#all the netflix cartoons i liked were cancelled

[articulately-composed]

Let me know if I'm missing the mark here, but I think the netflixification of tv shows has ruined their ability to be obsession-worthy, and in turn, is contributing to all of us being just a little bit more depressed.

Maybe it's just me, but an 8 episode series that can be binged in a day does not scratch the itch I need to be scratched. It's a nice little distraction, but once it's over, it's over, and it stops occupying my brain space. I'm not being given enough time to mull over the characters or get excited about the next episode coming out. I was sick this past week, and ended up binging two 8-episode netflix series', and sure, they were good, but they're over now. my brain is done with them.

And I know people have been talking for ages about how the "chuck all the episodes on the streaming platform at once for max bingeability" method is killing fandoms, but I can't help but think it's making us all a bit more depressed too. We have nothing to look forward to week to week. Life is a constant cycle of dragging ourselves to work for the privilege to keep our basic human needs met, and now we don't even have that one day a week we can look forward to to watch our blorbos do something new.

And yes, I know some streaming services have been trying to remedy this by spreading out episode releases, like what Max did with Fionna and Cake, but again. 8 episodes. not enough time to get extremely invested.

basically, I'm just begging networks to bring back 26 ep seasons with weekly releases. Please, I need new blorbos. It's been ages.

[allergictocolor]

The Origin of the Addams Family

The Addams family has always been goth and enamored with the macabre. But did you know they didn’t always have names?

They started as recurring characters in New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams in 1938. They were a mother, father, uncle, grandmother, two children, and a butler in an eccentric family. (Occasionally others joined them. It's a big family.) They weren’t all officially named until the 60s, when dolls were released of Wednesday and Morticia, and the TV show debuted in 1964.

Charles Addams made a LOT of cartoons in his lifetime, about 1,300 total*. Only 58 of those in The New Yorker featured the Addams family, but they are what he became best known for. He also published some collections on his own, eventually creating 150 standalone, single-panel comics featuring the Addams family.

You’d expect Charles Addams to look like Gomez, but he didn’t. He actually looked like this:

He based the father of his strange family on this guy:

That’s Thomas E. Dewey, the 47th governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. He ran for president in 1940, 1944, 1948, and 1952. He had a reputation for honesty, but he was also kind of a weirdo. It was said that he had "a personality that attracted contempt and adulation in equal proportion." Maybe that’s why Charles Addams based a character on him. Or maybe it’s just because he was funny looking.

Addams, who signed his name Chas, was only somewhat involved with the TV show. The rights to it belonged to his second wife. He earned residuals from the show, which placed him in dire straits once the show was canceled after only two years. At that point, he had come to rely on the income, and The New Yorker wasn’t publishing him enough for him to live off of.

The show had more tropey, goofy plots than their later adventures, since it was a sitcom. Charles Addams criticized the show because the characters were only “half as evil” as they were in his comics. They had run-ins with neighbors and local politicians. Gomez ran for mayor of their small town. They recommended Cousin Itt for a job at the zoo and he was mistaken for an exotic animal. Wacky hi-jinks that never rose to the heights of pouring boiling oil on carolers, as the family did in a Christmas strip Charles drew, which was later sold as greeting cards.

Still, the show expanded upon the original comics and established much of what became canon for the Addams family and its members to this day. They have a dungeon in their mansion they like to relax in. The front gate has a mind of its own. No one can quite explain where their money comes from. They try to help others, even though their help is rarely received well. And they can't understand why other people don't live like they do.

In the next few weeks, I'll be posting character profiles of the various members of the Addams family throughout the years, from what I can find of their inception up through the Netflix show. I hope you will enjoy it.

*edited to clarify that his 1,300+ cartoons were drawn in his lifetime, not exclusively for The New Yorker.

[jazzyblusnowflake]

Besides Murder Drones, what are some of your favorite shows, and why?

Its difficult to come up with things off the top of my head tbh hm. i only have so much attention span to spare for any shows i watch XD especially since usually i never finish a show all the way through- its hard to keep me interested- cuz most shows end up getting cancelled anyway T-T but lets see-

for example- i really liked rottmnt and monkie kid- for story and also they have the same animation crew i think- but i wasnt able to get through all eps. and yet the characters and animation are very dear to me.

i liked atla [not korra, sorry] because of the complex story and characters.

Tmnt 2003 is very very dear to my heart- one of the first cartoons i grew up with- even tho if i probably rewatch it, it might be a bit nonsensical XD but on a world building and story telling standpoint i still prefer it over any other of the tmnt variations- even if people say the more further seasons were cringe lmao- i still loved it.

Mlp:fim's story telling was oddly touching and i was obsessed with it for a long time- esp just for the sake of character designs and shipping alone lmao- [just the "friendship is magic" gen tho...]

also i was dragged into being a jjba fan 😔 i cant really uhh... say anything on why i like it XD i just do lmaooo-

Glitch Techs was also an obsession- i loved the trope and colors and character designs and everything <3 oh also Inside Job! loved the story and characters and how they solved different issues [🖕 you netflix for both these shows]

oh and one of my current obsessions is Scissor Seven <3 story, characters, world building, simple artstyle- aaaa

and these are still only a few i can think of on the spot and not counting movies or games. but again not all of the mentioned shows here have i seen through til the very end either. so yeah...

i just kinda gotta be asked if i am or am not familliar with a certain show XD

[omegansamurai]

I hate that these YouTube videos complain and moan about how the Netflix live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender was a 'failure'...I mean, if that was the case, then why had it been renewed for not one, but TWO seasons, huh?

And like...I doubt the Avatar Studios stuff is gonna be anything groundbreaking. I don't even think Avatar Studios' content will be any good. Really, it's like, why is this even a thing? Just leave the franchise alone, Bryke, and just let people who can write and make your story a lot more enjoyable (Netflix's Avatar).

It just reeks of desperation and Bryke trying to be relevant. Avatar is not the next Star Wars, I'm sorry. It's a Nick cartoon that should've been an epic four-season (maybe five seasons, who knows?) show, but it shrunk to three, to make a failed shitty trilogy movie that the first movie bombed at the box office, thanks to the creators 'SUPER WISE' decision of canceling the fourth season because they want that trilogy movie series, and honestly? That itself was a bad idea. Bryke tries too hard to make their product the next Star Wars(which I think they're fans of, which says a lot), and it painfully shows. They try too hard. REALLY hard.

Like with Legend of Korra, they try to be super edgy with their 'story' and 'characters', but they just miss the mark on what made ATLA great. I mean, they don't even care about how the bending looks anymore in Korra. Really, there's a reason why they put the final season online, and it was just a bad show. Don't deny it, everyone. I'm certain it would've been good...but it was executed poorly and made not only a mockery of the characters in that show but the OG characters of ATLA(especially Katara). Well, maybe Zuko is the only one who's doing alright...but that just reeks of sexism doesn't it? Toph is all alone in the Swamp, and Katara is...not who she is...always sad about Aang's death...like get it together girl, you're mother-effin KATARA. Get with it!

And another thing, what more is there to tell? What is the next series even going to be? The Avatars are cut off after Korra, right? So...what now? And if you put the setting in some lame-ass futuristic steampunk or cyberpunk world and have bending in it, then...well, that's not really Avatar, is it? It's just its own thing at this point. And really, I don't want any new characters...I never wanted Korra's characters either if the writing they have for them was that bad.

I just think this whole Avatar Studios is just...again, desperation. Like why not reboot it or just...tell the same story, but with a different setting?

Sorry, lost track.

What I'm trying to say is, is that people act like the Netflix live-action of Avatar: The Last Airbender supposedly 'failed', which isn't the case. Y'all are just butthurt about how your 'perfect show' got 'tainted' by big corporations, and honestly, that's far from it. The people behind this live-action were very committed, and the actors were very respectful of their roles. The BTS looked like everyone was having a good time. And here you have idiots going on about how the live-action sucks because...what, Aang talks too much? No sexism from Sokka? Katara didn't act all rage-filled or whatever? I can get the criticisms, but still, I enjoyed it. I liked it. I want to see more.

It's just that this stupid fandom likes to put down the live-action because the cartoon is supposed to be this or that and it doesn't have this...when honestly, it's its own thing, but it's still Avatar! Let it be its own thing! You got the cartoon, now look at this NEW Avatar: The Last Airbender by Netflix! Look at the way they portray the characters, look at the direction they're going, look how they world-build, just look at it! It's almost like fanfiction, and really, isn't that what Avatar is? Fanfiction? It may be a cartoon show, but it's still fiction. They're not real people. We can do whatever we want with them. We're just borrowing their characters, story, and world.

This whole thing is an adaptation. So it's not your cartoon...but it's still Avatar.

I know I'm just rambling at this point, but I'm just kind of tired of seeing thumbnails on YouTube of people bringing down the live-action Avatar. I genuinely enjoyed it, and yes, while it may have some things to work on, the people behind the show will listen to their criticisms and work on that. But again, I still liked it.

Just know one thing...Bryke would've made the live-action of Avatar a whole lot worse if they were in control. I really do believe that. And as for Avatar Studios...I give it a year before it goes bankrupt. I know that's a little harsh, but I just know that the animated Avatar movie is going to be disappointing. ^^;

[freakyshibs]

Shows that were canned too early that deserved better (imo)

We all hate it when we get wayy too invested into a show with good characters, an interesting plot, and a solid setup right? Well it seems that the networks for these shows didn’t really see it that way sadly, some of these shows are known, others aren’t, but this is just gonna be me rambling about how we didn’t get more of these said shows 😭

The Owl House

Now this one I wont dig deep into too long? We did get a solid ending in the end, but we were definitely robbed of a full season 3

The fact that this was Disneys next big thing, (like Gravity Falls) and still got axed kinda baffles me a bit because executives love big ratings

I heard they cancelled it because of it ‘not fitting the disney brand’ (mostly because there were two main gay characters in it) which I thought was super unfair, because they really were that homophobic 💀

All in all, I enjoyed this show and wanted a full season 3

Close Enough

From Regular Show creator J.G Quintel, this show was definitely more for an older audience, and let me say they did amazing at it.

The shows humor didn’t revolve around cussing or sex jokes, (which is what I see all the time now in modern adult animation) and the show was definitely funny!

Unfortunately though, Max cancelled it after 3 seasons due to the merge of Discovery + and HBO Max, with Max canning alot of shows during that time, this being one of them

We kinda sorta got left on a cliffhanger of sorts?? At least imo. Liked the show and wish we had more

Wander Over Yonder

For a show made by Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls, Fosters Home) you’d think it would be popular and have a bunch of seasons right?

