Shitposting aside, what would you say has been the absolute worst decade in animation history?

Shitposting aside, what would you say has been the absolute worst decade in animation history?

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  1. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Aside from the 70s of course

    Forgot to post that

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      The 70s

      FRICK I guess the 80s then. The last few years were a rapid recovery in quality but the early 80s weren't really any different than the 70s and the mid 80s were hardly better.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      the 60's?

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      oi didn't the best indie movies get made in the 70s?

      fritz the cat n shit

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >aside from the 70s
      The 60s.

      You motherfrickers never seem to get it through your thick heads that things were a LOT worse back in the day.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      The 60's then. But the two are largely two sides of the same coin.
      Cheap animation, barely existent creative integrity, knockoffs and wannabes everywhere. There were standouts here and there though.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Early Hanna Barbera (1957-1963) will like to have a word with you.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      70s might have sucked for kids shows but they seemed very liberated in terms of adult animated content.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Funny how the 80’s were a terrible time for animation in America but a great one in Japan

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Gummi Bears, DuckTales'87, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers will like to have a word with you.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          They can't even touch my unstoppable army.

  2. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    2010s to now

  3. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 80s when everything was a toy commercial and there was no artistic merit

  4. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    1920s

  5. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The glorified toys commercials Era and what we are living in right now .

  6. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 80s

  7. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    2006-2016

  8. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    70s/80s.
    Say what you will about SU, but at least it had some fluid animation, some conceptual and allegorical merit, and wasn't a prolonged toy commercial

  9. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    It's the 70's and 80's, even if there are 0 good shows being made today, we fortunately have a wealth of internet resources to not only make our own animations, but look at ones from the past we would otherwise not get to see without the internet. If you're looking at it in pure isolation, there's a few hard decisions to make, but I could just say
    >The era that had no animation at all
    lol

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      This is a pretty good response to people saying "now", because animation isn't just what's on TV, or even just what's popular. Still some great internet animators that make shit today.

  10. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Why are zoomers not saying the 20s

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Hey frick you the 1920s were kino

  11. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Are we talking theatrical or TV? Those are very different things, especially before tv animation became a thing.

    Objectively though, the 1970’s is the worst decade for both

  12. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The world building for this show sucked ass. I accepted the fact that gem lore would always take a backseat to the townie crap, but it feels like they stopped caring after the Zoo arc. Homeworld looked like a jumbled mess, aside from White Diamond, the gem designs got worse and worse, Pink Diamond looked straight up ridiculous and nothing like her mural, and those "less human" gems they were alluding to were just sentient objects. I think what gets me most is the episode 'Lars of the Stars' where Emerald goes through a list of all the awesome stuff Lars did with the off-colors that we completely missed because Connie was being a b***h.

    It's a shame that the video games were more satisfying than the entire show itself.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      We were never going to get those scenes, Connie or no. "There were awesome adventures... offscreen!" was the joke.

  13. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    This decade easily, the "art"styles are all fricking hideous

  14. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    70s. But if half-decades are allowed, then the late 2000s
    I don't understand the hate for the 2010s

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      A lot of people liked it at first, so there’s a lingering feeling of bitterness

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >that time CN forgot it was a cartoon channel

  15. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    If the 70s is off the table easily the early 2010s. You can argue the 80s was an era of selling out to toy companies but at least those shows could be fun. The early 2010s was filled with teen relationship dramas masquerading as fantasy cartoons for kids.

  16. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    1970s to 1980s

  17. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'd say the 60s if theatrical shorts weren't still classics. But god Broadcast animation was hell.

  18. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Why do zoomers think having toys being sold alongside a cartoon automatically discredits said cartoon as art?

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Cynical motivations frequently lead to a product that barely any effort or care put into it, and also leads to something feeling sterile what gays here call souless
      I do think there are a few decent commercial cartoons though.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Cynical motivations frequently lead to a product that barely any effort or care put into it
        Interrogate this premise
        Company wants to sell toys
        Do they make a cartoon to promote the toy that A. has no money put towards story development so kids don't give a frick, or B. spend money trying to make it engaging and hook the kids so that they sell more product?
        The very idea that making a show to sell toys means you get a low effort storytelling experience whereas the true artists are making a cartoon because of their passion for the story and characters only isn't logical when you know virtually all cartoons are written by writers' rooms with committee oversight

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Businessman often make moronic decisions because of ego or for being out of touch.
          Money alone isn't enough to make something good if the artists aren't invested in it to some degree.

