Forum - View topicUS Animation? Good, Bad or Terrible?
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PuertoRicanMan
Posts: 30 |
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Im curious to see what people think about animation in the US. Im not talking about the horrid stuff they have on Sat mornings for my 10yr old cousin. (Feel free to rant about those though) But the ones that are actually entertaining. The stuff AS has on Sunday night, or anyother shows you can think of.
Some of the shows that come to mind for me are The Critic for those who remember it. The spoof they have about Snapple is still a riot to this day. (Try Crapple!) I thought Duckman was great when that was on. I think Sunday AS is pretty good. Though I think Harvey Birdman and Sealab 2021 stand out. So whats everyones opinion? |
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Cassandra
 Posts: 1356 Location: Birdsboro, PA |
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I like some of the stuff on Saturday mornings. Like Jackie Chan Adventures. I thought that was gonna suck, but then I actually watched it and it's not too bad. It's pretty funny
I try not to judge animation by what country it comes from. Japan has just as many crappy series as the US. |
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Hotaru
Posts: 481 Location: NY |
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Hm. Well, the only american cartoons i watch are:
Home Movies, aqua teen hunger force, sealab 2021, space ghost (rarely cause it's hardly ever funny) the brak show, the simpsons...and rarely dexter and ppg. And these, are fine and dandy as a t.v. show, but I really think most american animation is just...ugh. Maybe i'm just used to anime so i hate it more. |
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Ferquin
 Posts: 297 Location: Renton, WA, USA |
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Exactly. Yes, anime is at the top of my list for quality animation, but you must not forget the fact that animation as we know it today was born in the U.S. and we are no slouches either. It's just that Americans just don't see animation as importantly as the Japanese do. Here, we see it as children's fodder and thus, don't really expand and freshen the art form as they do in Japan where animation is treated just as importantly as reading classic literature. So, in other words, the cultural status of animation in either country shapes its quality. I enjoy animation as a whole, no matter what country the animated piece originated from. I am partial to anime but I am also very partial to American animation because so much of it is available to me. I'm sure if I had more access to other foreign animation, I'd probably like it as well. But seeing as Japan and America (and I suppose Korea as well) are really the major forces in animation, I can't help but to like them more. As far as U.S. animation, I will immediately mention the works of Bruce Timm and his work on the WB animated series for Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, Batman:Beyond, and currently Justice League. I am a big fan of Craig McCracken and The Powerpuff Girls. I'm also a fan of Genndy Tartakovsky and Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack. I also can't overlook the classic WB shorts. If you didn't know, those old animated shorts were initially created to entertain adults before feature films, hence, a lot of the gags and jokes were pretty mature, even for children today. I'm a big fan of PIXAR and all the stuff they put out. I'm also very partial to the Disney Ducks, although, I'm really more of a fan of the Duck comics that Carl Barks wrote and drew from the early 40s through the mid-to-late 60s. I've also gotten back into He-Man with his new encarnation which is really quite top notch animation and storywise. Oh, and yes, Jackie Chan Adventures is pretty damn cool too. There's really too many to name here, but the point is, American animation is really quite good if you know what to look for. Don't shut it out completely yet. |
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ghoti
Posts: 101 Location: Poland |
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Personally I _love_ animated Batman from WB. Best cartoon ever.
Then Cartoon Network cartoons like Cow&Chicken, 2 stupid Dogs, DExters Lab. I liked Space Ghost as well. And when I was in 3 grad of primary school I loved Teenage Mutant hero Turtles. Yay! they ruled! ^^v Oh and I liked Gargoyles. Don't know whether the're truely US but anyway... As for Jackie Chan - it disappointed me, but I somehow liked it, though. And I love all the sarcastic, antisystem animations which ridicule typical US lifestyle and humanity etc etc... ^^ I mean: South PArk, King of the Hill , Futuram, Simpsons etc. :) |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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There's one thing about American animation that every single anime fan seems to forget:
We have a thriving industry of independant animation, mostly short films, that has gone by unnoticed since around the 1960's or so. The bulk of the output has been from film and art schools such as CalArts as of late, but there are dozens of other professional animators, comic artists, and filmmakers who dabble with 10-minute animated shorts, show them at film festivals, win Academy Awards and such. So while everybody's praising Jackie Chan Adventures, all of you should check out the short films of Don Hertzfeldt, Bill Plympton, and John Hubley to name a few, and discover where the real meat n' potatoes of US-produced animation is. Sites such as AtomFilms have Plympton stuff on streaming video. And hell, they're just short films. It's not like some ultra-repetetive 26-episode frikkin' anime series. |
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Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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When it comes to American animation, I've but one word- nonplussed.