Well no, with this show only having two seasons after Disney cancelled it because ‘80 episodes were enough for this show’ which is kinda dumb?? I dunno I just don’t like executives and rules and stuff

I remember this show from my childhood, it was really good in my opinion, I feel like we could’ve had more if Disney didn’t cancel it as early as it did

Love you WOY 🫡

Inside Job

The fact that this show left on a cliffhanger too made me even more upset that Netflix cancelled it as early as they did

Not only was this another adult animated show that didn’t rely on cussing or sex jokes, the story was actually really interesting too and if the show did continue, we would’ve had a happy ending

Screw Netflix actually I will never forgive them for this one

Grojband

I CANNOT stress enough about how this show deserved so much more than what it got, I actually would’ve put it at number one, but the next one is kinda justifiable so ._.

From Todd Kauffman and Mark Thornton (Total Drama Island) this show featured a kid and his friends that were in a band, and used lead singers sisters diary as lyric ideas, bc they suck at writing them

And I loved it

I swear I don’t think I’ve ever been heavily interested in and emotionally attached to the characters in a show before, it was so good

The songs in this show were also heavenly, I suggest you give them a listen, theyre really good!

Also another reason I really liked the show was because it was a Canadian toon that didn’t revolve around gross out humor (I applaud them for that)

Unfortunately this was a show Cartoon Network screwed over BIG time, with when it came out during the summer it was airing, kids were mostly outside playing, never really gaining an audience, and then after the first half of the season aired, it was on a 2 YEAR hiatus. With fans questioning if the show would ever come back

Fortunately it did! Except Cartoon Network shoved it on their app, and a year later shoved it onto their sister channel, Boomerang. Then, after the show FINALLY ended their first season, the show was immediately cancelled, with Cartoon Network never really giving it a chance

The whole way Cartoon Network handled this show frustrated me immensely, with it having a decent fanbase, and people wanted more (me being one of them:()

The creators even had alot of plans for next said season, but I guess we will never get to see them (unless a Clone High situation happens but that’s doubtful)

Show was very underrated and deserved SO much more, Cartoon Network fumbled this one and the last show Im about to mention

Sym Bionic Titan

This sci fi animated series by Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Dexters Lab) only lasted one season with 20 episodes

With Cartoon Network cancelling it because of the failure to produce a TOY LINE

The fact this show got axed because of toys just makes me so upset

This was one of those shows that also left on a cliffhanger sadly, so we never really got to see how this show properly ended

With Genndy even saying that he wrote 10 more episodes, but now we will never get to see them

ALSO THE SHOWS SOUNDTRACK WAS SO GOOD?! Love when shows put banger songs in the bg, reminded me so much of Clone High

Anyways thats pretty much it? These are just my opinion tho, everyone is entirely different

[awakefor48hours]

As I'm rewatching TADC, I'm beginning to realize that in the near future, we're probably going to see more indie projects and I actually think that it has the potential to be good for the entertainment industry as a whole.

As time goes on, more people are pretty much only using streaming services but streaming services have a lot of problems with their platforms. The subscriptions are getting more expensive, there's so many of them, and a lot of the shows are getting cancelled in their infancy (some after being greenlit for more) despite their popularity.

Since 2019, Netflix alone has cancelled dozens of shows such as Dead End Paranormal Park, Julie and the Phantoms, Inside Job, Lockwood and Co, Warrior Nun, The Baby-Sitters Club, Raising Dion, Shadow and Bone, The Oa, I Am Not Okay With, A Typical, Anne with E, and much more.

This list doesn't even touch on other streaming platforms but I'm choosing to focus on these shows from Netflix (probably the most well respected streaming service) because I feel like it gets to the root of the problem. A lot of these shows were cancelled in their infancy despite having had high ratings (once again, some of them were even greenlit for more seasons). I almost never hear about shows ending anymore, I only hear about how they get cancelled after a season or two.

With both streaming services and cable not really giving creators the most certain platform, doing indie projects seems like the best bet and it works really well for both the creator and the audience.

To go back to streaming services, the amount of streaming services in the world are only growing and not everyone has the ability to pay for all of them but even the people that do pay for a lot of streaming services can't watch everything. I've mentioned this once but my parents are subscribed to 5 different streaming services, that's so many but they still ask me for help to pirate about once a month because they want to watch a show that isn't available on the streaming platform they use. That is ridiculous and I fully believe my parents should be allowed to watch whatever they want. (Just like my parents, I'll gladly share the piracy sites I use but it's through DMs only, I promise I'm not scary I cry watching kids cartoons).

But when it comes to shows on YouTube, it's available to basically everyone with a Wi-Fi connection and I fully believe it's the main reason why shows like TADC, Lackadaisy, Helluva Boss, RWBY, RvB, and more were able to get their level of popularity. They're on a free to use platform and can be shared to other people just as easily. Also when creators post their show on YouTube, it's much easier for people to make gifs and edits (which, let's be honest, are the real advertisers of a show) because YouTube lets people take screenshots/screen record without any hassle.

*If you want to know how to screenshot/screen record DRM content (things like Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, etc), I do have a post about here.

Along with the fact that it's more available to the public, it's also more available to the crew and creators. A few years ago, Dana Terrace (creator of The Owl House) made a tweet introducing a new character to the show but the tweet got popular because admitted that she had to pirate The Owl House in order to watch it.

(Since it's cropped in this screenshot, in the top right corner is a watermark of a well-known piracy site for The Owl House).

Imagine working for a company like Disney and not have the ability to watch your own show. They couldn't even give her complimentary mp4 files or even a subscription to Disney+ despite the fact that without her the show wouldn't exist. It's really annoying to see this but when it comes to shows like TADC, that problem doesn't really exist. You can just watch the episodes for free on YouTube.

Also, the fact that the episodes take a while to come out really makes the fandom feel a lot more united. The wait time between episode really kills the binging aspect of TV and I'm in full support of that. Ever since streaming services started to become the default way to watch TV, binging culture has gotten really bad and it can be pretty isolating to people who have busy lives.

Take me for an example. Someone like me, a single adult who has no kids and a terrible sleep schedule (ignore username), can stay up until 3 in the morning binging shows without too many negative consequences. But I have friends who are married/getting married and have kids/planning on having kids, meaning that they don't have the same amount of time as me. I can finish binging shows in a day or two which isn't a pleasure my friends have and it also mean I can't talk to them about it because they're only on episode 2.

I also feel a lot more comfortable donating to these indie projects because the money goes directly towards the creators and crew. When the WGA strike happened, creators explained how they got paid (you can watch the whole video here), and the quick version of it is, they only get paid the amount of times someone watches and episode, they get paid thee residuals from the subscriptions which is so little that it almost feels criminal. When you really put it into perspective, donating to 2 dollars to a GoFundMe and watching the show three times on YouTube is going to do more for a show then paying for a 15 dollar subscription and watching it 10 times.

YouTube definitely has it's problems, I've been subjected to whole ass adults saying "seggy" for nearly a decade, but when you compare it to the current state of streaming and cable, it seems like the best option for both the creators and fans.

[the-badger-mole]

You are so real for deciding to avoid Netflix's ATLA live adaptation. I was on Twitter earlier and what's been coming out is starting to discourage some of the fans lol. Like, they're removing moments that were part of the character's growth arc, like Sokka's sexism, and gender issues which is part of what drives Katara's arc and was a big part of the NWT and why Katara fought Pakku and seemingly more, like Aang's constant decisions to run off and have "adventures" even when he shouldn't

Yeah...I've been having this conversation with other fans. I'm not thrilled with what they seem to be taking out of the story arcs, but at the same time, I also strongly agree that an adaptation should build on and change things from the original to justify its existence. Heck, I applaud them for not trying to make this a shot-for-shot remake (stares at Disney) I get that the show runners and actors also probably can't reveal any new or expanded on flaws because of spoilers. So, while I'm rolling my eyes at the whispers that they're taking away things like Sokka's sexism arc because it was "problematic", and getting rid of Aang's irresponsible sense of adventure instead of actually addressing why it's an issue, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the people looking forward to the series that they have some even better storylines planned.

None of the changes are why I'm not planning to watch (though they aren't making me regret my choice). My reasons for not watching are more personal than I'm worried they're going to ruin the original series (first of all, the original series still exists and I can still watch it. Second, the original series had major flaws and plot holes of its own). I'm just not interested in live action remakes. I have a finite capacity to engage in new shows, and a live action remake of a fantasy cartoon I loved as a kid is not high on the list. You can blame Disney, if you want (and you wouldn't be totally wrong. The Disney Live Actions have been stupid wastes of my time. Yes, even your favorite remake), but if I'm going to start a new show, I want it to either be something fresh and new, or a series I've seen enough times to quote whole episodes. Yes, my most of my new faves have been cancelled in the last year (I'm still holding my breath for We Are Lady Parts and the next season of Abbot Elementary), but I'm still in the head space of preferring either something new or just plain old reruns to watch.

None of my feelings are an indictment of what I expect from LA ATLA. I encourage anyone who's even remotely interested to watch. And when you do, please post your thoughts. I, personally, will be lurking to see what people think. Who knows. Maybe someone will change my mind, and I will end up watching after all.

[l0thcat]

I keep thinking about TBB and how it ended. Or the whole season i should say, the ending was pretty good with a few flaws ( in my opinion ).

And you know, I'm not surprised, as much as i LOVE this show, I'm used to cartoons getting shit. Its been going on for far too long.

Its Disney AND Netflix. And here is a list of shows that were doing good, got told mid season its getting canceled, and a rushed ending.

Amphibia

The Owl House

She Ra and The Princesses Of Power ( 2018 )

Centaurworld*

My Little Pony G4* and G5

Steven Universe*

OK KO lets be heroes.*

Star Trek Prodigy*

Kipo and the age of the wonderbeasts.

The Mandalorian ( i know its not a cartoon but it has the same vibes as TBB ).

And probably many more. It sucks, so bad, for animation. And I'm saying this because i fully believe Disney or whoever was going to cancel TBB if it already isn't. They just didn't want to announce that.

Other notes:

*Centaurworld ; Was meant to be an ADULT cartoon and very much has left overs from that, however Netflix decided it was too MLP-esc so they made it for kids instead which ended up just being a bunch of fart and butt jokes. And then got canceled anyways so everything had to rush and wrap up in season 2. Which SUCKS because it is so beautiful when it can be and has beautiful music.

*MLP G4 is not Netflix nor Disney and while it did get multiple seasons and an ending, it had new writers during, i don't know, s6 or s7. And things slowly went backwards. And the end felt rushed imo. It wasn't a bad one but it didn't feel.. satisfying.

*Steven Universe ; i love Steven Universe, it was canceled because the creator got an Sapphic wedding AND kiss scene on screen, on a kids cartoon. But they compromised by after the finale they would get a spin off and a movie. The finale is good. Whats rushed here to me, was the spin off. And again, this is not Disney or Netflix, but Cartoon Network.

OK KO and Star Trek prodigy are also not Disney or Netflix ( which apparently Netflix is trying to save Star Trek Prodigy ) but also kicked the bucket.

All this to say ; there is a huge problem within the animation area and I'm tired of CEOs or whoever forcing creators and writers to cancel or shorten their stories.

