Everyone has heard of the madcap surreal humor of Regular Show and it's no secret that I rate it very highly, but it's not the first cartoon to do this humor. Earlier than that we had Angry Beavers.
Here is a show about Beaver brothers Norbert and Daggett, one of whom voiced by Sabrina the Teenage Witch's resident cat Salem. After moving out of their family home the brothers find a spot to build a dam and begin there many adventures in the real world but said real world pretty much involves everything older teens are supposed to do in this situation which is goof off.
The cartoon showcases their many surreal adventures which consist of space travel, B-Movie nightmares, becoming discostars and becoming hipsters with their stupidly long teeth; now some of those plot points sound similar to Regular Show and you'd be right.
These days many of the pop culture images and completely absurd plots in Regular Show wouldn't be acceptable ten years ago but the Angry Beavers were doing just that, the only major difference is time. You see the 90s was very much an era that never had it's own running theme so anything went back then.
If you want to bring back disco, make B-Movie horror films seem awesome or collecting cereal boxtops for a street sweeper, then the 90s was the right era for it. Heck even a stump with a drawn on face was considered a major character in this cartoon.
I don't rate it as the best cartoon, in fact it even missed my top 100 cartoon list but I do however rate it as one of the most important. You see an "anything goes" premise can only work when you embrace it as the normal and Angry Beavers was one of the first shows to work with that style and succeed; granted there were earlier cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life both of whom equally weird but those two function on a different concept.
So that's Angry Beavers; you know I can't help but laugh at the amount of beaver quotes this show had; my personal favorite is still Muscular Beaver.
There is an uncomfortable trend at the moment in the animation industry simply referred to as the remake or the rehash in other cases, this is taking a popular cartoon from eons ago and remaking it for a new audience but some of these so called remakes aren't really up to scratch and here are a few examples in what doesn't work.
The movies are terrible at this especially when each of these rehashes use CGI combined with live action; this is true with Yogi Bear, Alvin & the Chipmunks and the Smurfs, all of which are icons in their respective countries but as movies shown in this style it really doesn't work; and now that Disney want to try it, guess which franchise they're going to attempt this with.
Yep Rescue Rangers, a show which has no right to be involved in this type of animation to begin with considering there is only one prominent human character in the cartoon.
Warner Bros are really guilty of this, their recent rehashes of Scooby Doo & Looney Tunes does little to keep it's audience, in fact their problems are more to do with messing with the formula. Scooby Doo tried to go all contemporary by attaching an origin story and a complex plot to the simple chase villains dressed up as ghosts, Scooby Doo never had any problems adapting with the times providing it kept formula but has a hard time outside of that. In the case of Looney Tunes and probably Tom & Jerry as well, they suffer from being politically incorrect for modern audiences, the jokes and gags that were acceptable in the 40s & 50s are not so acceptable now so modernizing wasn't kind to them, in fact some say that the likes of Bugs and Daffy are too domesticated to be funny anymore.
Strangely enough classic American cartoons are also involved in rehashes with the likes of Rocky & Bullwinkle along with the very recent Mr Peabody & Sherman. Both of which are ancient by today's standards but makers insist on bringing it into CGI and making a film about it.
More recently we also have the likes of Pac-Man and Sonic coming back in CGI series and both sound like a desperate bid to regain fans when both franchises are practically dead in today's market. Even Powerpuff Girls are getting the same treatment as they return in their own CGI series but the makers insist the formula is still the same.
Remakes aren't all bad, Thundercats was actually good, if not better than the original, it is possible to remake things without ruining it. Other shows such as Ninja Turtles and Biker Mice from Mars both managed to survive being remade and improved as well.
So yeah, in most cases remakes and rehashes aren't exactly good for the industry, the idea of fixing something which isn't broke isn't always the best course of action to try and revive a long forgotten franchise. Only a small minority seem to succeed in this regard but as time moves on and nostalgia seems to only get more popular by the second, it's only a matter of time before I end up re-watching my whole childhood in CGI.
Did you ever want a series that shows you good action without any of the Shonen cliches interfering? Well look no further than Soul Eater.
Soul Eater is a Tim Burton-esque anime about trainee weapon meisters and their living Deathscythe weapons fighting against the likes of Kishin Demons and Witches all in the name of the Grim Reaper himself.
We join lead protagonist Maka Albarn and her partner Soul Eater as she hunts for the witches soul to make Soul Eater into a proper Deathscythe fit for the reaper. The same goes for Black Star and his partner Tsubaki along with Death the Kid and the Thompson Sisters.
