Thoughts? I think we've entered a new dark age of animation, worse than the 80's.

There are exceptions (such as primal, smiling friends, Miles Morales spider man) but it has pretty much become the norm in the past decade to make animation safe and PC, even in terms of design and cartoon style. Compare this to the 90's or even the 2000's, the climate has undeniably vastly changed

I can't seem to understand this, but Pixar, Nickelodeon, cartoon network, (most of) illumination, the majority of cartoons online - even adult swim is going down this route with shows like tuca and berti. As an animation fan this really bums me out and I feel that studios could do FAR better

I think we've entered a new dark age of animation, worse than the 80's.

Hey! The 80's were quite decent. During that decade we got great animated movies such as Rock & Rule, The Great Mouse Detective, All Dogs Go to Heaven et al.

While I do agree that cartoons in the 90s and 2000s were funnier and had nicer art styles (that is subjective however), I also feel like everyone focuses way too much on the bad animations we've been getting recently when there are heaps of really good ones! Animations like Lackadaisy, Monkey Wrench, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, to name a few.

Sure, people do talk about them for a bit, but once it's been long enough they always get pushed into the back to make room for a myriad of complaint videos about bad shows that released like 6 months ago.

People love to complain, and people really love saying the old days were better (it spreads to every generation, as much as we hate it). I'd like to see more positive videos and reviews for the movies and shows that actually deserve the attention, because there really are a lot more good ones than you would believe.

The higher end of 90's animation is better, the problem is that there was plenty of crappy animation of the 90's that makes today's animation look good by comparison.

you missed my point, cartoons from the 90's, even the ones not for adults, were clearly far more irreverent and original - just take a look at cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy or Ed Edd n Eddy compared to anything being put out now

The problem when it comes to movies like fritz the cat not being made today is the overbearing PC culture - Fritz would be considered too raunchy and racially insensitive (despite it being a pro-civil rights film), If it came out now they would probably be safe edgy jokes (drug culture, SAFE sex jokes, out of touch religious digs, etc)

Even South Park wouldn't be greenlit today, and if you asked most teenagers they most likely wouldn't have even seen it. My point is modern animation is primarily bland and safe and does little to challenge

Yes but the good cartoons made up for the bad ones - now a days it's mainly just crappy

Yeah, and the Hanna Barbera style of animation through the 50's was just about as samey as what we're seeing with today's animation called a trend.

I actually think we're entering a golden age, if anything. There's more variety nowadays I feel, more experimentation and risk-taking and branching off the mainstream, which is a good thing and should be encouraged even more 'cuz there's still not enough. Even if it means the stuff you like isn't dominating the market, anything that means your only options aren't kid shows, superhero shows, or adult sitcoms means there's a higher likelihood we'll all find something we like.

examples?

1980s was great, what are you talking about and it was Calarts ugly style that ruined the visuals of western animation for good. As for content and quality of that, then everyone knows why it is that and I need not say it out loud.

Steven Universe, Yogi Bear reboot, Animaniacs reboot, Loud house, Thundercats reboot, Infinity Train, He-Man reboot - whether or not you like these cartoons they undeniably have lack of variety stylistically than cartoons did in previous decades - not to mention the blandness in the majority of animated films

80's animated FILMS were great (secret of NIMH is one of my favorite animated films), I was talking more about the shows in the 80's

Agreed, calarts needs to die - what's scary is how much of an impact it's had to amateur animators

Midnight Gospel, Scavenger's Reign, Carol and the End, Blue Eye Samurai, Primal, Undone, Bojack (arguably? a lot of it is still sitcom-ish), Hazbin, Scott Pilgrim, Fired On Mars, Love Death Robots, The Shivering Truth, and Castlevania off the top of my head.

I might not be super into every one of these shows but I'm still glad they exist

Hmm? I was just other day watching 1980s cartoons and I loved them, but you mean like live action ? Then 1980s has some really great live action too. Admitted, I have never been fan of anime, so I do not know much comparison in that.

For me personally the visual downfall in entertainment happened after 2000s, where there was shift on technology and CGI and computer related tools became more affordable. You got the "flash" styles,. cheap 3D etc and some of that aesthetic went to live action and so on.

Even when technology improved somehow animation never left the flash-styled of stiffness. It was related to cutting costs. but since consumer was ok with it, companies stood with it.

