shadokitty

I'm finding that Boomerang is actually a pretty good resource for classic cartoons. Yesterday I caught one of the Bugs Bunny cartoons on the Looney Tunes block. Earlier today I caught part of the Tom & Jerry block. I've got plenty of DVDs to skim through as well. Because a large portion of my collection are 80s cartoons that I used to watch growing up. Even though the episodes are available on YouTube, I've been considering the Mighty Orbots DVD set. The main thing that has kept me from pulling the trigger is knowing that it's a MOD set. I had a bad experience when my dad got me Gog for Christmas one year. It was a MOD DVD and never played very well.

LJG765

Both will be missed! I will have to make sure to watch The Little Mermaid this month.

I've only seen the show once but I remember enjoying it. I think it was a bit cheesy but definitely watchable!

mrcellophane

I started the challenge with several episodes of ThunderCats, one of those 80s cartoons that I watched in syndication in the 90s. It's a silly cartoon meant to sell toys, but I love it. The worldbuilding is extremely bizarre (robot bears, a mummy in an evil pyramid, several races whose planets have been destroyed), and the characters are a lot of fun. (Except Snarf. Snarf is the worst.)

orlmac

I watched ThunderCats with my kids when they were growing up, then watched it with my great nephews when they were growing up. I requested the second season on dvd from the library for this challenge. They added some new characters for the second season (they had to have new toys to sell) and I don't remember watching the whole story arc where they were added. I still have a number of the toys from when my kids were young that survived my nephews also playing with them. And I agree, Snarf was an annoying character but I remember that my kids liked him so I guess they knew what they were doing. Now that I think about it, I'll probably look around and see if I can pick up the seasons on dvd for a reasonable price. This was one of the shows from the 80s that I really liked (along with Silverhawks and Inhumanoids).

BobO'Link

I didn't much care for it when I saw it during its original airings - "bad" animation (really just cheaply done - but that's how Filmation did all their work and it's very representative of their style) and poor voice acting were my biggest gripes. I've now watched it through at least 4 times (purchased the DVDs when I found it on sale and then the BR for much the same reason) and have a higher opinion of it but still feel the animation is cheap looking and Shatner, more than the others, sounds like he's just "phoning in" his performance most of the time.

LJG765

If I'm remembering correctly, Filmation only sprung for a few of the main ST actors, but not the whole crew. That might be adding to the sound quality issues as well.

shadokitty

I used to have a fan written book about the original series, which included an episode guide of both the live action and animated series. I believe that both James Doohan and Majel Barret voiced most of the alien crew members, like the caitian M’Ress and the weird looking alien with 4 legs.

mrcellophane

The only original cast member that didn't voice their character was Walter Koenig. Filmation wasn't going to hire Nichols or Takei, but Leonard Nimoy refused to voice Spock if they weren't hired. I should buy the Blu-ray release if only to replace the bulky plastic case my DVDs are housed in.

Took a break from ThunderCats last night to watch a bit of anime. I've been very slowly working my way through Cardcaptor Sakura, a late 90s anime about a young girl tasked with collecting "clow cards" - powerful cards that cause mischief after she accidentally frees them. It's a cute, low-stakes show and my first experience with the manga artist group CLAMP.

shadokitty

@orlmac. If you are interested, I do believe that Inhumanoids is available on YouTube. I have both Thundercats and Silverhawks through Google Play.

orlmac

Thanks, shadokitty! I am interested and I will check that out.

wishbone

Adding to this discussion Walter Koenig wrote the script for The Infinite Vulcan so he was somewhat involved in Star Trek: TAS. Here is an interview from 2019 with Walter about his episode.



This is a nice book on the series with episode information, trivia, sketches and production art, animation bloopers, etc.

Finally, in honor of Nichelle Nichols:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lorelei_Signal

davidh777

Lightyear is now on Disney+.

I like TAS. A bit hokey with the animation for sure, and it isn’t built for binge-watching as I did last year, but it does have an authentic Trek feel.

coyoteblue

Just saw that Crunchyroll bought Right Stuf Anime (which includes Nozomi), which in and of itself is ~okay~, but Crunchyroll was bought earlier by Funimation, which had been acquired earlier by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Which means Sony owns a helluva a lot of the North American anime market, which does not give me the warm and fuzzy feels.

coyoteblue

I don't think it's come up yet, but how does everyone feel about The Sandman? I think there's going to be plenty of cgi background and characters.