The Bad Batch s3 is no better in my opinion. I loved a lot of scenes of it and I'm grateful for a lot of it and I'm not honestly sure if this is Disney or Jennifer or someone else but it really hurts.

Here is why it bothers me:

I'll just get this one out of the way first. Tech. Tech COULD have been sacrificed. He COULD have died. In a way that was actually meaningful. Omega got captured anyway, she was probably going to whether Tech went home with them or not. His death IS sad and i DO see them trying to honor it, i do. But its bad to me because it really does feel like "gotta kill the autistic person". Its really annoying when shows try to have an autistic character and then mistreat them ( She Ra 2018 as well but Entrapta didn't die but she does get mistreated a lot ). Its annoying and hurtful. Especially with the writers and such teasing his fans so strongly. There was no reason to. Its not a spoiler.

The TALKS in between that we missed. Tech talking to Phee about Crosshair. Crosshair learning about Tech's Death from Omega. Omega talking to Emerie about her brothers. Crosshair coming back with Omega, we don't even see them just silently watching him walk into the ship. Its just nothing. I'm sure i am forgetting some because it happened, SO much during this season.

What happened to Cody. Like its fine if he's being saved for another series but then perhaps say that.

Creators do not have to be extremely secretive about everything. Fans who don't want spoilers don't go looking for it. I'm not implying they need to spoil the ENTIRE plot, but saying Tech is dead-dead is not something to be secretive about, An hour long finale is not something to be secretive about, etc.

The other Clone X's, while they are very very cool and supposed to mirror CF99... they weren't overly needed honestly. It felt so rushed. Like I'm not saying they needed to be someome either, they don't need to. But i wasn't fearful or full of impact when i saw them my genuine reaction was "this is too much now". It was like if they DID decide to put Darth Vader in it at last second. Like i fully believe Omega was supposed to be home with Crosshair for a little longer and help Echo and Rex with the clones. And then these new CX clones were supposed to show up in s4 and be the ones to get her again.

The fans.. would have wanted.. season 4?...... i don't know why its so bad to want that. And honestly atp, i don't get why its so bad to have plot filler. Its BAD for series that got canceled or shortened, but its not bad for a series that you want more of, because then you get more time with them or more lore if you're lucky.

It occured to me there was not one flash back. Not one about the past. The most was Omega talking about how she watched CF99 be made and that it implied shes older ( and is ) than them. Could you imagine the emotional impact on us and for Omega, watching her, watch them grow up. I don't think Rebels or TCW really had flash backs either but they usually did it in other ways.

I'm not like.. a good writer, so maybe writers on here will disagree and thats okay, I'm open to that.

TLDR: I'm tired of Cartoons kicking the bucket too soon for far too long. I feel like The Bad Batch s3 also had this treatment and it isn't fair to the fans.

[ariel-s-awesome]

I'm rewatching Kid Cosmic and man, the one complaint I have about that show is the wasted Chuck potential. It would've been great seeing Kid adjust to Chuck trying to be a friend, or Chuck, Tuna and Rosa all going out on their own space adventure. Or heck, he seemed to have a bit of a thing with Biker Girl Carla in latter half of the series, give them their own adventure! Overall, I def missed the 'filler', even if the main story in KC was good.

Right!? Dave Thomas said that his story had been told (was gonna link you until I realized you were the one that asked him about it), but it reeeaally wasn't. They just didn't seem interested in his story.

His life just started after his old one got shattered. And him becoming a side character was really abrupt.

Then there's him trying to atone by straining himself to speak without a translator and bud. Bud bud bud bud. That's self harm! Let's work on that dangerously low self esteem!

The crew should of either addressed that to show that it's not healthy or left it out. Because now that I think about it, that's not a great thing to normalize in a kid's show. Or any show, but kids are still developing.

It would be pretty easy in universe to get him a translator. Or maybe he could've learned a form of nonverbal communication that the cast picks up so he can be included without hurting himself.

The process would help with his healing too since first he'd have to accept that he doesn't need to hurt himself to become a better person. Then he'd grapple with how being raised in his empire affected him, and that he isn't an inherently bad person for being one of their loyal soldiers.

The rest of the cast helping him find a form of communication he can use and learning it with him (along with showing concern about him martyring himself out of guilt) would reassure him that they care about him despite his past. And that they're a far cry from his old comrades who wouldn't even react if he got killed.

Anyways, Kid Cosmic's biggest flaw was having too large of a "main" cast. None of the Local Heros aside from the original five (minus Chuck after he got shoved aside) had enough focus to become actual main characters.

Building up a huge main cast like DC and Marvel's superhero teams requires hundreds of chapters/episodes where they're gradually introduced so people have the chance to get to know them. And plenty of character-focused "filler" episodes.

Unfortunately Kid Cosmic didn't have that kind of time and instead of giving up on the idea Craig brought 7 background characters into the "main cast" at once.

Frankly, with how Netflix cancels most of their cartoons after a single season (especially the ones they don't promote) Kid Cosmic was lucky to get three seasons. And while I do think Wander Over Yonder's cancellation taught Craig a valuable lesson about not expecting networks to give him ample time to complete the story he wants to tell, he was still overly-ambitious non-plotwise.

[pixeljade]

Man. Looking at the state of the TV animation industry these days sends me into an irrational rage as someone who grew up in the 90s and 00s.

I mean that was an era with two stations dedicated almost entirely to animation (Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network), 3 if you include Toon Disney later on, not to mention original animated blocks on WB, ABC, ABC Family, Fox, and Disney proper; plus you had several preschool stations too. Both Nick and CN had systems where they created small shorts which could turn into bigger series and *put them on the air so viewers could help decide*! Add onto this that you had the massive boom of experimentation brought on by the development of digital animation tools, AND the fact that Anime was being imported all over the place, injecting new ideas into animation, AND you had Adult Swim creating the first dedicated adult animation block...there were COUNTLESS series which are still impacting the zeitgeist today! Even the series which got canceled early became cultural icons, Invader Zim basically built an entire subculture! Animation was EVERYWHERE, and it was new and different every fucking year!

Now TV animation is basically a wasteland. Most animators are saying nothing is getting picked up unless its a reboot or a sequel or a tie-in (even Craig McCracken said his new shows werent getting picked up iirc), and animation studios are shuttered left and right. Even the shows I loved most from this year, Fionna and Cake and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, were rehashes of previous franchises. Even great shows from the horribly short streaming boom are getting deleted unceremoniously from existence! I want to beat David Zalsav to death with my bare fists for what he's done, but he's hardly the only fuckstick CEO who's decided animation 'isnt worth it'. Even Disney feels less and less focused around animation every year, shoveling more franchise slop into our mouths, and cancelling great shows because they're even a little gay. Netflix is still making SOME stuff, but its hard to get excited when its probably not gonna get more than an incredibly short season or two. There's also indie projects here and there, but those are still slow to produce because there's no studio backing most of it.

Idk. Its just extremely upsetting to think that I saw what was probably the peak of the animated industry (at least, for now) come and go. And now so many folks I know and love who went to school for this will be stuck churning out more Spongebob content and never get their own ideas picked up. I do support the indie works to the best of my ability, because I do think that whether you like Hazbin or TADC or not, they're at least healthier for the animation ecosystem than Corporate-Approved Animated Program #201836, BUT i am not exactly missus moneybags over here. Idk. I just miss the old days I guess.

[notwhatiam]

OKAY.

So.

I was on a call with my parents today.

We were talking about the Inside Job cancellation, because I’ve been really upset about it and they were actually the ones who got me into the show in the first place. I was saying how weird and unfair it was that it just got pulled out of the blue, when my dad chimed in with something along the lines of, “yeah, but it’s not as though this kind of thing hasn’t happened to the show before. Remember that episode from the end of Part 1 that Netflix ended up taking down?”

And I was immediately like

And my mom and dad were like, “yeah, you don’t remember? That episode at the end of the first part of Season 1. The one with Reagan’s childhood friend that Rand erased from her memory.”

I said, yeah, the part where Reagan goes into her own mind and discovers that she had a friend named Orrin that Rand made her forget. At the end of the episode, she goes back to the present and uses his name as the password to shut down Bear-O and save her friends. That episode is still on Netflix. It didn’t go anywhere.

They were like, “no, but then there’s another episode AFTER that. The one where we find out what actually HAPPENED to Orrin.”

According to them, there was a lost eleventh episode after Inside Reagan. This episode revealed that Rand had trapped Orrin in a cartoon-inspired play land where he had been stuck for the last twenty years. Everyone in the real world thought he had died, and his dad had turned into a broken-down shell of a man over the loss of his son. Reagan and Rand ended up going into the cartoon world to try to save him, and they found out that Orrin had been surviving the whole time by breeding with the cartoon creatures and eating their offspring. They said that they were really confused when they went back to rewatch the first season and the episode wasn’t there, but they could also understand why it had been taken down, because it was honestly one of the most disturbing pieces of television that they had ever seen.

At this point in the conversation, I just assumed that they were messing with me. It’s not like they don’t have a history of pulling twisted shit like this (for context: my dad told me to start watching Inside Job in the first place because he relates to Rand and thought I’d relate to Reagan, and he was 100% right), so I asked them straight-up if they were trying to play some kind of prank. A “ha-ha, you made your own Mandela-effect-style conspiracy” type of prank. They swore up and down that they weren’t lying, and that they both distinctly remembered watching this episode together. They were shocked that I had never seen it, and the entire time over the past year and a half that we’ve been talking about the show, they had thought that this was a part of our shared experience.

So commenced the weirdest Googling spree that I have ever been a part of. I looked for “Inside Job lost episode”, “Inside Job episode 11”, and then a lot of stuff like, “kid gets trapped in cartoon world and mates with creatures to eat their offspring” (which provided a LOT of results, but nothing useful for any purpose except probably for sending the FBI to my house). My parents kept searching for stuff based on details that they could recall from the episode (for example: they remembered a specific moment where Reagan jumped off a cliff and discovered that the ground was bouncy), but they couldn’t find anything on their end. I asked them if they were absolutely sure that this was part of Inside Job, and they weren’t just mixing it up with another show. They were both completely certain that it had been Inside Job, and my parents don’t watch that much animation, so it would have been pretty hard for them to draw on anything else. I went through the Tumblr tag for Orrin Carthwait again, and it was all speculation about what COULD have happened to him, which meant that nobody else had seen this mystery episode, either. Besides, I love this show, and I practically live on Inside Job Tumblr, so if a lost episode existed somewhere, I have a really hard time believing that I wouldn’t have come across it. We’ve been on the phone for an hour at this point. My parents are going through their Netflix history trying to figure out what the fuck they watched. Meanwhile, I’m just lying face-down on the floor having a meltdown because I’m convinced that my parents and I live in different realities. The thing was, it wasn’t a totally impossible scenario? The story did seem to fit together fairly well with the parts of the show that I knew. Also, there’s an episode of Gravity Falls (which was made by a lot of the same people who made Inside Job, and contains a lot of similar themes) where Mabel gets trapped in a cartoonish fantasy land that sounds fairly similar:

So, maybe it was possible that Inside Job contained the more adult version? There’s also the fact that Alex Hirsch did that thing where he basically long-form gaslit the GF fandom back in the day by releasing fake footage of a nonexistent spoiler to throw people off the trail when theories started getting too accurate (I’m too lazy to find a post to link; just look it up if you don’t know about this). Maybe the creators were trying to mess with people by releasing an episode to only a handful of viewers and then yanking it, thus creating a conspiracy about the show in itself? Still, it wouldn’t make sense that EVERY trace of the episode would be wiped from existence. You’d think somebody would be talking about it somewhere. I started wondering if maybe it was possible that I HAD actually seen it, and just didn’t remember it. The thing was, it did actually sound really familiar, and some of the details my parents were describing felt way too clear in my mind. Did I just block it out? Where was it, then? I was absolutely losing my fucking mind at this point, so I started a last-ditch effort to just go through any adult animation shows I could think of and read the synopses of every single episode to see if one matched the description. And finally, FINALLY,

I found the bitch.

