>Crossexamining The Rebuttal

It's time to check out Jorge's final statements, and, well, it's talking about the effects of the industry because of what occurred in the 80s. Here's how he responded after I said animators have vast, yet limited, freedoms.

Nope. Even animators working on Disney have WAY, not “a bit”, more freedom to experiment. I’ve seen some things on Kim Possible, The Proud Family, and others that were way better than 80s cartoons.

I agree.

Animation on Edd, Ed, & Eddy is good.

*snickers* Okay.

Spongebob has good animation, a lot of the flat fake 50s series are surprisingly OK, they’re not as good compared to the 90s of course, and animation right now, I predict, is in a transition period away from the 90s style, evolving into something, and I’m not sure what it is, but for now, all artists in all studios have a lot more freedom to experiment and pitch ideas on NEW properties. New shows with NEW characters, something impossible in the 80s.

Galaxy High. Foofur. Kissyfur. ThunderCats. It may have been impossible in the 80s, but it had been done. As for moving away from the "90s style," you have to acknowledge that there actually was a solid "90s style," which it wasn't.

The early 90s had a late 90s feel. Ren and Stimpy was simply Hanna-Barbera retro with cooler character designs. Klasky-Csupo, once they got big with Rugrats, Duckman, and the first couple of seasons of The Simpsons, developed their own style for cartoons which continued into the 2000s. Fred Seibert engineered a movement that took place at both Hanna-Barbera and Viacom that was Hanna-Barbera retro cool with foreign influences, whether those influences were from Japan, France, Canada, or the UK. Spongebob also has that 60s retro feel more akin to the California surfer scene. Batman introduced the "animated style," which combined art deco from the 20s and 30s with Dave Fleischer's influential Superman shorts in the 40s, the spirit of the Tim Burton Batman 1989 movie, and the lessons Alan Burnett learned from his Super Powers tenure. The late 90s began to find influences in Japanese animation, but that was just a worldwide phenomenon that couldn't be ignored.

What we're seeing now (and what we will continue to see for the forseeable future) is a combination of all these ideas, which is, in turn, a combination of many elements that came before them.

But as to the stagnant belief of critics that the cartoons of the 80s were bland and uncreative, well, riddle me this. Aside from Fat Albert, Schoolhouse Rock, Battle of the Planets, and Star Blazers, can you show me a good cartoon from the 1970s that wasn't a Scooby dropping (mystery-solving teens/young adults with a unique distinctive character that the show was based on), based on a pre-existing property, nor was a spinoff (implied or direct) of another property?

Well, two of those are anime, so they don’t count.

Who said they didn't count? Animation is animation, regardless of who makes it and where it comes from. Otakus tend to want to segregate Japanese animation from animation from all over the world. I don't like the term "anime" because it's a segregated term, as if it's superior to any other form of animation just because it comes from Japan. Japanese animation became anime in the 80s because otaku became more prominent in this country and arrogant to boot.

THERE WERE NO GOOD CARTOONS IN THE 70s. It was the worst time for cartoons. Ever. Except maybe the period where they didn’t exist. So saying the “the 70s were worse!” is no defense of the 80s. It’s an insult, actually, to be compared to the 70s. That doesn’t mean the 80s were terrible in their own way.

Well, folks like you tend to make the 80s seem just as bad as the 70s, which, by your own admission, is untrue. When I see the 80s referred to as "not my favorite decade in animation" or "the worst period in television animation," it does frustrate me a bit.

Nothing good came from the decade.

Ok, who said that?

Nearly every other animation critic that hates the shows of the 80s other than the ones made by John K.. They're not hard to find.

You are quite right on this one; a lot of good things did come from the 80s. But nothing in terms of a series, until the Renaissance, late 80s. Nobody ever claimed no good animation RELATED things happened in the 80s.

Yeah, a lot of people basically felt that animation in the 80s were overcommercialized crap that was just made to sell more crap. People that feel that those shows, which are still, for the most part, still under lock and key and not on the air in the US. You'd catch the occasional Dennis the Menace or Dungeons and Dragons (which basically came back because the wizard character resembles a very popular boy wizard), but Galaxy High hasn't been on the air in any form in 10 years. Same with The Real Ghostbusters. The 1988 Superman series hasn't been on the air in almost 20 years, and it was the direct animation precursor to Batman: The Animated Series and was clearly ahead of its time.

Most of the innovations you listed were later in the decade, too. They laid the groundwork for ideas that would be expanded in the 90s, like the Disney Afternoon or Cartoon Network. And none of them have to do with production of series, like a specific show.

But it happened IN the 80s. Not after. The Disney Afternoon happened because of the success of DuckTales and Rescue Rangers in syndication in the 80s. Cartoon Network was built because of Turner's two big buying sprees in the 80s (his MGM/UA library purchase and the Hanna-Barbera/Ruby-Spears purchase).

I thought we were only covering American animation! Yes, anime in the 80s was of good or better quality than the decades before and after it, and it IS a good thing that it spread. But the two industries were so separated until the 90s that to compare them is stupid.

Again, the animation industry only became separate because of otakus who feel Japanese animation is superior than American or other international animation, because it isn't. Animation is animation, no matter the place of origin.

I have no idea when the “golden age” of anime was, or when it was considered worse. Did anime even have peaks and valleys?

Are you asking has their been a period where there was good animation from Japan and bad animation? Yes. Plenty of them. Every seasonal cycle has its fair share of good and bad shows. Some shows have poorly-animated episodes that they get cult status for the levels of ineptitude that's presented in them. For example, there's this really bad episode of Lost Universe that was so poorly animated. Seriously, google "Lost Universe" and "bad episode."

Well, that's that. The defense rests for now.