Children have bad taste in entertainment
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To be fair, most people figured out how badly Yu-Gi-Oh sucked when they were still kids. I remember when I first figured it out. Bought a VHS copy (because my family was technologically regressed like that) of a part towards the end of Pegasus's tournament. The audio/video turned out to be out of sync so we had to take it back but the guy wanted to see what the deal was before he'd accept it so he put it into one of the store VCR's. As it started up and we all stood there with our attention focused directly on the show, it occurred to me. "Wait, this is dumb. This is really dumb." Never watched it again.Revnak said:
Card game was still bitchin' though.
You shouldn't watch kids shows as kids, you shoould wait until you are old enough to see if it's any good.
But, there are a lot of good kid's shows, it's just that people tend to assume that kids will watch any old crap, because they will. Same as adults. Fucking hell there's a lot of bullshit TV aimed at adults.
It seems a large slab of decent TV my country makes is aimed at kids, though often for the overseas market [footnote]For example, H2O: Just add water only aired the third series here, in the country it was filmed, this year, several years after the rest of the world got it...and nobody wears school uniforms[/footnote].
For an example of a kid's show that stands up, The Mysterious Cities of Gold:
Though it was a bit long and drawn out at 39 eps.
It's about European colonialism in the new world, and it seems like they've done their research, IIRC, only its mixed with the legends of Mu and destroyed civilisations. But they fleshed it out much better than most, normally you get the odd ruin sitting in the middle of nowhere, IIRC with this it was more like WW3 happened in the Americas thousands of years ago and the rest of the world has only just found out, almost a post-Apolcalyptic feel in parts.
But, there are a lot of good kid's shows, it's just that people tend to assume that kids will watch any old crap, because they will. Same as adults. Fucking hell there's a lot of bullshit TV aimed at adults.
It seems a large slab of decent TV my country makes is aimed at kids, though often for the overseas market [footnote]For example, H2O: Just add water only aired the third series here, in the country it was filmed, this year, several years after the rest of the world got it...and nobody wears school uniforms[/footnote].
For an example of a kid's show that stands up, The Mysterious Cities of Gold:
Though it was a bit long and drawn out at 39 eps.
It's about European colonialism in the new world, and it seems like they've done their research, IIRC, only its mixed with the legends of Mu and destroyed civilisations. But they fleshed it out much better than most, normally you get the odd ruin sitting in the middle of nowhere, IIRC with this it was more like WW3 happened in the Americas thousands of years ago and the rest of the world has only just found out, almost a post-Apolcalyptic feel in parts.
Pretty much everything I watched as a kid is now ass to me. Most of it can be explained away as being a child and everything is new to you, thus everything is awesome. Those of us with extreme rose colored glasses just have generally harder times letting go of stuff. Psychology stuff, etc.
Well at 17 I can see that it has some bad acting at times and some shitty CGI, but hey it's enjoyable if you don't take it too seriously.Sonicron said:
I apparently went to watch that movie at the cinema, I had totally forgotten until someone practically had to hammer the fact into my head, either my memory is aweful or it was so traumatising that I was forced to lock the memory away. I genuinly got into an arguement with someone over whether or not we went to see that or the pokemon movie.
I admit that stuff I watched and enjoyed as a kid might not live up to my current standards. For instance, I used to like watching "The Neverending Story 3" on VHS (God I feel so old) when I was little... but now I realize it's not very good... (Admittedly, the Nostalgia Critic's review of said movie helped me on that one.)
Anyway, I can't help but shake my head at the shows we have on children's TV nowadays, namely sub-par cartoons and *SHUDDER* Tween sitcoms. Thank God not all of them are bad though... (Shows like Adventure Time, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, ect...)
Anyway, I can't help but shake my head at the shows we have on children's TV nowadays, namely sub-par cartoons and *SHUDDER* Tween sitcoms. Thank God not all of them are bad though... (Shows like Adventure Time, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, ect...)
Thread Title reminds me of how people (mostly those doing children's entertainment) say something along the lines of "Children actually do have taste in entertainment and are harsh critics because they are honest" and i'm always thinking NO! NO THEY DON'T!
So...uhm...thank you for that?
Anyways, stuff that doesn't hold up:
Knight Rider - Not necessarily a kid's show, just something i inexplicably LOOOOOVED as a kid. But...it's kinda boring, generic, and similar to it's simpsons parody, it's actually really set up so that every other episode they have an excuse for the car having to jump across something.
Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs - A sort-of-anime that was kind of a..."bigger" thing in germany i guess...nearly unwatchable. Everyone talks impossibly fast with a story pacing that's all over the place despite the stories being dull as hell.
Captain Future - ...equally weird pacing, and the nice atmosphere mixed with the amazing soundtrack don't quite overcome the horribly generic characters and the god-awful animation.
Stuff that holds up:
Who framed Roger Rabbit? - It...kind of just gets better every time i watch it and actually became only one of my favorite films when i was already at adult age.
Batman: The Animated Series - I don't remember it having quite so much humor and goofier scenes when i was younger, but overall, it's still an amazing series, with Mask of the Phantasm ranking as one of the best Batman Movies Live Action or Otherwise.
The A-Team - Not for the same reasons i liked it as a kid, but it has a undeniably cheesy charm to it (Also, i actually liked the movie despite being very different from the TV show)
So...uhm...thank you for that?
Anyways, stuff that doesn't hold up:
Knight Rider - Not necessarily a kid's show, just something i inexplicably LOOOOOVED as a kid. But...it's kinda boring, generic, and similar to it's simpsons parody, it's actually really set up so that every other episode they have an excuse for the car having to jump across something.
Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs - A sort-of-anime that was kind of a..."bigger" thing in germany i guess...nearly unwatchable. Everyone talks impossibly fast with a story pacing that's all over the place despite the stories being dull as hell.
Captain Future - ...equally weird pacing, and the nice atmosphere mixed with the amazing soundtrack don't quite overcome the horribly generic characters and the god-awful animation.
Stuff that holds up:
Who framed Roger Rabbit? - It...kind of just gets better every time i watch it and actually became only one of my favorite films when i was already at adult age.
Batman: The Animated Series - I don't remember it having quite so much humor and goofier scenes when i was younger, but overall, it's still an amazing series, with Mask of the Phantasm ranking as one of the best Batman Movies Live Action or Otherwise.
The A-Team - Not for the same reasons i liked it as a kid, but it has a undeniably cheesy charm to it (Also, i actually liked the movie despite being very different from the TV show)
Most of Disney's and Warner Brothers' stuff has aged pretty well. Just look at Batman: The Animated Series. That was the first series I'd consider a kid's show marketed and designed for an adult audience, and it was a smash hit. Anything Steven Spielberg touched on during the nineties, as a producer, tended to be good. Guy knows how to push the right buttons in a kid's mind.
As for "Digimon: The Movie" sucking, what did you expect, OP? This is three movies recut and reassembled into one Frankenstein of a monster by the typically uncaring, cynical gits at 4Kids.
I'll direct you to JesuOtaku's review of the movie, over on That Guy With The Glasses. She almost does a shot-for-shot breakdown of why the thing sucks, and why this can more or less be considered as the textbook 4Kids approach to licensing and dubbing.
Back when we were kids, TV producers either knew what we'd find interesting, or they had a sense of genuine respect for the way a kid's mind works, and how clever and perceptive most of us could actually be. Today's producers are a lot like those in the early eighties: most of their shows are based on video game franchises or CCGs, so who gives a fuck about plot? Just toss in some bullshit Moral of the Day after recutting the only *slightly* more inventive Japanese series that's available for syndication, and you're good to go.
Kids are stupid, after all. All they want is Mommy or Daddy's credit card, so they can buy more worthless electronic or plastic shit.
At least, the eighties' series occasionally succeeded at putting something like a plot together, enough that we'd start caring.
The best series I remember growing up to were Beast Wars, ReBoot and most of what came out of the WB animation pipeline at the time.
As for "Digimon: The Movie" sucking, what did you expect, OP? This is three movies recut and reassembled into one Frankenstein of a monster by the typically uncaring, cynical gits at 4Kids.
I'll direct you to JesuOtaku's review of the movie, over on That Guy With The Glasses. She almost does a shot-for-shot breakdown of why the thing sucks, and why this can more or less be considered as the textbook 4Kids approach to licensing and dubbing.
Back when we were kids, TV producers either knew what we'd find interesting, or they had a sense of genuine respect for the way a kid's mind works, and how clever and perceptive most of us could actually be. Today's producers are a lot like those in the early eighties: most of their shows are based on video game franchises or CCGs, so who gives a fuck about plot? Just toss in some bullshit Moral of the Day after recutting the only *slightly* more inventive Japanese series that's available for syndication, and you're good to go.
