The New Adventures of ILXor: The Animated Series Poll voting and campaigning thread

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The Saturday Morning Memorial Animated Series Poll: nominations

We're polling the best/most-loved/most-votes-receiving animated series of all time/from times that we personally remember!

How to vote

Email your ballot, consisting of at least 10 and at most 25 series titles, to cartoons at jklol.net. Include your ilx username for auditing purposes. Do not add rankings to your list of titles, just put number 1 at the top and number 25 at the bottom. Please use the title as collated in the official list of nominations whenever possible, as this will help me disambiguate similarly-named series. If you want to vote for something not nominated, please provide at least enough information to, for example, identify the specific wikipedia page for the series run you're voting for.

Theme song side ballot

Separately from the main ballot, you may optionally submit your top animated series theme songs. If you do, please vote for at least 5 and, why not, up to 25. Some good/mind-destroying tunes in this bunch.

Nominated Series

Please review the official nomination list, also copied in the nomination thread for redundancy. Voting for a non-nominated series risks your vote being discarded without notification if there's ambiguity about qualification or identification but is otherwise OK with me.

Deadline

Whenever I feel like it, but no earlier than August 25th, 2019, which gives you three whole weekends to binge on garbage from the 80s, you reprobate Gen Xers.

I'm prob going to use the voting weeks to finally watch a bit of NGE, Cowboy Bebop, Bojack Horseman and Steven Universe. Not sure if I'll vote for anything I didn't already love but those ones have been on my "to check out" list for a long time.

yeah hmm maybe i should finally watch eva for this

That screenshot is so good.

it's good. animation is good.

aside from everything Oliver Postgate has ever made, I urge you to all check out A Town Called Panic/Panique Au Village if you haven't, it is sensational

I have seen and adored the movie! It appeared on American Netflix a few years back. I think I checked out the series a bit at the time but didn't plow through them all.

i recall you saying so! the movie is a pinnacle yes but the series well worth finding as well :)

If the DCAU were lumped together as one nomination, I'm fairly confident that it would take the top spot (top three at least). As is, it'll be interesting to see where the constituent shows land.

I imagine B:TAS, Batman Beyond, and Justice League, at minimum, can each do well enough on their own

Given how the chips have fallen (BOOHISS), I'd say BTAS and JLU (as distinct from JL) are the locks, but Beyond? My impression was that it wasn't exactly the hotness.

I always thought Batman Beyond was kinda lame. Best were BTAS, STAS and both JL series

I didn't see the nomination thread. One current show that airs in weird spurts is Summer Camp Island. Some episodes are comparable to Over The Garden Wall. Good stuff.

I started working through the DCAU series I hadn't seen a little while back. What I've seen of Beyond hasn't blown me away. Static Shock, otoh, turned out to be a surprisingly-decent b-tier show.

(Which I'm sure is largely aided by the creators of the character being writers and producers on the show.)

This will be hard, I'm going to give this an even spread of "ubiquitous to my childhood actual Sat morning cartoon" type stuff (mostly 60s-80s toons) and important/newer shows.

I mean I'd never watch Roger Ramjet now, but it has to get a vote because it was an absolute staple of dinnertime in the early 80s in my house.

a few deep into Steven Universe and Gravity Falls. not really feeling them very much – but the character Amethyst from SU looks, sounds and acts so much like my old hair stylist it cannot be a coincidence. (tho after a shit load of googling i can find zero connection).

Hey, a poll where I'm a viking*! I plan to vote in both shows and theme songs, gotta find some time to throw a ballot together

* not a literal viking, that wouldn't make sense

I watched a couple more episodes of Over the Garden Wall and found it much more charming than the first episode!

Also wtf is this and should I seek it out (seeing that it made the nominations):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udeH8ghanXg

My stepson's been (re re re) watching Gravity Falls over the last few weeks, thre show is great but dear god I am sick of the theme tune now.

LOL and that now reminds me, theres no Voltron in the overall list. hahaha.

No one posted Hong Kong Phooey? I didn't nom as I assumed it would have been nominated.

― Dan Worsley, Tuesday, 6 August 2019 18:59 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Or Undercover Elephant! Or The Hunter!

Completely forgot about Voltron. I enjoyed the first few seasons of the Netflix series but then dropped off, for some reason.

I considered nominating Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog for a bit there, but thought better of it.

What I've seen of Beyond hasn't blown me away.

it's spider-man-as-batman with kevin conroy and bruce timm going full kirby! what's not to like?

(admittedly i haven't seen a frame of it in like 15 years but still)

I don't dislike what I've seen (which honestly isn't that much), it just hasn't grabbed me the way almost all of the other DCAU stuff does. Imma get back around to continuing with it eventually. Maybe this poll is the motivation I need.

i'm warming up to Gravity Falls nut Gonna give up on Steven Universe. the Bowie rip off theme song also really gets under my skin.

It always reminded me too much of Sufjan Stevens.

