When Cartoons That SHOULD Have Been Good Go Bad

I'm not gunna throw rocks at you. I enjoyed the show, but it never reached the level of being awesome. Personally, I blame Coop. Or ratherm how how Coop was written. The idea of some 'Jersey grease monkey' having a giant robot was cool, but Coop was an idiot. He acted profoundly idiotic at every opportunity. It was like he made a conscious choice to be a moron. To regress into a perpetual state of adolescant idiocy. (I can't believe I found a place to use that quote!) If half the show's conflicts had been started or exaserbated by Coop himself...It really could have been great.

Titan AE--I loved it, but if they had another 10-20 minutes of runtime to straighten out some plot points....It could have been great.

Atlantis--Should have been taken back to the drawing board. Decide a theme and stick to it. There should not have been the-hero-is-too-dumb-to-drive-stick joke 45 seconds after the silent mouning of the death of hundreds.

Black Cauldron--I just want an awesome animated high-fantasy movie. I wish this had been it, but it wasn't...

I also had high hopes for W.I.T.C.H. but it never really found its groove. I dunno, maybe the concept was just too Sailor Moon-ish to begin with...
 
Well if we're talking movies then really I would have to go with Disney's Treasure Planet. Let's face facts while the plot was based off a Steveson classic novel (Treasure Island) Putting the whole plot into a space farce was in fact sheer lunacy on the part of Disney itself.

I mean if Atlantis:The Lost Empire was bad, then Treasure Planet was by far a lot worse.

Now as for TV shows, I would have to say that while Thundercats were good, it was Silverhawks that really broke it for me. I mean who in their right mind thought this one up? After all perhaps the most annoying character in the bunch was in fact, The Copper Kid. with his annoying whistle like speaking. I mean even the Villains were laughable (Come on a Punk Rocker by the name of "Melodia?" As a villain.. Highly Laughable..

But then if Silverhawks were bad, then Jem: Truly Outrageous took the idea even further into the sublime. I mean come on, this was nothing more than maybe at best a show dealing with a girl who looked like Barbie had cotton candy stuck on her body, as well as all the corny band villains that came with the show (The Misfits? Aptly put.)

But believe me, TV does have some good shows, but when they go bad.. They go horribly wrong.

:coyote:
 
Spider-Man: Unlimited

I still think Spider-Man: Unlimited, had the potential to be a good show. I grew up on the 90s Spider-Man, so when I saw the first few commercials for Unlimited I thought it was weird, but was excited for it too, even liked the new costume. I believe had the series taken place on Earth instead of Counter Earth it would've lasted longer than it did, only the first two episodes should've taken place on Counter Earth, they should have Spider-Man and John come back after that. After the first two episodes, it all went downhill. It was just weird seeing Spider-Man surrounded by beast people (or beastials), and teaming up or fighting against knock-off Counter Earth versions of Spidey's own rouges gallery. Thats probably why it never caught on. It really is to bad, because the new costume was actually kind of cool, not better than his classic red and blue threads, but it was still cool.
 
Personally, I was disappointed with DuckTales when it first came out. I had been reading Gladstone's reprints of the old Carl Barks stories, and I thought that an Uncle Scrooge TV series would have stuck closer to Barks' work. Instead, we found Donald limited to cameos, and replaced by Launchpad, forgettable new characters that Barks never would have created, and the "real world" feel of having the Ducks go to real places was gone as well. I prefer Barks' artwork as well. It wasn't all bad, but even now I prefer re-reading a Carl Barks or Don Rosa Scrooge story over watching an episode of DuckTales.
 
How can something be "sort of unique"? :p It either is or it isn't in my book. Being "sort of" unique is what ultimately killed it for me. I had the POTENTAL to be unique - maybe a more kid friendly version of Gargoyles (most of which flew over the heads of most of my peers back in the day), but... they didn't stray from the usual Disney tween cartoon formula.
 
