How did Gravity Falls became the only successful cartoon from 2012 to still receive a huge following while the other three are left forgotten?
How did Gravity Falls became the only successful cartoon from 2012 to still receive a huge following while the other three are left forgotten?
Annoying orange did better than gravity fall and came out in 2012
tapping into the nostalgia of childhood summer vacations
quality writing and jokes
unexpected moral messages for Disney ("it's okay to lie sometimes")
mystery that kept people engaged
memorable characters
surreal visuals
>quality writing and jokes
oh come on now
What was wrong with Gravity Falls's writing? Most of the jokes were also pretty solid. Maybe my one issue with the show is that the writers didn't have Mabel sacrifice things for Dipper as often as he did for her. I can think of two major examples for Dipper, but when the one sacrifice of Mabel's I can recall is her leaving her fantasy bubble, that's kind of a problem. The show is otherwise a gem.
The one major sacrifice Dipper made was not staying in Gravity Falls and I think it broke everyone's brains. The only other one I can think of was sacrificing not hitting Wendy with the ball for Mabel to get her pig, but since the show torpedoed Wendipper that was irrelevant.
Mabel also sacrificed her puppet show to save Dipper from Bill.
Gravity Falls was the best one and anyone retroactively claiming it was bad are just being Cinemaphilentrarians. It holds up extremely well.
Ah, well that settles my nerves. I really do love how Dipper & Mabel learned from the Stans' mistakes and chose to face their growing years together. It's a sweet moral about the importance of family.
Awww thanks guysss for reaffirming my normie opinion or else I'd have a panic attack someone doesn't like my stupid kids show
Why so hateful?
Lol I can hear this gif
>Gravity Falls was the best one
You can't handle the truth
Its "humor" was terrible and unfunny and took up way too much of the storytelling, like it couldn't go 5 seconds without having to crack a whacky punchline
Its messages were hamfisted and preachy, and often had nothing to do with the characters themselves but was just an author lecturing the audience
Its romance was shit, there was no reason for Wendy to exist and the roadtrip episode was the worst episode I have ever seen
Its mystery was a wet anticlimactic fart which they lampshaded by literally throwing away the whole "Circle of Symbols" thing in the last episode to do a cringy anime mecha fight
The only episode I remember being "preachy" was the road trip episode, which I'd confidently call the worst episode of the series
>literally throwing away the whole "Circle of Symbols" thing in the last episode to do a cringy anime mecha fight
The mecha fight was before the circle and I feel like the circle was kinda cliche, I liked the way they resolved it (though I'd have liked it more if Stan was "killed off for real").
Stan didn't need to be killed off, but I do feel there could've been bigger lasting consequences like permanently losing his memory. It wouldn't even be a "bad ending" since the door would still be open for Ford to bring his brother along and grow a whole new fraternal bond from scratch.
I will admit it was heartwarming how Mabel’s scrapbook tied into the ending though
i agree w you re: the "Circle of Symbols" being meaningless because of stan's stubbornness, that scene always bugged me. i too wish the mystery had a more satisfying conclusion but it was still fun to follow along with until season 2b which was kind of mid. i don't hate the road trip episode tho bc i love road trip episodes/movies in general.
You hit the nail right on the head. I'll add that I think Gravity Falls coasted by on its "adult humor", which really amounts to jokes that would only seem edgy to 12 year olds and are otherwise blasé to everyone else. I guess it's good that the GF writers were (somehow) able to capture their targeted demographic so well, but that leaves the show feeling simply immature. Immature as in Alex-Hirsch-is-a-first-time-showrunner-and-it-shows, rather than a funny kind of immature.
It’s amusing in hindsight Gravity Falls used to be knows as the “wow they put THAT on a kids show???” thing because like they stabbed a wax dummy or mabel put jam on her face and dipper thought it was blood
I don't understand the complaints about the sacrifice considering the entire point of the Mabelland episode was to show that Dipper shouldn't have taken the internship. Dipper realizes even in her custom-built paradise she isn't really happy without him and learns that the opposite is true too
Hirsh is a hack and hasn't written anything good since
That's the answer.
Easy, not being on Disney XD
It was on DisneyXD. It still maintained the 1-2M viewers despite being on that paid platform.
Nowadays garbage like amphibia and the owl house struggled massively to get 0.5M on a free platform.
>on a free platform
?
You forgot The Legend of Korra
People still talk about her tho
I hate to just say "it subverted expectations", but that's kinda what it did, it was so different that it got a lot of people interested.
no modern bullshit
Was Gravity Falls really that good?
no
No?
It was a comedy. Even 10 years later, comedies are what stay in the public consciousness longer. Action shows and dramas make for neat spectacle that's quickly forgotten, but comedies have jokes that can be spammed all over social media forever and ever.
Tron got shafted by disney at every turn
It's getting a new movie.
FOTM caused by "muh deep lore theories" and also , it was promoted by far the most while the others were buried hard so it makes sense that normalgays think the thing most marketed to them by the major corporation was the best
>it was promoted by far the most
I've been noticing that the narrative about GF on Cinemaphile has been gradually changing from "Alex had it so tough, Disney fricked his show over by placing it in bad timeslots" to "Alex had it easy, Disney promoted his show all the time"
Which is it?
one show had pacifica
the other 3 did not
None of them were good.
Well Tron Legacy got cancelled despite being the objectively best written out of these, Motorcity everyone loves with 2020 hindsight, but personally even as a child I thought that there was no point in dedicating that much action and worldbuilding if in the end the plots were episodic but also non comedic, Randy Cunningham had the same problem, and despite the shit season 2, season 1 of Gravity Falls has what I call the True Detective effect:
In the era of the modern web we can see that True Detective is just word for word Lovecraft, year 1 college philosophy, and conspiracy all mixed together, but for the 2012 to 2014 era it was a revolutionary lightning in a bottle moment, Nic Pizza and Hirschlet were both clearly avid reddit and Cinemaphile users and by imbruing that into the lore it captured the audience attention as something revolutionary, it came out at the right place and right time, anything earlier would have been too in line with Zim or Billy and Mandy, anything after would be too bland and generic. It was perfect for it's time.
>Is unable to enjoy a good, episodic action show that has a rich world but doesn't feel the need to plot dump on viewers every fricking minute of runtime.
Motorcity literally got canned
the mystery aspect helped it gain a fandom. I don't see it as that great a cartoon though.
It's a puzzler, really
Gravity Falls had an actual cast of characters and a lot of room for discussion/speculation
It also took place in the "real" world, which I guess automatically made it easier for the boring normies to take it seriously.
>motorcity
boys would rather watch Mad Max
>tron
tron legacy was a flop (outside the killer soundtrack)
>randy cunningham
the 00s/early 10s version of brown girl slop.... geeky white kid gets superpowers slop
The only talented artist here was the one that created Gravity Falls.
Yaaawn
Gravity Falls was the only one of those shows that wasn't cancelled. Regardless of quality, it had an ending. And to be honest I feel like I'm 2012 Gravity Falls was as big as the other 3 combined.
Cause Gravity Falls wasn't watched by children, but 20-30 year old tumblrites.
Itvwas the only one allowed to survive and wasn't screwed over as much, by Disney
Just by comparing the posters I would assume it's because GF is the cheapest to make.
For me, Gravity Falls is sort of in the same boat as Rick and Morty and, to a lesser extent, Adventure Time. They set trends, and they all had a superlative first season. First impressions are important. No matter how many times you drop the ball later, people will remember that first season.
HOT BELGIAN WAFFLES
Wait, I'm alone. I can swear for real!