Cartoons ruined by executive meddling.

[synobal]

Okay I'm gonna be different here and put forward a cartoon that managed to not get ruined by executive meddling. Batman Beyond, the executives wanted Terry's little brother to become robin, for terry to have a minibatcave in his house and a whole bunch of other really stupid ideas and the shows creators managed to avoid all that terrible stuff that was pushed at them.

Totally awesome and much respect.

 

[BishopofAges]

I'd hate to say it, but the thing I most get depressed about is when a good show starts losing its edge to things like lazy writing, disney-esque endings, and when all the fun is replaced stuff like morals just ham-handedly jammed in so the audience can learn something. It really doesn't take a character stopping the action/story and saying something like "You know what? I learned something today." Honestly South Park made a bunch of fun at this sort of ending with Kyle/Stan saying something like that for some time, then I think they noticed that no one got the joke anymore.

Good writing does not need explanation, good writing and great writing explains itself through the audience's experience.

So yeah corporate shenanigans like that really screws my pooch, pees in my cheerios, and otherwise dulls my experience.

Also, why in the mother of all Fs did they cut Samurai Jack? Didn't the thing win awards and whatnot, and BOOM gone like it was never there...

 

[Auron]

Haven't watched the Avengers show, might be a good idea at least before it was screwed. So Young Justice is going to be replaced by kiddie Titans and another Batman that no matter how much it tries will not measure up to Bruce Timm's work in the original run and Justice League/The new adventures? Marvelous. -_-

 

[JemothSkarii]

Gargoyles, Symbionic titan (Giant robot show cancelled due to lack of toy line?), MLP FiM (Let Lauren do what she wants!), Tron Uprising, pretty much all of the saturday morning tv show blocks, and many, many more.

Lauren created a fantastic universe for mlp but I'm not really sure how essential she was for the show beyond creating the universe, she only wrote three episodes and they weren't really that great of episodes, she wrote the pilot two parter, which I liked and the ticket master which I thought was kinda weak.

Mine is Angel Beats. Originally the show was supposed to be 24 episodes but for some reason it got hacked down to only like 12 so there was so much left unexplored in it.

It still had a decent ending...

Spoiler

Utterly Heartbreaking QwQ

...But a good ending, but yes, more would have been lovely.

OT: Pandora Hearts, 25 episodes, finished on a cliffhanger (as the Director left in to try and get a second season) and it's been three years. There's a glimmer of hope, sure...but dammit I want my conclusion! So many loose ends >.<.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

It is true. I'm paraphrasing, but yes. Turner thought that the show was too violent and it would lead to kids blowing each other up in planes. All while ignoring the fact that his lovechild Captain Planet had Hitler, dismemberment, AIDS, gang violence with REAL weapons. Hypocrite.

Captain Planet btw was the first cartoon that ever featured drug addiction. Looking back it is a bit I dunno sketchy? The person who became a drug addict was Linka (the blond Eastern European chick who keeps getting hit on by NYer Weeler) and her cousin both of home sound really Russian.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

Ooooh. This thread gets me right in the gut.

People seem to be listing ones I already agree with, but here's my list anyway:

Spectacular Spider-Man,

The only marvel cartoon I ever really loved. The episode where all the big bosses fight each other with opera in the background was brilliant. In fact the reason why I liked YJ so much is because the man, Greg, was the man behind Spectacular Spider-man. So it really didn't hit me that hard since I have YJ to fallback on. But now that YJ is going then I guess there's nothing left except Korra.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

Haven't watched the Avengers show, might be a good idea at least before it was screwed. So Young Justice is going to be replaced by kiddie Titans and another Batman that no matter how much it tries will not measure up to Bruce Timm's work in the original run and Justice League/The new adventures? Marvelous. -_-

This is why I'm getting sick and tired of Batman cartoons. I love Batman don't get me wrong. Maybe if they create a Batman in the same vein as YJ with Greg at the helm, then that is something I can get myself into.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

Cartoon Network has a bad habit of cancelling its best shows, (most recently being Sym-Bionic Titan and Young Justice) with the weak excuse of them not being good at selling toys (though the toylines were either non-existant or the ones they made were shitty).