Re: theme songs, if you don't vote for the Raccoons theme tune you're dead inside.

steven universe is worth sticking w/ imo.

also if you're checking out SU + GF, check out AT too, and then bravest warriors + bea + puppycat which are from ppl who worked on these other projects but are shorter weirder online shows.

if AT = Adventure Time, no worries – i'm already a big fan. i can see the influence on SU for sure.

There's a lot of Hanna-Barbera stuff I vaguely expected to see nominated and didn't: the original Yogi Bear Show, Top Cat, Hong Kong Phooey, Jetsons, Snagglepuss...

Not sure I'd have voted for any of it, maybe Yogi and TC at the bottom of my ballot, so NBD for me, just surprised.

Re: theme songs, if you don't vote for the Raccoons theme tune you're dead inside.

OTM! I tried to answer the "what songs have an epic 80s mysterious night-time vibe like this?"* q on the "Self Control" thread but my brain got stuck on the Raccoons theme tune and thought it might be, you know, a bit of a category error to reply to a question about actual pop hits with a cheesy kids' show theme tune (which is great) (at least it's great if you're 8 years old or drunk, anyway)

* probably not the actual phrasing of the question what it got rewritten as in my head

Hanna-Barbera is mostly garbage imo. I don't know how they were so successful at creating a slew of iconic characters that everyone knows because they sure didn't do much to make them memorable.

I agree that Raccoons has the best theme tune, however I have found that plenty of people don't know it has a mostly-non-Rraccoons music video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usFFKNRB2z8

I have watched this more times than I'd like to admit.

Want to reiterate that as usual it’s ok to vote for things that aren’t nominated, I just reserve the right to bounce them if I’m confused.

nom list is missing The Yoga Bear Show

i got my shortlist down to 56 items now i just need to figure out how to halve that and how to weigh stuff that was beloved to me as a child vs stuff i enjoyed mostly as an adult

Hanna-Barbera is mostly garbage imo. I don't know how they were so successful at creating a slew of iconic characters that everyone knows because they sure didn't do much to make them memorable.

― Liberals are insane in the mimbrain!!! (Old Lunch), Wednesday, August 7, 2019 9:35 AM

Alex Toth, Iwao Takamoto, Doug Wildey, Daws Butler and Don Messick, Ruby & Spears, Michael Maltese, just for starters. "Didn't do much to make them memorable" way off the money.

god there's so much to get through here lol

how to weigh stuff that was beloved to me as a child vs stuff i enjoyed mostly as an adult

for instance i'm sure Doug would not hold up in 2019 as one of my favorite animated shows of all time and yet this poster is currently hanging over my desk:

https://i.imgur.com/nFljJhW.jpg

I'm reading about some of the H-B cartoons during the kitchen sink/dumpster era of the 70s and it's kind of impressive how brazen they were in ripping off their own properties

I mean, they wanted to do a Jetsons spin-off, CBS wanted something with the Partridge Family instead, so they made... Partridge Family 2200 A.D.? Sure, why not!

25 titles eh?
one more write-in vote idea: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes

i would not complain about longer ballots

c'mon u only get to vote in a best animated series of all time list once in yr life

another write in idea for yall: Amazing World of Gumball, The

anime division:

1. yes, everyone should watch eva

2. i will be placing sailor moon very high on my ballot even though it is the most uneven work of art i love, long stretches of it even suck because, like dragon ball, it was so hideously popular that they stretched out the plot arcs to near-indefinite lengths. the third season (sailor moon s) is, however, pretty amazing and consistent regardless, and i'd recommend anyone who wants to know why sailor moon is any good at all check out an episode or two from it, even though it'll probably make zero sense, it's a deceptively complicated show with overlapping timelines and time travel and ancient and future utopian kingdoms on the moon etc. the show is occasionally plagued by regressive attitudes about gender roles but by s it's fully about how everyone is a lesbian

3. if you would like to get into an anime for the purposes of this poll that isn't 250 episodes long, i recommend the 12-episode haibane renmei, which in its goodheartedness and its devotion to the intricacies of its world is as close as we'll ever get to a studio ghibli animated series (barring nadia: the secret of blue water which given its miyazaki origins is the ghibli animated series but it's 30-something episodes long and a subset of those episodes actively suck, which is why i've never finished it)

adult swim division:

1. home movies: i hope everyone is aware of how devastatingly good this show was. metalocalypse and bob's burgers are fine and often funny, and dr. katz is amazing, but this is bouchard and small's peak, which is weird because from the jump it's so haphazardly- and improvisationally-made and has a weirdly personal aspect, but by the time the third season starts, it just feels like it's made with so much... love? every character has this wonderful individual presence and pretty much all the jokes are character-derived and it's such a rich and warm experience

2. space ghost: still my favorite williams street show, even though it's the first (?) and the longest, even the very earliest episodes have this sense of surreality and ridiculousness and total freedom that could only come from repurposing a bad hanna barbera cartoon into a talk show format. the thom yorke/björk episode ("knifin' around"), which iirc aired shortly after the show entered the adult swim lineup instead of being a free-floating 11pm/midnight-ish show that i regularly confused with cartoon planet (same characters, no interviews, lot of good brak songs), still gets me rolling on the floor clutching my sides. aqua teen (which was a space ghost spinoff!!!) in many ways pushed this style further but i don't have nearly as much affection for it

oh god i should've nominated aggretsuko

og Space Ghost (as opposed to Space Ghost: Coast to Coast) deserves some love

i've never actually seen og space ghost so i apologize for calling it "bad" lol

the overall design is chefskiss.jpg Alex Toth

yes

FTR, when I trash H-B, I'm not talking about the character or sound design or the voicework, a lot of which was good to great. I'm talking about the badly-animated and unengaging final product which made poor use of those successful elements.

