Cartoon watchers with jobs

Finally started watching Harley Quinn. Holy sh*t that's good stuff.

Veloxi wrote:

Finally started watching Harley Quinn. Holy sh*t that's good stuff.

Yup!

I just discovered DBZ Abridged, a fan made project to condense DBZ down to fewer, faster episodes, and re-dub it with a lot of silly jokes. It opens with, "Oh, no, my Marijuana farm!" when Raditz crashes into the old man's field and it only gets sillier. It's like RvB made DBZ.

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

hbi2k wrote:

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

How did that come about?

RawkGWJ wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

How did that come about?

The first "abridged" anime parody in that style was of Yu-Gi-Oh. I was a fan of it and had too much time on my hands, so I aped its style and did a parody of Berserk. It was the style at the time, back when we were all tying onions to our belts and taking the ferry to Morganville. Back then it was usually just one person doing most or all of the voices for a particular fan series.

I became mutual fans with some other folks who made their own anime parodies in that same style, and we started offering each other voice cameos in our series. DBZ was one of the first such parodies to have something approaching a full voice cast because by then there were enough of us who knew each other.

RawkGWJ wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

How did that come about?

You smoke enough carrots…….

hbi2k, I watched that whole Berserk series. Nice work.

mmmmm… belt onions… those were the days

hbi2k wrote:

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

That's awesome! Great job, very believable performance.

This whole project makes me nostalgic for a simpler time.

Spoiler:

Mahna Mahna

Mixolyde wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

Fun fact: I provided the voice for that marijuana-- er, carrot farmer.

That's awesome! Great job, very believable performance. :wink:

The secret was spending the better part of my twenties high as a kite.

Inside Job is never great, and most of the time it's just kind of hitting standard adult cartoon formula notes, but...

I still enjoyed it. It moves at a steady clip and never gets bogged down in any one concept or reference. And, believe it or not, there's some character progression by the end.

It seems like it was greenlit for 20 episodes and season 1 is only 10, so I'm even looking forward to season 2.

I'm not sure how I feel about Inside Job yet. I watched the first episode and I was interested in the story, but I don't think I laughed once. I like the premise and the characters though, so I'll stick it out for a few more episodes to see if it grows on me.

Maya and the Three has an interesting setting and animation style (I'm not sure if it's claymation or CG that looks claymation-esque) but it's kind of all over the place tonally in ways that repeatedly pulled me out of the story.

One example is how it continually *almost* says something interesting on a topic, like infidelity in a marriage. I thought, oh, lots of shows depict kids who are struggling with the death of a parent, I wonder how they'll handle that. So of course they blow by it with barely a comment. But then they randomly riff on it in a punchline later.

In another scene, a husband and wife are arguing, and the husband can't control his anger and accidentally endangers his wife, forcing the heroes to intervene and save her. I thought, oh, are they going to comment on that type of toxicity in a relationship? But then... that doesn't seem to be the point of what happened at all and it's completely ignored as a theme.

Later, a character is struggling with killing someone for the first time and I thought, oh I see, these kids are eager to fight but never considered what the outcome of that violence might be. How are they going to handle that? But then LITERALLY seconds later that character is over it and bragging about it.

And that happens over and over again throughout the show. If a story insists on having their characters experience trauma but then doesn't wrangle with those themes in a way that's interesting or approachable, I think it makes the use of those beats feel unnecessary at best, cheap at worst, and causes some of the more emotional moments to feel unearned.

Something else that's tonally bizarre is how it randomly references modern songs in ways that don't match the story or setting. That's the entire technique, it's just sometimes used in lieu of writing original dialogue, like suddenly a character is verbatim quoting a Smiths or DJ EZ Rock song (actual examples, I'm not just pulling those two out of thin air).

The animation quality is good, it moves along at a steady clip, and it's nice to have something that isn't just retreading the same three settings as every other modern fantasy show, but the above issues mean that it just isn't coming together for me and I'm not even sure I'll finish the last two episodes.

But given that reviews seem universally positive, probably still well worth a watch for most folks.

I'll probably watch that soon. Been on my radar ever since I seen the trailer a month ago.

Watched the first episode of Maya and the Three and thought it was fantastic. Visual feast that might be to much for some people not in a flashy way but in the details. Everything is a work of art.

Also watched Injustice which was terrible. I read the comic twice and played the game. You can't really do justice heh heh to this story in one movie. So we get a watered down sack of garbage. Maybe if you haven't read the comic or played the game you might like it.

If you were a fan of the Kevin Smith He-Man don't watch the new trailer, it is a giant level 10 spoiler for the show.

Anyone watch that kiddy version He-man. Looked terrible so haven't watched it yet. I'll watch it sooner or later but it will be after a bunch of other cartoons in my backlog that I know I will like.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

If you were a fan of the Kevin Smith He-Man don't watch the new trailer, it is a giant level 10 spoiler for the show.

Anyone watch that kiddy version He-man. Looked terrible so haven't watched it yet. I'll watch it sooner or later but it will be after a bunch of other cartoons in my backlog that I know I will like.

I only watched a bit of it, but it doesn't seem terrible.

The show does seem intentionally geared towards a younger audience, and I think the writing reflects that. Pretty basic plotting and fewer "something for both adults and kids to enjoy" flourishes, even if there's a bit of self-referential humor.

So while I didn't find it very interesting, it'd probably land pretty well with kids in the target age range. Or folks watching it with their kids.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

If you were a fan of the Kevin Smith He-Man don't watch the new trailer, it is a giant level 10 spoiler for the show.