Animation seems to be, more often than not, a forum for comedy in the States. While it can be excellent at doing so (Tex Avery, Fritz Freileng, Chuck Jones, Matt Groening, and Pink Panther cartoons all come to mind), there doesn't seem to be much of an effort to go beyond that. There have been some stand outs. "Cool World" and "The Last Unicorn are two I can think of, but these aren't the major marquee titles that get the public's attention. In fact, I can't remember the last time someone mentioned "Cool World" to me. The effort to create serious animated films seems to have gained ground in America, not only with the increasing popularity of anime, but with the new ready availibilty of CGI. I don't doubt that, within time, the US will have its own "Ghost in the Shell" or "Grave of the Fireflies". But, right now, we seem to have stalled somewhere around "Atom Boy". |
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Grive
Posts: 21 Location: Monterrey, México |
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Actually, I'd be more willing to give it to Emile Reynaud and his Theatre optique, an invention he made in 1888. The Theatre optique showed images painted on strips of celluloid, which allowed for long running times for animation. I won't deny the importance of people like Edison (And his "Enchanted Drawing") or Raoul Barré, but I believe that animation wasn't born in the U.S.
I don't think that's the exact reason. It's more a separation in the evolutionary paths of animation in the west and japan. Thanks to Tezuka Osamu, manga (and anime) became way more complex and had a larger spectrum of genres, plots and themes available to it - things that aren't for children - whereas Walt Disney in america established animation as something that was mostly for children. These two persons changed the courses and history of animation. As I recall, animation in the US started being for adults in the most part (Raoul Barré's works, for example, dealt with things unfunny to children, like poverty and class distinction), and Walt Disney popularized animation as children's entertainment. Tezuka Osamu made manga and anime that appealed to children in the surface, but had enough depth to appeal to adults too (probably thanks to his educated background). So, anime has developed more into an entertainment method that ranges from animation kids will enjoy thoroughly (Totoro, Pokemon) to dark, adult anime (Wicked City, Hentai). Which is better? I really don't think one is inherently superior to the other, it's a matter of opinion. Personally, I prefer anime, mainly because I'm now an adult, and few western animated movies or series appeal to me, while anime still does, and probably will for a long time. Oh, and we also have to take imagination into account: In japan, being imaginative isn't considered a sign of inmaturity, while adults who imagine fantastic stories and characters and let their inner kid play are usually considered as inmature in the west. |
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Ataru
 Posts: 2330 Location: Missouri (Strikeman) |
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It has gotten better in the last couple years, and I grown up on the stuff.
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PuertoRicanMan
Posts: 30 |
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Which is better anime or US animation? I thinik most of us would agree that anime is better for a variety of reasons. I didn't want to get into that debate.
I was just curious to see what some others see. For some reason I completely forgot the shows CN has. I used to be a fan of Dexter.. but then they changed it a lot for the worse I think. Courage The Cowardly Dog is great. I agree that in the last couple of years these shows have gotten a lot better. For a while it seemed to me that a lot of the stuff that was coming out was either bases of a movie or it was completely CG.. and it both cases it seemed that they used that as an excuse to make a bad show. |
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floor182
Posts: 20 Location: cali |
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the US tries
but the Japanese dont hold back and great into deeper thought i think if you dont get what im sayin its ok |
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Hotaru
Posts: 481 Location: NY |
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Hotaru's Sister: I agree with you Floor. The typical view of animation in America is that either a) it's just for kids or b) people will be too wowed by "amazing special effects and fluid animation" to notice a crappy story. While for the japanese, animation is one of the most common art forms so alot more if put into it, and there's more variety. Of course, as was mentions, there are exceptions. There are some good American animations (old Disney, AS etc), and there are some bad japanese animations.
On a side node: Floor, even though I'm not Japanese, I take offense to your use of the word "Japanese." Japanese is a derogatory racial slur against the japanese, and while I certainly don't think you hold such views, I can't help cringing at the sight of the word. |
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Aya Reiko
 Posts: 166 Location: Nowhere and Somewhere |
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Varies. It can go from so-so to bad to worse.
Non-Prime time series often lack production value. Most are quick hack jobs out to make a quick buck off of ad rates and merchandising. And there's the recent trend of the insanely PC character design. This leads to the other major problem, the general public still regards animation as kiddie-stuff. This is why no US film will ever stray too far from the status quo for years to come. And the original Heavy Metal and Rock & Rule are both Canadian films. So this is what I grade as good US animation: The Simpsons - The original rule-breaker. Animation may not be top-notch, but at least the stories were. South Park - The successor to The Simpsons. Watch South Park: The Movie. Trust me, that alone says more about this topic than I ever could. |
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Vicious
 Posts: 97 |
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Batman on WB? There were a few good eps, but it was mostly mediocre. Now the earlier stuff on fox, THAT was good batman.(Though it may be that some people are refering to that since WB showed reruns of the show back when it was on fox) WB's Batman Beyond was cool though.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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"Most are quick hack jobs out to make a quick buck off of ad rates and merchandising."
So is 90 percent of anime. Don't let nipponophilia cloud your judgement. -Zac |
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