Honestly I feel like the general idea of it being another dark age is a bit overblown, though I will say for every animation high there's 5 blows that come with it. I still personally believe that television had a major role to play in the decline of animation being seen as an artistic medium. Not through the fault of the animators, television medium gives a lot of potential for storytelling, but through the marketing as a way to keep children quiet and as a babysitter.

The main problems I have with modern Western animation is that it's purely one way or the other. There's still plenty of Western animation out there, the internet has proven and will still prove that, but in terms of traditional mainstream animation it's been a gamble. When something hits hard, it hits hard. But that's a very rare kind of feeling because animation has been pigeon holed into being "for kids" by advertising and the general elites of entertainment. Even if animation was somehow only a "child's medium", kids are able to handle dark subject matter and imagery, Don Bluth's entire career was based on this. But even then there's been a shift in what kinds of dark matter you can discuss/show; hell look at general portrayals of Harley Quinn.

When she first appeared in the DCAU, they weren't afraid of showing how abusive Joker was towards her on a physical and mental level. Now? It feels super downplayed and the physical aspects aren't even addressed really. It's complete sanitizing and refusal to acknowledge that abuse doesn't sit right with me. Then again a lot of portrayals have taken a lot of the deeper aspects of her character and made her "kooky crazy clown lady", which just feels wrong.

The level of talking down within animation feels absurd, and feels like the reason a lot of cartoons are so safe is because they're afraid of ambiguity or teaching the wrong moral. Yet at the same time creating gray area where there shouldn't be any. It is ironic that in an era of ultra PC (not a fan of that but I will concede for this) programming, you have major companies producing some of the most bigotted, ignorant and offensive programming under the guise of being progressive. Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Oye Primos (or as I call it Oy Gringos), and that reboot of Good Times that feels like a Boondocks parody are so ignorant yet claim to be inclusive. Speaking of which, funny how Adult Swim pulled Boondocks over concerns of racism, which is akin to that one time a California school board pulled To Kill a Mockingbird for the same reason.

Animation shouldn't be marketed I feel, it should be rated, but shouldn't fall into the narrow marketing lenses of being "for kids" or "for adults". I mean we don't market illustrations or paintings that way, why should we do the same thing to animation? Animation is an art form, plain and simple

The fact he's right for completely the wrong reasons is so darkly hilarious to me.

The "overbearing PC culture" claim is just terminally online conspiracy theory nonsense. Family Guy had an episode where Stewie steals some of Brian's sperm to get himself M-preg then he shits out mutant dog-hybrid babies that all die gruesomely and onscreen over the course of the episode. Rick & Morty's staple joke is that Morty has an incestuous attraction to his sister. Every episode of Brickleberry and Paradise PD constantly made jokes making light of racism, homophobia, and bestiality. Mr. Pickles has more onscreen violence than anything that could ever be shown in the 80s. South Park and Fritz couldn't be greenlit today because execs are too stubborn to greenlight anything that isn't branching off an already successful IP. Inversely they'd never have greenlit a Scooby Doo spinoff in the 80s where the gang is investigating a string of co-eds getting murdered. Least of all one that features onscreen queer & interracial relationships, multiple broken/nontraditional households, and casual jokes about teen pregnancy.

Every generation has its share of crap, OP. We had "PC" stuff back in the day too. Captain Planet's an obvious one, but Gargoyles, The Extreme Ghostbusters, and Men in Black TAS were fantastic shows that all had at least one outlying episode that would've made you die of cringe if it came out today. And hell it should go without saying that X-Men TAS was just a weekly PSA on respecting people of different races, cultures, disabilities, etc. Also DARE was still a big thing in the 90s and a lot of shows would have that "very special episode" about drugs. I think the goddamn second episode of A Pup Named Scooby Doo was about the Mystery Gang uncovering some dolphins that were being used to smuggle drugs™, the bad guy is an extreme sports dude who ruined his career due to drugs, and they spend the latter half of the episode repeatedly turning to the camera to remind you that drugs will kill you and/or ruin your life (and also vilifying a guy for having a substance abuse problem which is pretty fucked, but that's another topic).

Since 2010 we've gotten a lot of great shows like Avatar: Legend of Korra (when it's not dangling a carrot over the heads of shippers), Gravity Falls, Owl House, Amphibia, Wander over Yonder, Kid Cosmic, Young Justice, that 2013 Thundercats reboot, Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc, Symbionic Titan, Mao-Mao, that Samurai Jack sendoff season, every TMNT sequel series, Primal (and that other more recent Tartokovsky series I can't think of its name rn), Castlevania, Invincible, He-Man Revelation & He-Man Revolution, the Dragon Prince, She-Ra, Cuphead, Voltron (see Korra), Ballmasterz, X-Men 97, and plenty of anime that incorporate mixed media like Mob Psycho 100 and Chainsaw Man. Even the Pokemon anime looks good these days. And there's countless others I've forgotten.

