Julius Terrell said:
This list goes to show that I'm not so close minded, and that I do understand that Japanese anime as its own flaws. I'm not that conceited. What medium doesn't have flaws. Most of these shows came along when animation was in its prime. These show I feel cannot be made under today's money driven environment. It's a real shame, but it even worse that traditional, hand drawn 2D shows aren't in favor anymore. What real shame for people like me who grew up with that standard.
I think it's funny that you listed Captain Planet, because to me it was one of the low points of television animation. Well, maybe not low points, but definitely the prime example of everything that was wrong with animation and kid's shows at that particular moment. Captain Planet came around just after the Transformers and He-Man shows of the 80s which were specifically designed to sell things to kids. The FCC didn't like the idea of kids being brainwashed by television to coax their parents into buying toys, so they put down regulations that essentially outlawed them for a time. They also put down regulations that said shows had to teach kids some sort of moral. Thus, Captain Planet--a show designed to teach kids how to do good, rather than a show designed to market toys. It was created specifically to appease the FCC, and it worked.
And this is where I feel your bias is showing, because I didn't grow up watching Captain Planet and when I watch it now and I find it nearly insultingly bad. I'm sure they worked good storylines in there, but every single aspect is so carefully calculated to fill those FCC regulations, and they don't even try to hide it. The villains being conspicuously topical and determined to ruin the environment, the environment-themed powers, the fact that everyone is carefully selected from every part of the globe to fill a nice rainbow of diversity...it doesn't feel creative to me, it feels like somebody did an artist's rendering of the most politically-correct rubric ever. It was a show completely designed by a committee.
Whoops, that rant went a bit long. Anyway, as far as the traits you seemed to like (artistry, creativity, risk, etc) I'm afraid Captain Planet is about as far away from that as you can get. I'm not trying to say it's bad that you like it, there are some shows I grew up with that I know are just as terrible but I like them anyway.
But the generation after yours had some great shows, as well. I was born in 1991, so the shows I remember best are Recess, Sonic the Hedgehog as you mentioned, Pepper Ann (a bit formulaic, but the writers at least seemed to "get" what a pre-teen girl is like a lot more than other shows), Rugrats, Tailspin, Gargoyles, Hey Arnold, As Told by Ginger, The Wild Thornberries, Angry Beavers, Jimmy Neutron, Teen Titans, Danny Phantom, CatDog, Pokemon, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life. I never really watched the last two there, but everybody lists them on 90s cartoon lists so I felt the need to list them, as well.
Recess in particular fascinates me because looking at it now the characters still hold up and aren't insultingly stupid or annoying, and I think I know why. In FCC-appeasing shows like Captain Planet and GI Joe and whatnot, the kids were written as children that are ideal to adults. Children who are generally well-behaved, learn from their mistakes, and try to do good in everything they do. But in Recess, Pepper Ann, Rugrats, and other cartoons from the 90s the children were written as they really were. They were stubborn, selfish, curious, confused, mischievous, weird, one-track-minded, impulsive, and sometimes even violent.
So cartoons from the 80s were determined to make model children, while cartoons from the 90s were determined to make children who were as close to the real thing as possible. Yes they often used stereotypes to make their characters (the cast of Recess can easily be summarized as The Leader, the Smart One, the Fat One, the Angry One, the Black Athlete, and the Geek), but they behaved as real children do. While they are generally good kids, they aren't exactly like Opie from the Andy Griffith show, either. They didn't go out kicking puppies, but they also weren't goody-goodies.
Though I'll grant shows like Captain Planet were only dealing with the tools they had at the time. At that point they were so scared shitless the FCC would take them off the air they were willing to crank out anything to keep their studios open. And many 90s shows and even to an extent shows today carry with them that "we need to teach them some sort of moral" thing. And again, my assessment is severely tinted by my personal experience with them. I have no doubt those shows were engaging, but to me they come across as a lot more transparent and shallow than the shows of the 90s.
As for cartoons of today, I do feel like there isn't as great of a variety as there was when I was growing up, but Adventure Time and Phineas and Ferb and other upstart shows seem to be kicking off a new era of cartoons. If I had to pick a theme for the current generation of cartoons, I'd say it's about wish fulfillment. Adventure Time is about an awesome kid going out and doing whatever awesome stuff he wants--every kid's dream. And Phineas and Ferb is pretty much the same thing, but they achieve their awesomeness in a very different way. And I think F&P is particularly funny because while it is "formulaic" in that every episode is pretty much the same[footnote]Phineas and Ferb build something awesome, Perry is alerted to whatever Doctor Doofinshmertz is up to this time, Candice tries to rat out Phineas and Ferb, Doofinshmertz and Perry fight, and right before the end whatever Phineas and Ferb built disappears (often because of something involving Doofinshmertz and Perry), Doofinshmertz is defeated, Perry returns, and Candice fails to rat the boys out.[/footnote], it seems to be more of a parody of those formulas than anything else. Doofinshemertz's plans are so ridiculous and were so obviously tailored to perfectly coincide with whatever F&P are up to that you can't help but feel the huge trollfaces the writers were wearing when they wrote them.
Some of my bias is probably showing at this point, and I'm sorry if I'm coming across as hostile, but you seem to have a great interest in animation but just a very limited experience. So many of these threads end up being polarized lamentfests, either lamenting the shamefulness of Disney or the lack of good cartoons these days or the disappearance of a particular person's favorite cartoon they grew up with that all perspective is lost and it all just becomes a "my childhood was better than your childhood" contest. It's like everybody who grew up watching cartoons automatically thinks they are an expert on what makes a good cartoon and what doesn't, but if what you're looking for is an objective look we have to at least be able to
admit our biases and understand why cartoons of certain points in time are different from cartoons in other times.