I'd be hella pissed if the reason their cancelling YJ is because of toys. I'd probably understand ratings but really?! Toys?! What a waste.

 

[Easton Dark]

Also, why in the mother of all Fs did they cut Samurai Jack? Didn't the thing win awards and whatnot, and BOOM gone like it was never there...

That seems to happen with a lot of Cartoon Network shows.

Maybe they hate Tartakovsky after Dexter's Lab.

 

[Goro]

Harvey Birdman, attorney at law.
First series was really subversive and funny, second series just lost all subtlety. Third series just not funny.
And I really miss samurai pizza cats.

 

[Gizmo1990]

Thank You! Someone else who was disapointed with Legend of Korra. Everyone else seems to think it is perfect but I fould most of the characters irritating and only 2 (Tensin and Toph's kid) good. none of the new ones even aproch the level of awesome that The Last Airbender did. Also, I may just be me but the fight scenes seem to be smaller and look slower. most of the characters are ment to be master benders but they seem to get their arse kicked every 5 mins and never seem to pull off the kinds of moves the original guys could.

While I disagree with most of what you said I can see where you're coming from. They did get their arses kicked every now and then but that's part of the character development. It would suck ass if they had just won every single confrontation. Besides the losses were meant to showcase how fast korra grew as a character. None of the chiblockers tricks worked twice on korra.

But as the person you're quoting and I both agreed, lets wait beyond the first season. The first season felt too fast that's why I think it put a lot of people off. They had to squeeze in so much into the story with such a limited amount of time.

I think Korra is great but far from perfect. I don't hate so much as I dislike Bolin all he ever does is try to be funny and since a lot of characters are funny in their own right he seems to add little to no value to the show. I do like chief beifong though.

I see your point and yes they had to keep getting ther arse handed to them, I see why it had to happen for the plot but I think it was done badly. Korra is ment to already be a master of 3 elements, Tensin is an airbending master and beifong is a master metalbender and likly a master earthbender. When the other characters were considered to reach master level they never lost that many fights and when they did their opponents were also master benders. The show told us that they were at the same level as the old characters but then had them fail. I could not help but think when watching the fights that Aang could have handeled it or Toph or Zuko or any of the other charcters from TLA.

I will try the next series but only to see what Aang's other kid is like. I know it was shorter and rushed but the fact is I just do not like the new characters as much. Mostly Mako. Hate that guy.

 

[Auron]

snip

Yeah I really liked Young Justice, a bit overly dramatic at times, thought that's in tune with Titans I suppose, still awesome overall. What's Bruce Timm doing nowadays anyway? Weisman would probably put together a nice show but not sure about that, the Joker voice actor in Young Justice was also completely terrible, it was Bren Spiner I think, he's awesome but not the Joker.

 

[likalaruku]

Asking the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac to make a show for children = Brilliant. Unfortunately Nickelodeon immediately regretted it. I'f I'm not mistaken, reviews with Jhonen Vasquez have Nickelodeon moving the show to all different time slots, not letting him kill off minor characters, refusal to sell the rights to MTV at his own request, refusal for another season & ultimate cancellation.

On my own I noticed Nickelodeon had newer episodes rarely airing while the earlier ones were overplayed. When I got my hands on the DVDs, there must have been 6 episodes I'd never seen on TV before.
----------------------------------------------
Other executive meddling I've read about:

*Execs wanted Robin in EVERY episode of Batman TAS. If they had their way, Batman would have been HIS sidekick.

*All the shit Adventure Time gets past the radar gets diced out by censors in Australia & the Philippines. Fortunately they can just watch the uncensored episodes online.

*The first season of ReBoot. Nuff said there. But you can tell the meddling went lax in season 2 & blind & deaf in season 3.

*Hasbro making MLPFiM heavily edit Derpy's big moment, then basically phasing her out of the season. It's also their fault Twilight is a pegacorn because they wanted to sell an even girlier looking toy of her.

