Why are narrative-driven cartoons so bad at writing endings? It would be one thing if they were lackluster or just underwhelming, but these endings are bombshells of, "What the frick were you thinking, it didn't have to be like this".
Why are narrative-driven cartoons so bad at writing endings?
First off, 3/4 of these shows started off as episodic adventures, which their storyboard teams were better at. Once they decided to have a narrative, the use of storyboards hampered what could have been great stories and endings.
In general, modern writers want to subvert your expectations or hamfist some poorly thought out bittersweet bullshit in order to seem more intelligent than they actually are, instead of completing a satisfactory narrative cycle.
All four of these shows, I like.
Korra was a shit sequel.
>Korra was [my opinion]
And you are free to think that.
It's a FACT that there existed a clear dissonance between setting of the ATLOK and ATLA.
Regardless of opinion, it sucked as a follow up to its predecessor. If you want to write a story about some superpowered Inuit living in steampunk new york, go ahead. But don't leech of an already existing work.
I like them too and hate all of their finales. You can do both you know anon? You don't have to take everything as a single package.
Please show me where in my post I said you couldn't dislike the finales.
Course I love LoK's finale and it mind broke many an anons forever.
I ship Star with Steven
It's hard to write a satisfying ending when you have no real plan for the story outside the extremely broad strokes.
Jack got rushed out
Star started great but shifted to narrative/relationship drama
SU was straight garbage
LoK tried to shoehorn in so much to be "mature" and was a rollercoaster in terms of quality
>Star Vs. was straight garbage
>SU started great but shifted to narrative/relationship drama
FTFY
Cope. SU was 10x better than Star Vs. Season 1 was the best season of Star Vs and every other season gets progressively worse.
>Jack got rushed out
The frick are you on about? Genndy requested ten episodes, when they were offering him more. He would have had plenty of time, if he hadn't decided to shove in his OC fapbait.
>Star started great but shifted to narrative/relationship drama
It would still have been shit without the relationship stuff, Nefcy is shit at writing lore (Glossaryck went from being a simple book guide to God, theres two personifications of time, unicorns represent like 5 different things, the nature, purpose and interior of the wand changes every episode, etc.), the whole monsters vs humans narrative is a poorly elaborated afterthught (didnt even tell us why demons dont count as monster for example) and she clearly didnt know what to do with Ludo and Toffee.
SU was great for 3 seasons
It's missing Voltron VLD
Also Amphibia
frick you! Amphibia's ending was kino, only /u/tards hate it
>godomino
>literal mahou shojo
>separation
>Say things that happened in the finale.
>Matt's still not in jail.
What's going wrong frysisters?
clone
But that was the best part
What?
Anne died and was replaced by a clone with a copy of her memories
So?
not the same anne
Fren
It was alright up until the sacrifice fake out. Really, the whole moon battle was just a little tacked on. Its fine they had one last enemy to curbstomp, great for showing the girls working as a trio again finally, but once you get to the God cat shit it turns into another philosophical mess written by Californian midwits, and the epilogue was unsatisfying and antithesis to the build up of the last few episodes of the series.
>It was alright up until the sacrifice fake out.
They did try to make it less of a fake out (I guess to compensate for spending like a quarter of the finale milking the hell out of the sacrifice scene) but that seemed to just lead to further problems
Like what? What fricking "problems" did it cause? None, because Anne is dead, and it wasn't a fake out. Watch.
>Like what? What fricking "problems" did it cause?
Endless arguments about whether or not Anne's actually a clone because some people insist she's totally still the original even though why would they even bring all this copy bullshit up if she wasn't a copy, plus I've seen a lot of people think it muddles the ending because the show still treats it as if she just came back to life right after saying she actually didn't and is still dead.
That's not a problem that the show caused. It's morons.
>Fake out
Anne's dead.
>Tacked on Moon battle.
Everything is "tacked on" then.
>great for showing the girls working as a trio again
That didn't happen, they all did their own thing you brainless california moron. Just watch the show.
>philosophical mess
There was no philisophy at all. Just a cat wanting Anne to take her job.
>unsatisfying antithesis
Not at all. Stop lying.
