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So I was watching Saturday morning cartoons with my kid and noted how much Japanimation influence there is nowadays.  I won't pretend to be an expert in the field but its pretty easy to spot.  The spiky hair, the big eyes, etc were all over cartoons like the new Transformers.  Although I can appreciate the art work, I don't really care for it.  Matter of fact I've grown a bit sick of it. (no offense if you like it) How do you feel about it?   

I had a friend who was huge into Anime.  He had a friend in Japan who he'd trade comics with.  Oddly, his friend preferred X-men comics to Anime. 

Years ago it was good, but now it's too simplistic. When we did the 100 best cartoons thread, it was plain for all to see that all the "best" ones were american cartoons, the vast majority being pre-90's. I think animation is very poor today, I see no excuse for standards to have dropped so badly within the last 10-15 years. Plus, alot of these kids shows are so basic by design and story that they are practically souless.

When I was younger I used to do alot of drawing and would often make pictures of cartoon characters of the time, be it He-Man and Lion-O, the Turtles or the Dungeons & Dragons gang. Being inspired by other artists work, made me better at doing art when it came to school work. You could draw most tv characters now in about 3 seconds and they would pretty much all look the same. Also, these kids shows now don't seem to carry any kinds of morals within the "stories" and they lack the great music and variety of colour.

I voted No. The only Anime I like is "Ghost In The Shell" and "Fist Of The North Star". Those are classic series, that are for a mature audience and have lots of work and effort put into them.

No. NO. NOOOooooOOOOOoooo!!!!!!! Oh seet jeebus no!

I like this kind of cartoon....!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2YVwH5J3E

Every once in a while I like to see an anime movie, but then not the ones aimed at kids (not the hentai stuff, either; just the stuff for grown-ups). I'm with RC; Warner Brothers (1930s-1940s), Tex Avery, and other animation pioneers made the best stuff. The cartoons from the 80s that were listed in the "Best cartoons" thread were, in my opinion, substandard, stiff, and very poorly animated (although they were still better than most Hanna-Barbera craptoons). The stuff today mostly all looks the same; that "anime" style has robbed many cartoons of their individuality. Nicktoons have avoided this for the most part, but most of the anime-ish cartoons look the same and have the same basic plots: collect all the {fill in the blanks} before the bad guys get them in order to get to some unspecified goal or play the card game and defeat the bad guys to save your friend. They are simply shilling video games or card games with no real entertainment value.

RC-  basically, the older a cartoon is, the better.  the best craziest ones are the ones from like the 30's where daffy duck was completely insane.  I sawa  good one the other day where oswald rabbit wanted a milkshake.  the ppwner of the milkshake establishment put some milk into the metal cans and then put the cans in the wasteband of a topless hippopotumus who did a few secnds of bellydancing then it was done

no offense to the topic starter or fans of the modern cartoons of couse

I don't care one way or the other.  If the cartoon is good, it's good.  Anime influence isn't going to be a deal breaker.

The Batman was rubbish.

Look at how cool and well thought out the art design was on the Batman TAS.

And "The Batman"'s Joker looked like a demented monkey :hatred:

I guess I don't care much.  I like the older stuff like Scooby Doo and I like some Japanese stuff like Cowboy Bebop and Tank Police.  I think today's stuff would suck whether or not it had an anime influence - it's just product.

Doesn't matter if it's anime or something else, I hate it when everything starts to look the same. Everytime the viewing public shows an interest in something, everybody's got to copy it. Creativity goes in the toilet, and good shows are diminished through repetition and imitation. Of course, the same applies to live-action shows, movies, music and so on.

I like my cartoons "cartoonish". I remember watching Speed Racer and some Hercules cartoon (I haven't seen or thought about it in 30-35 years) as a kid and thinking the animation was weird, then.

Love Cowboy Bebop, though.

Anything after about 1960 sucks hind tit. The quality fell off sharply about that time. Just in the number of cells made per toon was reduced greatly and then they went with overlays where the image didn't change just the mouth moving. Now along come Anime with their BIG ANIME EYES ... what's up with Japanese animation and big round eyes, I have theories.