Brad otm with both adult swim division recs. Home Movies will be at the top of my ballot.

I think it's a little too niche for the "shockingly old when I learned" thread, but it blew my mind to recently discover that Jon Benjamin did Jason's voice as well as McGuirk. Jason is an all-time character.

Yeah, Home Movies is great and will be high up on my ballot.

Did Paranoia Agent make it onto the nomination list?

that URL again is http://stuff.jklol.net/cartoon_noms.txt

I may or may not ninja late arrivals into the nom list as suits my caprice

ah thank you

I don't know if they belong per se but I am a little surprised not to see My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Bleach, Inuyasha, One Piece, Naruto, or Voltron, especially considering that The Cleveland Show got a nomination

Re: theme songs, if you don't vote for the Raccoons theme tune you're dead inside.

― emil.y,

It's good. But it's no Mysterious Cities of Gold (which I will also be ranking highly in the main poll).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ki99YBVKyw

oh shit i can't believe we didn't nom aggretsuko

btw while we're mentioning it metalocalypse is not just fine and often funny but sometimes brilliant + hilariously inventive - i think the scene where nathan tries to apologize and it causes a rupture in the earth is hilarious. also brandon small does like tons of the voices and he's sorta a voice-over genius.

some of Brendon Small's best work in recent years imo has been his Comedy Bang Bang appearances as aspiring lounge singer Victor Diamond and his friend and manager Tiny, simultaneously. Which he is astonishingly good at, like how can you be that good at switching between two funny voices in an improv situation. Sadly consigned to the fuckin Stitcher Premium paywall at this point but worth a listen imo.

It was a sad day when Willy became a regular 3rd voice that accompanied Victor and Tiny's appearances. They were gold without him. It definitely makes Small's performance all the more impressive, but holy hell does that character voice grate.

Did Paranoia Agent make it onto the nomination list?

― brigadier pudding (DJP)

Yep, it's in there. You had me worried for a minute.

it's no Mysterious Cities of Gold (which I will also be ranking highly in the main poll)

I only know the theme tune, I don't think I ever saw the series itself!

Paranoia Agent here?

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCESR3puCm82PQH2ecE-KOCwvwBpNyXX9

btw while we're mentioning it metalocalypse is not just fine and often funny but sometimes brilliant + hilariously inventive - i think the scene where nathan tries to apologize and it causes a rupture in the earth is hilarious. also brandon small does like tons of the voices and he's sorta a voice-over genius.

― Mordy, Wednesday, August 7, 2019 9:34 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's true i was underrating metalocalypse

i'm not ashamed to admit i saw Dethklok live and they (he) did some skits between songs (animations on a screen behind the band) and was doing the voiceovers live. sometimes while playing guitar. as goofy as it was, it was also really impressive.

i nommed paranoia agent.
can't believe we missed voltron, i'll write that in.
will def vote for home movies; will likely vote for metalocalypse

if ppl want to post links to specific episodes of shows here i'd be interested in watching them. when i get home tnite i'll try to find some good representative stuff for some of my fave choices.

ya, i never thought much of it at the time – but maybe i might should check out Home Movies.

it's no Mysterious Cities of Gold (which I will also be ranking highly in the main poll)

I only know the theme tune, I don't think I ever saw the series itself!

the main theme is still sometimes stuck in my head after all these decades but please could someone make me a full album-length extended mix of this incidental excerpt?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBUPdt-F6jU

oh my god, someone already did (well, they looped it for 53 minutes, close enough)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0wOpI3R91s

I can die happy, in 52 minutes

(though RIP the best bit i.e. the sublime choir hit at the end which has got lost in the looping, but hey, extra tension if you now wait 53 minutes for it instead of 1¾, right?)

