Which decade was better for animation, the 90's or the 2000's?

maybe it was my getting older but i just do not like the new shows like chowder and TDI which seems to be the bulk of what is out. most of the shows today that do not totally change the series like the enw iron man coming out have already been canceled. i loved samurai jack avatar, and the justice league episodes they were awesome. megas XLR was fun so in terms of originalality in action cartoons i gove the nod to y2k for taking things to new levels. which is what has happened with family guy and futurama things are more adult oriented and intense. back in the 90's there was always a new idea that was being rolled out for kids darkwing duck, ed, edd, and eddy really got started in 90's and prolonged into y2k, dexter, powerpuff, batman TAS, gargoyles, superman, i think jackie was in the 90's time frame is poor around there. my point is that there just seemed to be more things available for kids that was not retarded back in the day. now there are alot more family guys out there that are made just for adults to capitalize off of the aging market that loved batman, etc,. originality goes to the 90's, drama goes to Y2K.
 
Definately the 90's! The 90's didn't have such annoying usage of Flash and better characterization, while most shows nowadays are more of either trying to look good or trying to earn a buck.

Although I will admit that in the case of adult animation, the 90's was still during the time when adult animation's rise collapsed. (The 70's was apparently its time of thriving.)


... I already think that Family Guy has gotten stale. And I honestly don't like Avatar... like at all.

Chowder's okay, it's cute and funny and the style is admirable, but it's not something I can really hook on too.
 
Flash wasn't used for most of the 90s simply because Flash didn't exist back then. I'm quite sure it would have been used as widely as it was today if it was accessible enough.

Also, for the record, Craig McCracken says that he would have done PPG in Flash, had the technology existed back then.
 
Well that's an obvious fact.


Yeah, but his style doesn't make Flash very noticeable, or at least as badly as a lot of cartoons. I don't hate Flash, I just wish people weren't so lazy with it, it'd work a lot better if used to full potential.
 
The 90's produced some great shows, as well as some awful ones.

This decade has also produced some great shows, as well as some awful ones.


And you know what? the same can be said of ANY decade. So I'm not going to generalize and say that one decade is/was unequivocally better or worse than the other. It depends on your individual tastes and what era you grew up in.
 
Although I'm in the same boat as you, and I definitely don't think the 80s was a decade of greatness, I actually think you're being a little hard on your childhood shows. There's such a thing as hating your childhood too much in an attempt to detach yourself from that era.

I think it's really a bit arrogant for many people here to assume everyone is biased towards their childhood though. It's also arrogant to assume everyone here is a 90s kid. As this thread has shown, many members here grew up in the 70s and 80s also. And with the consensus pointing towards the 90s as their favourite, you have to at least respect that opinion for what it is, even if some people are hell bent on proving that we're all suffering from rose coloured vision.
 
Before I begin, who else is in agreement with me that this emoticon :shrug: is moronic and overused around these parts?

Okay, here goes:

In accordance to the original question of which decade was better for animation, there is no right answer, and every answer is going to be blinded with nostalgia. Every decade was good, and every decade was bad. There had been dark periods and great periods of inspiration in every decade. Even the 1970s had its good points besides being a loathsome era in animation.

There were good shows in both the 1990s and the current decade, and yet there were also terrible shows in both decades.
Yeah. I've fought that fight before many moons ago. It still has relevance. Not to mention six great things came about from the 1980s, and I'm not talking about the shows.

I think CyberCubed and chdr got the points of both decades, but I think I could expand them a little more.



CyberCubed is right on the money in that regards, though I could easily argue the fuse that started the Japanese animation boom was lit in the 1980s courtesy of folks like Streamline Pictures and the weekday consumption of shows like Voltron, Robotech, Tranzor Z (Mazinger), and others. TMS also developed series exclusively for the North American market in the 1980s, including Mighty Orbots and Galaxy High. Other shows like Bionic Six, Transformers, G.I. Joe, The Real Ghostbusters, Sabre Riders, Thundercats, Galaxy Rangers, and others all had this quasi-anime look to them largely because most of them were animated in Japan. Seriously, if you ever look at the Macross era of Robotech and compare it with the first season of The Real Ghostbusters, some of the characters look the same in some scenes, particularly in the eyes.