But their lessons at the Deathmeister academy get disrupted by the Witch Medusa as she plots to revive the Kishin Asura, so it's up to the Academy students to stop her while also fighting off other Witches, a Werewolf, a Swordsman and Crona the ambiguously gendered emo kid with black blood and a scary weapon named Ragnarok.
Now this does sound like a plot of any Shonen series but the execution of the show is well done; this is mainly helped by the very stylish art style, awesome music and well choreographed fight scenes. With all this you kind of forget that the majority of the cast are all rejects from other anime. Allow me to expand.
Watching these characters it becomes immediately obvious where they take their inspirations from. Maka reminds me of Witch Hunter Robin, Black Star reminds me of Naruto, Death the Kid is the spitting image of XXXHolic's Kimihiro Watanuki, Soul Eater looks like the forbidden love child of Dead Leaves and the Gorillaz while the Thompson Sisters could easily walk into Burst Angel no problem. Only Tsubaki seems to escape the comparisons. The supporting cast does slightly better with original designs at least but they aren't nearly as strong as the main cast.
Quite early on we meet the unoriginally named teacher Dr Stein, and while at first he seems awesome through his battles and eccentric personality but after a while he just gets annoying, this is true for a lot of the supporting cast as they seem to fade into one dimensional characters rather quick and this is where the show starts showing it's cracks as well.
For a series with enough source material for a long runner, it tends to rush things an awful lot come part two. New characters are introduced out of the blue both enemy and ally with nothing much to work from other than names. The end result is a taped together mess which ends in quite a let down come last episode.
Final Verdict: It's definitely worth picking up but random pacing in part two really messes with the story far too much. Nevertheless its art style and action really save it from being generic.
Sorry it's a couple of days late but here is the Cartoon Vault review for Angela Anaconda.
Angela Anaconda started as a short on Nickelodeon's Kablam, a series featuring numerous cartoons much in the same vein as Cartoon Networks Cartoon Cartoons production.
Despite the fact that Action League Now was the best series, only Angela Anaconda actually became a full on cartoon when it got picked up by Fox.
Yes this hideous cut out cartoon managed a 65 episode series but god knows why, it's awful.
Let me explain how this was made, basically a number of photos were taken of willing models and the faces were animated onto cartoon bodies, problem is it's not just creepy but makes everything look cheap in terms of production.
So the show is about Angela who kindly reminds us in the opening theme song that it's her show, much in the same way Doug does. In fact there are many similarities between the two; both enjoy self indulgent fantasies, both are social outcasts apart from a small group of equally weird friends and both can't shake off an annoying bully but while Doug at the very least is likeable to a certain extend, Angela on the other hand is very obnoxious and pretty much all her fantasies revolve around getting revenge and you have to wonder if they deserve it sometimes, even Nanette Manoir, little Miss "I can't speak French but it makes me look better if I fake it anyway"
Actually that's another thing, I find it odd that a Canadian show would put in a fake French character for laughs, which comes across as slightly uncomfortable but it's not nearly as bad as Angela gets particularly when in one episode she fakes Agoraphobia to avoid school which to real sufferers is very awkward and offensive.
Like I said before, this is bad, Johnny Test bad. While it is a neat animation technique to use cut out pictures it's not such a good idea to form the basis of a full on cartoon using said method. Flash animation and Robot Chicken suit this style better; but still were stuck with the haunting memory of this show ruining Digimon.
Now as I have some days off and lots of free time so more entries will come thick and fast.
Before I start I should explain Angela Anaconda.
Angela Anaconda was a Canadian Cartoon that used Cutout animation which is essentially a mesh up of flat images cut out from sources such as kids drawings or black and white photos in the case of Angela Anaconda. It's basically reverse gender Doug but Angela is a lot more obnoxious, ironically this was first made for Nickelodeon before Fox took it up for US audiences.
Now for this pile of shame; you see Fox had the rights to the Digimon Movie and decided to try and promote it with a shameless self promotion for Angela Anaconda.
The basic plot is Angela and friends are going to see the movie and all rush to get seats until local stuck up fake French girl Nanette and her teacher Mrs Brinks block the view of the screen, then using her imagination she digivolves into Angelamon and defeats Nanette. After her little self indulgent fantasy they realize they're in the wrong movie screen and all rush away leaving Nanette and Brinks in a mess.
Yes that was real and here is the evidence to prove it complete with my own personal reaction to it.
This is pretty much how Anime haters pictured Digimon and that's a sad thing to comment on; it certainly didn't set us up well for the film, if anything we all felt put off by it. Not that the film is any better, it was a huge mess of a story anyway but that's for another review.
However if you want me to expand on the abomination that is Angela Anaconda, then post your comments below and she'll go into the vault.