OMG I FORGOT TO NOMINATE CARTOON PLANET (aka Space Ghost's delightful step-sibling aka the source of most of the best Brak material)

This is simply indefensible.

what day is it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcPSmFhmhJ4

silby, I promise this is the only entreaty I will make itt. Please, for the love of all that is good and decent in the world, add Cartoon Planet to the list. I will literally be your best friend forever.

brak show was the apex of a specific style of nerd humor for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VI_yJsT5Fc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDhpC3vl8Og

All of the soundtracks released for Cartoon Planet are golden and well worth owning.

another mindmeld with OL and me here i see

btw if "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" doesn't win best OP organically I am going to doctor the results so if you want to preserve the integrity of the theme song poll you had better vote for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nafii87gdzs

^ unfair to post that one I guess since it's extended from the version actually used as the OP but whatever

I should note that best theme/OP nominations don't have to be The Canonical One, so Brad should feel free to vote for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5txHGxJRwtQ

OP is opening... poem?

it's just "OPening", it's a weeaboo term of art

the one for "ending theme" is "ED" so it doesn't really make any sense

anyway,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYDcadIKSUg

making sure everybody plans to vote for the venture bros, somehow still fantastically great after 16 (intermittent) years

My #1 theme song is probably going to be this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs8iaZqE2eQ

valid

I should note that best theme/OP nominations don't have to be The Canonical One, so Brad should feel free to vote for this

pfft never in my life would i vote for the english bowdlerization of "moonlight densetsu"

"moonlight densetsu" itself, however

making sure everybody plans to vote for the venture bros, somehow still fantastically great after 16 (intermittent) years

― jakey mo collier (voodoo chili), Wednesday, August 7, 2019 1:25 PM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i haven't watched any venture bros. since season four, always been meaning to catch up, it will be on my list based on the strength of those four seasons regardless

The Venture Brothers is still great but it's definitely in a groove where I don't actually feel like I need to watch it to know what is going on (see also: Archer)

venture bros and archer both shows where i enjoyed 2-3 seasons and then checked out

venture bros is still good imo and i'm all caught up - archer otoh i sorta lost interest in after everything became non-canonical coma genre exercises

Based on what I've seen of later seasons, they are both still really, really good; I just don't feel like I need to watch them

archer has become mostly unwatchable

i would have assumed it was over by now but i guess all sitcoms just run forever as long as a dozen or two people are watching them

Yeah I loved archer up to and through the vice season, but now it feels like it’s keeping Adam Reed from making other things that we can get excited about.

Like a third season of Frisky Dingo.

it's definitely running on fumes

I was on the Archer train til they stopped being ISIS (for obv reasons I guess) and then had that one Miami Vice (?) style season where Pam went all skinny.

Or when Lana had the baby? Around that point.

this isn't in the nom list but deserves consideration for theme song poll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo1C1XL4p6c

I had no idea they were still making venture bros!
Also the theme song by Jim Thirlwell is solid.

They aired a new season in 2918, and a lot of it was excellent

Worth the 899 year wait?

Yep. This is why I shouldn’t post from my phone

Might vote for this even though it wasn't nominated and I doubt anyone else would even if it had been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNobEXuYFeM

Can we submit unranked ballots?

i just spent a few hours watching cartoon intros... for research purposes, sure.... Anyway, I found this surprisingly awesome one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUAMVJD7XY

I had forgotten about the period where celebrities would make cartoons where they star as children.

Bobby's World with Howie Mandel.
Life with Louie with Louie Anderson.
Little Rosey without Roseanne.
Bruno the Kid with Bruce Willis, who also sings the theme song.

There hasn't been much Moral Orel conversation - I assume ilxors already know how good it is? In case they don't -- the whole thing is streaming on Hulu. It's the kind of thing that I think ilxors in particular might appreciate being as how it's in large part a satire of right-wing Christianity + small town hypocrisy.

Metalocalypse which has been mentioned is also great and also should be a crowd pleaser around here I'd think? It's about a metal band that is so big they're like the planet's largest (or one of the largest it's been a long time since I watched it) GDP. The band members themselves are total idiots for the most part (as mentioned above hilariously voiced) but bc of their influence + power they're tracked by a shadowy cabal group. the episodes are like 15 min or less each so v easy watching. (this is the episode i mentioned above where nathan apologizes - nb it is iirc the final episode of the show so idk if you want to watch it out of order)

the bravest warriors is a very cute post-adventure time sci-fi teen team show that is all available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv99gj1xxWw

Bee and Puppycat is also a post-adventure time show that is available on youtube but more unique - kinda a quirky young adult coming of age (?) show about a young woman w/ malaise/depression who does extra-dimensional tasks for pay w/ a half-puppy half-cat extraterrestrial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dop4MTlf_zc

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is one of my top 3 anime ever and it's a space opera about a war between a enlightened autocrat from an old european sorta astro-hungarian style nation and a failing flawed democratic nation whose army is led by a brilliant tactician. The episodes contain lots of dialogue about the merits of autocracy vs democracy, the failings of both, the struggle of human being to be free, and are then punctuated by epic space battle scenes scored with classical music. In some ways it reminds me a lot of War and Peace tho there's v little civilian story - but if your favorite part of W&P is discussions about chain of command and the importance of staff commanders this is yr shit for sure. It can be streamed on HIDIVE which has like a free month trial if you want to check it out: https://www.hidive.com/tv/legend-of-the-galactic-heroes -- here's a representative quote from it: "The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion by an external enemy is on the road to extinction."