LJG765

So weird that they wouldn't hire one more person, especially to complete the main crew. I have to admit, though, I do enjoy that clunky case! I am a sucker for packaging even if it's not the most practical. I may have even gone out of my way to buy the Brady Bunch set with the shag carpeting...

I'm glad he was included at least in one episode!

Thanks, I didn't realize they were putting it on D+ so quickly. I"ll have to watch that at some point this challenge. I do agree with you about TAS. I think a lot of shows don't hold up well to binge watching. The majority of them were created with the expectation that you would be watching them at least a week apart, so there is a lot of repeating info, credits, jokes...and so on that if you sit down and binge watch, get old fast. A big one for me was the original Batman. I really enjoy the show, but after watching a season and a half, I had to take a break that is now at least a couple years long!

I haven't watched it and haven't seen anything about it. The IMDB summary does lead me to feel like there would be quite a bit of CGI in it as well. Feel free to watch it and count it as a wild card if it doesn't qualify for the animation challenge...if the CGI isn't a significant part of the show, for example. I wouldn't say it would have to be half CGI, but it should be more than just a bit here or there, if that makes sense.

BobO'Link

A month or so back I read somewhere that The New Adventures of Batman & Robin is pretty much a continuation of the 1960s Batman live-action series and uses the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward for Batman and Robin. Well... it's pretty inexpensive and I found it and The New Adventures of Superman, the "companion series," on sale at Hamiltonbook.com so ordered a copy of each.

I started the Batman one today. Oh my... it "features" Bat Mite, a character I pretty much loath in the comics and detest in this series. He, or it, has been in every episode so far and the "humor" that's applied falls completely flat (like almost all of the humor injected into these Saturday morning superhero series). Even as a kid I'd have not found the humor funny in any way. These two came out as I graduated college and had pretty much stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons as they'd degenerated into these unfunny, and generally poorly animated, things. I blame the cheapness of the networks and generally poorly conceived stories coupled with the sweat-shop style animation used by Filmation (who also did Star Trek: TAS), and very generic, repetitive, music/score for this decline. Whoever does the voice work for the Joker is simply horrible. They can't keep a consistent voice style and switch from a "Ted Knight" type voice to a high pitched giggling voice, often in mid-sentence. Blech... At least West and Ward do good work.

I've not watched any of the Superman series yet and am hoping for a slightly more serious affair. If not... they were inexpensive enough that a single viewing pretty much justifies the price I paid. At the moment, I can sat the Batman one will only ever receive that single viewing...

shadokitty

It seems that at least the majority of the Hasbro cartoons are available on YouTube. I know that GI Joe, Transformers, Inhumanoids, and Robotix are on there. Plus while browsing YouTube on my Switch, I just found Visionaries as well, and watched the first episode. I believe I also detected Chris Latta as one of the Darkling Lords. He was apparently a well used voice actor in the Hasbro cartoons, given that he was also Starscream as well as Cobra Commander, in addition to other characters on both shows.

LJG765

Over the last few days, I've been going through my collection and realized I never actually used a digital code from Rio 2. I'm offering it here with the caveat that the expiration date was a long time ago...like years. I already had a DC, so just never bothered to redeem mine. I know that expiration dates sometimes extend and it's always worth the shot.


Last night, I watched Lightyear. I thought it was cute but maybe not up to Pixar's normal standard. Totally think the controversies were overblown (Chris Evans vs Tim Allen, two women kissing *GASP!*). Evans tried his best to sound like toy Buzz and honestly unless I really concentrated, it wasn't distracting. The other issue was really a non-issue. The scene is in the background and is not the major focus of the movie. I'm honestly glad they included it because everyone needs representation, even though this really is just the least that could be done.

