Series that pleasantly surprised you

I have to admit, I was all ready to dismiss Iron Man: Armored Adventures as "crap". The CGI animation on the civilians and the backgrounds was bland and awkward, and the idea of a Teen Tony wasn't appealing after watching the recent movie. However, this series surprised me with its strong continuity, awesome revamps of Iron Man's mostly-lame rogue's gallery, and character development. It still suffers some hiccups (voice acting, animation, how badly MODOK got jobbed in his second appearance), but overall, it has been impressive.
 
Well, after American Dragon ended I thought 'that was the end' but now I've moved on to other things.

Penguins is a good show. P & F is a pleasant-enough show and I dunno, I suppose FlapJack and Chowder are good too. They just need to stop trying to compete with Disney ( they can't ) and go back to what they do best. And I mean this for all television stations --- go back to making animated shows and stop trying to outdo the classic LA shows. All That, Kenan and Kel, Double Dare, Figure it Out... you can't beat the classics. ;)
 
Total Drama Island. The character designs looked incredibly cheap, but... I got pulled in by all the characters. Not that they were all good characters, but I loved seeing them all there at once. Lots of chances for backtalk and random quips. There were a few good characters that got the attention, and a whole that had just one gag in the episode, and were relegated to the background for the rest.
 
I saw the first few ads Teletoon ran for 6Teen I was sure it was going to be one of those boring shows that I always felt would have been better off with live action (like Braceface for exemple, augh!)... but when I got to watching it, it really surprised me by how good it was! It was funny and the characters were more than the simple stereotypes they represented and had added depth.

Johnny Test and its crazyness and its 'soft' continuity won me over. I wish the animation quality had remained the same as the first season but I can say the writting didn't change and its still fun.

I thought Johnny Two-Shoes was going to be a stupid show about a stupid character doing stupid things that annoy stupid neigbhors, like all the bad shows that sprung up in Spongebob's wake (Spongebob incidentely I'm not all that big on) or like the Eds (*barf*). But that show appeals to my love of absurb humor, running gags, soft continuity and is always surprising in someway.

Honestly its a lot more difficult to sell me on comedies. Off course since there's way more of it than any other kind of animated series it doesn't say much.
 
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force go. Really why would I expect anything from a show with a name like that. And it's character designs were pretty bad (Same people that went on to make transformer's animated.) However likable characters, a good well writen story line and some great voice acting including Mark Hammil as the main villain made this show something special.

Yin Yang Yo. I realize it's pretty hated around here but it had a small following on the Disney board. I admit I did not like the show at first but over time it grew on me.
 
I'd have to say Danny Phantom...its Phandom's (haha) obnoxious fans made made run off like my pants were on fire - but when I finally got a chance to watch the show once it ended (Nicktoons reruns) I've grown to really love it :anime:

Johnny 13 and Ember McLain are two of my favorite cartoon villains, so bonus points
 
Phineas and Ferb at first I thought was going to be another stupid Disney show, but it wasn't bad at all! Only bad thing is the repetitive formula.

Flapjack, too. I thought it looked kind of stupid and immature, but it was quite funny!
 
Kim Possible is another series that exceeded my expectations. To me, the Disney channel was way past its prime. I sat down to watch the tail-end of an episode, and thought it was just another generic teenage superhero show. But one day when I was bored, I caught a whole episode, and the selling point for me was how brilliant the comedy was. I absolutely loved Drakken and Shego's dialouge exchanges, and how they pretty much mocked every villain cliche in the book.

Right from the pilot episode, I thought I'd hate The Venture Bros. In fact, I turned it off less than halfway through it. Then, the first season aired on Adult Swim. There was nothing else on at the time, so I started watching. Again, the writing really impressed me, especially any lines from The Monarch.
 
The Secret Saturdays: I remember seeing the promos for this new series and I thought that it looked interesting. The sneak peek also increased my interest. I never expected this show to have so many cool twists in the storyline or awesome characters like Doyle and Zak.

The Penguins of Madagascar: I've never seen much of the Madagascar films or had the interest to see them, so I wasn't really expecting much from this show. After seeing a few episodes, most of the characters are either interesting or likable and there is a nice sense of humor within their interactions with each other.