Space Dandy is another anime - this one is a super trippy sci-fi anime by the guy who created cowboy bebop about rare alien species bounty hunters. it's a little crude (the guy is a pervert who hangs out a lot at an interstellar hooters essentially) but many of the episodes turn into these bizarre mindbending plotlines w/ really dazzling animation. i loved getting high and watching them bc it really felt sometimes like staring into a bizarre vortex. i think it can also be streamed on Hulu.

other stuff i want to promote i think ppl here probably already know about so i won't extoll the virtues of like bojack or rick and morty or steven universe or adventure time.

and if ppl want to proselytize for shows i'm up for watching anything if you point me in the right direction to stream it

Mordy your enthusiasm in this area is infectious so please extoll whatever you want

apparently the disconnected nature of Moral Orel, which I enjoyed when I caught an episode, was due to the fact Cartoon Network chopped up the running order and didn't air some episodes

going to have to go back and check it out. thanks, Mordy!

This last season of Archer (Archer 1999) was pretty great, but that's coming from a sci-fi fan enjoying the various references.

If you haven't been watching for a while, at the end of season 7, Archer is shot and goes into a coma. The last three seasons have been Archer dreaming variants of the standard Archer actors in three genres (noir, pulp fiction/adventure, sci-fi), with Archer waking up at the end of this last season. Season 11 just announced, so we'll see where that goes.

Moral Orel is outstanding. It does an insane pivot from being ridiculous to harrowing while retaining its identity; it's honestly one of the more impressive storytelling feats I've seen.

Dino Stamatopoulos is kind of an underheralded genius. He wrote a lot of the best Mr. Show sketches.

moral orel WAS amazing, i had nearly forgotten

the big o is possibly better than i remembered. the design of the show is astonishing

moral orel was obviously very high quality, it just was a bit too gonzo for me to watch regularly

i went to college w/ the creator of bee and puppycat and knew her a little bit -- she was an amazing artist even then

OK since we're in an evangelizing mood:

HILDA is an extremely sweet story about a girl who lives in a magical forest with her (single) mom but because of circumstances has to move into the city. It's definitely aimed at young kids but is smart and complex enough for adults to enjoy. See also HILDA on Netflix deserves its own thread, where this is OTM:

The animation and character design are lovely (I don't know why but I find Hilda's beret to be an exquisite touch), and the story is surprisingly intricate for a kid's show -- things mentioned in the periphery in one episode pay off several episodes later. (As an aside, you know you've reached peak serial narratives when something aimed at 9-year-olds has multi-episode arcs.)

Also the theme song is by Grimes (?!).

the big o is possibly better than i remembered. the design of the show is astonishing

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, August 8, 2019 8:41 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and i either forgot or never made the connection that chiaki j. konaka, the creator of lain, was the head writer of big o. which makes so much sense

As for themes, Daria is up with my faves at a quick brain-glance. I'm also (sorry pvmic here) fond of Futurama because of the 60s song it was ganked from!

Copyediting:

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Tinin, The Adventures of (1991-1992)

Thanks!

new on netflix - a reboot of rocko's modern life!?!

feature-length film I believe

Yeah, I was never huge on the series but the movie/special sounds intersting! The main cast returns from twenty years in outer space to see what a horrorshow we've made of the planet since then.

a new Invader Zim movie is coming to Netflix soon, too!

netflix reviving all the shows that made me feel out of the loop for not liking

can we talk about how people are planning on balancing their ballots btwn stuff they suspect just wouldn't hold up today but is v important part of their youth w/ stuff they think is still fantastic? kill yr darlings? so hard to do.

Can we submit unranked ballots?

― The Pingularity (ledge), Thursday, August 8, 2019 1:47 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Nah.

I'm considering interpolating points for ballots with less than 25 entries linearly from 25 to 1 rather than giving 16 points to the 10th choice of someone who only submits 10 shows, does anyone think that sucks?

no i think that's excellent

The contender which for me hits both the 'youthful impact' and 'holds up' criteria is G.I. Joe, which I remember more about than most other childhood media and which has been revealed, to the extent that I've reviewed it in my dotage, to be a really fuckin' weird show. Lotta comics writers involved (including Steve Gerber, which I have to believe influenced the weirdness to some extent).

i'm voting only for shows i think are outright good, some may be "this is outright good for a ten-year-old." but no mere "this is dross but i remember being attached to it."

Yeah, I used to watch the shit out of some Snorks but I somehow doubt it's weathered the test if time.

Just finished Over the Garden Wall and despite not feeling the sense of humor in the first episode, I acclimated to its charms pretty quickly. Moreover, the way the world unfolds is a gem of storytelling. Glad I stuck with it!

holy hell, i had totally forgotten about Duckman! i never loved it, but it had it's moments, will add that to the list. (of things to watch/rewatch)

i looooove duckman but part of me can't imagine it's held up

ya, i feel like time will not have been kind.

would love to rewatch nonetheless. The comics are good!

the rocko's modern life reboot was fun and reminded me both of what was v cool about the original rocko (and how heavily influenced by ren + stimpy it was!) but also it was the perfect length like 40min and i don't feel like i need to watch any more

ppl recommend me other things to watch plz. i'm going to watch big O.

anyone interested in the non-action side of anime should try A Place Further than the Universe it's real good and only 13 eps long

Anybody tried Infinity Train yet? Haven't heard anything one way or the other yet

Oh no, where are Alvin and the Chipmunks? That show basically formed my impressions of life and culture between the ages of 3 and 8. I will write it in my ballot for sure.