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            Don't worry the death of "creator driven" shows, money draining up and the strikes will make sure to weed out those unfit to write and head a show

            We will return to a golden era of shows with cool merch, starvation is the best motivation for art

            • 9 months ago
              Anonymous

              Has John K taught you nothing?

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            Then the product fails, as many 80s shows did. The ones that are remembered by and large have plenty of materials available showing what a passion project they were for the creatives even if plastic action figures had to follow
            I might be accused of cherry picking but I don't think Steven Universe is superior to Thundercats in any aspect whatsoever and I've seen all of both. SU at its very best is better than Thundercats at its very worst but I really cannot agree with any of the points in

            70s/80s.
            Say what you will about SU, but at least it had some fluid animation, some conceptual and allegorical merit, and wasn't a prolonged toy commercial

            when comparing the two. Even on the toy commercial front SU has a frickton of shitty plastic merch

            • 9 months ago
              Anonymous

              "Toy commercial cartoon" isn't about the show just having merch, it's about the toys taking priority over anything else.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Then it's a bad brush to paint the 80s with. Few shows that aren't failures that have become super obscure fit the description. The worst offenders that are still remembered are probably the girl shows like Care Bears and MLP.
                I've admittedly never seen GI Joe though. Don't know how bad that one is lol

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                There are a lot of 24 hour streams of GI Joe you can jump into to get a whiff of it

                It's basic and cheesy but fun

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Neckbeard with shelves stacked high with Funko Pops in charge of explaining how Finn getting turned on by manipulating his girlfriend into fighting is deep and meaningful but transforming dinosaur robots literally kicking the butt of a transforming planet is shamefully soulless

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                At which point the fans were more important in the judgement of a show rather than the actual show?
                The whatever dinosaur robot show was conceived by a toy marketing board and had streamlined animation from the cheapest studio possible, Adventure Time looks like a boy's doodles and imagination turned into a show. Yeah the show went on to suck but the first seasons were good.
                And like I said before, I don't think commercial cartoons are inherently bad. The dinosaur robot show might have been fun.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Anon was describing a scene from Transformers the Movie and it's telling that you don't even know about what is basically entry level material for understanding 80s animation. And certainly not cheap

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Adventure Time is also a toy show and cannot be held up as a paragon of soulfulness vs something like Transformers is the point. The pilot and some early seasons had soul but so did 80s shows that were just about awesome fun stuff
                This is the scene in question

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                just read this

                "Toy commercial cartoon" isn't about the show just having merch, it's about the toys taking priority over anything else.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                So you're saying when people say
                >80s is bad because toy shows
                They're NOT taking about Transformers?
                What are the bad soulless toy shows that ARE emblematic of the decade then?

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                isn't classic transformers the one they would arrange shots to put as many characters in order to promote them?

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                I dunno, you find the source of that and tell me
                I think you can find examples of soullessness and TRVE SOVL alike at different times in 80s Transformers

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                The movie infamously kills off a bunch of the core cast kids had grown to love in order to bring in a new range of toys
                The result is interesting unconventional storytelling that shocked kids and left them with lasting impressions of fictional mercilessness that's super interesting from a literary perspective
                Cynical forces can corner artists into doing bold and interesting things

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Hahaha the 80s music does something for me and I don't know why lol

  19. 9 months ago
    Broken_Gizmo

    Outside of everything before the 80's? 2010's onward.
    The sun needs to explode and kill us all already.

  20. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Everyone's calling 70s and 80s animation shit like the only thing made was tv shows.

  21. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    You posted it, the 2010s are by far the worst
    the 90s had grossout but it also had plenty of great comedies and action shows and while the 80s had "too many toy commercials" as 2010gays like to call them (despite the fact that current shows they like still try to sell toys) they at least had cute girls and some actually funny shows like the first few seasons of Garfield, they also had those heavily serialized cartoons (Jayce and the wheeled warriors, Ulysses 31, Thundercats, even motherfricking 80s She-Ra had continuity despite how much dyke-ra fans shit on it, etc...) that Cinemaphilemblr likes so much decades before it became the norm

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous
      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous
      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous
    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      The 80s had the best theme songs

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous
      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        I 'member that episode where she gets lost inside Chronos spaceship and ages until she dies but Ulysses manages to get to the center of it (while dying due to his wounds) and spin the time machine in the opossite direction turning back time to the point none of the events of the episode ever happened, no matter how over the top poweful an antagonist was or how seemingly impossible to fix a certain problem was he just asspulled his way to victory all the time, based

