Saturday Morning Cartoons
I can't believe I've gone so long without throwing THIS rant up. I could have sworn I did so years
ago.
Two quick notes before I begin. First, a couple people actually bought some of that there cheesy merchandise, so hey, I guess if those... two people bring that... cup and mousepad... to ACen, I'll... sign'em? Or something. This brings me to the second aforementioned note. I will shortly be embarking on a journey to Anime Central, E3, and a brief stopover to visit relatives. So Don't expect me to answer any mail for a couple weeks.
Now then, Saturday Morning Cartoons. Unless I seriously underestimate the age range of my readership, chances are, if you had a TV, when you were a little kid, you would wake up at the crack of dawn every Saturday, wait for the farm reports and test patterns to go away, and start watching cartoons. Chances are most of them sucked, but on the whole it was a lot better than anything else on TV.
Look what's on Saturday mornings now.
Absolute garbage. Cartoons about kids in school, blowing the point of escapism. Digimon, with it's amazingly stereotypical characters, mounds of stock footage, and copycat premise that all scream "Designed by a committee!" Then there's Power Rangers. Both garbage AND not even a cartoon. In fact, I'm amazed that trash is still on the air. They've completely changed the cast, setting, and Japanese rubber monster show the fight scenes are lifted from how many times now? Actually, the disturbing thought hits me that that thing has been on long enough for the kids who watched it when it first started are now old enough to be on it, and presumably a few of them are. That sort of viewer-star incest is just plain disturbing. Still though, with a couple rare exceptions on the obscure Warner Bros. channel, there isn't a thing on Saturday mornings I can bear to look at, and at that, nothing is Saturday morning exclusive.
Now, at this point, you're probably thinking I'm juts nostalgic and whiny. That I consider the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up with to be first rate, and everything else garbage. Well, you're wrong. The cartoons on while I were growing up were actually pretty lousy for the most part. Much better than today's filth, but I freely admit I grew up in an endless stream of stalemated-arms-race-designed-to-sell-action-figures shows. A couple of those had surprisingly good writing, and there was the occasional truly great show (Pirates of Darkwater), but as a whole, it wasn't fine viewing.
The point where Saturday Morning Cartoons were REALLY good was around the early to mid 90s. There were actually NUMEROUS shows with genuine witty, highly amusing writing, and they weren't even trying to sell anything! There wasn't even an issue of things being censored to death. If any of you grew up watching The Tick and its peers, I hope you realize how lucky you are, and quite frankly, your younger siblings have my sympathies... unless of course you get the Cartoon Network.
Still, the question must be asked, what the heck happened? Did all writers of decent Saturday morning cartoons suddenly die, or perhaps get jobs in a more respected field? Did the major networks suddenly become even more senselessly stupid? Does the average kid actually PREFER mindless trash to well written interesting shows? Frightening thought.
On a related issue, isn't it odd how TV values have changed over the years? Look at Popeye. Popeye was created as a means of encouraging kids to eat spinach. Look at anything else Popeye does though. He's a womanizing pipe smoker who solves all his problems with violence. With current cultural values, Popeye would teach kids NOT to eat spinach, if kids actually inferred values from cartoons that is. Then of course, the 70s and 80s had this raving fear of violence and the occult, which led to strings of shows where superheros spent 90% of the episode in exposition, and where weapons of any kind were only used to threaten. Not to mention fiasco's with censors not allowing The Real Ghostbusters to feature the Necronomicon, out of a combination of fear and ignorance. What isn't allowed in today's cartoons you ask? Evidently music and storylines judging by the butchering of Escaflowne. The violence and occultish aspects came through just fine. What troubling times we live in eh?
and now...
here it comes...
courtesy of Nuriko-chan...
and featuring the fairly obscure characters of the Phantasy Star series...
which you'd have to have played to get the full impact...
here it is...
Phantasy Starlights