Very glad someone nominated Serial Experiments Lain! That show captures the thrill and mystique of early internet communication so well and it looks extremely cool.

A Place Further Than the Universe looks great - will definitely try to watch that. Any other recommendations for anime of a sort of strange or magical bent?

Watch Mission Hill!
Iirc all the episodes are on YouTube.

anyone interested in the non-action side of anime should try A Place Further than the Universe it's real good and only 13 eps long

just watched the first ep so cute!!!

xp Land of the Lustrous is a neat fantasy anime with some pretty unique visuals and worldbuilding

Infinity Train was great

will give it a shot

can we talk about how people are planning on balancing their ballots btwn stuff they suspect just wouldn't hold up today but is v important part of their youth w/ stuff they think is still fantastic? kill yr darlings? so hard to do.

Did anyone but me say they'd do this? Anyway I'm less inclined the more I go over this. I'm going to stuff a few old H-B or whatever ones right at the bottom.

Speaking of killing darlings though: giving Ren and Stimpy close to top billing, vs "John K turned out to be a bit of a pedo lech" :(

Yeah that’s a tough one. Would welcome discussion of Art vs artist thoughts as pertains explicitly to the poll and how that might change ur voting.

I have to disclaim I was quite small and forbidden to watch Ren and Stimpy while it aired and I’m not positive I’ve ever seen more than five minutes of it so that being said I would be pleasantly surprised if the work of the guy who serially groomed minors for sex turned out to be heavily discounted at this remove.

On the other hand most animation is a collective work with no single author.

Up to y’all.

i will not be voting for ren and stimpy, ymmv

I just feel like it was pretty groundbreaking at the time - first of the widely popular "adult" cartoons (Simpsons aside).

i think it's a very important show and my expectation was that it would do well in this poll but it wasn't going to be on my ballot just bc there are things i find kinda sleazy + gross in an unpleasant way about the work that made it difficult for me to enjoy as a kid and not eager to review as an adult - i do understand the appeal of dissonant animation (or at the very least dissonance in other areas of art) but there's so much competing for space on my ballot i have the luxury of not voting for something i see as an extremely important + distinctive entry in the genre but just isn't beloved by me in that way.

going to check later if there’s a good public link to a bill oakley interview where he talks about mission hill a fair bit

it’s aged ok, feel like the character bits hit well but I’m not sure if more episodes would have been good or had to go in a different way because they mined the territory

xp at silby, I wasn’t allowed to watch the simpsons (!) for years and catching up was a joy around 1996 or so

my mom misremembered this recently as not letting me watch south park. which, outside of the definite distance, is funny because I had to explain that not only did they not have cable tv until I was in college, comedy central might not have been carried locally then

my parents didn't like the simpsons but thankfully they didn't stop me from watching it

they definitely did not allow me to watch beavis and butthead or mtv at all for several years, which was stupid of them imo

by the time south park came out i was in third grade and watching mtv religiously and not giving a goddamn shit and all bets were off

this is so foreign to me!

xp - I nominated Ren and Stimpy, and will be voting for it, but completely understand why others won't.

Finding out years down the track that the guy responsible for the cartoon I obsessed over as a pre/early-teen got up to some awful shit was disappointing, to say the least. In these last few years, learning of and observing the behaviour of creators and fandom in the entertainment I enjoy (music, movies, tv, comic books, video games, genre fiction, you name it) has been disheartening. I can't change what I liked back then, but I can make better-informed decisions now.

For me, voting for R&S is acknowledging it's impact on me, and not necessarily as a recommendation for others to check it out. ymmv.

And now for something completely different, here's the greatest cartoon theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOpxUZEetLg

LOL I was singing that just last night (prob thanks to this thread) and my other half looked at me like I was nuts.

I wasn’t allowed to watch South Park, but my brother was always out when it was on and I would sneak into his room and watch it on this old black and white dial TV where you could only half get Channel 4. I didn’t watch South Park in colour until way later.

My grandparents didn’t let us watch the Simpsons at their house because it was ‘too American’.

IT'S ME NO-NO SMALL ROBOT YOU KNOW

Great spaceship design in Ulysses 31.

mission hill was not for us. was amused to learn it was not only a contemporary but initially a near-namesake of downtown, which i love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fI7zm7RXHs

This will be a top three on my best theme songs ever, love it to bits.