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous
          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous
    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      We had a Mighty Orbots thread a couple of days ago, the whole show was animated as well as the opening, pretty much OVA quality

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous
          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous
      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Her human form looks like Atomic Betty

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      [...]
      The 80s had the best theme songs

      Mysterious Cities of Gold shits on any serious narrative cartoon since and Inspector Gadget shits on 90% of comedic cartoons since.
      Zoomers just regurgitate the toy commercial line about shows they've never seen. Most of those shows had fantastic character design, especially for the villains, precisely because they were conceptualised as toys first. Some writing was trash, like the very beginning of Transformers and most of He-Man but still more entertaining than most lore shows after they disappear up their own buttholes
      They also seem to forget what a toyetic franchise Star Wars is too

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Agreed

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous
      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        90's and 2000's art styles shit on the streamlined 80's art styles.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Lol no they don't, Japanese animated 80s shows look vastly better

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            Cinemaphile and Cinemaphile are separated boards for a reason, this is a discussion about american productions, and european and latin american stuff too if we get bold here.

            • 9 months ago
              Anonymous

              I'm taking about Japanese animated American cartoons
              Thundercats, Transformers, Cities of Gold, Ulysses 31, Inspector Gadget, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                I should say Western instead of American before someone comes at me about how those are French

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                You can't escape the frogs when it comes to quality animation, it's unavoidable

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Same with the nips. That’s why our best shows are outsourced to them.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Why by the time of the Mario cartoons DiC switched to korean and chinese studios?

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Cheaper ofc. And Japanese studios needed to look overseas for work less as their own industry took off

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      [...]
      The 80s had the best theme songs

      >pedophile
      opinion discarded

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      I feel embarrassed for you.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      I lie how you focused so hard on the 80s but completely forgot how fricking garbage the 70s were in the process. It's like you forgot any decade before the 80s existed.

  22. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    2006-2023

  23. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 2010s felt miserable

    At least people were barely trying in the 70s, now people actually try and end up with something far worse and loose twice that much money

    80s was fine, Toys and merch shows were cool if you were a kid

    We are truly in the end of the darkest period for animation, so much mediocrity for poorly managed and written shows that lost money and the goodwill of the public, not to mention social media turning all the people involved into clowns rather than people worth admiring

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >The 2010s felt miserable
      Based, I would say cartoons are still pretty bad now, but at least not all of them have that banana/bean smile and stick limbs art style now

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      the only memorable syndicated cartoon from that era is lost city of gold. the frick are you on about?

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Do you mean syndicated or do you mean serialized? Either way it's bullshit

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          either or.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        70s stuff was accountant magic with how they managed to push so much dumb stuff, some of it is ok most of it is mediocre or bad and derivative and somehow it's still better than modern shows with asinine premises repeated characters that make the yogi and Scooby gang formula blush and episodes no kid would ever look forward to, so yes the planned mediocrity of the 70s is better than what we have now

        Did you actually experience the 80s?
        Having a sleepover with your homies then watch cartoons early in the morning and play with your toys in the yard afterwards?
        I think only the 90s captured that with Pokemon and that isn't a Cartoon

        If we are to rank these shows based on their audience the 70s and 80s weren't a dark age at all just a period of adjustment long postponed and the rise of shows with marketing as it's main Focus

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      I'd argue early 2010s was actually great. But all the wrong shows got popular.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        this
        >regular show
        >gumball
        >wander over yonder
        >clarence
        >harvey beaks
        >mao mao
        all will be brushed aside because people only associate the decade with adventure time and SU

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Scooby Doo mystery incorporated
          >Generator Rex
          >Green Lantern: The Animated Series
          >G.I. Joe: Renegades
          >Ben 10 Alien Force and Ultimate Alien
          >The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
          >2012 TMNT
          >Transformers Prime
          And these are counting the cartoons that aired in the 2010s and not 2000s cartoon that carried over and ended in the 2010s Like Batman Brave and the Bold and CGI Clone Wars original run before getting revised by Disney.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >At least people were barely trying in the 70s,
      No they fricking weren't, the 70s were an absolute arms race to produce the cheapest animation. In 1979 most animation was reusing frames from 1971, just slightly recolored with new characters. It was fricking abysmal.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >2010s felt miserable
      >80s were fine

      idk, the 2010s saw some glimmers of brilliance. Adventure Time hit its stride, Regular Show came out, SU won the hearts of millions, Gumball came out, and this is just CN stuff. Easily better animation than the Saturday morning toy commercials that were literally poorly animated.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Absolutely nothing in the 2010s comes vaguely close to the Thundercats into for animation

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          *intro

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          The Thundercats intro is indeed fricking kickass, but that was also a personal project of an extremely talented Japanese animator and the show itself outside of the intro was stiffly animated even by 80s standards.

