American Cartoons?

Shuhan said:
There is a thread about it in the general discussion area.

To answer your question im not really a fan of korra, i loved the first series a lot better and i guess my expectations were too high for this show.

i dont really watch any other american shows tbh.

link9us said:


OH come one, don't tell me you never seen "Teenage Mutant ninja turtles, teenage mutant ninja turtles, turtles in a half shell turtle power" lol


Or

Fire, wind, water, heart, GOO PLANET, captain planet he's a hero going to take pollution down to zero" Lol

ok ill shut up now, it must of been since i was just a child when i watched those cartoons.

Nichibotsu-kaeru said:
how many of you have watched Avatar: The Last Air Bender? as it is not on MAL since it is an American show as well, could you tell me what you thought of it? and how do you guys organism episodes that MAL doesn't have like other good Cartoon Adventre Time? and what thoughts you had on that if you watched it (which i highly recommend :) xox

TitanXL said:
Nothing you find in American animation can't be found in anime, only done better since they have a much stronger and open animation industry. Avatar is Baby's First Shounen Anime, for example.

IceBubbleTea said:
I like that show, I think it's better than a lot of anime I've seen.

how many of you have watched Avatar: The Last Air Bender? as it is not on MAL since it is an American show as well, could you tell me what you thought of it?

and how do you guys organism episodes that MAL doesn't have like other good Cartoon Adventre Time?

LayedBack said:
Venture Bros

Nuff Said.

TitanXL said:
If I was going to put American animation on my list, I sure as heck wouldn't put Adventure Time or Avatar, I can tell you that much at least.

Anyway, I find American animation in general pretty much obsolete. They don't make anything worth watching since they decided all animation is either for manchildren adult comedies like Family Guy or kiddy comedy cartoons like Spongebob. Nothing you find in American animation can't be found in anime, only done better since they have a much stronger and open animation industry. Avatar is Baby's First Shounen Anime, for example.

link9us said:
Well ive always been a huge fan of Marvel and DC comics back in the day, i use collect them alot. I finally started to download and start collecting some of the series, surprisingly they edit it quite a bit compared to t he actual comics. But still the marvel and DC univises have always been enjoying to read/watch and sports some of the most influential characters in animation.

Now a days marvel and DC has gotten huge, its now in big block buster hits with holly wood movie starz making millions. Just look at movies like ironman, dark knight, and the soon to be released "avengers" some of these movies have the highest gross income in the entire world.

Also marvel and DC are started to become very popular in the gaming industry, before most of the games kind of sucked but now they are really pulling out all the stops, creating some pretty large budget games like batman arkham city or amazing spider man.

So i think, anime is obviously my most favorite medium, but i would definitively say my 2nd most favorite is the marvel and DC universes.

dankickyou said:

Some people say Marvel and DC comics are just full of kiddie Superhero stuff but that's not true. Some of it is brilliantly written and illustrated. I dare say with a straight face that All Star Superman comics is one of the finest piece of work I've ever read/seen.

TitanXL said:


If I was going to put American animation on my list, I sure as heck wouldn't put Adventure Time or Avatar, I can tell you that much at least.

Anyway, I find American animation in general pretty much obsolete. They don't make anything worth watching since they decided all animation is either for manchildren adult comedies like Family Guy or kiddy comedy cartoons like Spongebob. Nothing you find in American animation can't be found in anime, only done better since they have a much stronger and open animation industry. Avatar is Baby's First Shounen Anime, for example.

SergioSource said:
I never watched, Rugrats, Recess and all that always creeped me out, I watched Pokemon Yugiho and all that

link9us said:
lol ok since this has became a debate once again. I will just post my save responce that i had in my avatar thread.


I guess I may as well give you my thesis on American animation Vs Japanese animation before the thread becomes locked. First of all, saying one is better than the other is a losing game.