It’s Rick and Morty, Season 3, Episode 9: “The ABCs of Beth.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, so I guess I forgot most of the details. Rewatching it back, though, it’s undoubtedly the same story that my parents were describing. The episode is about Beth discovering that Rick trapped her childhood friend, Tommy, in a fantasy play land of his own design called “Froopyland”. She goes back to try to save him, and discovers that he’s been surviving there the whole time by mating with the Froopyland creatures and then eating their kids. The story is basically about Beth coming to terms with the fact that, while her dad is a really fucked-up person, she isn’t entirely unlike him (for better or worse). Honestly, I can understand why my parents’ minds conflated this episode with the ending of Inside Job. The design of Tommy:

Could conceivably be an adult Orrin:

And a lot of the themes about dysfunctional family and fucked-up childhoods (including missing childhood friends) are actually incredibly similar.

Still, I can’t believe that I was actually briefly led to think that there was a lost episode of my favorite show that I had never seen, which was either purged from the collective consciousness or deleted from my own personal memory. This is the worst thing that my parents have ever done. If I ever go to a therapist, they’ll be hearing about this first.

[aniketsanimationblog]

The Fallen TV Animation Empire

Chapter 1: The Rise of Television Animation with Saturday Morning Block

On August 18th, 2023 - I made a Post titled "The Summary of this whole current Debacles of Animation Industry" on this very Tumblr Page, @aniketsanimationblog, and you, animation fans, have expressed the concerns about What is Going on in The Global Animation Industry as a Whole, I am glad by that!! I am so thankful to those who expressed this concerns and realised that Animation is in Danger. Because, what happened in the Last Year, When Nickelodeon and Paramount+ Canceled and Removed Star Trek: Prodigy from their platforms at that time, until Netflix saved it to stream the entire Season 2 in one-go, just paint a big picture in the Animation Community. Last Year, Star Trek: Prodigy's Cancelation and Removal was not just the omission or abandonment of a Star Trek Show set in their universe or the best Star Trek Show in the Alex Kurtzman's Era of New Star Trek Shows, but also a big Massive Shocker of a Serialised Animated Kids' Show, that had a chance to become Nickelodeon's Next Avatar: The Last Airbender, betrayed by their own original Network, is like committing a Seppuku.

And it happened at the same time or before that incident, when most of the great Animated Series at the same time were Canceled/Canceled + Removed/Sabotaged by their respective Broadcasters, showing the Dismays of Fandoms of their respective shows. Now either only a handful of Good shows are left or there is nothing to watch at all, because of Kids TV Broadcasters' Greed and most notably Animation Community's Biasness towards Shows that, nowadays, have become a Money Generator, and no longer serving any good quality things to the fans, whatsoever, once they had in their prime, in the first place.

Now depending on who you may ask, "How did this Happen? What Happened to the Kids Television, once we used to love since our Childhoods, have gone in their Worst Phases now?"

Well, to understand why this happened, we need to go to the history of how this Kids TV Animation had started to build its Large Empire.

To understand the history of Kids TV Animation, we need to go back to where it all started. Since, it's a long history, and for context, The Kids TV Animation first started in the United States of America, as Hollywood were the only film industry to create Animation Renaissance from the big screens, they are also responsible for creating Majority of their Animations in the Small screens, we have to go back all the way to 1928. This is the year, when Walter Elias Disney, as we all know him as the legendary Pioneer and The Father of Animation, released his iconic Cartoon Character, Mickey Mouse's First Short film, "Steamboat Willie". At that time, "Steamboat Willie" was released over on Hollywood Theatres. But at the same time, there was an experiment happened at the small screens, aka The Television, with some limited animation cartoons appeared on TV with one of the images of "Felix The Cat". And remember, at that time, TV was available to some people who could afford TV, when majority of people weren't ready to switch from Traditional Radio. So, a handful of People watched that experiment going on.

Then some Animated TV movies happened like, "Willie The Worm" by Chad Grothkopf. It was an Eight-minute experimental TV Movie in Animated form.

But all changed in 1950s when, TV Animation started to broadcast like, "Crusader Rabbit" and "Colonel Bleep" etc.

But the First TV Animated Series came along, consisting of Animated Shorts, "Captain Kangaroo", by the Terrytoons, which is often referred to as, "One of the Finest Cartoons to ever produce on TV".

But the Cartoons, at that time, was seen primarily as "Children's Entertainment" by some Movie Exhibitors.

In 1954, Walt Disney capitalized on the Medium of Animation to Showcase on TV, with his weekly show, "Disneyland", which was broadcasted by US Terrestrial Channel, ABC, which expanded later to "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color".

But as soon as Television popularized in the US, the people were slowly moving away from their traditional Radios and Movie Theatres, to the Compact form of Entertainment, Television. And thus, a new format was started to develop for TV Animation for Children, "The Saturday Morning Blocks", as the name suggests, the TV Animation would only be broadcasted on Saturday Mornings, because on Weekdays, The Kids are at their Schools, and on Sunday, With the American Football games clogging up the Sunday Schedules. At that time, there were no Cable systems, people were relying on Terrestrial Channels like ABC, CBS and NBC. And thus, American Children of that era were having a Ritual of watching Cartoons on Saturday Mornings.

And thus, some Television Animation Production Studios came afloat at the time. Such as, Filmation, Depatie-Freleng Enterprises, UPA Studios, Warner Brothers with their Merry Melodies, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) with their first classic iteration of Tom & Jerry until it's collapse in 1957, Disney Studios, and the leader of all Studios, Hanna-Barbera Studios, by the Creators of Tom & Jerry, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.

For the Starters, 1960s era was the era, when TV Animation boomed with mostly H-B Studios, "The Ruff & Reddy Show", then "The Huckleberry Hound Show", "The Yogi Bear Show" and most notably, "The Flinstones", which was like an Half-an-hour Animated Sitcom series, aired on ABC, which was their biggest successful show on Studio History, running for 6 years, alongside The Jetsons and Top Cat.

Hanna-Barbera had the common Trope used in most of their series, featuring atleast an Anthropomorphic Animal and a Child Character, up until they created "Scooby-Doo! Where are you?" in 1969 for CBS. Many incarnations of Scooby-Doo spawned for 17 seasons on CBS and then ABC, uninterruptedly with their new formula of A Group of Teens solving Supernatural mysteries or Fighting Crime. And they are the ones, who started with their Limited Animation Technologies at that time for Artistic Reasons.

Disney Studios had their fair share of Animated Shows, showcased on TV, most notably The Mickey Mouse shorts including characters from the Mickey Mouse Universe, as we all know today, and also "Winnie The Pooh".

The Studio still had a decent amount of TV Animated Series, even after Walt Disney's Demise on 15th December 1966.

At the time of 1960s, there were several Animation Artists, mostly Animators, that are still called Legendary/Veteran Artists, like Walt Disney, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Gene Deitch, David H. Depatie, Friz Freleng, Don Bluth, to name a few.

But as Time went on, the Kids TV Animation was changed for a new era, that is beyond just only for "Saturday Mornings".

To be continued...

Next Post, Chapter 2: The Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons and Rise of American Cable Television for Kids TV Animation.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

Fav Series to get to know me a little better.

Been seeing a few posts do this and thought it could be fun to try too. No pressure but feel free to join along if you want!

The Sandman- While I've read a few chapters of the comic (which I still need to read more of) par say, the Netflix show adaptation is so freaking good & seriously exceeded my expectations in terms of the visually effects also the storytelling is done so well & seeing Morpheus in live-action is also great too. So hyped for S2.

POSE- I swear this series doesn't get enough attention on it as far as I can tell. Because it's honestly I think one of the best shows I've seen so far, Set during 1980s America during the AIDs crisis with a mostly Black and POC casting that's focuses on Ballroom culture which offers a place of belonging to NY gay/queer communities. This show is a emotional roller-coaster that had me feeling so much for its great characters & it should be watched more by everyone because it's so good.

Arcane- Just seriously one of the best mature adult animated series thus far. Before I got into Arcane the only one or two thing I knew about it was hearing how awesome it was and that its based off of the long time popular online game League of Legends & that was pretty much it. But actually seeing this show upon first episode had me hooked from the start, everything dealing with this show is top-notch. From the fantastic, incredible 3d animation to the mature well-written compelling storytelling, along with well-rounded, morally complex flawed characters that feel so human in terms of the choices they make be it in the wrong or right, also the real banging soundtrack along with it. Just one of the bests series I so far seen.

Primal- Yet another example of really great adult animated series that have come out recently way ago. By the creator of Samurai Jack and Dexter Laboratory, Gennady Tartakovsky Primal is to me a good, well done showcasing of visual storytelling. Just a epic & awesome story about a caveman dub as Spear and his Dinosaur pal "Fang" that bonded over the loss of their families & now goes on a journey together through the violent prehistoric times. I consider this animated show to be akin to art, like a show with zero dialogue & all atmosphere & raw emotions. Just a piece of like animated art.

American Gods-Ah this show, Yet another one of Nail Gaiman works. I have a bit of some conflicted feelings on this show because while its so damned good and I seriously love everything about it on the premise of Gods and Deities from other cultures and mythology living within the modern world & trying to rebuild the influence they've once had on humanity & everything else how this show is put together in terms of visuals also storytelling is great...except for that damn cliffhanger and the fact that the show was cancelled...so yea. Still love it a bunch but eh...yeah.

Tuca & Bertie- Yet another fav adult cartoon show of mine that also got done so dirty yet again but also I feel don't get a lot of attention on it. Made by Lisa Hanawalt who in case you didn't know was the character designer of BoJack Horseman, and I would say Tuca & Bertie is like the less depressed and lesser cynical sister series of Bojack while still tackling some real heavy mature issues and problems. The world of Tuca & Bertie is one filled with mainly anthro bird people and dogs also talking plants people too. The show just has this more off-beat , zany , fun optimistic feel-good vibes going for it that's feels so inventing. But similar to Bojack in a way were its not afraid to get emotional serious about adult problems like sexual abuse or dealing with harassment & treating said issues with tact & maturity while still keeping the show overall light-hearted tone. Should be watched more.