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            Nonsense, it was highly variable with some parts being stiff and awkward and off model but plenty of parts being remarkably good for the time she the budget, even recalling some of the studio's old Topcraft glory days now and then
            Plus of course the stiffness is a direct result of such ambitious character designs. They could have animated noodle limbed blobs as smoothly as you could want but they were trying harder than that. Perhaps to excess

            • 9 months ago
              Anonymous

              Yeah that's fair, I was knocking it a little too hard in my post honestly. Agreed that they got a little too ambitious with the character designs though, you can sometimes tell that they were struggling to animate them in the more complex scenes. Still the opening was several leagues ahead of the show itself and was a passion project, I feel like it's kind of an unfair comparison. Like the 2010s had some amazing indie animations that blow most 80s TV animation out of the water, but I wouldn't compare to two because they're such different beasts.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                I think it's unjust to just say 80s toyetic cartoons were badly animated because there are fine examples mixed in there. Thundercats intro is just the very obvious go-to to illustrate that but I'm sure we could also point to various random scenes from big toy shows. And of course some of them got movies to show off better animation in too.
                2010s has some good stuff but a lot of very low effort dreck too. I think the Wakfu season 2 intro might be the best cartoon intro since Thundercats though

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        >SU won the hearts of millions,
        Su was anything but brilliant. Hell it was a grim reminder of why outsourcing can 't do all of the work for you.

  24. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    probably the 2000s
    3D was ramping up and 2D was winding down. Took about two decades for 2D to be making its triumphant return in the west.

  25. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    2020’s so far. I can only think of a handful of films or show’s released during that time which I’ve enjoyed or seem to have any artistic merit. If you discount anime then it’s really slim pickings.

  26. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Shameful as it is to admit, I love beanmouth loregay cartoons like AT, SU and Gravity Falls so that's exempt
    Whichever decade the Hanna-Barbera cartoons are from, I guess

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Much more people will start expressing their love for those shows once the younger zoomers and alphas who grew up with them become more present on the internet.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        I have seen more kids into anime and ladybug than any of the other toons

        Now that I think about it only adults talk about those toons outside of Ben 10, it's all anime

        Maybe I should invest into latex, there's no way an entire generation didn't get a latex fetish as they grow older

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          You're only now realizing the audience for SU and Owl House is a tiny contingent of loud females on Twitter?
          At least Adventure Time also has some adult stoners who liked it in the first seasons when they were baked like Penn was
          But no, kids don't watch that shit. They go from Paw Patrol to Demon Slayer to Berserk where they are happy

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            No I saw that coming a mile away, it's just that it makes sense why those shows have no views, it's only angry women and no standards horny men that watch them

            Pokemon and it's consequences have been disastrous for modern entertainment

            • 9 months ago
              Anonymous

              What did Pokemon do?

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Showed studios that it is cheaper to air Japanese shows than make them in-house, the numbers Pokemon did also destroyed the advertising Market, previously ads targeted different shows and their timeslots but now all competed with Pokemon for the prime time in the children demographic

                All of this compounded, less cartoons and bigger numbers on anime meant less advertisers wanted cartoon timeslots which meant cartoons lost more value in the network eyes and this became a downward spiral

                Why would you pay for ads in a cartoon no one watches when you could pay for Pokemon and warrantee that eyes looked at your product

                As a network why would you pay for a cartoon in-house when anime gives you more competitive ads, they were even cheaper than shows in syndication at the time to boot so even if you didn't produce it it was logical to follow anime over cartoons

                Anime had slightly better pacing and writing than the average cartoon even if the animation was 12 frames of shit,it was different and kids loved it because of that, if you tell a kid they can watch a big boy show were a samurai swears and people fight they will drop comedy and talking animals in a heartbeat, the fact that their parents didn't get it only made it more appealing add into that the fact that the shows had continuing narratives and you got a captive audience, making returning to cartoons after watching anime lame