This is probably going to get some rocks thrown at me but... Megas XLR. (Dodges rocks from angry fans around TZ). Yeah I know the show's fairly popular around here with some people, but I don't really like it. The premise of it seemed really cool AND Clever: Let's have an american made giant mecha show. And instead of an angst ridden teenager as a top notch pilot it's a fat new Jersey grease monkey into video games, TV, and of course eating everything. With excellent looking animation and top notch voice acting this show seemed like it would be really good. And the pilot Lowbrow 6 minute short showed that as well. Unfourantley for the most part this cartoon blew due to the writing. There were some clever moments but the majority of the episodes had a bunch of lame too long to really laugh at jokes and not really too interesting plots. Also if there was one show this decade that over did the "at least things can't get any worse" line it'd be Megas. I'm not saying it's the worst show ever but it's defintley one that "went bad" for me more then it should of.
 
No offense, but I'm really getting tired of this "Kanto was flawless, everything else was garbage" mentality among "Pok?mon" fans. Yes, Johto had some bad fillers, but Hoenn and Sinnoh have more than made up for it.
 
Godzilla actually had a reason.

Most Godzilla fans know that Toho is PARANOID about their Kaiju, especially godzilla. If you have a monster that even SLIGHTLY RESEMBLES Godzilla, (aka, any upright dinosaurian creature with spines) the will sue the hell out of you. The RIAA has got NOTHING on Toho.

Anyone remember the "5 dollar footlong" subway commerical with the monster that was replaced by a robot?

Yeah, that was Toho.

So even for a series based on a version of their monster, they wouldn`t let the series use versions of the classic monsters, forcing zilla to fight generic creatures each week.

Ben 10 Ailen force is different. While, IMO it is far better/more mature than Ben 10, I`m really dissapointed how the show is still so episodic, with very little connecting plot. There's nothing to wonder about or look forward to usually.
 
Toho also charges separate licensing fees for the various other monsters, which prevents some companies from using monsters like Ghidora, Mothra or Mechagodzilla.
 
What Ever Happened to Robot Jones , It had an interesting premise , fluid animation , and an awesome cast of 80's like characters. You look at that and you say "Wow that show sounds awesome." but your wrong this show was bad. The humor in this show was super dead beat and the main character, Robot Jones was abused to no end by the bad guys. I also didn't like how they had a character with a robotic leg that's not funny at all. And the worst thing about the show was that new episodes didn't even come on till Fridays at 10:00PM I was so tired by that time that I couldn't even really pay attention to what was happening in the show.
 
Hey, where ever did I say Kanto was, to use your word, "flawless?" Nor did I say "everything else was garbage," that's a poorly written generalization.

That's not to say Kanto was flawless, by any means; on the contrary, of course it had its share of bad episodes.

But, since the title of this thread isn't "when did Pokemon jump," let's get off that topic.

Meanwhile, another example I can think of is Family Guy, when they decided to make Herbert a frequent character. >.
 
Off the top of my head, I'd say House of Mouse: what I was hoping for was a chance to see how all those Disney characters would interact with one another, but basically, it took just about every movie character and turned them into walking one-liners. They were completely limited by what they had done in their movies; every joke, every visual, every fiber of their beings. Only the main Mickey cast were able to have some dimensionality, being the obvious stars of the show, and all. In any case, the KH series was Disney-cross-over land done right.
 
Most Anime and Animated Sitcoms- it seems these days that these kinds of shows can't get through an entire season with out reminding us that:

1. Everything we loved and grew up and believed in was a joke

2. Having normal concepts like eating meat and having a heterosexual relationship isn't worth the pain

3. Have the supporting cast or one character hog the spotlight by either torturing the main character or make him or her or them an unlikeable, narcissistic, uncaring cloth-eared nonce

And 4. That America is a cesspool of sex and violence and that our government needs to be taken down and replaced with some New World Order from some Third-World Country.

(of course, this can be said about any franchise from any media)

YinYangYo!- the action was cool and the humor was so-so, but the problem was Yin and Yang's sexist attitudes that killed it for me.