The Midnight Gospel- The short way to giveaway on what this show is or deal with? Can be phase in one way. And that there's should be more animated Podcast. Made by Pendleton Ward the same man behind Adventure Time, I swear this show was quite the experience but in a good way. The animation is so trippy and yet so uniquely creative with using different styles. It follows a dude who goes inside a simulator to different worlds to try to interview people. The talks within this show can hit on many different levels with discussions of coping with loss and death or dealing with the struggles of hoping, a show you should take your time with, but so worth it.

Castlevania- I'll try to keep this one short & sweet. But another real awesome and oh so good adult animated series based off the classic game of the same title. great and amazingly done action /fight scenes as well as also just as wonderfully engaging and entertaining characters that you'll truly end up feeling so much for and the crap they have to deal with. Fantastic beautiful animation also the storyline and plot is just as good as the look of the show. Truly another banger.

AMC Interview with a Vampire- Now, this might sound like a controversial statement. But I deeply think and feel that this series version of interview with a Vampire is ten times more better then the movie. Not! That the movie is bad or anything, I very liked and enjoy the movie...but it never been one of my top fav movies to be honest. But the show on the other hand is so Top-notch on many levels, especially with the great performance of each actor. So Love Jacob Anderson playing as Louis de Pointe du lac and with him as an black man during 1900s America and how that's play into dealing with his vampirism, also his sexuality in terms of black queerness and showing the intricacies of the many challenges also jump ropes a black man having to keep the front of hypermasculinity especially black masculinity in a time era were being black your already seen as less than human is written so damned well. Also Sam Reid playing Lestat De Lioncourt is so fucking both great and entertaining to watch like for real, and Claudia in this show I feel is so much better then the one in the movie. Like I felt so much for her in this series. Like its so good.

Documentary Now- One of my most favorite comedy series that's never fails to creak me up. Like for real if you're interested in or into mockumentaries style of comedy then this show right here is right up there. Each episode focuses on a different "documentary " topic from dealing with a band rise & fall from success to the son of a famous chef overcoming his fears of chickens and taking over for his dad to a broken man that's ends up having a deep connection with a monkey. This show is just something else ^0^ .

Final Space- Final Space is probably one of if not the best adult animated series that I truly feel belongs right alongside with Bojack-Horseman to be honest. It's severely underrated in terms of adult animation which I think it's a shame because it really surprises me with how good it ended up becoming. At first glance looking at this sci-fi themed average typical comedy adult cartoon ended up being and becoming a much more well-rounded, emotional thought out very developed top-notch mature series. What I love about final space is that unlike other so-called “adult” animated shows is that it doesn’t try so hard with its adult humor or go overbroad with how much it tries to make it so “adultlike” such as having non-stop cussing or unnecessary super crude gore or out of place sex & nudity ( which I feel isn't always a bad thing when done right...but some adult cartoons tend to go overboard with it) This show has such a great balance of its comedy while also not afraid to get emotional serious about loss & grief or deal with some real heavy dramatic moments that are treated as serious as can be & isn't treated as a joke or a one off thing like how it would in certain other adult cartoons. One of the most mature animated series I've had the pleasure of watching & still pissed that it was done so wrong.

Welp that's about it! Sorry if this got too long ( ￣▽￣). This is just a couple of series I love. Tag in if ya'll want too!

@iamnmbr3 @dorkynerd23 @lokomotives

@feministfandomforever @uncleasriel

@zinexine @itwv-brainrot @vulgar-mary-p-ppins @captainbarinius @eddawrites @that1-otter @ghostbauhaus @freedom-and-beyond @dreballinarts @youlackconviction @toe-star @gey-scout

[blueikeproductions]

I can tell you right now, if this actually happened it’d be suicide. This Chinese spin off couldn’t even get off the ground when Cyberverse was on, coupled with political tensions at the time, what makes you think this is gonna work now?

The Cyberverse toys barely sold as it was. They went to clearance immediately when it came out during Christmas, and Japan cancelled the line outright it did so poorly. Japanese stores were STILL clogged with unsold merchandise after the show ended in America!

So no, until Hasbro actually says so, I don’t believe for an instant they’d be THAT stupid to pseudo revive one of their worst selling toy lines to buy time for a post EarthSpark kids cartoon. They’d have better luck dubbing and repackaging Transformers Go!, the Braves meets Beast Hunters Prime continuation Japan got when Prime was cancelled down there.

I don’t think partnering with Nick or Cartoon Network matters anymore anyway. Nick is so neck deep in controversy it has fully become The Sponge Network: All SpongeBob, All The Time. Cartoon Network has nothing new except Ivandoe, which is just Gumball again like the incredibly short lived Elliot From Earth was, so that’s not helping. Tiny Toons Looniversity sure, but that’s on borrowed time, as that only appeals to Animation Twitter Stans and curious Millenials who grew up with Adventures, and the later has mostly abandoned it.

In my experience, modern kids hate most modern cartoons anyway and are either watching web shows, trendy anime or older cartoons like Tom & Jerry.

Transformers’ best bet now is becoming a Netflix series like Pokémon has become in the west. Paramount+ is a glass house waiting to crumble, that so far most rocks thrown at it have been terrible aims.

And as much as some don’t want to hear it, the best type of show Transformers can be now is pure anime like RiD01 & the Unicron Trilogy. Anime is bigger now than its original boom in the 90’s and 2000’s, and a new kid oriented toyetic Transformers anime is the best thing they can do now.

What that would be I don’t know beyond classic Autobots vs Decepticons with Optimus & Megatron as the hero & villain we know them to be, not shady moronic uncle and still somehow slightly racist but repentant great uncle they are in EarthSpark. (I’ve said once I’ll say it again, MEGATRON palling around with the lead black-Asian family is not the flex people think it is.)

I would also accept Autobots vs Terrorcons as the gimmick of a kids anime, but we need proper hero and villain characters again. Skybound is proving head over heels this is what people want.

If Hasbro has the audacity to revive Cyberverse and force what many outside China will probably think is Astro Boy in heelies, the series outside of Skybound will be even more worse off.

The only thing they can reasonably be tinkering with is a kids cartoon based on ONE, and that can either be telling the story of what happened after the Quintessons on Cybertron, or more likely, they’re on Earth with an original story about the Decepticons & Quintessons doing something, while Optimus and Elita tell vague stories to Spike (white), Carly (Asian), and Chip (black) about what happened on Cybertron relating to the problem of the day so as not to overshadow an eventual TFTWO. And best case scenario that won’t be ready until summer of next year at the earliest.

Bottom line: Cyberverse no, TFONE the Animated Series on Earth yes. Energon Universe anime is preferable but we’re not there yet.

[nosetoons]

Is it me or does like very few stuff on Netflix I love/really like that have already been either cancelled or overshadowed isn't really worth the $16 a month? No, Squid Game doesn't count.

I miss The Midnight Gospel forever and always. But at least now I don't have to fork over money to a company that only cares about popularity because someone on eBay literally made a bootleg DVD that contains all 8 episodes of this show. And I would rather pay $25 once for a DVD I can watch over and over for free from now on than pay $16 a month for stuff Netflix ignores.

I'm not usually vocal about piracy and bootlegging, because that just seems to be the thing most people do because "skurew da compahnii" but the thing is this, Netflix isn't losing money. They're a billionaire company just like the rest. And they flat out refuse to do physical media copies of their own stuff unless they can outsource it to other home media distributors.

That being said, Netflix fumbling the bag for one of my all-time favorite shows is one mistake I can't forget, nor honestly forgive. It makes it even worse they straight up told its co-creator Duncan Trussell that they were happy with the show when it premiered. Fucking two-face liar. If anything TV show cancellations are very confusing to me. Because the thing is Netflix is a multi-billionaire company, if the show wasn't successful for them, they have like all the other shows that are super successful, why not put some of the money they earned from that one successful show to give to the people to work on a new season for that show, specifically for those fans. Not every show on there needs to be on the line like Squid Game, Stranger Things, or in animated terms, Big Mouth. Like at this point, what was even the point of opening up the animation division if you're not going to let the artists and animators in the division have their projects take off by letting it just die after one or two seasons? It makes no sense.

Not like it matters anymore, because it seems like to me Netflix's future of adult animation wants to line up with Fox's adult animation lineup; just nothing but soulless adult animated sitcoms. It's not even just Family Guy clones anymore. It's just the goofy quirky character goes on stupid adventures and says "fuck" and "shit" and there's TONS OF NUDITY AND POP CULTURE REFERENCES HAHAHA. It doesn't even help the fact Netflix's most recent adult cartoon is resulting in the company being boycotted by Black people because they thought using BLACK STEREOTYPES was a great way to make a show for black people. Meanwhile, shows like Midnight Gospel and Inside Job are left rotting away because Netflix didn't give it a chance but are literally looking for ways to make the next Big Mouth.

In other words, if you are wanting to do a cartoon, avoid both Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery. They're not into animation for passion, they're in it to make a quick buck.

Anyways, here's my annual doodle for the show's 4th anniversary. Again, I know it's long gone, but it's still an amazing show that I highly recommend even if it's only 8 episodes. If you don't have Netflix, just buy the DVD off of eBay. It's worth the 25 bucks.

Happy 4th Anniversary, The Midnight Gospel! 2020-2024

[popculturebuffet]

Top 20 Animated Episodes of 2022 Part 1: 20-11

Happy new year all you happy people! It's that time of the year again for my top 20 episodes of the year list!

For those new, which is likely a lot of you as these things tend to blow up, every year I take 5 episodes max from every show I watched, as given both this blog's busy schedule and my habit of putting things off I don't get to everything i'd like to (Personal apologizes to Dead End Paranormal Park, The Cuphead Show, Transformers Earthspark, Mike Judge's Beavis and Butthead apart from one episode, and Primal), and pick the best. As for why not just do a top 10 , or as I tend to do 12, there's a few simple reasons.

1) Since this blog started with just single episode reviews of shows and it continues to be the blogs backbone, it honors what I do, and is a nice way to really single out the episodes that really hit the high points for a season.

2) Even when i'm hitting a LOT of shows in a year, I still don't usually reach 20, and even if I did it wouldn't feel like enough to make a proper list and 5 seems too few.

3) It's something few other people do , especially for animation, so it stands out more while still allowing me to reflect on the year in animation

Now that's settled, before we get to the list under the cut let's talk about 2022.. but first just let me.. mentally prepare myself

Okay now ii'm mildly prepared 2022..

