Poll: As a Teenager, which did you watch more? Toonami, or MTV?

[omega 616]

Neither.

Cartoons are for kids, the stories and characters are basic and wacky. Didn't hold much interest for me as a teen.
MTV was just music videos and that wasn't interesting either, I don't need a video to listen to music and watching people "dancing" is boring.

I started watching kind of more adult stuff as I went into high school, it wasn't like news or Grey's anatomy ... it started off with stuff like the Tribe (that post apolcolyptic show it was about 2 gangs of teenagers. It was shot in New Zealand) and as I got older Veronica Mars, friends, Smallville, Dharma and Greg etc you know, that kind of stuff.

I still watch that kind of stuff but I like am now watching more Arrow, Bones etc. Not that I am a teen any more.

Well, Cartoon Network aired several mature programming on Toonami even if they were edited. Ever watched Gundam Wing? The Big O? Batman Beyond? Outlaw Star? IGPX? Rurouni Kenshin? Yu Yu Hakusho? Justice League? Samurai Jack?

I have literally never seen a second of most those but I've seen half an episode of Samurai jack and it was total crap. When I was a kid I would watch some batman cartoon, but I also watched argh real monsters, angry beavers, courage the cowardly dog, catdog, Keenan and Kel etc but as they quickly dropped off as I grew up.

I the only cartoon-esque thing I watched as a teen was DBZ.

 

[Ieyke]

Neither.

Cartoons are for kids, the stories and characters are basic and wacky.

That's laughably incorrect.
SOME of them are, but on Toonami that wasn't generally the case.
For a long time you'd've been somewhat right regarding western cartoons, but the Japanese have never been stupid enough to think that way. To the Japanese it's always just been another medium for story telling. They'd make every type of show from the most serious to the most childish as anime.
Anime has a history of getting extremely complex, political, philosophical, and/or mature.
And it's not just anime.
Nowadays what you believe is TOTAL nonsense, but even back when it was somewhat true of western cartoons there were major exceptions.

Gundam Wing - Dead serious basically all the time. Rebellions, coups, war on a beyond geopolitical scale. Grim.

Cowboy Bebop - Have you seen Firefly? Cowboy Bebop was Firefly long before Firefly existed, except it happened to be animated and it has a film noir style instead of a western style.

Batman:The Animated Series - still outright the best incarnation of Batman ever made. Puts every movie Batman to shame.

Batman Beyond - Continuation of Batman:TAS

Justice League/Justice League Unlimited - Shares Batman:TAS's universe. What Marvel is doing now with its inter-connected movies/what DC WISHES it could do with its movies, is what Bruce Timm and Paul Dini did long long ago with the DC Animated Universe.

Young Justice - An extremely well-made modern successor to the DCAU's Justice League. It got cancelled after 2 seasons because it was declared -too popular with girls/women-.... WTF logic that bullshit is, I don't know.

Spider-Man The Animated Series

X-Men The Animated Series

Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X

Tron Uprising - a direct extension of the Tron universe.

Avatar The Last Airbender - Initially it seems like it might just be a wacky show for kids. It's colorful and has its wacky moments. But then it gets darker, more political and philosophical, until those kids you've been following have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and are neck-deep in war.

Avatar- The Legend Of Korra - Same deal as its predecessor, except the first season is even darker - dealing with terrorism, civil war, genocide, fratricide, corrupt politicians, crime, etc.

The Venture Bros. - Wacky? Yes. But crazy complex and easily the best/most cleverly written TV show...maybe ever.

Futurama - Wacky, clever, hilarious.

-

Many of those shows are vastly superior to Smallville and Dharma and Greg.
(Basically nothing beats Veronica Mars)


(Samurai Jack was...eh...okay)
(DBZ was preeeetty dumb)

 

[omega 616]

snip

If you give me something to watch that is animated I just can't take it seriously, like I used to watch that animated batman 'cos it filled a gap and I just didn't think it was entertaining and as much as I dislike batman, I found the batman movie with Heath in it actually entertaining. Every time batman spoke or was referred to as THE batman I wanted to punch a puppy but over all I was entertained.

Futurama isn't hilarious, it's again entertaining. I never once burst out laughing or even smiled, it was one of those shows that if there is nothing else on I would watch without complaint but a lot of other stuff took priority over it. It has fuck all depth, it's puerile.

Smallville is very PG 13 and nobody likes Dharma and Greg 'cos Chuck Lorre directs it and nobody on the internet likes his stuff, just look at TBBT.

As for anime it can get fucked till I get some dubbing, I can't stand subtitles or western people who say dubs ruin anime, subs are always better. If you speak the language then great but watching anime with incoherent rambling playing while you watch and read is stupid. I am not just having a go at eastern language, if Germany, France, Spain or any other none English voice work was over an anime I would call it incoherent rambling.

I watched both the xmen and spiderman animated series and again both entertaining but fuck all depth, they aren't plumbing the depths of human emotion of political ideology, it's just "stop the bad guy from doing bad stuff". If that is what counts for serious story telling, then no wonder stories in games are exactly the same.