It really all depends upon preferences, what you like in animation style and how you perceive the different cultural differences. Obviously myself I enjoy anime more so than American animation, but such movies that are huge block buster hits like lion king, and a lot of pixar movies are just genially very entertaining, even to this day.

American animators and animation fanatics contempt the Japanese style and methods as lazy. Whereas Japanese animation fanatics scorn the American style as clunky or too comical. But what's the difference between the two, really?

The easiest answer is the style: the visual look and feel of Japanese animations vs. American animations, mostly evident in the design of human characters. The distinctive large eyes with numerous reflective highlights and detailed color are the main hallmark of anime, along with small noses and mouths generally denoted by minimal lines. The style itself uses many angles and flowing, reduced lines. Things such as eyelashes, hair, and clothing are depicted in more fine detail. The color often uses more variants and shading, with greater attention paid to non-outlined highlights and shadows to add more depth. Without the doubt make no mistake, that is by far the largest different between American animation and Japanese animation is the visual style. If the visual style look more like American cartoons with usually realistic comical characters, then most anime fans probably wouldn’t even watch it because its that fine detail and intricate character designs that make a story stand out as more a serous medium.

Comical cartoon characters with rounded, highly exaggerated features. There's usually less detail, focused instead on using tricks of style to imply the detail in more refined, understated fashion, and less attention to shading instead of solid block colors save for in dramatic scenes that require it.

Where American animation may seem to lack in that aspect, though, it makes up for it in the amount of animation done. American animation includes a great deal of original animated motion picture - some of it used regularly, but still animated painstakingly frame by frame. In contrast, anime uses a lot of cheats: long scenes in which only the mouth of a character (and maybe a few strands of hair) moves during the amount of cells depicted in action sequence., or depicting rapid motion. This is why Japanese anime is sometimes labeled as "lazy" by American animators. However personally I love the style more so than I do American animation and that is my preference personally. I grew up watching anime since I was only 12 year old, and im 27 now so I really enjoy the vibrant colors and more fine detail to characters even though the animation doesn’t depict as much motion as American animation does. But in some cases movies like Metropolis or akira use the pen and papter method that most American cartoons used and those movies were absolute fantastic in showcasing truly what motion picture is really like. It is a shame that most of the anime medium doesn’t use those same techniques that those movies used. Also factoring in the time they were made it something that is just absolutely brilliant and even anime today in this day and age doesn’t have the same type of animation motion style.


The style element goes a bit further than just drawing styles, though. American animation tends to use straight-on camera shots, less concerned with cinematic angles and dramatics than with clearly portraying the events, though there are exclusions to that rule. Japanese animation will often make use of exaggerated angles, viewpoints, and zooms to intensify the mood of a scene and show actions to extreme effect.

Anyway that is enough about the visual style, it is obviously one of the most significant differences between the two forms of the medium, but let’s talk about what the debate has always been bout was the target audience and cultural differences. This is probably the largest debate on two sides of the spectrum. But both are vastly different, and once again, one is not better then the other, coming up with a conclusion like that exemplifies the fact that you are just biased towards anime, or the other way around.

Let me try to clear it up. Most of this debate has stemmed from who the target audience is for, and I am not argueing this fact. In America, for the most part animated cartoons and films are considered to be for children, and are targeted for that audience. In Japan, anime can be for children or adults. But distinguishes this sort of difference in target audience, the answer is “cultural difference” the idea of what's appropriate for children and appropriate for adults can differ between the two cultures, and what's appropriate for a ten-year-old in Japan may not be considered appropriate for a ten-year-old in America. Most of that can be explained by cultural differences, and an American watching Japanese anime may notice cultural references or context clues from the locations that wouldn't be present in American animations.