                TLDR money and quality of content for a kid outcompeted everything, butt ugly martians couldn't stand a chance

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                You could have just said
                >Outcompeted everything
                But yeah you're not wrong
                Too bad America didn't just make something that's as appealing for kids as Pokemon but guess that's why it's the biggest media franchise of all time
                And, of course, very much a merch monster

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Just saying that it outcompeted everything is selling it short, warner folded to Pokemon, many studios closed and the ad market never fully healed for cartoons

                I should actually say something positive though the cartoons that thrived in the shadow of Pokemon and post pokemania are nothing short of exceptional, SpongeBob, cartoon network in its city era and a few outliers have some tremendous quality that even the most cynical of us can't deny

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Pokemon had super stiff animation but very appealing designs. Attractive kids and super cute critters
                I don't know why the West is so resistant to that and like ugliness so much, especially when they tend to get hits when they actually go cute (MLP, Powerpuff Girls, preschool shows)

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Attractive kids

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                >I must draw hideous blob children or people might think I'm a pedo
                Yes anon, making Misty a girl 10-year-old boys find hot is good for marketing
                And just about every shonen shit anime has a pretty love interest too

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                There is a thread in Cinemaphile right now about main girls and villains in kodomo shows being attractive right now, to be honest I always found the moms and villains to be the real appeal in these shows, Japan does know how to make mature ladies beautiful

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Ok but a whole lot of 8-10 year olds like a 10-11 year old love interest

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                I respect the first animated crush, I just like hags

                Tron Uprising

                MotorCity

                Symbionic Titan

                Really interesting spins on action adventure that used new forms and styles of animation to tell interesting stories.

                The first two are really good the third one needed one more season
                Good picks

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Stuff like Rugrats was ugly and it was hit
                But there is a right way to do ugliness in cartoons

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Rugrats, Ed Edd n Eddy, Phineas and Ferb, they all succeeded despite being ugly to look at
                And the japs make ugly comedy cartoons too
                But get a hit show with cute characters people want to collect and you can get even bigger numbers
                There's also an ugly-cute middle ground that Spongebob kinda gets

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                >As a network why would you pay for a cartoon in-house when anime gives you more competitive ads, they were even cheaper than shows in syndication at the time to boot so even if you didn't produce it it was logical to follow anime over cartoons
                Yet despite all that, it felt like only a handful of anime became hits in the west. You had Pokemon of course, and DBZ, YGO, Naruto, maybe a few more I'm forgetting. But we never got the supposed doomsday scenario where cartoon networks would just stop producing original content altogether in favor of syndicating anime

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                SpongeBob aired in may 1998, Pokemon July 1999 we didn't crash and burn because we were in the middle of a Renaissance and even then it nearly toppled the industry

                Maybe it forced the few good cartoons in the 00s-10s to be as good as they could be

                I'd argue early 2010s was actually great. But all the wrong shows got popular.

                Got some examples of who should have been popular? I'm curious about that statement

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                Tron Uprising

                MotorCity

                Symbionic Titan

                Really interesting spins on action adventure that used new forms and styles of animation to tell interesting stories.

              • 9 months ago
                Anonymous

                I mean, those *were* popular, anon, they just all got shitcanned or deliberately sabotaged by the higher ups. I saw a lot of MotorCity fans back in the day, especially. And I still mourn Uprising and Sym-Bionic getting pulled when they were just about to hit their stride.

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            >But no, kids don't watch that shit
            I have to interact with kids for work reasons and a surprising amount of them liked SU and AT, or at least know about it. Maybe there was a crossover promo with Fortnite or something

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Kids don't watch TV and it's easier to find anime online than western stuff.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          You do realize that the anime kids watch are shows like Sazae-San and Chibi Maruko-Chan, right? Western kids watch YouTube channels like Game Sack and LGR.