No, I'm fed up of it.  A few years ago Cartoon Network put out Samorai Jack.  This floored me beucase it was an action cartoon that did not look like Anime.  I actually rememer thinking "wow" when I first watched it.   Good stuff if you haven't seen it.  Its the same guy as did the Clone Wars.
-Ed

One of the big problems is that it's just a superficial influence without any real understanding of the techniques involved.  Japanese anime is its own unique thing and I don't think much of it would be called a "cartoon" in the traditional sense.

If you want to learn to be disappointed with (or possibly hate) most animation, check out John K.'s (of Ren & Stimpy fame) blog:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

Whether or not you're a fan of his work, he knows his stuff.  It's a very educational blog, basically an online course in animation and cartooning.

I still enjoy many of the old crappy 80's and 90's cartoons I grew up with, though.

South Park has likely some of the most basic, simplistic animation possible, but who watches South Park for the quality of the animation? It's the story that's funny, it might fail if it was well animated. 

The guys at South Park don't let the animation part get in the way. I remember the first time I saw SP, I thought "Are they doing this crap with CONSTRUCTION PAPER?", and had forgotten about it by the time the show was half way over. I LOVE how unforgiving they are, Kenny died every episode for a while, some people (Canadians as it turns out) have heads that are in two pieces, they've advanced one whole grade in the 10 years it's been on, it's perpetually winter, and they DO NOT EXPLAIN IT. When I first heard of it, before I had seen the show, people were talking about how Kenny died every episode. I was asking how the hell that worked, and people said "That's just how it is". I honestly thought there was going to be some explanation for it, , but no, , I just got used to it. When they did finaly elude to an explanation, , it was even more ludicris than him dying every show and appearing alive in the next. I am kinda bummed how little airtime Jesus gets these days though.

Personally, I don't care for any Anime. A few years ago they put on a cartoon that (I believe) was supposed to parody Anime, , take it to the extreme, including the totally senseless name. It was called Bo-BoBoBo-Bo-Bobo, and it was the weirdest think, , and not completely in a good way. I chalk it up in the same row as the Pokemon crap that started 10 years or so that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

When I was a kid, I couldn't stand Speed Racer, , and the quality that made me not like it is something I see in alot of today's Anime. Anime seems to have a style over substance approach to things, which is escpecially annoying since I don't care for the style.

Classic cartoons and anime collide:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYRPvz-LV-k

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has negativity on the subject.  I prefer the 70s/80s animation style more than anything.   Stuff like He-man, Thundarr, GI Joe, etc.  I did watch this show over the weekend and kind of dug the theme.  I would say it kind of mixes 90s animation with 70s cartoon themes.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Saturdays.jpg)

That clip summed it up pretty well IMO. .

I think it's getting way overused.  I mean, there are some "anime style" cartoons I like because they're good shows (Avatar, for instance), but it bugs me when we're seeing a lot of old school shows redone in Anime style (like the new Transformers, or Lunatics for instance).  It just doesn't LOOK right now on robotic characters.  And what really bugs me is when, for comedy effect, they have the character briefly morph into these REALLY exaggerated "large faces" and stuff, to me, it destroys the mood and takes away any sort of credibility or seriousness the show is trying to build (a la Teen Titans).

And for that matter, what is UP with that "tear drop" thing that I keep seeing over and over?  Yes, I know what it means in Japanese cartoons, but why the heck are American cartoons now using it as well?  A drop of water by someone's head doesn't mean s**t to us Americans!  (Yeah, call me ethnocentric if you want, but I stand by my point, plus I doubt it means anything to Canadians, Afrcians, Europeans, etc, etc either.)

Tear Drop? Enlighten me for those of us that do not, have not, will not watch Anime.

the thread seems to be for people who DO like modern cartoons.  why insult the topic starters tastes?

Actually nope, I rather dislike anime influence in modern cartoons hence my original post in the thread.

so do you like any modern cartoons or just very old ones
 

I like some modern cartoons but I mostly like stuff from pre-anime explosion in the past few years. 

I'm not sure if I'd even call it an anime explosion. I like real anime. It's this faux anime everybody's doing - superficial knockoffs that try to look like anime. That's what we're seeing too much of.