As an example, I’ll use Death Note. This particular anime delves into the principled predicament of whether or not killing can ever be justified. It also involves a thick plot with characters that use, dare I say it, cognitive thought and rational analysis to suit their causes. Does that sound childish. On the American end, cartoons such as Family Guy and Futurama are meant to appeal to adults through humor. There is a very huge distict difference between the two. Now that’s not to say that ALL American animation is aimed at a younger audience, cartoons like spawn you will amost nearly call an anime clone. But for the majority of American animation, that’s how it has always been.

Lets talk about sophisticated story and plots now. Another distinctive difference is that American cartoons tend to point to a well-defined answer to moral dilemmas. In shows such as Superman, there is a good guy, being Superman, and a bad guy, being Lex Luther. These defined values are already kind of set in motion. Using the example of the anime Death Note, however, it’s evident that the Japanese do not set definite values in their animations. This is I think something that most people are trying to get across. When it comes to sophisticated story lines, Anime as a whole, a medium that derived from japan has focused more on adult oriented writing. It dates back in japans history, during the historical time periods during the time when ozamu tezuka the godfather of Japanese animation began writing sophisticated story lines with a very unique appeal that is very different to American animation. Even the series astroy boy which in japan is aimed for a younger audience has some form of violence in it. The ratings systems of japans vary great then the ratings systems in American. For example a show like astro boy would be aimed for all audiences in japan, whereas in American, it would have a PG rating and not a general audience rating unless it was edited.

I think personally that japan delves deeper into thought when it comes to writing, since their medium is aimed more for a mature audience, rather than children. But American animation has been vastly influential to japan as is the same with Japanese animation. Now a days more violence and more interesting story lines are being produced in America for American animation compared to how it was 20 years ago. I think one of the most differences is cultural changes though personally. Just look up the customs and cultural differences between japan and America. I have already touched based on this topic already but kids, children are allow to watch shows that we Americans would never in our right mind be able to watch without a PG or PG13 rating. Anyways going back to my first paragraphs bout visual style differences, I think that is one of the major things you need consider and probably why most fans who are into more lifelike characters and amount to detail, prefer anime visual designs over the cartoony American animation designs.

Well either side of the spectrum definitely has lots of differences, it still all comes down to personally and what you want to watch as an individual.

Siion said:
Its not really all that obsolete then is it. Man children and kiddies are enjoying it. I can recommend quite a few cartoon comedies to people i know but i can rarely suggest an anime knowing full well that they will enjoy it, sometimes people can't jump the culture gap. I can agree that you can find better animated stuff though but writing is universal.

NicoleB said:
Never saw this series at all, maybe I should give it a try.

Nichibotsu-kaeru said:
and how do you guys organism episodes that MAL doesn't have like other good Cartoon Adventre Time?

Anime_Name said:
I felt it was more funny than dramatic and the fights were all flash, bam, wow! with little physical violence or blood. The drama was lacking because everything had either neat and tidy resolution or any possible left over problems were just forgotten.

Gogetters said:
Spelling check?

deadleeserious said:


Basically they're saying "And how do you guys organise shows that MAL doesn't have, e.g. cartoons like Adventure Time. "

Surprised it took Armiga this long to jump in the thread lol. Time for it to turn into the same argument for the 15th time I guess.

deadleeserious said:
I wasn't complaining about arguments at all. Unfortunately every thread about non-Japanese animation turns into the same argument over and over again, usually sparked by Armiga's rather extreme level of bias. Think I've seen at least 4-5 threads in May and June that it's happened in.

mitch3315 said:
Only ones I watch are Archer, Family Guy, South Park, and Futurama.

deadleeserious said:

Just because they disagree with you doesn't mean they aren't mature.

deadleeserious said:
Still, arguing your own opinion does not make one immature, unless the facts are blindingly obvious, which in this case I don't believe to be true, particularly when you admitted yourself that you "won't be watching any US stuff anytime soon" which makes your expertise on the subject of American animation very questionable if you don't actually bother to watch any. Same as people who hate on anime because they saw a bad Youtube AMV, but didn't bother to actually watch any worthwhile anime.