Anyone watch that kiddy version He-man. Looked terrible so haven't watched it yet. I'll watch it sooner or later but it will be after a bunch of other cartoons in my backlog that I know I will like.

I couldn't resist, I watched it...

Spoiler:

So the big cliffhanger at the end of last season was Skeleton kills He-Man after Teela, Evil Lyn, Man-at-Arms and the D&D party from hell spent five episodes resurrecting him, and then they bring him back seemingly like five minutes into the new season!? It was a fun ride, but I don't think it is a good series for anyone that wasn't me--a 40 year-old man obsessed with he-man as a kid.

ccoates wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

If you were a fan of the Kevin Smith He-Man don't watch the new trailer, it is a giant level 10 spoiler for the show.

Anyone watch that kiddy version He-man. Looked terrible so haven't watched it yet. I'll watch it sooner or later but it will be after a bunch of other cartoons in my backlog that I know I will like.

I only watched a bit of it, but it doesn't seem terrible.

The show does seem intentionally geared towards a younger audience, and I think the writing reflects that. Pretty basic plotting and fewer "something for both adults and kids to enjoy" flourishes, even if there's a bit of self-referential humor.

So while I didn't find it very interesting, it'd probably land pretty well with kids in the target age range. Or folks watching it with their kids.

Yeah my son especially likes it and my daughter too. It was far from the worst kids show.

Watched the first episode of Star Trek: Prodigy.

It's technically a "two parter" episode, but kinda hard to get an idea what kind of show it'll be since the entire runtime is purely setting up the pieces.

Would've also been nice if they included another episode to give folks an idea of what the week-to-week tone will be. But as-is if you waited a week it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Animation is good, voice acting is good. Some tried and true archetypal lead characters.

The main cast isn't Federation, so that could be interesting! And since the show is intended to draw in a younger audience, probably a good way to introduce kids to Star Trek tropes at the same time as the characters.

OH so wait today was just part one of a two-parter?

Huh, we'll wait a week so we can watch both.

Veloxi wrote:

OH so wait today was just part one of a two-parter?

Huh, we'll wait a week so we can watch both.

No, sorry. To clarify, today's premiere is both parts of a two-part episode. But it's only 45 minutes long, and most of that time is spend introducing us to the cast.

It gets the setup out of the way pretty neatly, but I was just saying you don't really get anything beyond that setup for now.

So if you waited and tuned in next week you'll probably get a better idea overall of what the show will actually be trying to be about, if that makes sense?

That leaves 8 episodes to go in season 1, so I'd guess it'll lean into a more serialized format. But that's pure conjecture, I don't have anything tangible to back it up.

Given how far apart the seasons have released, it's easy for me to forget that Young Justice is written so well. Season 4 is "airing" on HBOMAX.

Just finished watching Dota: Dragon's Blood on Netflix. I thought it was pretty good overall. It felt a bit rushed in places, and the big "powers" behind the scene had a bit of a complex relationship that was a little hard to follow at times, but I really enjoyed the characters and am looking forward to a 2nd season.

New episode of Prodigy is up.

Not much happens in this episode, we learn a couple things about the ship, including the presence of at least one space MacGuffin. Also a replicator that can reproduce a fully formed, assembled, and functional shuttlecraft.

There's action and some nice animation and effects, but we don't learn much more about the characters. They don't really bounce off each other in interesting ways or start forming core relationships/friendships.

One problem is that Dal is not interesting.

He's the boring dude who the audience (and most of the cast) doesn't understand why he's in charge except "because he's the main character" and also later he'll probably turn out to be some sort of "special" or chosen one.

They obviously want him to be a seat-of-his-pants, decisive! (even if his decisions suck), and charming character. But so far he's also fairly selfish, borderline incompetent, and anything he accomplishes is due more to luck or the competence of the people around him more than anything else.

I'd guess they'll solve that problem with him making a grand gesture/sacrifice at some point as a shortcut to character development.

Spoiler:

If at the end Janeway had said "I like the cut of your jib" it genuinely wouldn't have surprised me. Since the hologram seems to have comparable intelligence and knowledge to actual Janeway, it'd be nice if it turns out she's not an idiot and doesn't really think these folks are Starfleet cadets, but is trying to take care of them/avoid freaking them out.

It's not bad, but with such a small cast and number of episodes, it'll be a more interesting show if they flesh out the characters more going forward.

The first three seasons of "Real Ghostbusters" is on Crackle.

Not sure how well it's aged, but I remember liking it as a kid and might check it out on my Shield TV. I tried watching it in my browser, but Crackle pauses ads when you alt+tab away which is just... nope. No thanks. At least on TV I can play Switch during the ad breaks.

https://www.crackle.com/watch/2772

The 90's X-Men show is being revived as X-Men '97, due out in 2023 on Disney+. The new show will continue where the original show left off with Xavier travelling to the Shi'Ar home world. The voice actors for Wolverine, Rogue, Beast, Gambit, and others will be returning. And this isn't just some nostalgia grab. The original creators of the show have been wanting to revive the series for a while and they pitched this idea to Disney.

And since we're all thinking about it...

The Doomsday Clock is ticking ever closer to the inevitable Gargoyles revival.

ccoates wrote:

The first three seasons of "Real Ghostbusters" is on Crackle.

Not sure how well it's aged, but I remember liking it as a kid and might check it out on my Shield TV.

About as well as any other 80’s cartoon.
I bought the entire series on (bootleg) dvd from a local comicon several years ago and there are a few really good episodes but most of the series ranges from “cheesy and dated in an amusing way” to “cheesy and dated in an obnoxious way.”