Phineas and Ferb: For the first few episodes, I wasn't too impressed with this series. Some aspect of the formula work, such as the boys not realizing that Candice wants to get them into trouble, and other feel forced, such as Phineas asking in nearly every segment "Where's Perry?" Since they started making some different twists in the episodes while still maintaining the basic structure of each episode, it's been much more enjoyable for me.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: I also remember seeing promos for this show on Nick and it looked pretty cool. The storyline for Book One was pretty solid and fun, but Book Two totally blew me away. The series itself was a nice surprise since the beautiful artwork, great storyline and solid character development came from Nick.
 
Spongebob: When I heard everyone raving about this cartoon in 2001 I decided to look at it myself. I thought it would be mindless drivel at first but I was suprised and hooked by it's brillant writing and comedic timing. It instantly remided me of Animainacs, well the first three seasons anyway :sad:. I can picture after the third season an Nick exec telling the writers to "dumb it down" so that only little kids will be intrested in watching it :D

Phienas and Ferb: Around 2007 there was nothing worth watching on Disney Channel. I instanly wrote off this toon as a animated version of Disney's tweencom trash. It took me a year but when I finally got around to watching it I was hooked. This toon reminds me of what spongebob used to be.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold: I wasn't in the camp of "batman must only be dark and edgy" but I was afraid this series would end up being too childish. I didn't have much faith in Warners Bros. Animation after coconut fred and loonatics unleashed. I'm hooked on this series now. It's fun and intelligent written at the same time. With this toon, Scooby doo Mystery Inc., Laff Riot, and Bruce Timm's green latern toon coming down the pike it looks like WBA is getting their mojo back.
 
That was the first one I thought of, for the same reasons.

I think "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" is amazing! Just as good as the more serious series at times. Really, really happy with it. :)

I also found "Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys" unreasonably good. :p
 
Wedding Peach - Having seen Sailor Moon back in the 90's, I decided to check this series out. After seeing the first volume to this series from Netflix in 2007, I became hooked and started to get more information on this series by Googling it. Shortly after that, I decided to buy the entire series on DVD, and was thrilled when I received the season 1 and 2 DVD sets in the mail. Aside from the DX OVAs, I found the rest of the series to be great.

Thanks to Wedding Peach, it made me a fan of the magical girl genre, making me see other great magical girl series, like Magic Knight Rayearth and Sasami: Magical Girls Club.

Transformers Animated - When I first heard of this series, I was thinking "It looks like another Transformers cartoon is coming out. I think I'll check it out." I expected to like the series, but I was blown away from what I saw, considering it to be the best Transformers series since Beast Wars. Plus, Transformers Animated Grimlock is awesome! :D

I agree. The animated series version of Starfire is very adorable. :anime:
 
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends - On the surface, it looked pretty decent but very lightweight and childish. It took me a while to appreciate the ingeniously clever writing and endearing characters, after which it became my favorite CN show of all-time. It was also the only thing I bothered to watch on CN for years, until...

The Secret Saturdays - When I first heard about this show on CN's 2007 Upfront, I thought it would be something akin to Nickelodeon's The X's -- a cheap, tacky, and downright hideous excuse of an "action family" cartoon that would most likely get shelved after a single season. I didn't even watch any of the pre-release promos; I merely tuned to the hour-long premiere to kill time while waiting for The Clone Wars (this was the very first time I'd tuned to CN since the last Foster's premiere in May 2008). Needless to say that I was blown away from the get-go with the quality of the storytelling and characterizations as well as the silky-smooth retro animation. Not only did it become my new favorite show on CN, but it actually rekindled my faith in the network as a whole after they turned me away in 2006 and 2007.
 
Avatar is a big one for me. From the material I'd seen beforehand, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was destined to be nothing more than another cheap attempt from the west to cash in on anime's popularity, much akin to Marathon's output...just, uhh, not as neon.

But I managed to catch the first airing of the show in the UK, due to the big ol' network hype train, and was greeted with something that surpassed my initial expectations. I decided to keep tuning in, and didn't regret it once the writing steadily became more solid. Likeable characters, superb sense of humour, snappy dialogue, an engaging story, brilliant animation; I never could have imagined that I'd get into the show as much as I did.

