Channel 4's 100 Great Cartoons

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Oh, come on. It couldn't have been that bad. Besides, at least someone has done a countdown highlighting the best Animation has had to offer. Frankly, I'm still wondering what's keeping the US from doing a cartoon countdown.
 
This list is eh... pretty bad so far (having watched 10+ parts so far) but it's got some interesting facts and they got some people involved in some of the animated works to chime in on them and that's pretty cool.

The scope of this is hard to gauge because not only does it include movies which makes things a huge mess in of itself but they also are ranking franchises and characters so as to separate the various Looney Tunes and Disney shorts among others. If this was a list of the greatest cartoon characters that'd be fine and even ranking shorts starring different characters by the primary character isn't such a bad idea but there are many Looney Tunes shorts which use more than one starring character. So I dunno I guess it's fine and they did it a while ago so no sense complaining about it but it just seems odd to do it that way.

One of the most interesting things about this list is both the British opinions on some of America's best known characters as well as the insight on British animation it offers. Some of which I have seen and much of which I have not. So if you fancy yourself an animation historian it's worth a look and entertaining for that reason if nothing else.

EDIT:

I finished watching it and I did find it interesting throughout so I still recommend it to anyone who fancies themselves an animation historian.

There was an evident British animation bias of course but well... what exactly did you expect?

I took the movies out of the list for roughly the top 30

#27 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
#26 - Futurama
#24 - Danger Mouse
#23 - Popeye
#20 - Looney Tunes
#18 - Ren and Stimpy
#15 - Aardman Animations
#11 - The Flinstones
#10 - Bugs Bunny
#5 - Family Guy
#3 - South Park
#2 - Tom and Jerry
#1 - The Simpsons

Yes they did rank Looney Tunes and they also ranked the various characters from Looney Tunes. Which doesn't make much sense, you should do one or the other but not both.

While I'm happy to see TMNT on their list and among so many greats it annoyed me greatly that they barely took even a moment to talk about it. One less than funny comedian talked about how he wished they were more like real turtles while the opening theme played. Not even a mention that they used to be called Hero Turtles in the U.K.? Very disappointing.

I'm not sure if you have to chock this up to lack of exposure for these shows in the U.K. but I couldn't hardly believe some of the omissions. No Batman (or the rest of the DCAU), no Animaniacs, no Pinky and the Brain, no Rocky and Bullwinkle, no DuckTales, no Muppet Babies and no Darkwing Duck. How do Transformers, Thundercats, He-Man and Ninja Turtles make the list when Batman: TAS doesn't? How can Animaniacs not be anywhere on this list? Did they never get good exposure in the U.K.? I'm going to assume that's absolutely the case for Cowboy Bebop but I know it at least aired in the U.K. Kind of surprised there was no DBZ because it was pretty big there from what I recall.



Plenty of websites and magazines have done one but as for a television network doing one like Channel 4 did here... I'd have to chock it up to a lack of interest.

I think it would be great if a list on a website were presented in video form with clips from the shows but that's a pretty daunting project I suppose.
 
Bearing in mind this is from 2005, I think..

Batman - Was on CN & CNX
Animaniacs - Was on CITV
Pinky and The Brain - Was on CITV
Rest of them - I'm sure they aired somewhere

Also,
Bebop - Was aired on both CNX & AnimeCentral
DBZ - Was just as popular over here as the US.

Batman & Bebop I could understand, since neither of them had mainstream exposure.

However Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain and DBZ I don't understand. The first 2 was on CITV or CBBC (can't remember) and DBZ was on Toonami frequently at the time.
 
I kind of find that statemant a little hard to believe. I mean, only 14 British toons made the countdown, compared to a whopping 74 for the US. Or did you mean that their cartoons didn't get much of a chance?
 
Seems someone dug out another top 100 ranking.

Whelp, here's a spreadsheet comparing all of them so far:
http://goo.gl/mYh2W

Besides the oddities that are exclusive (or nearly exclusive) to Europe, I find a few things odd about this list.

First and foremost, Its hard to take this list seriously when they are judging animated movies against animated series. If they are opening the list up to animated movies, there's any number of movies that Europe was guaranteed exposed to that needs to be on the list.

It seems there's a ton of "clumping" that occurred somewhat randomly. It looks as though they include all TMNT series ever made together but yet separate certain Looney Toons / Merry Melodies series out for seemingly no reason.

Beyond that, this list seems very fixated on slap stick series and related series. There seems to be a prejudice against action series.

I'm finding it hard to believe that series that were excessively popular in Europe didn't even make it on this list. We know Action Man, MASK, Vor-Tech, among the BKN library were very popular in Europe yet none of those series even made this list.

I find myself wondering if this list was focused around series that this channel ran and not animation as a whole. That's the only way this list makes any amount of sense.

/edit

After watching the first episode to ensure they weren't explaining some sort of logic behind the list I would seriously like to nominate this list as the worst one to date. It's --- just ---- bad.
 
I don't believe it was their intent to lump all the Ninja Turtles series together because this list was compiled in 2004 and if the 2003 series was even in the UK by then it wouldn't be far enough along to get noticed by the populace. There was no reference to anything but the 1987 series and they barely said anything about TMNT in those brief moments. Total bummer for my fellow Turtles fans. No respect.

I also find it particularly odd for them to rank Looney Tunes but also rank Bugs Bunny shorts, Daffy Duck shorts, Sylvester and Tweety shorts, Pepe Le Pu shorts, etc.

Also Punk, those are various lists other folks made that have been recompiled by Knighthammer for comparison sake. So Knight misspelled Phineas and Ferb, P&F wasn't on that UK list and it didn't exist then.
 
I remember seeing this a few years back - I was looking forward to it initially, but after a while I felt bored and disappointed. Some of the exclusions really do make me wonder.

The commentary is pretty typical of Channel 4's "Top 100" shows which they used to make over a few years in the 00s. Comedians emphasising perceived sexual innuendo in almost every entry - it gets rather boring. However, I do remember being amused by the rapper saying how attractive Cheetara was - I wonder if he's aware of the "furry" label? :D
 
AFter wasted nearly 2 hours watching all of this, all i have to say is :
- U have ruined my definitions about CARTOONS !
- SOMETHING HAS BEEN SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN !
Tks alot pal, now i have rashes in my brain
ABout the top 5, i'd like to present my list :D :
#1 : Tom and Jerry ( CREATION OF MANKIND's ANIMATIOns )
#2 : Space GOofs ( French ? Nah, worth watch )
#3 : Oggy and the cockroaches
#4 : The Simpsons ( Just fine )
#5 : Looney Tunes ( Bugs, Syl, Tweet ... )


P/S : Some maynot know, but the actual animation historians r us, r kids, childrens on all over the world !
 
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