I don't even like the name..."Anime". It's like saying "I like Annie-May". Like you've got a crush on a Walton.

I forgot, Guyver: Bio-Boosted Armour is good  :teddyr:

My anime preferences go farther back, to when most of my friends had no name for it other than "Japanese cartoons." Star Blazers, Force Five and Battle of the Planets were among my favourites growing up. I like some of the later stuff too, like Evangelion and Dragonball Z, and movies like Metropolis or Steamboy. It's anime in the vein of Pokemon, Digimon, etc. that I don't care for. That's the style that seems to have taken over, going back a few years to when you could watch Fox for two hours on Saturday morning and see nothing but Digimon.

Ironically enough, the big eyes characteristic of anime are a direct result of American toon icon Betty Boop. The Japanese fell in love with her freakish peepers and started drawing their characters with similarly grotesque oculars. So, if you hate giant eyes in Japanese cartoon characters you can blame Betty Boop and her American creator Grim Natwick. Now you know... "AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE!" :teddyr:

As far as the anime influence in current American productions, I couldn't care less. The only cartoons I watch that were created in the last 5 years are either Adult Swim comedies or Cartoon Network's "Chowder" and "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack", which I'm pretty sure both of which were created by former Spongebob writers. I lost interest in anime right around the time that Spriggan came out and the utter saturation of the market began. That's not to say that I'm anti-anime, but I no longer watch things just because they're Japanese made or influenced.

15 years ago my friends and I had to wait for the Sci-Fi Channel's annual "Anime Invasion Week" to get exposure to new stuff... and by "new stuff", I mean dubbed stuff from the '80s that was new to us. We'd mark it on our calenders anytime TBS would have a midnight showing of Vampire Hunter D or Robot Carnival, then spend the week up to it counting down the days. I miss those days...

I was born in the early 90s, so I had a chance closely how animation and anime crossed for my early years.  To answer the topics question, I don't really care.  Anime influence can work well for certian cartoons, Avatar, Teen Titans, and Kappa Mikey(Actually, that show pretty much seemed to mock that style of animation by adding characters that were drawn with American influence and with Japanese influence).

I'd like to know about the "tear drop" thing too.  I can't recall noticing it before.

As for anime, I don't really care one way or the other.  I'll watch any style of animation as long as the story is good and it's well drawn within its style. 

Well, I watch a lot of anime and I am a big fan, but the teardrop thing still puzzles me.  Though, through my experiences watching the shows, I have theorized that the teardrop represents 3 things, embarrassment, witnessing something weird, and feeling slightly threaten.  I think the teardrop represents those things and that’s how it is represent in anime character.

According to my sources, the drop of water means the character's either embarrassed or thinking deeply about something.

Yeah, the 1960s is when it switched from theatrical shorts to TV shorts.  They were produced quicker and had much lower budgets - hence, cheaper, inferior, animation.  On the whole, I'd also say writing standards fell - at least in the old school style cartoons, like those from Warner Bros.


One thing to keep in mind is there's a heavy filter on what kind of anime we see in the west.  We only get a very small percentage of anime produced.  It's a pretty big thing over in Japan, which runs a huge gauntlet of genres and styles - think of how American film must look outside the USA when the only films that get wide releases world wide are the gigantic big budgeted Hollywood action films. 

One thing I will say though - anime is, on the whole, amazingly homogenous visually.  If you watch three or four different American cartoons, you'll likely see much more variety between them than 95% of all anime.

I don't know, I'm not really an anime "fan" per se, there have just been shows I liked in the past.  I haven't watched any anime in a year or two, actually.  My personal favorite is Trigun, for what that is worth.

As far as the influence - I was fine with it when it was minor in the 90s.  For example, Gargoyles has some anime influence in its visuals, but it is relatively minor and actually adds to its look.  There are a lot of shows now that are HEAVILY influenced by anime, and it is done poorly to boot.  And I don't like that at all.  One thing western cartoons have in abundance is variety in visuals, and they really should work to maintain that. 

I also don't think anime-type storylines should be adapted to western cartoons.  It really is never that well-done, and they're so ridiculously bloated in the Japanese originals (I'm referring to Shounen Jump type stuff like Dragon Ball, which is what normally gets ripped off) that they can't ever copy them very well.