And I'm not going to sugarcoat it; whoever told you that Infinity Train lacks stylistic variety is an asshole. The show is gorgeous and it's nothing short of an act of malice from the higher-ups that there's no official physical release of the series.

Even though I think much of the cast looks like they're from a race of humanoid hippopotamuses, Steven Universe pays some of the best homages to classic anime that I've ever seen in western animation. Thundercats Roar, despite the characters being hideous melty blobs that only resemble the original characters by accident, had some great musical homages to the original series and some damn fine animation setpieces. By the later half of the series, the background renders in Teen Titans Go went from bland solid shapes to more detailed painterly pieces. Even though they do look like Rick & Morty at home, Star Trek Lower Decks and Inside Job were both surprisingly good. Even Zombie Simpsons and Velma and Hulumaniacs have occasional moments of sakuga.

Now, I'm not sure if children's cartoons have gotten worse or if it's just that I'm at the ass-end of my 20s, because it all looks like Cocomelon to me. But Craig of the Creek is one show that stands out for me. I've watched a few episodes and it reminds me a lot of Hey Arnold. It's chill, it's lowkey, it's a vibe, but I imagine it's hard to appreciate when you're young and only interested in hyperactive sugar-addled explosions of colors and zaniness. 90% of everything is crap, and it certainly doesn't help when brainrotten rage-fueled content farms like Mr. Enter and E;R will milk any piece of crap to a fine dust. But if you look beyond children's television stations, perish the idea that "PC culture" is the reason why 90% of everything is crap, do a bit of research on the amount of work that goes into a show's development, you'll be surprised by the nuggets of gold you'll find within a show that's receiving criticism for vapid "Calarts" boogeymannery.

Sorry for the omega dump. I wanted to find better examples of modern animation but I think I spent over 3 hours carefully crafting this essay so TL;DR: yeah, that latest Disney sequel might've sucked, but so did Atlantis: Milo's return, so go watch MFKZ instead. (Or if you're a minor, idk go watch Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.)

"You also need to look at the demographics coming out of these schools now, they are VASTLY different then eras gone by."

Why does that matter?

It seems to me that we're in an era where companies think they can get away with ugly-looking art styles and animation. Recent examples being Big Mouth (the ugliest art style I have ever seen) and Invincible (why even bother shading, right?), but Invincible at least can get away with it because they were allowed to draw blood.

And then there are cartoons where the writers actively want to insult the viewer, like Velma. I can't recall an era of the past where the showrunners were so keen on creating such loathsome material as Velma.

There has also been an onslaught of early cancellations, but I don't think good shows getting cancelled before their time is anything new.

There have been some good shows, like uh... Owl House, I guess. But even they had to shorten their final season down to a mere montage.

You haven't lived until you've seen 60s animation. Back when it was the norm to be about 2 frames total of animation like ANYTHING by filmation studios. Superfriends was considered too violent (yet didn't even show punches on screen) and was controversial. 60s spiderman? They don't even understand perspective half the time. So things aren't even close to as bad in the 60s. Back when they did anything to save a penny, even if it was barely animated.

I am so sick of arguments about the quality of "modern" animation devolving into whining about "PC culture." You explained it perfectly in the first paragraph--it's a simple matter of studio heads being too risk-averse to accept ANY risk in the inherently-risky world of creativity these days. Plus, as is the case of any decade in the industry, failing to understand what people really want and what made the "original" so beloved in the first place--I'll grant you that I've heard people complain about, for instance, the lack of diversity in Peter Jackson's LotR trilogy, but that doesn't automatically mean they like Rings of Power more, they generally would prefer the LotR trilogy simply because it's far more entertaining than Rings of Power, Peter Jackson's Hobbit movie or any other ways J.R.R. Tolkien's books have been milked since then. I guess one could argue in good faith why studios feel the need to be "overly-cautious" on aspects of the original that MIGHT offend a small minority of people in reboots, but those are decisions they make very early on in production, it's their right and decision. If you have a problem with that, then all you have to do is NOT watch or otherwise support media you don't like, plain and simple. I imagine Velma getting a Season 2 was pre-determined before it was even publicly revealed, but I would also imagine it wouldn't have gotten as many eyeballs as it did if the "haters" didn't keep it in the front of our mind months after release. Meanwhile, the best original movies and shows of the 2020's seem doomed to fade into obscurity simply because "Rage-Tubers" won't constantly remind us about it months and years after its initial release like with the bad reboots and remakes. The difference today, it seems, is that the bad stuff is not fading into the dustbins of history like they deserve while the good stuff is not getting the attention and profits they deserve.

