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I watched Batman: The Animated Series recently. Obviously still very good, I think everyone agrees with that. I don't think I appreciated the uniqueness of art deco Gotham when I was little.
I also watched a few episodes of Animaniacs a while ago, and I definitely did not pick up on some of the jokes in that show when it was first on. :P
"Fingerprints?"
Cut to an animaniac holding a timid looking purple clad rock star.
"No, thanks." -Dot
PS: what dou think about a lemmy community for talking about cartoons both old and new
!animation@lemm.ee
Thanks!
Huh, i forgot that exist though i am wonder if its more beneficial to have a community on just kids cartoons
Old cartoons somehow defined the feel of my childhood. It's one thing I get super sentimental about. I'd enjoy it.
I ended up rewatching a few episodes of Thundercats some years ago and it was... not great. Can't remember too many specifics (I think for one thing the dialog was pretty bad) but it definitely wasn't really appealing as an adult.
Thundercats! Not great, for sure, but I remember that the same weaknesses were still there in the 80s
Snarf was always insufferable. My idiot brother and I hated Snarf. Why was he not humanoid like the other Thundercats? Why was he a ripoff of Lost-In-Space's Doctor Smith? Why did he have weird crocodilian qualities? "snarf snarf"
Liono was just one dimensionally dumb. Kit and Kat were clearly there for the littler kids to relate to.
Tigra and Panthro were solid dudes. Cheetara and Pumyra were the closest thing to making me question my sexuality at a tender age. Mumm-ra was great - he had a nice pyramid and flying wrappers. Mumm-ra's henchmen have probably aged the worst.
Inspector Gadget. Ooof. Did not age well
Mysterious cities of gold and Real Ghostbusters 👌👌
Edit: to clarify, i mean the don adams cartoon series of Gadget.
Re inspector gadget - why not?
I was probably a bit harsh - it's not designed for an adult mind in any way shape or form, which is fair enough.
Ah so there's no dated no-nos, just that's it's better to leave in your child brain rather than revisit?
What about Inspector Gadget didn't age well?
Well, transformers holds up better than GI Joe, which holds up better than he-man, and that was the holy trinity back then.
But, the older cartoons held up better than any of those. The old Hanna Barberra, Warner brothers, and Disney stuff works as well on average as it did then. They were awesome back in the eighties, and they're still awesome.
Samurai Jack. Still awesome.
Samurai jack
The art etc is awesome
Yeah there are artistic scenes in samurai Jack that wow me even all this time later. Great show.
Well… I was maybe 18-19 when Butthead and Butthead came out, and 22 when Southpark came out… I’m 49… and I still love them both and watch all of them. I’m not up to date in the Simpsons which DOES go back to when I was in high school. Family Guy was early college too. All of them reference life I knew growing up and yes I feel the nostalgia watching them.
For me to comment on cartoons of my youngest childhood… Scooby Doo… Smurfs? Those are absolutely formulatic. Nowhere near the plots that toed the line as more “modern” cartoons.
Now I’m thinking of all the Adult Swim shows and getting a little teary eyed. 🥹
I’ve rewatched DBZ and it’s still great. Although there really is a lot of filler. I think watching on demand really highlights how much there is. Kai version was nice in its own way.
Two years ago when I had cable there was a channel that showed old He-Man episodes. They came on around midnight so I would stay up to watch. The animation style is looser and very experimental, which I remembered, but I really enjoy how rough and non-commercial it is. Reminds me of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon in its fantasy style.
The only catch was it was in Spanish but I don't think it lost much. Plus since the dialogue is simple, I could practice deciphering. All and all was fun to watch again.
The animation style is looser and very experimental, which I remembered, but I really enjoy how rough and non-commercial it is.
I get what you're saying and I agree, but it's kind of funny because the cartoon was literally created to promote sales of the toy. They still had creative freedom though because the toy didn't start with a backstory
Really? I mean I know they did that in the 80's but this was a wild bet in 1983 when it aired...
The Mattel company released the first wave of the Masters of the Universe toyline in 1982. After the Federal Communications Commission relaxed its ban on toy-based children's programming, Mattel decided to commission a cartoon to promote their toyline.