Xmen, spiderman and batman animated series are one step up from Tom and Jerry or the looney toons on the serious scale.

 

[Ieyke]

As for anime it can get fucked till I get some dubbing, I can't stand subtitles or western people who say dubs ruin anime, subs are always better. If you speak the language then great but watching anime with incoherent rambling playing while you watch and read is stupid. I am not just having a go at eastern language, if Germany, France, Spain or any other none English voice work was over an anime I would call it incoherent rambling.

^THAT is true. Not an issue with any of the shows I mentioned or any of the ones on Toonami.

The Batman, Spider-Man, etc certainly weren't super deep, but they're not wacky or shallow by any means.

Smallville was reeeeaaally cheesy and makes a sad mess of the DC universe.
Dharma and Greg and TBBT are both okay. Just not particularly noteworthy.

 

[Something Amyss]

They must have all been on in the daytime when I was at school then, because I sure never saw or even heard about them. (And I was a kid who scanned the tv schedule in the newspaper religiously to see if any horror films would be on Turner Classic Movies.) Then again after a few months of being subjected to TRL, which another family member insisted on watching, I avoided the channel most of the time. But even if they had music blocks as you say almost never seeing an entire music video on the channel was definitely true of my experience with MTV around 1998 - 2000.

I watched large blocks of music on MTV with my friends. It was largely crap, but still. Large blocks of crappy music.

 

[Lilani]

I watched Toonami and made jokes about MTV. As I got older, Toonami disappeared, but MTV remained a goldmine of hilariously horrible television.

 

[smithy_2045]

Neither. Not that I had the option to watch either, but even if I did it would've been neither. I spent my teenage years on the internet, and only watched tv for sport and certain comedy shows.

 

[Saltyk]

When I was in high school, it was the early-mid 2000's. And I'm pretty sure that MTV was pretty much utter garbage by that point. I remember watching some music videos on it prior to that, and even Beavis and Butthead. Sadly, I think the era of "good" MTV was over as they started their transition to garbage Reality TV shows that had nothing to do with music.

Toonami by a wide margin. It was a great block on Cartoon Network, full of some of the best action anime of the 90's.

Spoiler: Feel the Nostalgia flow through you.

 

[themistermanguy]

I mentioned before that Toonami tied with MTV in the early 2000's for teen viewers. Here's the article that states it in case you don't believe me.

http://www.timewarner.com/newsroom/press-releases/2001/03/13/cartoon-network-s-toonami-delivers-key-tweenteen-demos

 

[lacktheknack]

watching TV

Plebs please, I was playing video games.

I wouldn't have been able to watch MTV or Toonami if I wanted to anyways, because our channel package didn't have it. Plus, Mom thought that MTV at the time was abhorrent (she wasn't wrong).

 

[J Tyran]

Neither, I didn't actually watch much TV at all. I was busy doing... other things like chemistry experiments, cider tasting and learning exactly what the other gender where for. Racing up and down the M1 in a Metro with a Metro Turbo bodykit on it going from service station to service station looking for the Raves where fun to, there where some police cells involved a time or two as well.

 

[sandangel]

MTV had long since crapped the bed by the time I was in high school. Toonami on the other hand was excellent at the time, so that became part of my regular schedule.

 

[themistermanguy]

since the general consensus is that MTV has been going downhill in the early 2000s, I suppose a better question would be which was your most watched after school block as a teenager? TRL, or Toonami?

 

[HyperdrivePics]

Definitely a Toonami kid. Dragonball Z was amazing and new back then. I had just rediscovered Sailor Moon on tv. Plus some cool new animes like Big O, Tenchi Muyo, Yu-Yu-Hakasho, etc. Toonami hands down.

 

[thejboy88]

Usually, I watched Toonami. It had a slew of shows that I loved, while MTV only had one that ever interested me, Daria.

 

[LaSelaMelvins]

Haven't really watched MTV since 2005, when Gorillaz released Demon Days and MTV played the fuck out of Feel Good Inc and DARE.
Noodle was fuckin' hot, man.

I mean I'm sure I glanced at it since then, but if I want a dose of pop culture, there's FUSE and AXS for that. I feel that the more I watch MTV, the more brain cells I lose.
Toonami, on the other hand...

 

[Vicarious Reality]

I only watched MTV a couple of times, never heard of that toonami
I think i watched ZTV more though

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

Neither.. didn't have cable till like highschool and didn't hear about Toonami till then.. i think mtv was out of music by time i got cable..

 

[faefrost]

I think there are a lot of assumptions in the original question? Heck MTV kicked off during my Senior year in High School. Toonami didn't come about until I was in my 40's I think. Where is the choice for "Star Trek and I love Lucy reruns, and the rare beloved Godzilla movie?"

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Actually I don't recall watching either. MTV was for music videos and Toonami sounds vaguely familiar but can't place it. I think I just watched Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.