          Also, ONLY GEEKS AND NERDS WATCH LADYBUG!!!! Normies avoid shit like that and watch shows like SpongeBob and Teen Titans Go.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          What about bluey

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Those shows are already viewed fondly in most places, barring niche corners like this one. And even here half of that is from culture war baggage
        But you're right. It'll be like waking up one day and being surrounded by people who unironically liked Ben 10 Alien Force

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        I think you are underestimating how long ago those shows were
        People who were kids while those shows aired are very much here now
        Whether they/we remember them as fond parts of our childhoods is another question
        (Gumball was an awesome show to have as a kid though)

  27. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Right now this is the worst fricking cartoon decade to date

  28. 9 months ago
    Smaugchad

    It's pretty bad right now honestly, at least as far as family cartoons go. The decade is just getting started but all these strikes don't bode well.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      what we got so far was just an extension of the 2010's trends, the next period still hasn't started

      • 9 months ago
        Smaugchad

        Yeah despite the huge pushback I think the next major era is going to come as AI tools start allowing solo artists or small groups to produce indie animation fast, cheap and relatively undiluted. We'll see a huge glut of this type of material, most of which will be awful of course but there will be some metric by which the whey starts getting separated from the chaff.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Most Adult cartoons are pretty bad now too and older adult animation is seem as too problematic now to the point some episodes are being removed from reruns, streaming and home media releases with "COMPLETE series" on it's title

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Really? The Boondocks? They wanna shut down what black people have to say about black issues for not being woke enough? Lol

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Meanwhile, in books

  29. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 1970s by a huge margin or, more specifically that period between 1972-1982. After that, it was more of an up and down deal where some years would have multiple great shows or films while other years were pretty bleak on both the theatrical and television fronts.

    The '70s and early '80s though had awful television animation and theatrical animation was in a pretty bad place as well.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Just a reminder that Cinemaphile already choose the 2010s and the worst decade in animation history multiple times:
      https://strawpoll.com/fckwbg3f/results

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        just a reminder that Cinemaphile is mostly bitter, aging millennials

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Nah, let's be honest here the 10s deserve their hate, they are the generation that was trained by the greats of the reinassance, they had good will ,skills and some budget to deliver great stuff and all we got was good first seasons, nonsensical mids and unfulfilled endings of extremely bad quality

          They deserve their hate, they squandered their potential

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Dunno, tons of posters here talk as if they don't even remember how awful things were in the late aughts when cartoons were being gutted in favor of live action.
          To them, beanmouth era is the nadir

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            We are judging cartoons on their merits, at least I'm trying to do that, not networks being moronic and emptying two magazines worth of shots in each foot

            The live action era was an exercise in stupidity, a fool's goldrush after Nickelodeon success

  30. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    I think the only truly bad era for cartoons was the late 00s and the 80s.

    Every other time has something interesting going on. early 00s had avatar and the CN golden age. AT and GF reinvented animation for a while. Even the 2010s had SU and the autheur series. owl house, amphibia, molly etc were all good series even if not my type.

    Right now there's good stuff coming out but animation has gotten so cheap across all the world it's very easy to be forgettable

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      late 00's had Chowder and Flapjack

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        not exactly a lot of people remember those shows. won't deny the cohort that produced it went on to make great shows tho'

  31. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Still waiting to hear which 80s shows ARE the egregious soulless toy commercials written by indifferent artists
    I guess the closest we've heard about are He-Man, G1 Transformers season 1, 80s horse show and Care Bears
    All of which I'm pretty sure have passionate fans who will argue they go way above and beyond what soulless writing from indifferent artists

  32. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    Anyone who says we don't live in the current worst decade is wrong. Animation was too primitive in the 60s and 70s so it is unfair to criticize it and compare it to modern standards. While the 80s were glorified toy commercials, the people behind them still tried their hardest to create great cartoons. Thanks to children buying toys, executives realized the amazing money potential for cartoons. The 90s is a great time for animation mainly because this is when more creator driven animation started to come out. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon paved the way for this. 00s is another great decade that continued the trend of creator driven cartoons. I have nothing but positive things to say about this decade of animation, it really felt like creativity and and dare I say it, "soul", was at it's peak here. 10s is when things start to get to shit, cartoons aren't that profitable anymore because of kids not buying toys anymore. It's sad to think about but Steven Universe was the last Cartoon Network show to get a big merchandise push with toys, books, video games, etc. You never get merchandise for cartoons anymore. Secondly, streaming makes far much less money than T.V, particular with no ads meaning it's impossible to market to children. Because animation is so expensive and there's 0 return due to no advertising and merchandise, we get nothing but sequels and reboots. This leads us into now. The 20s. This is the worst decade in animation. There is nothing but reboots, sequels, and just bait in the place of storytelling and characters. I blame streaming mainly for all this. You can't sell a streaming service based on original works, only nostalgia bait. Another terrible thing about streaming is no advertising. It's impossible to find cartoons I like because streaming is nothing but a random collection of nostalgia and hot garbage. Then when a show I like is released it's all dumped at once which just leaves no room for it to sit. This is the worst decade.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >You never get merchandise for cartoons anymore
      Except for preschool shows which are merchandising behemoths

