Blog Talkback: Toons of the 2000s: Top 25 Animated Television Series Countdown #5-1

Yes, but the execution of it didn't work for me. No suspense, no element of surprise, not one original thought, but all of it was done with such a self importance, like the writers didn't even know by themself how unoriginal they were. (Which sounds logical to me, because otherwise they would have tried to be better.)

Well, the least I'm looking for is that if you tell me a dumb and predictable story, that has probably been told a million times before, you do it in an entertaining or interesting way. Look at Samurai Jack. The stories for some (many) episodes can be told in one short sentence and many of them are just "Jack Vs warrior XY", but I was sitting on the edge of my seat for most of its run.

Yeah, maybe, but in Season 1 I couldn't care less about anybody on screen, which is just the worst thing to do when you try to convince your viewers to tune in again.

I used Spongebob as an example, because it's Nick's another popular cartoon show. And while I don't know how big the animation budget of either Spongebob or Avatar is/was, we can be sure that the Sponge has a really big one, just because of its international popculture phenomenon status. Still, it didn't have this status in Season 1, where the animation was already superior to Avatar. You wanna compare it to other action shows? Sure. Ben 10 has very similar problems, but it doesn't have these heavy frame skips during character movements, that Avatar has. The Secret Saturdays can be pretty wooden from time to time and they have some trouble to animating emotions, but the movements look at least fluid (although they have the habit to stop abrupt). Kim Possible is maybe one of the best animated TV cartoons of the decade, although a certain animation studio caused some bad looking episodes in season 1. And even an Adult Swim show like The Venture Bros has some very satisfying animation!

Wait a second, I thought I said that that the action scenes are good animated. Maybe it has something to do with the language barrier and I accidently formulated it wrong, but I always said that the action scenes look very good.

Like I said, even if the show would all of a sudden satisfy me in its last two seasons, it has still the in my eyes one bad first season, which for me already disqualifies it for the #1 spot. I think this place should be held by an overall satisfying cartoon and not by one that wasted a third of its run.
 
Wait, if American Dad! was supposed to be tied with Family Guy, shouldn't they have wound up in 6th and 7th place? Now I'm confused - how exactly was this scored?


Yeah, that came out today. Anyone know how the reviews went?
I know it's gonna be horrid, but I'm gonna see it anyway. :sweat:
 
Let me point out that I'm moderately conservative as far as politics go and I enjoy Family Guy. I don't take the liberal jokes too seriously because it's satire. Satire pokes fun at things. It's really not a big deal.

Either way I gotta say I'm disappointed SpongeBob and Family Guy aren't in the top 5 (I'd say Futurama too, but the mediocre DTVs brought it's greatness down a notch), but I suppose I can live with it. Robot Chicken and Flapjack are right where they belong though.
 
Spongebob uses the same backgrounds over and over again, Avatar gives us beautifully detailed and varied landscapes we would be lucky to see used for more than two or three episodes. That sort of thing eats at the budget.

Frankly I don't have any problem with the animation in Avatar...not sure where you're looking.
 
Why do you always have to drag South Park into a Family Guy discussion?

They simply thought Family Guy is funnier than South Park. That's why it's higher. There's no conspiracy here, it's just as simple as that.
 
Ok Ranting Swede, we can just agree to disagree. However, I want to clear one thing up:



No, I understood what you meant. You said that the action scenes are well animated. But then you acted like that doesn't really help the show itself. My point is, you can't just admit a major part of the show is well-animated, then criticize the show in general for being poorly animated.
 
One thing I don't like is that I felt South Park should be a little higher on the list in the top 10.
Justice League even more so. Danny Phantom's nice, but Justice League is WAY better. That should be in the Top 5. Heck, DP is flawed and I feel the article doesn't convince us on why it should be here. It belongs in the 25-21 instead, if that!

That's why I didn't add it to the Nicktoons Top 5. I like the show, but it's just not good enough!
 
I have a sneaking suspicion Wakfu will not be on this list. Which is a shame because it's easily one of the Top 5 shows of this decade. Then again, only one other person besides myself here knows of the show so it's not really surprising I suppose. :sweat:
 
I myself think that Avatar's animation is beautiful. And it only gets better as it furthers. (Season 3 was the best!)

The scenery, landscape, and backgrounds are detailed, colorful, and lively. The elements themselves are very pretty. The water is fluid and pure, and the fire is very elegant looking and vibrant (especially in season 3)

The fight scenes are also gorgeously choreographed, much more elegant than a typical brawl with just straight on punches.
 
I'm not too sure about that. Just because the 4Kids series didn't end up on this list doesn't mean that it was unknown outside of its core fanbase. This is only a list made from people's opinions, so it shouldn't be taken as fact. Plus, the fact that all of the episodes are on 4Kids' website and Nick will be airing the series in the future makes me think that more people will know of this version of the turtles. I think that it's a possibility at least.
 
Hope you don't mind me asking but why did you guys take American Dad out of the running? Did some people not think it was worthy of tying Family Guy?

And how come nobody could write an article for Moral Orel? That show certainly had quite a lot of irreverence and social commentary in it, it was pretty ferocious at times, find it strange nobody had anything to say about it at all.
 
I respect your opinion, and honestly, most of this is just difference in preference. However, I do have to say there are a lot of twists in the show. Just because the final objective remains the same doesn't mean the plot didn't take many turns, detours, and shocks along the way. Just in Season One, I'd say there were major twists in several episodes without even counting the first three - when they learned about Sozin's Comet, when the origins of Aang and especially Zuko were revealed, pretty much everything revolving around Yue, when Zhao nearly killed Zuko, and really everything in the finale took me by shock. And no, you can't just dismiss Zhao's killing Zuko as "It's a cartoon, so they're not gonna kill anyone." There was a certain aura in the show which made you feel like anyone could die at any time - they did kill off characters, by the way.
 
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