My main issue with the movie is that it really was more of a homage to every sci-fi movie out there. Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Wall-E...I'm sure I'm missing more, but every few minutes or so there would be music or a name or a visual that would bring up one of those visuals. Normally, I'm all for a little wink wink, nudge nudge, but in this case, there was way too much of it, that it became a mixture of all those movies instead of standing on its own.

shadokitty

I got Rio 2 once in a box of random movies I bought, where you were able to select the genres you wanted. I still haven't watched it, but given that I enjoyed the first one, I should some time. Maybe this year I will finally open the Dragonlance movie too. Bought it many years ago in the Walmart $5 bin, but have also heard from many fans of the book that it is terrible and highly reviled among the fandom.

shadokitty

I was watching Visionaries this morning when a thought occurred to me. One of the Spectral Knights is a blonde woman named Galadria. I got to wondering if that was a nod to Tolkien, given the blonde elf Galadriel.

shadokitty

Last night I was watching random videos on YouTube, and one of the videos was from a channel called Toy Galaxy. The channel has a lot of videos on tv shows and toys from the 80s, and last night's video was all about Exo Squad. It described the history of the cartoon, as well as the controversies it got into regarding legal issues with the toys. Part of that reason was Playmates started to reissue the Robotech toys under a rebranded name. Which also upset FASA, because at the time, they were claiming rights to the designs for the Battletech game.

Travis McClain

I spent the weekend and this morning going through the Scooby Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series box set. I'd forgotten that the "third season" was actually the third season of The Scooby-Doo Show in 1978, eight years after WAY concluded. There's no getting around several episodes featuring unpalatable, outdated racial stereotypes but outside of those the show holds up surprisingly well. The most dated thing for me was the use of Britpop songs played during chase montages in the second season. I'd forgotten all about those being a thing. I know the laugh track has fallen out of favor but I can't imagine this show without it. For me it's this implicit fourth wall breaking conceit that confirms we're in on the joke of the show. Despite the presence in our collective consciousness of Scooby pronouncing words with r's, he almost always calls his friend Shaggy instead of Raggy. I didn't catch him saying "ruh-roh!" either.

And you gotta give it up for Velma, as iconic a strong female character as TV has ever offered. She's smart, she's competent, she's insightful, and she's brave. She takes charge over Shaggy and Scooby when their cowardice kicks in. I suppose there's an argument to be made that she was really a model of pushing off the important work on the girl but I never read it that way. As a child, I simply saw a model that girls can be all those things Velma is, which is probably part of why I've just always taken that for granted.

The plots became more elaborate in that later season, which stands to reason as they'd had several years to grow as writers. They also started including more guest characters. There were several episodes where I honestly couldn't make out who the villain was because there were multiple candidates with motive, means, and opportunities. It seemed an inverse of the humor. There were some wacky gags from the beginning, but the humor came more predominantly from witty dialogue. As the show progressed, the emphasis shifted to increasingly wackier gags and the dialogue didn't feel as witty.

All in all, I can say that not only did I see why I dug this show as a child, but I enjoyed it now, too.

caligulathegod

The Disney Animated canon are so iconic that sitting down to watch them, I never realized I had never actually sat down to watch them. Outside of Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi and Dumbo, and the Little Mermaid to Hercules renaissance, I don't think I've ever really watched them all the way through. I got a boxed set of Blus a few years ago and am finally watching them. There were a handful that had not been released in HD when I bought it, but the last one finally came out a few months ago so now my collection is complete. My goal is all 60. Plus, I have Song of the South in HD (from a 35mm print).

LJG765

I am a huge fan of Disney films. I own their entire animated classics line plus the majority of the DTV sequels and quite a few of their other films that don't fall into those categories (live actions, docs...) I will say that not all of them are HD. I only upgrade if it falls into one of two categories: 1) It's a real favorite of mine or 2) I get a GREAT deal and can save space (Combo pack with multiple films in it like Hunchback 1 and 2.) Part of the problem I have with upgrading is that a lot of times the features aren't fully carried over, so then I have to keep both copies and that annoys me, so I'll stick with the DVD which is usually pretty decent visually anyway.

You'll have to share how you enjoy your first time watches!

davidh777

Lucky now on AppleTV+ is a pleasant-enough faux-Pixar movie. Not great but works as a family movie.

I burned through the first season of Lower Decks, and it was… fine. A couple of the episodes grabbed me more with their plot, but in general I was underwhelmed considering I’ve heard some raves. Last month Bobolink didn’t really rave, though, so maybe I’m not that far off-base.