Reveiw american animaion by decade.

L

LilMissDanceAlot

New member
I'll start! (Oh by the way, the reason i dont include animation from the pre-20's is simply because i have'nt seen that much of it. But if YOU have then feel free to share your thoughts on those golden oldies!)

1920's
Good times. Naturaly, the quality of the animation was very simplistic compared to what would come later, but imagination in terms of content and sight gags sure was there. My only complaint about this decade is that virtually all animated films belonged to the same "genre", if you can call it that, namely the sight gag oriented comedy (as oposed to more emotional, "artsy", action-oriented or thought-provoking films, for example). This is actually a complaint i have about the state of mainstream animation all the way up to the 60's.

1930's
Very good times. Disney was at their peak in terms of short films, which not only looked beautiful with its fluent movements, rounded shapes and warm colors (that most other studios more or less tried to copy), but also accasionaly strived for something more that just being funny. Certain films like The Old Mill and many Silly Symphonies also attempted (and succeded) in not only looking beautiful, but also being in a way naratively beautiful, if that makes any sense. They had an emotionality to them that made them stand out from the purely-for-laughs films that the other studios made. Of course the triumph of the decade was Snow White, that amazingly combined typical animated comedy with an egnaging and emotionaly involving storyline as great musical numbers. Another studio that makes me rate this decade among the absolute best ever is Fleischer. They took the absurdist animated comedy invented during the silent era and made perhapes the funniest and most bizare animated short films of all time.

1940's
Very good times. This decade seems have mostly continued with the styles and genres from the 30's rather than invent any significant new ones. The Disney feature lenght films from this decade were just as good or even better than Snow White, but the studios short films seemed to be slightly worse of. I miss the emotinality (i guess you could say cheesieness) of some of their 30's shorts. Warner Bros. was on top of their game now, and caried on the torch from the fallen Fleischer studios in terms of zany humor.

1950's
Very good times. Though i dont like the UPA/Hannah-Barbera limited animation style. Never have and never will. So i certainly dont see the UPA revolution as anything good. But what makes me rate this decade high anyway is the continued excelent work of other studios, like WB and MGM. Too bad Disney films (both short and feature lenght) became so unoriginal and dull compared their 30's and 40's predecessors.

1960's
Bad times. Look, Flintstones was funny and even somewhat clever (from time to time), but most television animation from this decade was pretty bland and booring, even if it was aimed at an adult audience. Not to menation the actuall animationwas awfull. A "golden age" of TV cartoons it was not.

1970's
Horrible times. Hannah-Barbera dominated the world of animation with shows so repetative, boring and badly animated that they can be challenged in terms of stinkyness only by the 80's toy commercial toons (well actually, in terms of crapy animation, not even those can compare with Hannah-Barberas 70's output).

1980's
Horrible times. Even though i loved so many of them growing up, nowadays 80's cartoons give me no enjoyment or stimulation at all. I do not find them exciting, not funny, not emotionaly involving, not beautiful, not artistic, not deep, not anything. They were probably the most badly written TV shows of all time. However, they did often have very original and interesting premises. By that i mean the basic idea of the show. Like, "four turtles that lives in the sewer and fight rock-people and evil ninjas and then eat pizza" or "Ponies that have pictures of rainbows on their butts and live in a pink villa in an all-female collective". (I guess that often, the reason for these unconventional ideas came from the fact they the characters and settings were not originaly invented with a TV show in mind, but as toys.) Oh, and the music in 80's toons kicked rump. But other than that, the 80's were, from an animation point of view, just a long visit to sucktown.

1990's
EXCELLENT TIMES! God in heaven, the 90's were great! To be fair, this greatness started buildning up during the last two years of the 80's, but did'nt came into full power before the first cuople of years of the 90's. The Little Mermaid revived the beautiful and emotional Disney films, The Simpsons started the new era of adult comedy, not to menation became the single greatest achievemnt in the history of human culture, Batman TAS did for action cartoons what Simpsons did for comedy, Ren and Stimpy started the trend of inserting adult humor into "kids shows", and Tiny Toons and Animaniacs revived the good'ol "slaptsick humor" genre of cartoons and thus strated a wave of what i call neo-classical animation. *sigh*, how i miss those days. And to think, Sonic was actually cool...

2000's
Good times. Kinda. On one hand, adult humor shows like Futurama, Family Guy and South Park are more popular then ever (to bad The Simpsons went down the drain even before the turn of the millenia though), Pixar is making wonders, and TV cartoons in general are usually well written enough. But on the other hand, this entire decade has ben absolutley dominated by that sickening "stylistic" limited animation/pretend-anime mixture, that we see in everything from Teen Titans to Kim Possible. And just WHAT is up with that genre about crime-fighting adolescents becoming so prominent? A decade ago the premises of TV cartoons were so much more different from each other. And i also hate how censorship has once again gotten stronger. While The Joker in the 90's could say he was going to "kill" Batman, Slade in the 2000's has to say he is going to "destroy" Robin, much like Shredder had to say about the Turtles in the 80's. I Also miss the 90's Disney formula, and im getting sick of companies trying to copy Dreamworks and their "wise-cracking-animlas-played-by-Jim-Carrey-and-Will-Smith"-genre. But all in all, animation is still in a lot better than shape than during the 60?s, 70's and 80's.
 
Its because of The Little Mermaid, Roger Rabbit, The Simpsons (the Ullman-shorts) and to a lesser degree Mighty Mouse that i said that in all fairness, animation did started to pick up during the last years of the 80's. But as i also said, the effects that those pioneering works had on animation in general didnt really start to become noticable before the 90's came about. Thats when animation companies realised that it was actually worth money and time to try to make good cartoons.

