Blog Talkback: Toons of the 2000s: Top 5 Most Influential People in Animation

Who here is being a CN/Anime fanboy? The only person involved with anime people have said they wished was up there was Miyazaki, who arguably does deserve it (and probably got narrowly beat out by the other anime guy), and has anyone here said someone from CN should be up there? There seems to be more Family Guy/South Park fanboying going on here than CN/Anime fanboying.

If anything, the staff are bigger CN "fanboys" since Fred Seibert, the guy responsible much of Classic CN, got to #2.
 
Without the success of South Park though, Adult Swim probably wouldn't be around, CN took a gamble on Adult Swim and it paid off, a lot of adult animation on cable is around because of South Park. I'm not saying SP invented limited animation, but you sure as hell saw a lot more of it after SP was a hit.
 
Well, South Park was a product of The Simpsons success, which probably came about because of The Flintstones.

Really, if you want to include the SP duo for existing in a long line of successful shows, you might as well make this list the "Top 5 Creators Who had Success" entry.
 
That's very debatable to say the least.

When Cartoon Network launched Adult Swim back in 2001, they acknowledged shows like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, the stuff that MTV did in the early 90s, and South Park as well as their own Space Ghost Coast to Coast as reasons for starting the block. However, at least in the early years of the block, Cartoon Network didn't want Adult Swim to be as crude as South Park but more of a borderline between the two.

If anything, Adult Swim knocked the luster of South Park down a few notches because they were different than South Park. And the Adult Swim model is a successful one. Comedy Central tried to emulate it. Not really working out so well.

There wouldn't be a South Park if Duckman and Beavis and Butthead didn't come first. South Park came around just as Beavis and Butthead and Duckman were winding down in 1997. History tends to skip those pages (for some reason, it's sealed together).

And all of those shows wouldn't exist if The Simpsons hadn't been a success on broadcast television.

And I sure as hell saw a lot of limited animation before South Park. I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, and limited animation been around on television since the 1950s. South Park hardly invented the mass use of limited animation on television. It's just that limited animation was masked by brilliant writing. That's why Hanna-Barbera is a legendary studio and why South Park and others are popular today.
 
South Park didn't have much to do with the creation of [as]. [as] owes its existence to the success Space Ghost: Coast 2 Coast and Toonami: The Midnight Run.

Pretty good list. Glad to see both Seibert and Lasseter there. Though, no love for Mike Lazzo? He's one of the reasons anime is big in America and was the creator of Adult Swim, which led to the revival of both Family Guy and Futurama, two huge adult-oriented animation juggernauts.
 
Here's the thing about Mike.

I like Mike. He's the guiding force of Adult Swim and Williams Street as a whole. But Mike played a relatively small role in a lot of the grunt work at Adult Swim. I give a lot of respect to Sean, Jason, Mike, Matt, Adam, and a whole lot of other guys and gals in the ATL. It's a group effort. Mike's more of the ringleader of the group, but in the end, he's largely a figurehead. The main reason behind anime's rise were the Toonami side of Williams Street, who are actually fans of the medium. Thankfully, those guys migrated and became a pivotal part the Adult Swim side of the company.

Like I said, I like Mike, but Adult Swim/Williams Street is more of a group-think environment than just the works of one individual. It wasn't an intentional snub. Just a lot more made a bigger impact on the medium this decade than Mike Lazzo.
 
I'm comfortable with Miyazaki as an honorable mention; his work in the '00s has been smaller in scale and, personal opinion, in quality than during the '90s. Still fantastic films, of course, and he's brought anime to the mainstream, but we're a few years late on it, y'know?

I'm not familiar AT ALL with the name Masao Maruyama, but Madhouse is probably the best animation studio in Japan this side of Ghibli, so, glad to see that get recognition. Same with Gen Fukunaga - FUNimation is like a benevolent deity in what is, in some respects, a dying industry.

And, of course, Lasseter and Catmull deserve the top spot. They brought Pixar to fame and fortune, flipped Disney up and down and (hopefully soon) up again, brought Ghibli to the US, and - most importantly - continually and successfully combine quality with profitability. That's something that EVERYONE in ANY medium should aspire to.
 
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