development is fine, and it still hits some good emotional points, but it just really feels lacking when the scope of things is a much more known quantity. The aesthetics of the show really lend themselves to grand mystery, like that moment in the fixing car with all the crazy stuff exposing the innards of the train was really cool, but the plot couldn't feed the viewer much plot importance for that scene because the character's personal goal with the scene was much smaller. She knew what was going on. The first season had a cool thing going with the mystery of the train interplaying with the exposition of Tulip's personal issues that they really couldn't match with the later seasons. Apex made me feel really gross with their heavily trained sociopathy and how they really got good at manipulating children, even if it ended well. I actually skimmed some spoilers and I knew somebody was gonna die horribly, and I was really hoping it would be Simon, and I'm glad it was. It was nice seeing Amelia steadily working through her issues, although the ending was kinda weak, since it didn't really land on a very triumphant moment. Would've liked maybe a montage of Grace teaching Apex to work through their emotions or something. Also The Cat was totally fuckin' that bear. Electric Phantasm posted:I wish cartoon network made their shows more easy to watch. Been wanting to check out Mao Mao, but I don't have a cable provider so my only option seems to be going through seedy websites. I think Hulu still doesn't have the last couple seasons of Steven Universe. I have worries about the whole business model of streaming services and the way they'll change how the industry works, but the worst part is how often it can be unclear about how to get the show you want. If you seek the  alternative, keep a strong adblock or ublock or ghostery and don't run any .exe files.
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Oct 17, 2020 03:04
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