On the one hand we got a lot of good content. In addition to those fine, critically raved about shows I mentiond I didn't get to I got to PLENTY of good animation this year: While Owl House got screwed over last year, it started going down swinging with it's best run of episodes followed by a special that's just shy of breaking 5 million views on youtube and made disney realize they fucked up real good. So with a new regime hopefully it won't bow forever next year. Amphibia did bow out with an utterly heartstopping finale, The Great North has reached it's peak, while they sadly bowed out Tuca and Bertie and Close Enough still had great seasons to close out on as they left us wanting more, and we got two utterly record smashing debuts; Smiling Friends which is still a sensation even now and is easily one of the best adult comedies in recent times, which is not the easy feat it once was, and Legend of Vox Machina not only continued Amazon Prime's hot streak, but proved to be a hilarious yet deeply integlent and compelling fantasy.. that still had a song about tugging a gnome's motherfucking beads, a goliath nakedly diving into acid, and one or four heroes going through a tragic arc that included an accidental pact with a vengeance demon complaning that his love intrest just yah'd him like a horse while running away from demons. There was a lot of fantastic stuff. And that's not even getting into the films I haven't got to or the one I have with PUss in Boots.

Behind the scenes though?

Yeah, let's start with the appitizers first; Disney continued it's slow march towards death, putting Turning Red on Disney+… depsite the fact that unlike the previous two straight to D+ orders, which were undrestandable.. they simply coudl've delayed it by a few weeks or delayed lightyear.. which in contrast bombed HORRIBLY in theaters. It also came out Disney gladly funded various florida senate members who ended up passing the contriversal don't say gay bill, which is beyond standard disney fuckups into a level of vile. Thankfully Old New Boss bob iger stepped in at the end of the year, so their might be hope.

Netflix also seems in flux: on the one hand they still put out lots of critcally aclaimed animation.. and on the other they keep canceling things, not knowing what their doing, so their fine.

Ironically though what caused me the most stress this year to the point I spiraled into depression in anxiety wondering if anything I did mattered.. was Warner Bros Discovery. After champinoing Cartoon Network and HBO MAx as a safe haven for animatoin, a great place, and generally great.. the celeing cave in, the floor gave out and what was left got set on fire, covered in spiders and some sort of hobgoblin who hates animation , diversity and sometimes it feels me specifically took hold.

That hobgoblin.. was Dave Zaslav, head of discovery, new head of warner brothers and absolute human nightmare. In the span of just a few months he canned two full movies, Batgirl and Scoob 2 and made it so they can never be finished or released, and that… just something so disrepectful to it's crew, moneywasting and pr headachey that it still lingers to this day (Mostly batgirl but even not carring about Scoob 2 what the fuck).. was him JUST GETTING STARTED. Over several months he took a fucking chainsaw to hbo max, cutting content left and right and leaving many shows that were either streaming only like Close Enough or hadn't got a dvd release like Victor and Valentino, Mao Mao and FAR TOO DAMN MANY to list, effectively homeless, the most galling to me being completely digitally delisting final space, TAKING AWAY PEOPLE'S ALRAEDY BOUGHT DIGITAL COPIES, and generally destroying the franchise… to make 5 bucks. I know he likely got more than that but come the fuck on. It is not an exageration nor slandar to say David Zaslav cares less about the company functioning.. and more about making money to the point he's just.. liscneding shows they had the rights to to other streamers. Which is good as at least htey wont be cast into the void, but it's galling to have someone so greedy even something as simple and to some actors VITAL as residuals makes him wince. He has done exactly ONE THING right in making James Gunn head of the DCEU and I still don't trust him not to step in and fuck tha tup for James, the viewing public and good taste because his track record is if it costs money

I wasn't REMOTELY joking about that anxiety attack. When someone disrespects your medium THIS BADLY , it makes you quefstion everything your doing. I came around realizing I can keep these things alive and keep him acountable, but it still hasn't been easy constantly wondering what he's going to do next to fuck things up, to fuck up possible retrospectivges or just generally make animation worse. He has been a waking nightamre and has single handeledly made the year harder. It was hard enough with Elon Musk's takeover of twitter (Which i'm on more now, you can find me HERE), republican garbage still rising up and making LBGTQ+ peoples lives hell, JK ROwling somehow getting even worse and way too many gutpunch celebrity deaths… but this year will be SO MUCH EASIER if Zaslav finally goes down. Please… WB get rid of him before he eats you from the inside. And you reading please.. dont' harass him. It won't help. You can call for his resignation, but please do so respectfully. We do not want to be ignorant yowling jackasses. Just be good people.

So this year was highs, lows and not so creamy middles.. but what shows rose to the top? What shows were the best? Or at least almost the best but not quite? Find out bellow as I count down The first 10, Numbers 20-11, of my top 20 animated episodes of 2022!:

20. X-Mas with the Skanks Adventure (The Great North)

"It isn't a Lone Moose White Elephant without someone running off into the night to cast something in the lake"

The Great North is as show I liked a lot last year and that has only improved with age, to the point I really wish more people talked about this wonderfully charming, bonkers little show. It has great characters, even greater voice acting and some of the most hilariously weird plots i've seen in a sitcom while still being grounded in the characters themselves. And season 3 is the show hitting it's stride, as while season 2 was pretty good (and we'll see an episode form that later) Season 3 has been the show's consitently best season, with such plots as the tobins minus beef getting addicted to an outback stakehouse style restraunt Beef dosen't want them to go to, a disaster drill that's dinosaur themed, beef inviting all his love intrests to a dance and all of them being fine with it once the misunderstanding is cleared up, the town deciding to have a man who carves wives for sailors cave a really , really handsome man to win a local yachting compettion, having to cart the local millionare to an island while the kids all go overboard on being rich for a change, and the tobins all turning on each other over beef's obession with the movie Enough Said. It's all great stuff, though what ultimately won was a premise smaller in scope but no less dumb, and just in time for christmas.

While the show's last Christmas episode was great, X-Mas takes it to a new level with a very simple, realistic but still hilarous idea: It's the annual Lone Moose White Elephant, which while bringing in tons of the towns great character from the easily impresssed Santiago Carpachio, the aptly titled Drama John, deadpan death lover and my adopted daughter Bethany, and the calm soft spoken Mayor Peepers, it also opens old wounds: As the Tobin kids tell Honeybee, several christmases ago the kids got one of those singing anamatronic dealies, you know your singing fish, bears, etc, the kind that annoy the heck out of parents if overused and the kind i'm sure most children have had at a least one point. I had a singing fish and thus deeply related to the episode of Big City Greens where Cricket bonded with his while trying to resolve his repeated attempted murders.

Skanky is no exception, a very weird x-mas tree that sings a christmas version of Mambo #5, shakes it's various balls that are supposed to be sex oragans mut make no sense as such and delighting the kids.. and slowly driving beef mad to the point he finally got rid of it last year. And given the Tobins turns had all passed, they coudln't get him back and due to a recall coudln't find one online. Granted i've never seen that stop someone from selling something online but still point is they were skankless.

Part of what makes this so funny is that normally the Tobins aren't at each other's throats: their one of the most loving supportive families you can see. As Honeybee evne points out this episode Beef would normally give his kids the shirt off his back "I've seen you do it multiple times when Wolf forgot to get dressed. " So seeing him both so throughly against something that makes the kids happy, while seeing them all so against their dad is a nice contrast, and is also nicely petty. I do love the close knit family we have here but sometimes i'ts fun to see the stupdiest things turn them against one another while still being plausable.

You can probably see where this is going as Londra, their boat neighbor friend and happily married lesbian, has returned Skanky from whence he came, as he's started to haunt her and with her partner gone, she had a chance. This leads to a bloodthristy game of chess as the Tobins try to out manuver beef, as well as various townsfolk who want Skanky, not helped by Honeybee understandably switching sides as Skanky is awful. Hilarous but I woudln't want him in my house. We also get a neat subplot about Moon and a pregnant reindeer that bonds him with his new friend and love intrest introduced this season so dat's nice. But the main draw is this hilariously stupid conflict. And while it does get a nice emotinal tie, Beef also ties Skanky to the fact he was all he could afford and ashame of him, it never looses the core with beef being ready to cast it into a lake at one point, and being quitely infurated as the kids get a twerking snowman as a replacement. This episode scraped onto the list barely beeting out vampire keanu reeves but it's townwide fun and the sheer werid specificity of this feud while still somehow being relatable got me.

19. Charlie Dies and Dosen't Come Back (Smiling Friends)

"Grandma what are you doing here?" "Oh I cursed and said DAMN in 1958 when your grandpa was shot by that ROTTEN burgalar!" "… well that seems unresonable I don't think you should be in hell for that."

Smiling Friends had one heck of a pilot last year, a hilariously dark tale of two colorful cartoon characters trying convince a man not to kill himself.. while said man has a gun casually pointed at his head the whole time. It shoudl not have worked as well as it did, but man it did helped by the bizzare quest of Alan to get his cheese back from some rodents.. and also find out why some guy is living in his wall but cheese first.

It's no shock then that when Adult Swim dropped the first season all at once early last year, it blew the internet in half, became a huge sensation and is easily one of the best comedies in Adult Swim's storied history. It can be weird as hell but unlike some adult sitcoms dosen't just throw weird shit at you, but uses it to craft jokes, to create contrast in general just to be great. And this episode is a great showcase as to why while also being a shocking bit of character development in a show that mostly sticks to just living episode by episode.

In this one, yet ANOTHER christmas episode (likely because the show was originally scheduled for late 2021), the smiling friends head out to get a tree and Charlie's lack of enthusastim for getting his job or damn near everything finally grates on Pim, who meekly but firmly approaches it. Charlie, being kind of an ass, explodes on him over this, makes a scene.. and then dies for his hubris.

He arrives in hell with his hellish bed, hellish tv and jeremy his helish source of entertainment, aka one of the best running gags in human history.

Just.. the animation there as the wind goes out of him… beautiful. Getting help from his grandma whose in hell for, as detailed in the quote, not the fairest reasons, and watching her deepthroat a lollypop whiel laughing manically, Charlie journey's through hell and finds Satan. This gag.. is fine. Like Satan being mad over a doordash is hilaroius, I won't lie but him just being an introverted gamer on his computer is thek ind of gag tha'ts just been done neough. You can do more with the devil being funny, just look at the Cuphead show this year or Futurama in the past. That said him deciding to just.. not help charlie after he makes him smile and jeremy getting his revenge helps.. as does the literally deus ex machina that saves him GOD VOICED BY GILBERT GODFREY, which is not only just.. brilliant casting but took on a LOT of extra meaning after his untimely passing not long after. He got to go out of his long, distinguished voice acting career playing god. You coudln't ask for a better sendoff.. nor a better ending as Charlie ends up on earth a bit less cynical and a lot less naked. He probably won't change, this isn't that kind of show.. but what this show is is deeply hilarious, creative and weird and i'm happy to get at least one more season of it.

18. Grandma Smugglers (Craig of the Creek)

"Your dad is an utter smokeshow and I say that with the utmost respect" One of my greatest regrets on this list was not putting Capture the Flag on here last year. It's why I took off the regulation that I had to watch every or almost every episode of a show to qualify. The special was a grand finale to the shows longest arc that also tapped into it's continuity so deeply it made me want to see what the nods I didn't recognize were about and got me to catch up.