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      There's a few things I forgot about. Mainly how 10s is the decade where 2D animation truly died in the west, giving rise to the same cookie cutter 3D styles. But goddamn do I really fricking hate what streaming has done to the animation industry. This is the true reason why everything is so fricking terrible now. Streaming. We can't have weekly discussions on shows anymore because entire batches of episodes release at once to be binged. It's also fricking annoying watching that many episodes in a row. I love Jojo but I have yet to even touch part 6 because of the fricking dogshit binge format that destroyed Jojo Fridays. And because animation takes so long when you don't properly schedule out your releases you are left waiting ages just for a few episodes. See The Cuphead show and how Netflix took one season worth of 18 22-minute episodes, stretched them out into 36 11-minute episodes, then released them all in multiple batches randomly throughout the year and called each one a "new season". What made cartoons profitable back in the day was marketing directed towards children. Ads playing for light up Skechers, the latest action figure, etc. Cartoons were a fricking goldmine for money because of this. How many times were you watching a cartoon as a kid and saw a commercial that made you really want something then begging their parents for it? We all know this feeling, but kids today do not. Kids today don't have to deal with commercials due to streaming. This means they are completely shut off from direct advertising. The reason why kids today aren't interested in anything other than watching videos online and playing video games is because they aren't being advertised to anymore. If you're an executive trying to make a cartoon, you're just fricked. Not only do you have to deal with no advertising revenue, you don't get to make merchandise anymore, you also have no exposure anymore because you're randomly dumped alongside 300 titles on demand.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Like why even bother to make something original? All your other revenue sources are cut off. It's impossible to make any return. What choice do you have but to greenlight a reboot/sequel instead? Not only is it much safer, it's much cheaper. Plus nostalgia sells merchandise easy. Oh and how can we forget the treatment of the people who actually make the show? They're treated fricking worse somehow even moreso than before. Inside Job breaks my heart every time I think about it, and Pantheon makes me consider suicide. Oh, and how could we forget all those cartoons like Infinity Train, Mao Mao, Summer Camp Island, and more all being pulled from streaming for tax reasons. Cartoons like Final Space which had no physical release (oh yeah, cartoons don't get DVD releases anymore) so when they got pulled from streaming they got pulled from existence. It's a damn shame Netflix forced us here but it seems we're headed for a complete industry collapse, not just in cartoons but in T.V and movies. With each day this strike passes the industry loses millions of dollars. Everyone is bleeding money left and right in the tens of millions each quarter because it's impossible to make streaming profitable. Then there's A.I, which could and IS going to put out hundreds if not thousands of jobs. Being concerned about having a computer program trained to do your job in place of you is a very valid concern. Not to mention all the ethical implications of having your entertainment regurgitated from a cold unfeeling computer program tailor made by cold unfeeling executives. What was once art is now math. Math of the unknown algorithm spewing out chunks of data made to simulate what art looks like yet not what art is. But studios are doubling down on A.I against literally everyone's wishes so it seems the strike is here to stay. By the time everything is over there won't be an industry anymore. Everyone will have left to get their entertainment from the internet. This decade blows.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          I don't want to be mean but a lot of creatives have become lolcows
          Twitter killed the movie star, also the pop one and the creatives, people just don't know when to shut up sometimes

          If creatives only talked about their products, the creative process and made art people would kiss the floor they walked on, instead they treat the internet like a diary and we get to know far more tlof them than we needed to

          Netflix might have done a lot of damage and have terrible policies to a point the polar bear meme is a widely recognized thing but they didn't bring the house down on their own

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Animation was too primitive in the 60s and 70s so it is unfair to criticize it and compare it to modern standards.

      Japanese animation looked good. Why is this an excuse.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Cause we are talking about american cartoons cause this is Cinemaphile.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Even then the early HB shorts looked good.

  33. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    80s after the various moral panics and necessity to tie in everything to toy lines. The latter CN has picked back up.
    But it will be this decade. Netflix will be the only bankroller of note for animated shows but their business model basically requires that they support any show, good or shit, for only 2 seasons. Because after that point they have to pay the creators far more and they already get the new subscribers who came for that one thing/show. So you will have possibly amazing procedural animated series that will be written as multi-season storylines that will just get euthanized at the end of their sophomore season.
    Mattel is also looking to bring almost every toy line they can think of to screen. That will be a lot of trash.