Transformers Animated is another, though it has more to do with the fact that I couldn't stand anything 'Transformers' prior, rather than the stylised character designs. The only reason I initially tuned in was due to pure boredom, but I found myself hooked. I think the series overall aesthetic helped in some regard, as I'm probably one of the few who actually found it appealing from the get-go. But other than that, I became a fan of it pretty quickly. I might not have got all the in-jokes and nostalgic nods, but it didn't matter. It had a great script and a cast of heroes I really enjoyed, Sari included. Sadly ended before it's time.


I'll admit that I'm not really that big on the show myself, but I just can't bring myself to dislike Carl the Evil Cockroach wizard. He totally made it worth watching.
 
secret Saturdays

invader zim

fairy oddparents: from the oh yeah cartoon roster I was expecting chalkzone but fairy oddparents really surprize me
 
Invader Zim: When I first saw the ads, I thought the show would be stupid (in a bad way). I saw the first episode that night and ended up being somewhat obsessed with it in high school.

Digimon: I had just grown sick of Pokemon and I, like several people, thought it would be a Pokemon rip-off. The stories were more dynamic, and the characters were far more likeable.
 
X-men evolution. Hearing that it was about the x-men as teens, as well as being less comic-accurate than the 90s series initially turned me off, but i recently got disney XD and ive been checking out the show and its actually pretty good, with good character development and animation, and even some focus on characters ignored by the 90s series (for example, boom boom).
 
I walked into Evangelion without knowing whether I would like it or not... Every review of it I read was always an extreme, either epic masterpiece or trash. I heard people hate the ending, and people like it.

I came out very pleasantly surprised. ;)

Penguins- I thought it was another stupid Nick show, but it's not bad at all. I haven't seen too many episodes, neither do I consider myself a fan, but definitely better than what I thought it was going to be.
 
The Replacements - At first I thought it was going to be one of those series that tried super hard to be funny, but once you kept watching, it was really clever when it wanted to be.

Dave The Barbarian - Wrote this one off at first for the same reasons with the Replacements, and this was actually hilarious as well.

Early 60's Hanna-Barbera Cartoons - Mainly the early stuff like the Flintstones, Jetsons, Top Cat, and Jonny Quest. I hated the first three things as a kid because I thought it was just dated without being a classic, like Looney Tunes. Not to mention, I hated HB for all of the crap they put out later in the 70s-80's, minus the original Scooby-Doo.

Part of me still feels way about it humor wise, but watching it a few years later, I really enjoy them on a nostalgic, simplistic level. I have to side with John K., the early stuff is really pleasing aesthetically. Jonny Quest , I originally overlooked this, but one day I just sat down and watched it and was completely blown away by it's sophistication and style.

Drawn Together- If gross out humor isn't your thing, then you probably wouldn't gravitate to this one, but I honestly haven't laughed that hard at a 00's cartoon..ever. Just completely insane and I loved every minute of it.

Lupin the 3rd - I caught this on adultswim out of bordem in 2003, and was completely entertained. Some people don't like it because of angular style, but it's actually one of the reasons it's my favorite anime to date. It's a shame it's not more popular stateside.

Also: One of the best theme songs ever.


Honorable Mentions: Brandy and Mr. Whiskers. the aforementioned Secret Saturdays, Archer, Venture Bros. and Jem.
 
I agree with you about 6Teen, also Jo?l Legendre who provided the French voice of Jude alias Hugo in the French dub fit very well to the character.

Other series who pleasantly surprised me.

Captain Harlock aka Albator in French: The first time I saw it, I didn't pleasantly surprised me like Goldorak (UFO Robot Grendizer) did, when I was a kid but it was later when they released the series in DVD and I saw it as an older adult, I understand more better the main character's development character and the French theme song, is very poetic.

Fireball XL5: I saw this series the 1st time when Teletoon beginned to broadcast in Canada. Less sophisticated then the other puppet-animated series Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. I was hooked even if it was filmed in black and white. I guess it was part of its campyness

South Park: I discovered this series from my nephews, I decided once to set my vcr to record one episode to see how it look and once I see the show, I've became almost addicted. I find it so hilarious, the characters have lots of "qualities" that's make their charm and they menaged to give us a moral by some subtle ways.

Wayside: I didn't saw the book where the cartoon was derived but I liked the friendship between Todd and Maurecia even if Todd was often punched by Maurecia and the "leadership" of Principal Kidswatter, the animation looked "cheap" but not as "cheap" as Total Drama Island/Action.
 
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