Chowder- Geese! A lot of shows these days are trying to be like Spongebob and this is one of them. Everybody but the main character looks like they are gonna commit suicide or go on a killing spree!

6TEEN- to me, there have been one to many teen toons to many the past 10-20 years. This show has become to stereotypical.

The Secret Saturdays- at first, I liked this show what with the cool cryptozoology science and the action and all, but unfortunately like Dragon Ball Z and Beast Wars, it gets dragged down by overbearing parents, getting rid of all the good characters, and letting the bad guys win.

Ben 10- I admit the franchise is great but a lot of the first series shows was god-awful cause Ben and the others used to get at each others throats over everything!
 
Captain N: The Game Master
- The concept sounds good in theory, but it just didn't work. Then again, if it was made today, just ditch the whole Kevin Keen and Princess Lana part and call it 'Super Smash Bros: The Cartoon'. Hey, it'd be better than Brawl...

Super Mario (ALL the cartoons)
- Okay, so I can't fault this too much since they didn't have all the new characters and the paper-thin continuity that we have now in the Mario games. SMBSS was good for its time, but the SMB3 cartoon just totally fell flat with crummy animation, horrible and cliched stories and don't even get me started on Super Mario World. (Rick Wheeler and Kevin Keen got NOTHING on Oogtar) Just don't.

F-Zero: GP Legend
- We could have had a cool, campy series with an ensemble cast every episode (some focusing on Falcon, Goroh, Super Arrow or Zoda) and kick-ass racing, but instead we got black-and-white characters, a Marty Stu main character who's story vaguely resembles the plot to the movie 'Demolition Man', virtually no racing and I just... lame. I have a love/hate relationship with this series, but I think if Nintendo ever wants to try another F-Zero cartoon again, let the Westerners handle it.

Avengers: United They Stand
- An Avengers cartoon without Iron Man, Cap or Thor? Well hey, at least we've got another Avengers cartoon coming in 2011...
 
Don't worry. *Shows empty hands* I'm not going to throw rocks at you. You're entitled to your opinion, but respectfully, I have to disagree. I thought that Megas XLR was great. it was one of the few shows airing on Cartoon Network at the time that I made it a point not to miss. While there were some episodes of Megas that I liked more than others ("Bad Guy" "All I Wanted Was a Slushee", and "Department of Megas Violations" stand out in my memory as being among the funniest), but I enjoyed every minute of it.
 
Kung Fu Panda didn't quite live up to my expectations. In my opinion, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It had it's moments, but it seems to lack that certain magic that Wall-E had. One thing I will admit though, Kung Fu Panda had heart.

When I first saw the commercials for Camp Lazlo, I was expecting it to be just like Rocko's Modern Life. Let's just say that I was um....dissapointed.
 
Can't speak much for American Dragon, but with all of the comic book/movie/tv show/video game plots used, to come up with a purely original idea (with no cliche insight) is becoming somewhat of an impossibility. Even going against a cliche has become a cliche. To be sort of unique is to take a cliched setting and add bits of originality to the table.

As Told By Ginger for instance has the popular girl befriending the main character as opposed to antagonizing her.


Lavenderpaw: As for American Dragon, to be honest it's a decent cartoon, but the first seasons quality keeps it from being one of the best cartoons. The Jake and Rose relationship as you mentioned was the high point, but for a show to be the best, episodes that don't contribute to the plot needs to be just as enjoyable. Season 2 succeeded in making episodes outside of the Huntsclan, Jake & Rose and Dark Dragon storyline enjoyable. Season 1 failed to do so. In S1 those aforementioned subplots were the only thing the show had going for it.
 
Made up for it with what exactly? Even MORE bad fillers? :p

It has to be said: Pokemon as a show become completely formulamatic during Johto and, sorry, it has never recovered from it.

Kanto wasn't flawless, and everything else isn't complete garbage...but it comes pretty darn close to being that way, IMHO.
 
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