^^^massively otm

We watched Over The Garden Wall, and while it's not perfect, it looks amazing (as tt said, Ghibli-tastic), has a really cute and tasteful aesthetic (of a sort a Gen Y permachild like me wouldn't roll their eyes at - cues from Neutral Milk Hotel and Grim Fandango rather than anything more brash) and its world-building works pretty well - it all comes together sweetly. And that moment in the frogs episode is transcendent

Didn't remember the Jamie and the Magic Torch song being quite so minor key (after the Pete Townshend chords that kick it off):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMMow_Itqw&t=33

oh well skip the first 33 seconds yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMMow_Itqw

Any other recommendations for anime of a sort of strange or magical bent?

i completely agree with all the recommendations for A Place Further than the Universe - "a group of high school girls go to antarctica!" might sound like a terrible comedy or something but it's a surprisingly moving drama with plenty of great comedy too, and gorgeous animation. only 13 episodes too!

it's hard to think of what western series i still care about at all though - probably throwing Pingu a vote out of childhood nostalgia, and certainly Avatar & Korra are quite good, and SGCTC of course but that's about it. it's hard to feel much nostalgia for any of the 00s/90s stuff around when i was a child except for Avatar which stands out as by far the best from then. maybe Ed, Edd & Eddy, it was endearingly weird at times but that's about it as far as the children's cartoon sitcoms go.

i was always most into the more plot/adventure oriented anime (or the western attempts at imitation) like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh (DBZ was always too confusing for me though, always just endless fights so I never knew what was happening when I did see it) but i wouldn't hold those up as at all worthwhile though Yu-Gi-Oh occasionally did take its already goofy premise to some seriously weird places. the original dub of One Piece that i grew up with was not good at all in its very strange attempt to turn it from a show for teens to a show for kids but it did get me interested enough to eventually get into the manga which is still one of the best comics there is - hopefully it will finish within the next decade.

Thank you! Already completely sold on the basis of "a group of high school girls go to antarctica!", but I'll try the others too.

I *love* that Fullmetal Alchemist theme posted upthread. This will make it onto both of my ballots for sure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzV9ug9BQds

bouncing back to Ren and Stimpy: that show was immensely influential on me when i started watching it in high school. I can still recite the "oh my beloved ice cream bar" routine from memory. The Mad Magazine style chicken fat, the Bill Wray backgrounds, the twisted relationships and absorption in the ugly and subversive all remain a powerful lure but John K's real life ugliness certainly complicates matters. I'm intending to vote, with some misgivings, for R&S in this poll with the understanding that while the work not only retains but is founded on some of that taint, it is the product of many voices and remains among my favorite cartoons.
fuck the Spike TV revival though, that shit was vile.

a few more '10s anime i really like and will be voting for:

Non Non Biyori - slice-of-life comedy in a rural farming village, with lots of blissed out pastoral still shots. probably my favorite anime. you'll know whether you're on board or bored from the first episode.

Hyouka - mystery/character drama series about a high school club solving small-stakes mysteries. this is the best looking show in KyoAni's already impressive catalog imo, it's really expressive.

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun - girl approaches guy she likes only to find out that he's secretly a shoujo (girls') manga artist and accidentally ends up as his manga assistant instead of girlfriend. fun romcom that's much more on the comedy than romance end of the spectrum.

apparently i have some googling to do re: John K/Ren and Stimpy. was def planning on having it on my ballot, but far down enough that nothing is set in stone.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-stimpy-underage-sexual-abuse

the pilot for Mission Hill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0ZMw4y9rV0

i love the colour palette they use so much.

monthly girls' nozaki-kun is indeed very funny though idk how well how much it parodies shoujo manga tropes would work for someone who isn't familiar with those at all. probably not too hard to understand

Acting like those first couple seasons of R&S are not hugely influential and also really funny seems off, to me.

I’m sure all those anime guys are squeaky clean lol

Well I mean the creator of Ruruoni Kenshin got a slap on the wrist for possessing child porn last year but I’m fping you for “anime guys”

First ballot is submitted, btw!

Not mine!

Reminder that if you are submitting a theme nomination for an anime that ran multiple seasons please check if it had more than one OP during its run and make sure you identify the one you mean; American airings for some shows stuck to a single OP as opposed to using all the originals. As with all ambiguities, I'll do my best but reserve the right to give up.

i am prob not voting in the theme song poll but every single gundam wing title song was a bop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYe_-oFkMaI

though my favorite ("white reflection") is from the movie endless waltz so i don't think it counts for this poll

Yeah themes should be from works that otherwise meet the main poll criteria.

i dunno what john k has been up to lately outside of finally releasing this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10533350/?ref_=tt_urv

He put a lengthy and deeply cringeworthy response on Facebook which is captured here:
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/ren-stimpy-creator-john-kricfalusis-apology-triggers-backlash-from-victims-158358.html

Are there a lot of women w lead roles in the creation of anime? Serious question.

Xp

Are end title themes allowed? Especially since some series have no opening theme or perfunctory 5 second opening sequences.

Like it'd be a shame for FLCL not to qualify.

omfg what is this Chapi Chapo stuff, and what is the comedown like :D

amazing

Are there a lot of women w lead roles in the creation of anime? Serious question.

Xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, August 12, 2019 1:41 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know I just felt like fping you for the generalization which is faintly smacks of japan is fucked up!

Are end title themes allowed? Especially since some series have no opening theme or perfunctory 5 second opening sequences.