That was well worth it as Season 4 may be Craig of the Creek's best yet. With the kingdom disolved, there's now more to explore, omar is now around full time and the show continues to be a nice comforting bit of greatness to dig into every few months when Cartoon Network releases a batch of episodes.

This episode in paticular takes advantage of things now that the other side is free by focusing on Raj, one half of the honesuckle rangers aka the show just casually having a gay couple that starts out as bumbling antagonists subserviant to a cruel dictator then quickly has them become some of our heroes most steadfast alllies.. who were weirdly absent from the final battle but hey the capture the flag game had a LOT of moving parts.

This time we see Raj's home life and it's honestly nice. He has a loving dad who JP can't help but comment is a total smokeshow (with all respect). Which..

He's also voiced by Danny Pudi who i'm delighted to see post-ducktales and I was happy to find out has a major role in earthspark.

Raj also has a grandma, a kind woman who moved here when there was no one to take care of her in her native india, and whose son is overprotective of her. He clearly loves her and the warmth between them just.. melts my heart and reminds me of my own grandmas. What's unique though is tackling the immigrant experince, growing older and generally a lot of things you don't see in a kids cartoon but Craig of the Creek does it's best to be represenative as hell, often showing off unique part sof the various kids cultures.

The core of this episode is also heartwarming as Raj wants to sneak his grandma out, hence the title.. but to see a waterfall in the creek that's similar to one she grew up with. It's a simple goal with Kelsey, JP and Mortimor filling in for her.. and failing badly turning it into a race to get there.. and allowing Raj's father to see that maybe he needs to ease up on his mom, still take good care of her, but let her enjoy her life. It's a simple, sweet story, the kind Craig of the Creek really excels at and in a list full of hard choices, this one was well… simple

.

17. The Core and the King (Amphibia)

"Don't you think it's time to say goodbye to those childhood friends of yours, son?"

Amphibia Season 3b.. was a mixed bag. On the one hand it was necessary to set up the finale, helped further Sasha's character growth and the post apocalyptic amphibi was kinda neat… but mostly it just felt like the series spinning it's wheels and ocasionally doing something to help set up the final conflict.. then making all of this near pointless by having the gathered army just.. give up in the third to last episode. As you can probably tell as much as I love the show.. it's one of it's weaker periods. So there weren't a ton of episodes from this that made the list but the two (technically four, and just with that you can probably guess which one made it to the next part of the list), that made it are some of the series best.

Core and the King gives us Andrias' hinted at backstory, why he talks about friends so much that even not knowing it.. both Anne and Marcy figured something was up seperatley in Marcy's Journal.

What could've been a simple tale of Andrias being evil and his friends having to turn on him.. we see it wasn't that simple. Turns out while Andrias people were indeed conquerers it was widely accepted. That was a shock to me, if not a suprising one: if you grow up your whole life thinking ransacking entire worlds, leaving them lifeless and hollow and keeping some of the surivviors just to study and make new advancments to conquer the next place is fine just fine, it'd be hard to question until something pushes it. Both Steven Universe and She Ra have detailed the deprogramming that'd take.

Andrias was indeed happy and had two friends, Leif and Barrel. Yes the same guy what made that neat hammer grime uses. Also Leif is very clearly a plantar, to the point Anne also called that along with us, and the finale confirms it. Not the most vital takeaway here but they were not subtle.

Things are fine though Andrias' abusive dad Aldrich, played phenominally by William Houston who apparnetly played a similar character in dark souls, encourages him to drop his friends. As it turns out being absorbed into the core was a tradition.

Things take their turn, and thankfully save the world from early ruin, when Leif holds the calamity box.. and gets a vision of the world ending. When she can't swaw Aldrich because fuck if he cares he'll just find another world to ravage and start over, she's forced to take drastic measures. And this is what makes the betrayal suprisingly layered and what makes this work so much for me: while we know Leif did the right thing, she still had to steal from her best friend, plunged the kingdom into darkness, and forced Barrel to make the hard decision to let her go. She did the hard thing.. but it didn't come without consequences, lost her everything and everyone she knew, forced her into hiding, and ruined her life for a while. She did recover eventually.. but as we saw in the finale it took a LONG time for that to happen. It's a soul crushing decission as no one wins and we knew no one would… we just didn't know it'd be this sad or not nearly as straightfoward. Sure Andrias is doing the wrong thing.. but he's a kid abused into beliving this is all okay, with no real choice to pivot from what his dad once who then had said dad and every other horrible ancestor he has scremaing in his head for the rest of his life. While it dosen't make what Andrais did REMOTELY okay, it makes him far more sympathetic than I thought possible, someone who really had no chice but ot become the monster he did and how simply not backing his friend up, for the understandable reason of not seeing her dreams, screwed him up badly. It's a truly harrowing well built episode that nicely sets up the finale.. I really wish there were more like it leading up to it but i'll take what I got.

16. Say It Again, Ham, Adventure (The Great North)

"I didn't want Drama. I guess I just kept coming out because I wanted one single perfect moment"

So back to the GREATTTTT NORRTTTTH and like the above episode, i've covered this one. See back in June Kev pitched me "Queer as a Fox".. which I sometimes put as gay as a fox because my brain is very tired. Point is it was a look at Fox's animated queer content over the years… with Simpsons mostly getting it right, Family Guy having either gay sterotypes or a transphobic diatribe that will likely be the worst thing i've reviewed for the rest of my career, and American Dad just being sorta

But for the finale I picked out the Great North, both to give us an even four and because it was the first one of these Fox Sitcoms to just come out, pun intended, and have a queer character in the main cast from day one and not have them be a sterotype or it be their whole personality. It's just there. Hence Ham, a loveable odd ball with a flair for baking whose always a moment behind everyone else and who comes out in the first episode.. for what's clearly the 80th time. While the crew could've just left the joke at that… they later decided in the back half of season 2 to explore this; Why HAD Ham come out so much?

So while watching a movie with his monotone but loving and kind if also frequently slow on the uptake boyfriend Crispin, about a racecar driver having to come out as gay, and also in a way that nicely lampoons various queer media that's just about screaming

Over and over. Ham assumes this kind of coming out isn't usual and while Crispin's wasn't that bad and his parents, while taking a second accepted they did light fireworks and have to pay massive damages over said fireworks. It then , while also giving us LOTS Of Fun ham coming outs (From using it as a suggestion during one of Judy's improv gigs, to Mayor Peepers annual silly wig party which has Ham in a sailor moon wig, to white water rafting), reframes it as Ham wanting more from his coming out. His family was simply kind, loving and supportive and while he liked that for such an important moment in his life.. he wanted a tad of gravitas.

And being a nice, supportive loving family (Even if Beef was going through some stuff in the pilot he still told him "And we love you just the way you are dammit!"), the Tobins gladly agree to help Moon stage a second more dramatic coming out by having come out to Beef's Cousin Danica. Danica.. is the worst in the most hilarious way possible, having not heard from the tobins since she Moon was a baby and she wrote on the back of his birth announcment "Please stop". She also has an entirley beige house and upon meeting her for this plan, which Beef while going along with is ready to pull his son out of if she's too hurt, tells Judy she looks like a floozy (Something Judy finds entertaingly insulting. )

Things quickly esclate though as it turns out Danica was hiding some thefts and holds the tobins hostage, minus Wolf and Honeybee who are trying to do a true crime podcast, and soon have to contend with Danica's basement, trying to escape, and the fact danica only has tvoed episodes of fraiser with commentary on them.

We also get two hilarious Chief's, Chief's Edna and Elba (one voiced by the wonderful kat dennigs) who are delightful as they are enept, and barely manage to actually pull off arresting her. Ham also has the revelation he dosen't need a dramatic coming out and it's a good thing his family is like this.. not everyone GETS to have a safe, sedate coming out and it's nice of the show to acknowledge that not every coming out has to be dramatic or traumatic for the person doing so and it'd be a nicer world if we had more soft acceptance like the tobins give. but also gets to have one safely with his family acting it out. It's a truly sweet moment with a very nice hug at the end. Overall an excellent episode

15. Clouds on the Horizon/ King's Tide (The Owl House)

"Watcha Playin?"

I originally had just kings tide but I realized these two.. are basically a two parter, similar to the end of the previous season. While the final quarter of season 2 is just one long narrative roller coaster it's these that bring it to it's end.. and prepare us to board the NEXT ONE for season 3, and overlap, even if both have diffrnet goals.

Our first half sets up Eda and the CATS plan to sabotage the day of unity, while Luz's , while first just seeming to be a sidequest to rescue her sweetie with her nerdy best friends who used to alwasy be beside her but had thigns to adress elsewhere but are now back beside her.. ends up being important.

On a character level after a season of putting up with Odalia's shit, her entire family rebels against her: THe twins actively try to help Amity sabotage her, and Alador is revealed to be badly domestically abused, working because Odalia threatned the kids otherwise, and stands up to his soon to be ex wife. We get the aawesome battle sequence you'd expect from that, as well as Kiki slipping further.. and slipping that the emperoror has a spy in the CATS and thus knows about the plan, leading to luz ducking away. It's an intense, fun episode with one big heartwarming moment, the second most cathartic divorce of 2022, and a hell of a cliffhanger.. to be resovled righ tnow.

I combined the epis because raelly they flow right into one another, being one big climax to the season and EVERYTHING it's built up, the first half finishing Amity's subplot, and tying in Kiki's slow fall.. and the next one containing every damn thing else paying off.

The first horrifying thing is that despite our heroes best efforts and another neat fight scene… Belos WINS. At least for a few minutes: Even as the rest of our heroes airship their way to be big damn heroes, Luz deals with Belos personally as with his genocide already on autopilot, and Terra and the other collabeerators thinking their getting paradise much like odalia finishign the job for him only to realize he lied and they'll die, he tosses the Collector into the bottom of his super villian lair and prepares to go off ot earth dellusional that it'll all be great.

The episode has a nice air of hopelessness as Luz DEAPERATELY tries to stave things off by sigil stamping belos, a clever big of using his own racisim and ego against him by playing up his need for a guide.. then has to fight a blob monster. It's an episode where, much like for most of the season.. our heroes are loosing. Their doing their best and without sigils aside from hunter (Who being basically human can fight it off easier I guess), and we get a great fight.. and a truly sad moment when Belos gaslights hunter again, but it's ultimately a loosing one: our heroes are good and we get to see just how far they've come across the series and season, with Luz using a truly awesome looking pheonix-esque x made of fire to kick thigns off.. but ti also shows how outmatched they always were: they keep growing, evolving getting better as people and as witches.. but their up against someone whose been getting worse as a person but even better as a witch for a century and who even without his magic has freakys hapeshifting powers and hulk strength.

The desperation makes King's decision to free the collector.. make sense: there was no other option: his mom was dying (even if rahne manages to cut eda's arm off before she completely dies), his friends and sister were dying.. this was his only option. And it shows that just because i'ts not belos.. dosen't mean the Collector isn't any more dangeorus showing that he's still a child in mind and body.. and using that to be twilight zone level's of terrifying.

