Cartoons!

[GraysonEvans]

Bojackman started pretty rough when I watched it but really picks up towards the middle

[tegan]

Cartoon Network announced that Steven Universe is no longer going to be airing repeats, which is generally what they do when they want to throw something under the bus. Hearkening back to earlier situations like Young Justice and Sym-Bionic Titan, it seems like Cartoon Network is really poorly managed. They keep producing content that nabs an audience, but because the audience doesn't fit the very narrow demographic of "boys age 7-12 watching it on network television and wanting to buy toys afterward," they just try to shove it off the air instead of finding a way to capitalize on the audience they've got.

[Merus]

You have to hand it to Hasbro, they could have handled Friendship is Magic much, much worse than they did.

[BobbyBesar]

Are Steven Universe's numbers any good? It always seemed like it didn't have a clear target market to me.

[N1njaSquirrel]

A quick google indicates viewing figures between 1-2 million. 

 

I have no basis for how good that is, but it seems in line with Adventure Time's viewing figures.

 

Maybe it's more to do with sales of other things? I have no idea.

 

Do they still use Nielson boxes in the US? Seems like such an outdated system.

[tegan]

Are Steven Universe's numbers any good? It always seemed like it didn't have a clear target market to me.

 

All the shows I mentioned above have been pretty popular, particularly among girls, but it's difficult to gauge just how big they got because most of their audience preferred to watch them online instead of on network television.

 

 

Do they still use Nielson boxes in the US? Seems like such an outdated system.

 

This is pretty much the crux of it. Creators are at the mercy of an outdated (not to mention inherently flawed) system and marketers who don't know how to do their jobs.

[Bjorn]

So Tegan pointing out the Harlan Ellison episode in the latest Scooby Doo has actually got me watching it, first time in years I've watched the full run of a cartoon.  I really didn't think I'd continue with it after the first few episodes.  They were neat, but not compelling enough to watch a 52 episode series.  Glad I hung with it a few more episodes though.  It  warms up and starts getting really good, and quite dark, after a bit.  The callbacks to old Scooby Doo incarnations, plus the inspirations for a lot of the episodes are really good as well. 

[Ben X]

(a-woo-)Oooh, new DuckTales in 2017!

[SuperBiasedMan]

Are they calling it a HD Collectors Edition?

[tegan]

So here's a thought: Huey, Dewie, and Louie are among the few characters in the major Disney canon to age. Like how around the turn of the millennium they all looked like some variant of Jonathan Taylor-Thomas.

 

 

 

So what if this new series had them aged up to the point where they essentially become a trio of Nathan Drakes?

 

...Fuck, Nathan Drake sounds exactly like the kind of stupid bird pun name that a Ducktales character would have.

[BadHat]

Now I wanna see a poorly aged version of them that looks like an adult Macaulay Culkin or Haley Joel Osment.

[SecretAsianMan]

Now I wanna see a poorly aged version of them that looks like an adult Macaulay Culkin or Haley Joel Osment.

 

[tegan]

I really, really hope that the six new Steven Universe episodes coming next week aren't an indication that the show is being cancelled. If they're just trying to push out the last of it as fast as possible, I'm gonna be really sad.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I thought a second season of Steven Universe had been announced?

[I_smell]

...I think the ducks pictured above already look like aged Macauley Caulkin.

 

I watched the new episode of Gravity Falls last night and I liked it! Some nice artwork compositions, and intense plot points for the show. I do wish they'd pull the Blendin trick more than once, where mysteries will be neatly foreshadowed before they have a dedicated episode.

Apart from that main plot-line mystery which just rams itself into the back of every episode :/

 

I liked that Dipper seems to have gathered some fame within the town for solving mysteries, that's a happy progression for that character.

[deleted user]

_

[TheLastBaron]

As someone who in the past six months both watched a lot of DuckTales and saw The Pizza Underground live I eagerly await this new series.

[jennegatron]

For anyone in the US who doesn't want to drop the exorbitant amount necessary to watch cartoons on TV here, Sling TV has cartoon network (and adult swim, and about a dozen other channels) for $20 a month. If you prepay for 3 months you get a free streaming stick (roku or amazon) to plug into your tv.

I really want to try it out. (For cartoons & for live sporting events.) 

Has anyone here tried it out yet?

[tegan]

So I finally got around to seeing The Book of Life. It felt like a really excellent movie that decided to deliberately hamstring itself by playing into the expectations of western animation; namely grating and incongruous pop music interludes and female characters that -while generally admirably written- are designed to be the same conventionally attractive heart-faced, almond-eyed, small-nosed, long-haired CalArts Stepford Wives from every other animated movie despite ostensibly inhabiting the same world that the male cast of expressive and inventive puppet people does. It was still a film that I loved and that I personally feel like the world needed, but it was like watching as some beautiful animal deliberately stepped in a bear trap.

 

Also, every single shot feels about three-quarters of a second too long.

[I_smell]

Wow, glad I checked back into the thread. I've never heard of The Book Of Life, but I must watch it!

[N1njaSquirrel]

My problem with the book of life was the intro and ending, which I felt wasn't needed at all. It could have so happily been removed and affected nothing about the story. If it really needed that much exposition, it could have done it in a much nicer way.

[tegan]

Holy shit, Gravity Falls.

 

Holy shit.

[tegan]

Oh, also, on Steven Universe:

 

Pretty sure Pearl loved Rose. It would not at all surprise me if they tried to sneak LGBT themes in and it seems pretty abundantly clear from context.

 

Plus, you know, gems are a seemingly all-female species anyway.

[BobbyBesar]

Steven Universe:

Yeah, I don't really think there's any other way to interpret that. That wasn't just a best friend or hero worship tantrum.

 

Gender is, I assume, pretty meaningless in this context. As we saw with Amethyst, they appear to grow in crystal farms.

 

It makes me almost want to go back and see how much that may have colored her interactions with Stephen's dad. I always got a bit of a tension there, but assumed it was just a slob thing, like with Amethyst.

 

I posted about my ambivalence before, but I'm pretty much on board with Steven Universe at this point. There's enough of the things I like to balance out the things that I don't, and I think the show has deliberately shifted tone away from some of the earlier Stephen-hijinks.

[SecretAsianMan]

I still find Steven annoying at times, but I'm a sucker for the kinds of things the show hints at a lot so I'm on board as well.