But anyway, if you think the 80's was a decent time for animation, i respect that, even though i dont agree.
 
I disagree about the domination of anime-esque shows (especially citing Kim Possible as an example; what the heck?). Those were popular for a short time and still are in France, but that trend has died down significantly.
 
I think animation only gets better as time goes on. Most of my favorite shows are from 2000+, and I would hope that 2010 has better shows than now. You can tell how far animation has come by each decade.
 
I'm not so sure I'd call the 1950s "very good times". Sure WB managed to adjust the structure of its cartoons, largely due to the talents of Chuck Jones and Friz Freling and the UPA studio reached it's zenith in stature, but many others were seeing less success. Terrytoons and Lantz studios had their budgets skeletonized by the faltering film studios, which resulted in shorts that were largely a shodow of their previous efforts. Famous Studios fared little better. MGM got some very good output, but shut down it's animation department entirely in 1958. Walt Disney Studios, after some initial theatrical and television successes, dropped a $6 million bomb in theaters entitled Sleeping Beauty that threatened to bring the studio to financial ruin.

While there is much better output that the 1960s, I'd say it was a worse decade than the 1940s or 1930s.
 
I dont think the 60s were that bad. Alex Toth made some classic cartoons from that era (space ghost and birdman), and though there was plenty of limited animation, there were also people who knew how to make limited animation work to their advantage (here im thinking of the peanuts specials).
 
I can enjoy cartoons from a range of eras:Scooby Doo,WB shows 60-70's and a lot of shows from the 90's/2000's.The 80's have always turned me off a little.The My Little Pony thing just didn't sit right with me.
 
I guess my description of the current style of TV animation was pretty badly explained and confusing. What i mean is that all shows (okey, okey, not ALL, but plenty of them) have that stylized, flat, edgy kind of look with a lot of sharp corners and thick, black outlines around characters and objects, thats largely developed from the 50's UPA films and Hannah-Barberas shows (whose style in turn stems from the 50's pop art). Kim Possible is the perfect example of this kind of style. Of course, not all shows have animation styles as flat as Kim Possible, but almost all shows have a more or less edgy style with sharp corners. Think Teen Titans, and compare it with a softer and rounder looking 90's show like, say, Sonic the Hedgehog. And many of these shows also have elements of anime in them, once again Titans is a good example, with elements such as big eyes, big spikey hairdos, face faults, big sweat drips, characters occasinally turning into chibis ect.

So anyway... does no one else feel like wasting about 30 minutes of their precious time telling the rest of us what they think of animations highs and lows throughout the ages? Come on people, dont make me feel socially awkward and lonely by having suggested an activity no one else wants to participate in.
 
90's a lot of underrated and obscure shows and movies.

00's The best decade beside the 90's with few TV show revivals like Skunk Fu and Krypto the Super Dog, as both 2005 and 2006 had interesting animated movies.
 
Since we're talking solely about American animation, shouldn't East Asian influences such as Japanese animation be considered a further segway in the growth and evolution of the entire medium in America?
 
I mostly agree only I wouldn't call the '80's horrible times. I mean it wasn't the best but it was definatly better than the '70's. I also will not call the '50's very good times
 
Why not? You still had the Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry and some of Disney's very best feature films. I'd definitely rank the 50s far above the 60s, 70 and 80s.

My list would look something like...

1940s - They don't call this the Golden Age for a reason, people
1950s - Still some fantastic cartoons, but not as brilliant as the 1940s.
1990s - Lots of great stuff. The Disney Afternoon, WB's finest series, the Disney Renaissance, Ren and Stimpy...
1930s - A very important time of growth that needs to be acknowledged. This was also the prime period for Mickey and Popeye.
2000s - Some great cartoons so far this decade. Yeah there's been a lot of crap too, but more than enough to make up for it. I can't fault a decade that gave me Spongebob or the Eds
1980s - Nothing great but a lot of fun stuff that defined my childhood
1960s - Lots of crap as things begin to get stagnant. Still some good work from Warners and Disney though.
1970s - Aside from the various Peanuts specials I really can't think of much I like from this decade. Dismal.
 
Hmm.. in my personal opinion, this is a perfectly reasonable listing. Except that i really cant see how the 80's could be better than the 60's. The 60's atleast still had animated short films on the big screen, shorts that were more or less in the same zany genre as those of previous decades (only not nearly as good), and many television cartoons were aimed at adults. As i said earlier, that doesnt automaticly mean they were particularly good, but the very fact that they were written with adult audiences in mind mean that they could'nt be completely without wit.

Contrarywise, the 80's TV cartoon series with any quality of writing at all were exremely few. The ones i can think of are: The Real Ghostbusters, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, Gummi Bears, Ducktales and maybe Garfield and Friends. And of course the Garfield, Peanuts and a couple of other prime-time specials. One again, since they were shown on prime-time, they needed to entertain the post-elementary school crowd as well and couldt be all bad. Even the original prime-time My Little Pony special is suprisingly exciting and dramatic, crazy as it sounds.

But all in all, 'id say the 80's were a lower point in animation history than the 60's.
 
At the very least, the 80s cartoons were at least fun as they toned down the need to have a moral themed show (such as the Tom & Jerry episodes where they were friends).
 
Hmmmm..... my only gripe is, you talk about the "anime-influenced" shows like they're bad things. I loved Teen Titans, and Kim Possible, and Avatar; and while I will not deny that these shows creators were partially inspired by anime, it's likely that they got equal inspiration from previous american shows, llike B:TAS and even some of those old 80's toons.
 
What about those 30 second morals at the end of the episodes? And i think that one reason the 80s toons are popular is due to the voice acting, since with the right VA, any dialogue can sound effective.
 
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