The simple image of a child in wha'ts basically pajamas, holding belos attack with one finger and simply asking "whatcha playin".. is as aweosme.. as it is terrifying. This is a being who just had our heroes all but beat and has been behind everything.. and he gets swatted away with just two fingers like it was NOTHING and makes the collector approaching our heroes right after that much more terrifying.. as is their escape with our heroes BARELY regrouping ot earth.. and king once again making a massive sacrifice. While the collector stopped the spell.. the isles are at his mercy and our heroes are even more lost than before… with the very foe they just lost.. not as gone as they think. It's a tense thrill ride of a two parter that somehow manages to fliip the table again just in time for it to all come crashing down and I coudln't wait ot see how it goes.. and still can't wait to see how it all ends… still wish we had ore episodes what the fuck disney. But what we got.. holy shit will it stay with me for years to come.

14. Enchanted Forest (Smiling Friends)

"Which hand of the Witch hand will it be? Gahahahahaha!" "This is the most obnoxious thing i've seen in my life. "

Look sometimes the things that make it on these lists are terrifying showdowns with abusive genocidal assholes or god children. And sometimes i'ts an optimist and a lazy pesimist wondering through a fantasy forest that just happens to be in their town for some reason while acompanied by a rotoscopped hobit who wants them to deliver an IED to his Stalking Victim. Sometimes I just want goblins and refrences to my childhood. I'm a simple man. Okay that's a lie i'm a man who has about 80 intrests that fight for my head, an obession with keith david and who constantly refrences a comic strip more people need to hear of

But I do love this episode which takes a simple stock plot, Charlie dosen't want to do something (Something being quest in the fantasy forest their in), Pim wants to, Charlie ends up being better at it… and somehow weaves in comic gold like the hand witch (and her excellent chopping skills), goblins (one of my faviorite things and I do like how this paticular goblin shows up a decent amount. ) , and of course Mip, a direct rotoscoped parody of the Bakshi versions of Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Do I love seeing this refrenced in modern day? Absolutely. Do I love that Mip has weird sexual tension with charlie, dosen't raelly break character and turns out to be an elaborate homage to Bjork's stalker?… yes and no respectively. Mip is really what makes the episode, though having charlie save some aliens and the suddenly grim ending dosne't hurt either. Not the most complex episode.. but sometimes an episode just needs to be funny and the fact they went to the trouble of rotoscoping a character just to get the refrence right shows Smiling Friend's craft: the animatoin is simple but can speed up in complexity, change styles or what have you just ot sell the joke or moment better. That and goblins. Always goblins.

13. Fate's Journey (The Legend of Vox Machina

"Faster Percy Yah Yah!" "I'm going as fast as I can, this carriage isn't built for speed and did you just Yah me?!"

Legend of Vox Machina was one of the nicest suprises i've ever had in animation. I had no real idea the adaptation of Critical Roll's first campagin was coming, and was only vaugely aware critical roll existed because Your Turn To Roll showed up in my spotify recomendations (And it slaps). So finding out that in the wake of invincible Amazonw as rolling out ANOTHER animated adult action show that looked like if James Gunn did a fantasy show.. I was intrigued. And after the first three episodes, as Amazon releases the show in batches of three, I was HOOKED. While it took me far too long to get to actually watching Critical Roll itself I fell in love with this show and while only having heard of two of it's voice actors before this (Ashley Johnson and Sam Rigel, Tulip/Lake and Donetello respectively), I became a huge fan of all of them after. Vox Machina takes a dungeon and dragons campaign and condensed it into 12 joyous episodes that still have the spirit of chaos of a campaign, while also telling a deeply compelling story of revenge, friendship, and scanlan's crotch. The series deftly ballances the tragic vengeful story of Percy as he edges closer to literallya nd figuratevely selling his soul for revenge with great character moments for all involved, and PLENTY of hyjinks from team bard Scalan pulling a distractoin by singing a song on tugging on his motherfucking beads while wearing a sparkly codpiece (One DIRECTLY MODELED on one of VA Sam Rigel's own costumes)

A planning scene where brusier Grog's plan is kill everyone including the guy their rescuing while Scalans is "Down a bunch of mystery poitions and hope I live, and Scalan's attempt to translate a book they got from their enemies devolvling into him and Vax giving each other two handed middle fingers. And of course the majestic game of ball tag, which starts at the breakfast table and escalates to Vax elbowing Grog in front of an offical for a 3 pointer. The series is a nice ballance of hilarious , heartfelt and generally horrifying, and it is awesome.

And while it's a bit of a thrill ride, having to pack over 50 hours of campagin into 10 episodes (the first two based on a pre-stream adventure that ends up being VITAL to the plot Season 2 adaps), it dosen't mean our team dosen't take time to stop and breathe and it's why Fate's Journey has stuck with me so much.

After a disasterous first encounger with the Briarwoods, the vampire and necromancer power coupled that slaughtered Percy's family and took over his hometown of whitestone and succesfuly enthraled the soverign of the land, our heroes are on the run out of town, minus their Cleric Pike (Whose reaffring her connection to her patron the everlight) and on the way to Whitestone to settle things. As a result we get a lot of nice character moments. Scanlan , despite normally being the extra horny extra hammy comic relief, tries to translate a book they stole from them, Grog, who sees pike as a sister, is morose over her being gone and convides in Vax and Vex, Vax's sister, tries to get Percy to open up and stop having a resting bitchface. We see both who our heroes are for a second, and see them truly bonding as more than just the only people who will loosely put up with one another.

We also get one of the seasons funniest scenes as during a relaxing campfire, the party recounts their weirdest kills: We get some badass ones with Vex casually killing Hotis which toally won't come back to bite him, Grog ripping a monsters jaw in half.. and some hilarious ones as Keyleth pushes an ogre into lava.. and then pushes him down while telling him to go to sleep panicked because he's not dead yet while everyone else looks on and horror and of course Scalan's.. is having a sex partner turn into a monster.. and still finishing.

That.. image aside, we also get a thrilling chase with Scalan getting kidnapped and sucking on a monster tentacle because of course, Grog being certain he wont survivie but heartwarmingly sad about it, and of course the greatst and funniest bit of ship tease in human history as Vex yahs percy as a horse and he undrestndably dosen't take it well. It's a relaxed episode that turns thrilling and leaves our heroes without any of their weapons.

The ending is also masterful.. in the most horrifying way possible. Earlier we see the briarwoods meet with some pesants seemingly doing some pr for their evil overlordship.. and at the end we find out WHY they, including a CHILD were invited…. as we see their bodies all hung on the sun tree in center of town dressed as Vox Machina. It's truly chilling, horrifying and I did not see it coming but man does it cut the bone even thinking of it now. I.. really don't have anything to follow that, fantastic episode.. next?

12. Any Sport In A Storm (The Owl House)

"Then there won't be any delay in branding you with Coven sigils and taking you away from your friends and family forever! Hooray!"

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME HUNTLOWWWWWW?

Yeah look I haven't hidden I ship this. I"m not a subtle person. It's why this guy is one of my spirit animals

So it's not a huge shock this one got on here, but it didn't just because a ship I started shipping before this went from "Maybe canon" to

In the span of one episode. This episode is a great character piece and thankfully spotlights both halfs of Huntlow well. After Willow spent most of season 2a gone, likely because Tati Gabrille is far busier than I could've possibly imagined, she gets one heck of a spotlight here that moves both her and Hunter's arcs forward, moves them together, and gives us a subplot with some Lumity that's.. fine. It's a nice little riff on fan theorizing and the azura thing, and it's ncie to see the two get a moment together that dosen't come with a lot of crap attached first. Just the two hanging out and being dorks.

But their not the dorks we're here for, nor why this episode is on this list. No it's the green and the gold for this one as Willow brings up a hithero unknown intrest in flyer derby.. basically a broom flying sport where you try to steal flags and beat the crap out of each other. You know for kids, and is forming her own team. At the same time in order to get the respect of an adult who hates him for something that isn't his fault because Hunter's life is a constant stream of abuse, brainwashing and doing sick flips, Hunter inflitrates the school.. and it goes how you'd expect

So when Hunter finds Willow, he finds a powerful prospect for the coven.. and someone who has the confidence, freedom and affablility he lacks, while she just.. straight up kidnaps her future boyfriend because she needs him for the team and while getting better at socializing still hasn't grapsed kidnapping isn't okay. Unless it is on the boiling isles but given Amity's reaction to being kidnapped and spit out by a giant owl, i'm wagering it isn't.

Either way we get adorable chemistry, a new power team/couple in viney and skara, and puddles the griffin.

We also get Hunter.. not understanding he was horribly abused and nearly consinging his friends to a horrible fate, standing up for them finally earning said adults respect… which like.. Darius man you really need to apologize for a.. .lot of things, and some good hunter blushing. All in all a good day for all. Horay!

11. Hellspital (Close Enough)

"It's a known fact doctors have killed more people than Genghis Khan and Chaka Kahn combined!"

Sadly this is Close Enoughs final time on this list as it was one of MANY casulaties of "David Zaslav wanted 8 more dollars", though it's for now thankfully avaliable to buy on youtube if nothing else. Why JG Quintel wasn't absolutely devistated I don't know, but it went out on a high with season 3 being fairly good. It also, while keeping a mixed ballance, fixed the one issue I had with season 2: there wasn't enough Alex. And Even then I got they simply needed to spread things out more evenly, so I wans't mad but boy oh boy did my boy get a great season, ending with getting Bridgette back but involving having his soul stolen by George RR MArtin, dating an alien tentacle monster instructor and of course going to hell.

The road to hell is paved with Childhood Trauma as Alex , after a golf course injury and on an all chili diet because of course he is, refuses to see a doctor after his dad went to the hosptial and got a terrible diagoniss when alex was a teen. Our heroes do everything in their power to not let his dumb ass die, but he ends up running away and bonking his head, but not before tons of jokes including him being tricked into their trap of a viking timelord marathoon (the season does manage his sudden obession with vikings that cropped up in season 2 after one joke about him writing a viking novel ins eason 1 work a LOT better without dominating his character this go round), despite having alerts for such an event, and nothing about it making sense only figuring out midway. Which is still good fo rhim

After hitting his head he end sup in a HELLSPITAL…. which is nightmarish as you'd expect, and well done at that, but gets heartwarming when Alex's dad decesnds from heaven, played by Henry Motherfucking Winkler who thanks to being in the upcoming season of Vox Machina has a VERY good chance of making this list two years in a row, and we get Alex having some heartwarming father son bonding with axes.. as well as the reveal his dad was sick a long time but simply didn't want to know he was.. and by the time he did it was too late. It teaches alex a hard lesson: that ignoring a medical problem because of bad news.. won't make it go away and the people who love you need you. it does so with time axes, demons and jabs at our awful healthcare system, but also with love. And gas which is what alex has. Chilli and all that