In the 1990s, SciFi also aired Japanese animation quite frequently in their first seven years on the air (the pre-Hammer years as a matter of fact) and regularly had annual festivals of films. The anime industry as we know it did begin in 1998 at about the same time within weeks of each other. Dragon Ball Z premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami on August 31 of that year while Pokemon premiered a week later on September 7. Both series, as well as Sailor Moon (which premiered in June on Toonami), began a shift that would last for about a decade and completely legitimized the anime industry. More networks wanted them.

And that was also the problem. Nearly every broadcast and cable network

To nitpick, Dragon Ball Z was actually produced in the 1980s, and was released in the US in the mid-90s to little fanfare and got huge in 1999 and stayed that way until the show's end. But I've got to go with chdr on this one. Fan adoration towards superheroes is as old as storytelling itself and largely generational.

Couldn't you both be right? I love Chowder and Animaniacs. I like Flapjack and Tiny Toons. Yes, animation from Warner Bros. doesn't represent all 90s cartoons just like the cartoons from Cartoon Network doesn't represent all 00s cartoons. It's all a matter of taste.

I would. Spongebob Squarepants (like The Simpsons before it, a show that came from the previous decade that became better known as iconic of the decade that followed) isn't quite mainstream but, like Family Guy and Naruto, aimed towards a certain demographic niche.

But that's true of all shows. Gargoyles, Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, Dexter's Lab, Darkwing Duck, The Tick, Sam and Max, and a majority of the shows that came from the '90s has niche fanbases that continues to enjoy the shows long after they ended. None are truly mainstream, just popular. When it comes to animation, being a fan of animation PERIOD is niche in itself, so what's the point of breaking it down by cherrypicking fanbases by the decades they came from?

We're all fans of animation. Who really cares what decade it comes from? We'll always have differences in taste, but I think what keeps this and other animation communities strong is that we're fans and proud of it.
 
While I can see where this was coming from, I don't remember a lot of other channels other than CN airing anime. Not every channel imported anime. Nick obviously didn't in the U.S.



While I also can see how some cartoons made in flash animation can look cheap, I'm not sure if that really affects the quality of the writing for any show. I don't think kids really care that much about animation as long as they enjoy the show.



For starters, I think that the statement that the 90's gave us the best superhero shows ever is really subjective. I believe that there are people in the world who didn't like some of the superhero cartoons back then, even some of the series of the DCAU like B:TAS. I also don't see what's so bad about kids wanting to be Goku or Ash Ketchum, especially since that's not that much different than wanting to be Superman or Batman. It isn't like anime affected the popularity of superheroes since kids still like them. Considering that you do like Pokemon, I'm surprised that you act like kids wanting to be Ash would be a bad thing.



No offense, but I think that's more of nostalgia talking than anything else to me. Sure, I like those shows too, but that doesn't mean that the new shows aren't as good. I think Chowder and Flapjack are great and could easily be considered one of CN's best original comedy shows in recent years. I can't say that they'll be remembered as classics since that would require more time to past by and to see how they last in the future.



I'm not sure how you know already that mose of these shows won't go down as anything special. That could be a possibility for some shows, but I wouldn't say that for sure until more time has passed and for shows made during this decade, I think it's too early to tell. I'm also not sure when it was a point of the 2k3 series to reach up and go beyond the popularity of the 80's series. To me, that's sounds like expecting lightening to strike twice in the same exact place. It happens, but it's rare.

I'm also not understanding how you think that the same thing happens for Brave and the Bold since it's only finished its first season and the new X-Men series hasn't even finished season one. I do respect your opinions, but I wouldn't call any of this proof as to why the 90's were better. I think it would be more appropriate to say that these are your opinions since these opinions are not facts. Everyone has different tastes so it isn't like one certain decade is the best for everyone. It's better to just leave it as opinoins and respect where they differ.
 
Looks like another thread repeating the tired mantra of nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. Were the 90's as good as the 80's? Were the 80's as good as the 70's? Were the the 60's, 50's, 40's, and 30's all equally good? Does anyone here honestly see that when looking back?