  34. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The ONLY good thing you can say about 80's animation is that it inspired a wave of artists to create the renaissance of TV animation for the 90's.

    This current era of animation is seen as "good enough" by many artists, sometimes outright shilled and hyped as being great because, "Trust me bro, my friend worked on it!". I think in that sense, this era is worse because artists, showrunners, writers, etc. have just become completely complacent. The only time we see a showrunner willing to fight the network is so they can include gay rep or whatever. All we have to look forward to is more of the same.

    The 80's was bad, but we get to see the cause-and-effect of when the industry is REALLY bad and what we end up getting is a bunch of creatives trying to bring back the old lessons of Preston Blair or Tex Avery. We're no longer at that point because there's just too much nepotism running rampant and there's nothing to look forward to. It's sad that one of the best creatives right now in TV is a dude who got his big break in the fricking 90's. There's no new wave of talent. It's like, do you like Alex Hirsch? No? I guess you're out of luck then.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Japan will like to have a word with you.

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        I don't understand what this has to do with my post. We don't outsource to Japan anymore. We've exclusively done Canada for digital rigs (Toonboom type stuff) and Korea for paper+digital clean-up. Sometimes Australia and French have a bone throw their way, but it's rare.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          C11 killed off Canadian outsourcing and Japan's animation is thinking of going on strike with the writers/actors guild so that Japan can get better pay, better secluding and made family anime aimed at all ages the norm again so studios can do the show that want to do again instead of otaku/fujo/toyetic garbage.

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          The ONLY good thing you can say about 80's animation is that it inspired a wave of artists to create the renaissance of TV animation for the 90's.

          This current era of animation is seen as "good enough" by many artists, sometimes outright shilled and hyped as being great because, "Trust me bro, my friend worked on it!". I think in that sense, this era is worse because artists, showrunners, writers, etc. have just become completely complacent. The only time we see a showrunner willing to fight the network is so they can include gay rep or whatever. All we have to look forward to is more of the same.

          The 80's was bad, but we get to see the cause-and-effect of when the industry is REALLY bad and what we end up getting is a bunch of creatives trying to bring back the old lessons of Preston Blair or Tex Avery. We're no longer at that point because there's just too much nepotism running rampant and there's nothing to look forward to. It's sad that one of the best creatives right now in TV is a dude who got his big break in the fricking 90's. There's no new wave of talent. It's like, do you like Alex Hirsch? No? I guess you're out of luck then.

          Don't answer to that guy. He is a known spammer that writes shit that makes no sense and he has been doing it for more than 2 decades. He is barely better than guy.

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            You're the spammer who writes shit that makes no sense and you have been doing it for more than 2 decades here.
            FRICK OFF!

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        Why the frick is Bravestarr where it is?

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          Filmation is know for sucking away any life from animation, that and the toyetic crap at that time is why John K entered the animation industry.

          • 9 months ago
            Anonymous

            Well that's dumb, Bravestarr was plenty of fun
            But it sounds like you don't have any opinions of your own and just regurgitate those of others so I don't particularly care what you have to say

  35. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 1540s were a pretty bad decade

  36. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    2020’s and before that the 2010’s or 80’s

  37. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    This thread's taught me that about half of Cinemaphile is too young to have seen 70s cartoons, because holy frick it shouldn't even be a debate. Content-wise a lot of modern cartoons definitely suck ass and it's probably the worst it's been since the late-80s on that front, but there wasn't even a single cartoon that broke away from the general trends of the 70s and all of them were made on a shoestring budget recycling animation. Even theatrically there are only a handful of animated movies that were worth talking about, and most of those were extremely rough regardless. That decade was a black fricking hole.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Literally the first post in this thead is OP adding "Oh and don't say the 70s, the 70s are cheating.

  38. 9 months ago
    Anonymous

    The 1430's. Name one (1) good cartoon that came out in that shit hole of a decade.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Very original and funny anon

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      LOL

      Very original and funny anon

      It was actually funny,

      • 9 months ago
        Anonymous

        It was like the 4th time the same joke was made this thread samegay

        • 9 months ago
          Anonymous

          And? The joke only gets old after you have already written it for 12 times. Also I am not the same anon.

    • 9 months ago
      Anonymous

      Josephinus and the Gay Ballads of Her Felid Merrywomen was my favorite from then.

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