Kids are stupid, after all. All they want is Mommy or Daddy's credit card, so they can buy more worthless electronic or plastic shit.
At least, the eighties' series occasionally succeeded at putting something like a plot together, enough that we'd start caring.
The best series I remember growing up to were Beast Wars, ReBoot and most of what came out of the WB animation pipeline at the time.
I like how people complain about kids shows being terrible now, when they were bad back in anybody's childhood. To the kids watching them, they think it's the best thing in the world, while adults think it's the devil.
Back in the late 90's my favourite show was NASCAR Racers. It was NASCAR, but the cars had boosters in them, and the tracks were complex and had loops and right turns. But the characters were annoying, repeating the same catchphrases over and over and even the "good guys" would deliberately cause crashes.
Did I have bad taste? Children are very narrow-minded, can't blame them for that.
Back in the late 90's my favourite show was NASCAR Racers. It was NASCAR, but the cars had boosters in them, and the tracks were complex and had loops and right turns. But the characters were annoying, repeating the same catchphrases over and over and even the "good guys" would deliberately cause crashes.
Did I have bad taste? Children are very narrow-minded, can't blame them for that.
It's not that kids have "bad taste", so much as kids have different tastes in entertainment. Kids tend to like slapstick humour more than adults do and prefer loud, over-the-top characters (which adults often find irritating). They can also find it difficult to understand overly-subtle plots, so the younger the intended audience the more things are "spelt out".
I don't know what you're talking about. The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, the original DragonBall subbed (back when Funimation liked covering things up with plants and stuff), DangerMouse, DarkWingDuck, and Gargoyles all still kick a fair amount of ass. Even SailorMoon does. I think television of today has set your expectations too high. Nick cartoons from the 90's were great. Rugrats, Doug, Ren and Stimpy, etc. So much awesome. Then you had all those weird spin-off cartoons that were just as great.
In fact, if I go ahead twenty years and look back at Avatar: The Last Airbender and the latest My Little Pony, it will still rock, too.
But I do have to say that most cartoons from 2000 on have been pretty bad all along. Remember when anime steered away from awesome weird-ass plots about bug robots flying out of people's faces and moved towards people playing card games? That was weird. All of those animes suck. They did at the get-go, they still do now.
What I'm really trying to say is that everything in the 90's was golden.
In fact, if I go ahead twenty years and look back at Avatar: The Last Airbender and the latest My Little Pony, it will still rock, too.
But I do have to say that most cartoons from 2000 on have been pretty bad all along. Remember when anime steered away from awesome weird-ass plots about bug robots flying out of people's faces and moved towards people playing card games? That was weird. All of those animes suck. They did at the get-go, they still do now.
What I'm really trying to say is that everything in the 90's was golden.
All the Disney movies, old Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon cartoons, and video games that I played, hold up well.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, though.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, though.
Ok, overlooking the fact the thread title has nothing to do with the OPs argment, I feel the need to respond. To the OPs argument, that is.
Very very bad idea to go back to childhood things. Dear god, the number of things I've rewatched from childhood only to...
Y'know, its kinda unrealistic to expect things to hold up over time. For example, i wouldn't even dream of watching the A Team ever again. I loved that show as a kid, but I know from my Knightrider experience that it will be beyond lame.
Moreso for cartoons. I made the mistake of buying the Thundercats DVD when it first came out, and I'll tell you, it was actually physically painful to watch that again. Like it was draining my soul. Now, the writing of the new version is just as much of a bag of wank as the old one, but I think it is a hell of a lot better. The art style is better and cheetara... Waaaaaaaay sexier.
Thats right, I said it.
Very very bad idea to go back to childhood things. Dear god, the number of things I've rewatched from childhood only to...
Y'know, its kinda unrealistic to expect things to hold up over time. For example, i wouldn't even dream of watching the A Team ever again. I loved that show as a kid, but I know from my Knightrider experience that it will be beyond lame.
Moreso for cartoons. I made the mistake of buying the Thundercats DVD when it first came out, and I'll tell you, it was actually physically painful to watch that again. Like it was draining my soul. Now, the writing of the new version is just as much of a bag of wank as the old one, but I think it is a hell of a lot better. The art style is better and cheetara... Waaaaaaaay sexier.
Thats right, I said it.