Top Christian Cartoons

I recently found a site that mentions the top 8 Christian Cartoons, which happen to be....

1. VeggieTales
2. Superbook
3. The Flying House
4. Davey and Goliath
5. McGee and Me
6. Adventures in Odyssey
7. Cherub Wings
8. Hermie and Friends

Yes, VeggieTales is the best Christian cartoon series I've seen. Teaching lessons about God with memorable songs and sophisticated humor without having to be preachy.

Hermie and Friends is a cute series about garden bugs who talk to God regularly. It even features the celebrity voices of Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, Judge Reinhold, and the late Don Knotts.

Adventures in Odyssey was a Christian radio series that also became a beautifully animated video series.

And I've always loved Davey and Goliath and Superbook when I was a kid.

Also Christian cartoons I think are cool, but not on the list are..

3-2-1 Penguins. A team of space penguins who take two kids on adventures in space and they learn valueable lessons along the way.

God Rocks. About a town where everyone are living slabs of rocks. And four rock kids meet famous rocks from the Bible. Like the two stones with the Ten Commandments and the rock that once defeated Goliath.

Kingdom Adventure. Which is actually a puppet series mixed with cool animation. It's about a forest of elves called Lumans who have adventures that are similar to the Bible.
 
What about Hanna-Barbera's Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible? Or even the several christian cartoon shorts that were early work of Lou Schiemer and Hal Sutherland of Filmation Associates?
 
There was one Christian anime I saw on a Christian network about a year ago, but can't remember. I know it told stories from the bible and whenever they had to edit out nudity, they'd zoom in on the screen to avoid it. It had lyrical ending music, the animation looked 80's, and it was on NHK.
 
Veggietales and the Miracle Maker are the only one of those mentioned here that I've seen except Davey and Goliath which I saw a LOOONG time ago.

My dad's doing some storyboards and character designs for 3-2-1 Penguins. He has some DVDs of the original episodes... I need to check those out...
 
Well actually Moral Orel is a good Christian cartoon, although a little twisted in it's message. It would provide kids an example with the immoral adults who are stuck on dogma against Orel, whom represents the innocence and goodness in religion.

Now if they could just show it in the day on Cartoon Network.:p
 
What? No mention of "Jot?" That was religious and VERY bizarre.

The series was animated in Dallas, TX and it had a pretty long run, being in production from 1965 to 1981.
 
My church has some of the H-B Greatest Adventure Stories of the Bible on VHS for the children's church to watch periodically. How about naming some of the pre-Filmation Christian works of Scheimer & Sutherland?

This will give away my age, but I can remember when Flying House & Superbook, both imported from Japan IIRC, were on CBN (now ABC Family) back in the 80's. Davey & Goliath reruns can be found today on Trinity Broadcasting, if not also in limited syndication.
 
If you're not referring to "Superbook", then you must mean "In the Beginning", created by Osamu Tezuka, of all people.

One of the Nippon Masterpiece Theater series was actually based on a Christian children's book by Patricia St. John, the show "Treasures of the Snow". Alas, it's been ignored like all but a very few shows from that classic anime series.
 
Prince of Egypt is purley classic. Joseph King of Dreams is good too. Miracle Maker is very good, practically the only Jesus film that I can sit through. The Nightcrawler episode of X-Men is my absolute favorite. The Peanuts cartoons are always good. Besides the obvious, A Charlie Brown Christmas, you can usually find a religious undertone in them. I have always enjoyed Richard Rich's video series, Animated Stories from the New Testement. Of course all Big Idea cartoons are great for learning a lesson and having a good time. I enjoy the Adventures in Odyssey series, but the radio drama is far more superior. My favorite however is the Adventures from the Book of Virtues.
 
I really like that too, that's a classic. It wasn't all platitudes either, they gave some thought to his dialogue and that made the episode quite strong.

On another note I was reading Superbook's wikipedia entry for the hell of it and there's a note up there that a new series is planned for 2007. I hadn't heard of this, anyone know if that's accurate?
 
Can some of you guys be serious? Or is someone going to mention Trinity Blood?

Now honestly its a shame Christian cartoons are looked at on such a level. Some (like some of any group of cartoons) have some real heart put into them and are genuinely entertaining. Veggie Tales certainly is. Fun little stories that teach a lesson of some kind and catchy tunes and interesting cast of quirky characters. Several makings of a good cartoon and it's executed quite well I might add.

3-2-1 Penguins is also from Big Idea and I'd say it's alright but overall you can't top the Veggie's in that kind of medium.

I use to watch Adventures in Oddesy when I was a wee lad. Those were based on cassete tape stories. It also had a pretty decent cast of characters. It was a little preachy but the stories were well written and the animation was quite good for the time.

I also remember Hanna Barbera's cartoon with two explorers and their guide/friend Moki (sp?). It had similar character designs to that of Captain Planet which came years later. They basically thrusted these 3 characters into various historical biblical events. I don't remember much about them other than that but I recall enjoying them.

I wouldn't classify McGee and Me as a cartoon really but I guess since it's a hybrid you might count it. I have all but I think 1 or 2 of those VHS and I enjoyed them a lot when I was a kid. Besides the bible scripture reading at one point or another in an episode it was mostly "life lessons". You have an average realtively "good" kid and his cartoon McGee that came to life one day who occasionally gets him into trouble but can also be helpful. In the same fasion as Rodger Rabbit you had human characters interacting with cartoons and that's always been a bit of an interesting concept and probably took a great deal more effort than just making a live action show or a cartoon but I seem to recall enjoying the cartoon segments within the series most of all. Those tend to have McGee as a character in a short story of some kind. Meant both to teach and to entertain. Maybe I should dig up those tapes to see if I still find it enjoyable.

After reading about Angel Wars I've been interested in seeing it myself but I haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully I will some day.

Unfortunately I don't have only good things to say about Christian cartoons. A lot over the years have been what equate to a cop-out. I'm sure someone poored their talent into each but sometimes that just isn't enough to make a good cartoon that's more than fluff. And much like the movie industry the increasing use of CGI isn't really helping things. All I know is if I were to make a cartoon I'd go with 2D. I think that's where my inspiriations come to life better.
 
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