Anime influence seems, potentially, like the death blow to the individuality of animated cartoons.  It's all starting to look the same to me.

Batman The Animated Series

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IsNOu0_V9Tg

The Batman

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1LXGB1rDfJc

Oh, man...

I'd vote against "The Batman" just because of what they did to the little squirrels.

Ya know, I feel the same way.

I got nothing against anime. In fact, I dig it. I'm not hardcore obsessive like I know a lot of people can get with it, but I like it. I'm not too deep into it, but I really like stuff like Devilman, Akira, Ghost In The Shell, and a lot of H-anime. I even liked The Big O. But I really, really, really don't like the way that "edgy" anime style has integrated itself into everything nowadays. Look at that new Batman cartoon on the W.B. It's terrible.

Of course, at the end of the day, I really couldn't give a rat's patoot what the art looks like, as long as the story itself is still good. I'm not a fan of this new anime-inflected version of EVERYTHING, but I could live with it... if only the cartoons themselves didn't suck so hard these days.

I'm a big 11-year old, really. I still live cartoons and Saturday morning programming and "stupid" kids' stuff. But there are very few cartoons around nowadays that are any good. Remember the old W.B. Batman and Superman cartoons? I can watch them now and still be blown away. It isn't just nostalgia. Those shows were genuinely great. I watched Batman and Superman every chance I could, and I HATE Superman. That's how good that Superman toon was. Cartoons today suck. Hard.

Did you ever see Justice League?  I thought it was pretty solid.  But yeah, kids cartoons are pretty crap on the whole now.

Ugh.

I'm totally into anime at the moment. The thing you have to understand is that most of the appeal has less to do with style and more with story. The evolution of manga and anime in Japan (and lack of censorship, especially to younger viewers) allowed the medium to address broad themes and concepts. By contrast, American animation, which was based around vaudville and innocuous humor, over time became thought of mainly as children's entertainment.

The big eyes that the style is famous for was inspired partly by Max Fliesher cartoons but even more by Disney (Snow Wite and Bambi, in particular, which influenced "God of manga" Osamu Tesuka. Its a convention that has survived mainly due to the Japanese placing such a high value on cuteness. Big eyes denote an innocent character (such as Ash Ketchum in Pokemon), whereas slanted eyes suggest a more menacing character (such as Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop).

The funny thing is, some of the "classics" you mention, particlarly from the 80's onward, had much of the animation duties performed by japanese anime companies. This includes Batman: The Animated Series (which was even more inspired by anime's adult themed storytellying), Jem, Inspector Gadget, GI Joe (all American hero my ass), Transformers (a series which was originally adapted from a line of Japanese toys) and Thundercats.

The difference now is that many of the American cartoons that you see today, like the most recent Batman series, are making the conscious effort to mimic the style and content of a "typical" anime. The suits in charge of all these shows, by the way, seem to think anime means "edgy" artwork, lots of speed-lines, big eyes, pointy noses, lots of flashing explosions, and little else.

As I said before, I really couldn't care less about the artwork (though I do admit that I'd like to see a return to more Westernized styles, especially in the case of Batman... dammit, I miss Bruce Timm! ...anime influence or no, there's a difference between being influenced for the better, and just straight copycatting... which is what you see so much of today) as long as the cartoons themselves are good. And that's the big problem with the cartoons I see today. Anime, non-anime, whatever. Hell! Give me that old Golden Book style where there weren't any moving pictures, just cameras panning across still illustrations. I'll take scribbles if ya got 'em. It doesn't matter. Just put some effort into the writing, ya know?

Another example :

Extreme Ghostbusters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwHD7Y_Duso


The Real Ghostbusters


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8eLP4Bgsuo&feature=related

Most of what's on cartoon Network is junk.  If anime influence means that we actually get something that's funny without being gross, offensive, or boneheaded, then I'm fine with it.

Looney Toons... now THERE'S art, IMO.

God, have you seen The Loonatics, or whatever its called, where they take the classic Looney Tunes and make 'em "edgy."

::vomit::

 :hatred: :hatred: :hatred:

how dare they!!!!!!! blastphomy!!!!!!!!