I feel like stuff like the OG Animaniacs and Akbar and Jeff in the 1990s could come across as odious to fans of the Republican Party in particular. Seriously, it is somewhat surprising going back to that decade in particular and see children's cartoons mock specific political wonks at the time like Newt Gringrich and especially Rush Limbaugh as bluntly and rudely as possible. Or how the entire Naturally, as a Democrat I absolutely ADORE these jokes even more as an adult, but I imagine more conservative cartoon fans would be far less nostalgic of this stuff if they only saw these types of episodes and jokes.

I wouldn't say that exactly. Rage-tubers will use a good film to bash on a bad one. But a "good film" needs to be a box office success which breaks new ground and everyone loves(or at least enough that anyone who doesn't is considered a hater), in order to keep the narrative that all good films are successful and all bad films are box office flops.

Late 2010s animation wasn't so bad, despite the supposed rise of PC. However, it was also the end of the CN renaissance.

I think that the problem with modern cartoons is that they're safe, but not in the way you think. Rather, the problem is that the people greenlighting cartoons are now sitting on their piles of money and taking out cartoons that they consider a possible financial risk. Despite the fact that many of the legacy cartoons of the 2010s and before are gone, only few cartoons have come in to fill in their seats; even less so if you want to name ones which haven't already ended.

I think I remember that "Trick Moon"(Cartoon Network pilot) was going to become a full series, but was cancelled before they could even start.

Even the lore-heavy cartoons that everyone loves get restricted to two or three seasons at most, when earlier ones were allowed to go on for 5 seasons or more.

I could probably fill this whole post with what David Zaslav has done, but suffice to say that he much prefers something to be consistently mediocre over being potentially good, because he wants the least amount of risk possible.

:Those are classics but other then that the 80's cartoons were mostly just glorified toy commercials or some form of animated psa (which worked because to this day I still say no to drugs and alcohol)

True, I wasn't even really a fan of the Animaniacs for these reasons as a kid, not because of my political beliefs, but simply because I was 10 years old and didn't know who the fuck they were referencing or talking about. When you have a cartoon aimed at kids with half the jokes being aimed at executives and politicians, my younger self is going to lose interest real fast.

I wrote a lengthy message about the reason and my computer crashed.

All I'll say is you're looking at the mainstream but keep in mind animation in the 80s had ups downs and competition (like today, the new wave of anime)

I made a comparison with music and how I usually scrape for the underground shit or those bands that dissolved before the suck could get to them but fuck it

The point is that modern animation (mainstream) sucks but nothing stops you from doing a cartoon about a cat buttfucking a mouse every episode, or wholesome slice of life that YouTube would even pay for (yeah they're the 4th Reich)

As long as we don't keep the pen down, modern art is in our hands brother.

Draw something to express yourself, draw and hit the shit where it hurts until it hurts no more.

People yap about 80s music as a godsend when it was all radio friendly shit, no one would mention you Jane's Addiction or NWA or L7

Whatever you do, do it good and for yourself brother.

Case in Point:

What in ass's name are you saying? Fritz is tame by today's standards and Family Guy and South Park are still going on.

Ed, Edd and Eddie was fun but objectively the art style sucked and the fun was "kids doing kid shit and acting like greedy fucks while being stalked by, bro seriously I wanna bang Marie Kanker"

Ren and Stimpy is overrated, I said it.

And about PC culture, you're the only one that gives a shit. Look at how many parodies of the SJWs and PC culture there are. If people don't go throwing the N word for "jokes" maybe it's because it *is* unfunny, not offensive per se, offensively unfunny.

And seriously I can't remember the last time I haven't heard jokes about drugs on cartoons or sitcoms

I dunno if "golden", maybe silver or that bright thing that covers chocolate. But as I said before the easy way it is for a single guy or a group to create their own web comics and cartoons, animated music videos, digital art, I think it's a wonderful tool that OP is dangerously ignoring