*SatAM Sonic & Gargoyles getting cancelled despite their popularity.

*Gargoyles 2ed season was dumbed down to appeal to younger viewers because the execs didn't like the older demographic. It was actually bad enough that after the anger of the initial shock of the cancellation subsided in the hearts f fans, they looked at it again & realized that they didn't like where the show was going at this point. It was moved to comic books.

*SatAM Sonic also got moved to comics & while it started looking more like AoStH with SatAm characters, it ended up slowly surpassing the show in maturity to the point where SatAM looked childish. Then SEGA forces Archie to shoehorn in their godawful Sonic Adventure characters, despite it being an alternate universe.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

MLP:FiM after S1. Don't get me wrong - I still really do enjoy all 3 seasons so far and am among the few who think that S3 was overall better than S2, but something changed in the show a long time ago that started with Lesson Zero (a good episode that set a bad trend for the series). I don't know if executive meddling caused it however, but it hasn't been quite the same in a long time. The show just doesn't feel as lighthearted as it used to.

I think what you are alluding to is the fact that Lauren Faust stepped down from Executive Produce to Consulting after season one.

Honestly, I think that's a big part to it but that there's more to it than that. Most of the second season went for a darker, more flanderized route with the characters. While some episodes like Sisterhooves Social and Friend in Deed stuck fairly true to the characters and lightheartedness; most episodes were more along the lines of Lesson Zero, Mare-Do-Well, and Hurricane Fluttershy with the heavily exaggerated or backwards characterization and a notably more bitter tone. I can't say for certain just how much Faust's departure played a part in this or what else lead to the decline, but the show has indeed gone downhill since the very first non-Faust episode aired (Lesson Zero) and I do feel that Faust's departure wasn't the only reason that this happened. Once again, I liked Lesson Zero, but it was a horrible episode to model the entire show after.

 

[Snotnarok]

Sonic SatAM, it was a pretty good show with some nice story going on, sure it was a bit cheesy with the dialog and what not but it was a pretty solid show. Then it ends on season 1 while Sonic Underground goes on for more than 2 seasons, and nothing was good about that show.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Dragon Ball Z. The reason that we had three main villains each replaced by the next one soon after their introduction (first #19 and #20, changed because ?an old geezer and a fatso weren?t intimidating enough"; second #17 and #18, changed because ?what, the Big Bads are two delinquent teenagers??; finally, Cell, who had to transform early because ?his second form looked too ugly?). That was all due to editorial interference.

Then again, without such a strong editorial interference like before, we got the Boo arc, which was just a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

 

[Loonyyy]

There was something to ruin with The Legend of Korra?

It had a cool art style and animation, and the setting was awesome, and it had a female Batman running around, with a magical V as well, but Korra was such a terrible, completely irredeemably unlikeable character and a terrible person.

You know. I'll agree that Legend of Kora was bad... but I just can't remember anything to not like about it. I think it was bad because I don't remember anything except for Zuko's kid or whatever coming in with a navy and getting destroyed?

Why was Kora so bad? All I remember was that she had an attitude.

Mainly her attitude. The series painted the guy removing people's powers as evil, but I actually preferred him. When trying to track him down, Korra happily used her powers to assault a powerless man. Her SWAT team was ridiculous, and was using excessive force on people learning to use a skill which would allow them to fight toe to toe with benders. In a world with benders, outlawing (What was it, Chi blocking or something?) is just blanketly making classes of people. Considering Korra's actions, these people should learn this, because benders can be complete asshats, and might attack you with the elements on a whim.

She also had these annoying impulsive streaks, which are just so overdone, and the constant bit about rebellion got old, and the less said about how she acted in romantic endeavours the better. She also had no compunction about killing people. Really, to me she came off as a psychopathic bully, who was stupid and insensitive, callous, and yet treated far better by the other characters and the story than she deserved. I only saw scattered bits of The Last Airbender, thanks to school, but Aang was an inquisitive, caring character, and was always interesting, and his companions were fun, and lifelike. The only part of the main trio I liked was the chubby one, who I felt sorry for, the way that the other *obvious romantic interest despite Korra clearly having more chemistry with the other guy* dressed, and their ferret thing. I really felt sorry for them putting up with her. The antagonists from The Last Airbender had more depth, character, and things to sympathise with than Korra, in my mind.