It seems I have to accept that every decade was as good as any other decade, were I to accept that the "best" decade is determined by when someone "grew up"*. Since there's obviously no magical force out there ensuring an even distribution of quality over time, this reasoning is equivalent to arguing that there is no measure of quality. It doesn't matter if some very real external factor had a negative impact on a decade's output, because whatever nonsense you grew up watching, you'll supposedly look back and think everything was better than it is now. This is an appeal to absolute subjectivity. If there is no real measure of quality, the idea that every decade can have a share of both good and bad is undermined. If I'm not to judge one decade better than another, who am I to judge one show better than another? You can find fans of anything, especially if they grew up with it. It would be absurd of me to argue that these fans are wrong for enjoying their favorite show, but neither can I believe that poor writing, unconvincing acting, bad / inconsistent drawing, and amateurish, low-budget animation are all completely subjective issues. Furthermore, if I've rejected all objective measures, any claim that present entertainment is just as good must also be nothing more than just another opinion, no more valid or invalid than any other. May I pull my hair out in frustration yet?

In the present, nostalgia somehow explains everything. Like an old show? Nostalgia. Rewatched an old show and still like it? You're blinded by nostalgia! Rewatched an old show and now realize it sucked? You were previously blinded by nostalgia. I've seen every variation argued somewhere, and I've seen examples nigh weekly.

There are still people blinded by their own nostalgic feelings. I can make this claim because I've judged that plenty of modern shows are, in fact, quite decent. It is an opinion which I believe I can support. We're here to share opinions and support them with facts and reason - the basis of all productive discussion about entertainment, subjective as it can be. ;)

Stay tuned next time for my rant about Modern Classics, "Why we don't have to wait a few decades to declare how great this thing is." (The people telling us to wait and see had better not denounce future claims of greatness as nostalgia.)

---

*What do people mean by that, anyway? Given that modern society doesn't consider you an adult until at least 18 or 21, we all "grew up" over the course of roughly two decades. Which half are we assumed to idealize over the other and why?

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Whew. With that out of the way, I'll say the question posed between the 90's and 2000's is still a tough one.

In general, both were better than the 80's, and the last 30 years have been a better time for animation than the 70's. Disregarding the present, I would have said the same back in the 90's. For original, domestic, 2D animation, I believe the 90's have an edge. There were more shows I couldn't miss running simultaneously, many of them with longer runs (not always a good thing) than what I enjoy today. There was certainly more full animation on TV. This decade was far better for anime's TV budgets and exposure. Pixar has also done pretty well for itself (understatement) lately. Stop motion might as well be a draw between now and then, for how little is done.

Out of the entire history of animation, we've all been living through the greatest times for the medium. Between DVDs and the Internet, there has never been so much access, nor has there ever been so much discussion. We should be glad for what we have now and hope to see future progress.

--Romey
 
Well put. Yes, I've seen some comments on Toon Zone and other forums to suggest that some people really do side with a show on the grounds "It's because I grew up with it", but the fact is that some complaints made toward this decade can't always be pinned on nostalgia.

If anything the nostalgia arguement seems to be a lazy way to avoid having any possible legitamite debate.

Now to restate my earlier comment, which was voiced by some others, this decade for the most part is full of redundancy as the majority of toons either fall into the tween sitcom category or action cartoons staring an adult character or teens. But where are the adult centered cartoons aside from Spongebob and Back At The Barnyard?

Second, this decade is also full of extremism:

1. Early part of Cartoon Network's decade was mostly classics, and now the network barely has classics.
2. Cartoon Network and Adult Swim played a lot of anime, now they barely play any.
3. Toon Disney goes from playing a good chunk of Marvel cartoons only to rarely air them now.
 
True that. It reminds me of when James Rolfe said he preferred the Jack Nicholson Joker, and TDK fanboys said he was blinded by nostalgia. Uh, so liking JN Joker is objectively wrong now? Just like it's objectively wrong to still like shows from your childhood years later?
 
,,to peoples on the thread: You Know sometimes Nostalgia is RIGHT!

NOT all decades our created equal! Each decade has at least one medium thats better then the next, some decades have better sitcoms, some better animtions, some better Reality TV (if there is such a thing..LULZ) What Im saying is that even though Nostalgia plays a factor people really should stop trying to take the Decinsitized route & say all decades of TV our equal! In a perfect world...yes they wold be, but the truth of it is there not. The 80's & 90's WERE better decades for animation just like the 50's & 60's were the golden age of sitcoms & just like the 00's has been the golden age of tweencoms (even though I dispise them!) True every decade has its ups & downs, but that doesn't mean there all the same, cause the fact of it is the 80's & 90's had more Culture & Wit in their animation this this decade had! I'm not saying all Y2k animation is bad, Im just saying the later part of the 1900's could be conisderd the silver age of u,s. animation while this would be the bronze!:D
 
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