Mutt, go to sleep.
>antithesis to the build up of the last few episodes of the series
Leif's letter, what Anne said to Marcy when she was freed, Anne's final lines; they were shoving "CHANGE IS HARD" in your face again and again.
And it was hard, Anne had to give up half her fricking family and her adopted home. Just because she had courage didn't mean it wasn't hard.
it's actually the sprannegays who mald over it, there's this one schizo homosexual who spams spranne cope in every general
I do think a lot of Voltron's writing issues fall on executive interference and writing around Steven Yuen's filming schedule.
BECAUSE YOU WATCH MODERN "CARTOONS" AND IGNORE PIC RELATED
fricking shit I'm so fed up with this board
B.I.T.C.H
Bitch.Idiot.troony. Ching-Chong. Harlot
Because most western animation is funded depending on a random suits mood so they often have to completly change the narrative they had planned on a whim.
Also Genndys a hack.
Narrative driven shows are bad in general. There is almost always cool concept ideas that they fricking choose to drop for something generic. Reading the Arts and origins book of SU made me realize how moronic the crew is
Not just that, but because western animation is still shackled by boomer "toons are for kids" logicany attempt to tell a cohesive story is bog down by corpo droids coming down and making them write meme shit and tailor episodes to trending outcry of the month.
what shows DO have a good ending? haven't seen them but atla and mystery inc i haven't heard terrible things about
Anon DID YOU EVEN READ THE THREAD frick
Literally the greatest cartoon ending of all time
I think Kipo's ending was good. I know a lot will disagree, but no one is going to say the show shit the bed, only that the ending "could've been better" at worst.
Korra's ending wasn't that bad. Season 2 ending was peak garbage and franchise assassination.
SvFoE ending is a legendary level of awful so it's hard to disagree.
Jack was... eh...ok. I still prefer Ashi dying. The show went downhill when she appeared and the whole romance thing started.
SU managed to have not one but two garbage endings thanks to SU Future.
I'd say most of these were just meh at best.
>Star
never had a consistent story or lore, fans got fooled by smoke and mirrors
>Steven
writing went to shit the moment that Lapis returned
>Korra
only season with goo writing is season 3, all the others are just shoddy fanfics
I always imagine its a combination of performance anxiety of the writers and pressure from execs/network heads to make the shows finale have a certain level of “epicness” or to have or a certain moral or narrative that might be out of place in the show or feel forced or derivative. Also knowing how Cinemaphile writers can be, I’m willing to bet some of these types of shows had planned finales with content too dark or heavy for a kids show and so they’re asked to change it and because they’re stubborn or can’t think of anything better they go for low hanging fruit.
>Why are narrative-driven cartoons so bad at writing endings?
I like to think of this like The Law of Diminishing Returns. The more time people put into making these shows, the higher the probability these shows wont deliver in the end. At the very least for SU, Cartoon Network is a shitty place to work at. It's not like Steven Universe flaws would've been gone, but CN def has a role in fricking over their shows because???
Not sure why SJ is in there, the final season was pretty good (although the ending was a mindfrick but I heard the game's ending is the true version)
>Why are narrative-driven cartoons so bad at writing endings?
wrong homosexual
Umm narrative means story. So literally every single episode of every single cartoon is narrative based.
Shows in general have bad endings.
Never watched Star or SU so I can't speak to those. Korra needed an actual plan from the beginning and getting jerked around by Nick didn't help. Jack needed more episodes but in hindsight was probably more of an uphill battle than expected, going from episodic future samurai shenanigans with no planned ending to a time-skip season arc with only brief glimpses of familiar faces. Scaramouche is a 10/10 character though.
Samurai Jack's ending wasn't bad, it's just it was better the first time I saw while watching Gurren Lagann.
You seem to be missing one of the most egregious examples of this
What happened?
Samurai Jack isn't a narrative-driven cartoon, which is why it flubbed the ending by trying to force it to be a narrative
>Samurai Jack isn't a narrative-driven cartoon, which is why it flubbed the ending by trying to force it to be a narrative
You can say that about a lot of shows come to think of it