I actually would probably go back and watch the rest of the series if she was the antagonist, or something, just not the focus, because I really liked a lot of what they had going, but I just couldn't get invested in her at all. Bear in mind that I only watched like 6 episodes or something, so maybe later they shot the writing team and it got better.

Actually, that would be a really cool inversion. V guy fights a rebellious underground movement to destroy the oppressive bender regime, and give power to those unable to fight back against the priviliged upper class.

 

[iDoom46]

Cartoon Network has a bad habit of cancelling its best shows, (most recently being Sym-Bionic Titan and Young Justice) with the weak excuse of them not being good at selling toys (though the toylines were either non-existant or the ones they made were shitty).

I'd be hella pissed if the reason their cancelling YJ is because of toys. I'd probably understand ratings but really?! Toys?! What a waste.

I can't really say if toys are the ACTUAL reason, but (at least when it comes to the shows listed in this thread) "ratings" is never the true reason behind cancellation. For whatever reason/ulterior motive they have, network execs start suddenly moving show timeslots without warning, skipping weeks, and showing episodes out of order to confuse viewers and manipulate the viewership figures down to make it SEEM like the ratings are terrible.

Dragon Ball Z. The reason that we had three main villains each replaced by the next one soon after their introduction (first #19 and #20, changed because ?an old geezer and a fatso weren?t intimidating enough"; second #17 and #18, changed because ?what, the Big Bads are two delinquent teenagers??; finally, Cell, who had to transform early because ?his second form looked too ugly?). That was all due to editorial interference.

Then again, without such a strong editorial interference like before, we got the Boo arc, which was just a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Akira Toriyama has gone on record saying he HATED doing the DragonBall manga in the later parts. He's said that there was lots of meddling by editors to make him change things and keep the series going despite his declining interest.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly where things started going south but, from what I see, it seems like it all started somewhere along the lines of the Frieza or Cell arcs. Frieza arc because halfway through Toriyama's background and character designs suddenly plummet to really simplistic, and Cell because you can tell he REALLY wanted the story to end there with Gohan taking over after Goku's death.

 

[Mr Mystery Guest]

Batman Beyond. Season 2 was ruined because the executives wanted every episode to be set in the school. Their thinking being - everyone likes school right? Everyone can relate to school and school never gets boring. It became ridiculous, the Gotham police should have just closed the bloody place down and it would have cut the crime rate in half.

 

[Harlem Knight]

Hmmm, well I'd point out that you guys are missing an important point. A lot of the changes to these shows doubtlessly happen because YOU (adults) like the shows. It's an intentional security matter.

Originally there was a lot to be said for children's shows that could also appeal to an adult audience, Anime, especially when it picked up through the 90s got a lot of attention that way (when people pay $30 for a subtitled VHS producers take notice) and inspired the design of a lot of cartoon shows in the US. This lead to a lot of pretty popular properties being developed, and lead to a lot of money being spent as adult fans purchused stuff for their kids (uh huh).

The problem of course here is obvious, when you create situations where random adults and children mix in the same cosm it becomes pedo-bait. Something a predator can use to chat up a child and form that all-important initial connection when the parents/guardians are not around. Sometimes watching a random 40 year old discuss [insert show here] with an 8 year old can be cute, if a bit creepy, but othertimes it's hardly harmless, and people DO keep track of the techniques used by child predators.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Pedo's will find ANYTHING to use as bait for children.

Hell, they can turn on SpongeBob or an other cartoon on television right now to attract children. The maturity level of a cartoon has very little (if anything) to do with whether pedophiles will watch the cartoon.

It is easier to make toys and syndicate a 22-minte cartoon with a juvenile plot and no ongoing arc.