Holy shit. I was such a dopey kid.
I used to watch David the Gnome when I was young. When I went back and watched it as an adult it was the slowest moving thing I had seen in a while. I was amazed I had that kind of attention span as a kid.
I've been rewatching Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Space Ghost, and they hold up (if they were ever funny for you to begin with)!
I think my comedic tastes have changed. I used to love Family Guy, Ren and Stimpy, and American Dad but can’t do it anymore.
For me, it’s the classics that holds true: Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo.
I always hated Tom and Jerry. I always wanted Tom to win.
Pinky and the Brain.
Loved it then and still do.
I've been watching Hercules: The Legendary journeys from the 90s, and I watched them a ton as a kid, too. Love most episodes still even tho Kevin Sorbo is now a shitmonkey. They honestly had really positive messages, and it's just campy enough for the costumes and ancient animation to still be fun.
That's not a cartoon, is it?
Oh true. My bad, was thinking in context of old shows and forgot the topic.
For my kids cartoon, would probably be Static Shock. The animation is way tougher than I remember, but it was still really fun!
Gundam Wing was a trip. I think it's meant to be a drama about child soldiers set against a mecha backdrop (like a lot of Gundam), but you really have to fill in the gaps yourself when it comes to character motivations. Even with that, the dubbed dialogue is so hamfisted it's a hilarious watch.
Johnny Bravo was surprisingly wholesome!
Avatar: The Last Airbender holds up spectacularly well as an adult, if not even more so.
Justice League, Batman (The animated series), as well as early SpongeBob. I was surprised how many lines I remembered from SpongeBob even though it had been years since I had watched it. Dexter's Lab still entertains my mom and I, and Courage the Cowardly dog is amazing. I alsl still like Yu Yu Hakusho and Kare Kano.
I tried to re-watch Sailor Moon and couldn't make it past the first season (I would still say I like the story, but I couldn't make it to the "Good" parts). I also couldn't do Inuyasha. I can't seem to get Rocky and Bullwhinkle either, but for some reason I loved when that show came on during the off hours when I was a kid. To be fair, I can't tell what shows I don't like because they were secretly bad, or because I'm now an adult and my tastes have changed.
The only one I've re-watched and I didn't feel held up as good as it did when being a kid in the 90's myself was Doug. I'm sure a junior high kid would still like it, but it doesn't hit the same for an adult. But it's also the only one I used to watch growing up that was strictly for and about a junior high school aged kid.
Let me tell you about this show called Candle Cove ...
Is that the show with CandleJack? I heard that he-
I grew up in the late 2000s, honestly I think most of my childhood entertainment was just fine. The most notable thing is iCarly, and I recently watched Quinton Reviews' series on it - it holds up better than I thought, but I realized the moment he named as most fans losing interest was the same time I stopped watching it lol.
Other than that there's Danny Phantom which I watched again and was pretty fun, except for the classic kid show thing of spelling absolutely everything out for you and leaving nothing to be assumed or figured out from context.
When I was in middle school, I fell in love with MLP:FiM (the one that started in 2010). I mean that show is famous for amassing a lot of adult men and women as fans. This one's the most intriguing to me - I rewatch episodes when I feel like it, and it certainly did start as a kid show (a very good kid's show), but as it progressed they tried to integrate more action moments to keep their older audience. On the actual content though, I love the way it teaches lessons and I find that sometimes they're lessons I've forgotten. I honestly think more adults, outside of the context of having kids, should engage with kids media like this. I'm biased - I'm a bit of an age regressor, but I mean when you look around there's so many adults that have forgotten or never learned the essential lessons that media like MLP:FiM or recently Bluey lays out in an easy-to-understand way.
Samurai Jack still holds up.
We are really enjoying TMNT 1987 with our little one!/
Not cartoon, but a tween nineties Saturday morning show called The Guys Next Door. It was only on for a while but it was actually quite good, and watching clips makes me happy.
Johnny Test, very very energetic. Id describe it as decent but has a bad aftertaste.
Gravity Falls, still great.
Duck Tails, still awesome.
Other misc Disney shows that aren't animated like Hey Jessie, Lab Rats, and that one superhero doctor one are all alright. They're not good but I can see why I watched them.