Do You Like The Anime Influence In Today's Cartoons?

[Mr. DS]

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. 

[Psycho Circus]

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.

[RCMerchant]

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

I like this kind of cartoon....!

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

[Derf]

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.

[lester1/2jr]

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

[akiratubo]

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.

[Doggett]

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

[Jack]

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.

[AndyC]

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.

[Eyesore]

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.

[CheezeFlixz]

NO!!

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.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

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

[Pilgermann]

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.

[CheezeFlixz]

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. 

[ghouck]

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.