― Coelacanth Green (Leee), Monday, August 12, 2019 1:43 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah why not

Five episodes into A Place Further Than the Universe - it's lovely so far! Looking forward to the trip developing.

Never heard of Chapi Chapo until half an hour ago, but it has a disarming style of stop motion movement (lots of jump cuts) and is characterised by almost incessant laughter and the best theme tune ever. Also rendered in a lovely cubist setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R6EB69M2jA

xp lots of women writers and artists, not a ton of directors but more than there used to be in the 90s/00s. the aforementioned A Place Further than the Universe was directed by a woman, as were K-On and Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun from our nominations list, dunno if there are any others on there.

Chapi Chapo theme is immortal; also by noted film composer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_Roubaix

Chapi Chapo is a freakin' delight, is what it is.

I also posted this in the nominations thread, but you really can't go wrong sifting through the animated shorts they ran on Pinwheel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_(TV_series)

Even some American shows have multiple theme songs. I specified the original theme song for Garfield on my ballot because the other one is eh, whereas for Rocko's Modern Life, both theme songs are good (and similar) and I didn't feel like specifying. Might be easiest to just lump all theme songs together under the one show

Theme songs with the same words and melody but a new arrangement (eg Steven Universe) are the same for our purposes.

I love rules.

idk if this should go here since i missed the nominations thread, but here are some 00s/10s anime that i haven't seen mentioned that are pretty great:

uchouten kazoku (eccentric family): this is my pick for anime of a magical bent. it's a super fun show - creatures from japanese folklore coexist with humans in modern-day kyoto, focuses on a family of tanuki dealing with guilt and grief in a really delightfully drawn world operating by its own strange logic. if you've seen tatami galaxy or the night is short, walk on girl, this is by the same writer and it feels of a piece, maybe set in the same universe.

silver spoon: fullmetal alchemist writer does a coming-of-age story set in an agricultural high school. its a very chill slice-of-life that also touches lightly on the economic realities of japanese farmers. kinda feels like it could be some govt-sponsored propaganda to encourage urban youth to repopulate the countryside but in a good way lol

kids on the slope: cowboy bebop/samurai champloo director made an anime set in the 60s about jazz and friendship!

from the new world: dystopian sci-fi set in the future where a small percentage of the population has developed psychic abilities in 2013, totally restructuring human society. an underclass of "monster rats" serves humans, kids discover a secret and face the consequences as adults.

dennou coil: spooky digimon. kids in the near future live in a world where AR tech is used in everyday life. they hang out, mess around at the margins of the code, confront death, and risk losing their souls. honestly better than it sounds, came out in 2007 so it predates black mirror. it has a really interesting tone that i've never really seen done anywhere else before. starts off like a children's show but then starts drifting towards horror. mitsuo iso, who did key animation for neon genesis evangelion and early ghibli, directed this.

princess jellyfish: unemployed neurotic obsessive nerdy women try to grow up and save their boarding house from redevelopment with the help of a stylish, crossdressing manic pixie dream boy (coded cis-male imo, but it's been a while so i may be wrong)

paradise kiss: high-achieving girl feels aimless until she starts hanging out with fashion design kids and starts figuring out what she wants from life. nice soundtrack that happens to include lol franz ferdinand but it works. at a key moment in the show, this shoegazey song starts playing and it's perfect. a couple of decently portrayed overtly queer characters too iirc, esp for its time

march comes in like a lion: teen shogi (japanese chess) prodigy deals with depression, learns how to make friends/maintain relationships with other humans, and eats a lot of delicious food

yona of the dawn: what if there was a shounen (boys' action/adventure) anime but with a female lead?? swords, magic, and dragons

the lost village: horror comedy about trauma that features a giant deranged penguin. all of the characters go by their online handle irl and are terrible. thought this was some stupid, messy fun, but ymmv

kino's journey (2003): a mysterious girl and her talking motorcycle wander a world inspired by calvino's invisible cities. there's a remake too but idk anything about it

natsume yuujinchou: gentle boy who sees spirits tries to help them and slowly opens his heart, mushishi vibes

humanity has declined: post-apocalyptic dark comedy where a girl tries to mediate between humans and fairies

hyouge mono: set in the era of the warring states, this one's a comedy about a man obsessed with tea ceremony/wabi-sabi/art

shouwa genroku rakugo shinjuu: traditional comedic storytellers (rakugoka) try to make it in the 1930s through the 1990s

gankutsuou: sci-fi take on the count of monte cristo + mecha. visually arresting

most of these are like 12-24 eps long.

After doing some digging, I'm going to give nu-She-Ra another go; I watched the first season and didn't care too much to go on, but apparently it gets much better by S2?

I’ve only caught eps here and there when my kids are watching it but it seems v high quality and interesting the stuff I’ve seen

xp great list thanks, i haven't seen any of those & only a few were on my radar already

also Barakamon is one more of my anime favs that i missed in my last post - hotshot calligraphy artist gets sent off to live in a small island village after a public meltdown, has to learn how to get along with people in a close-knit community while finding new inspiration for his art. really nice little slice-of-life character piece.

Would we be better off with a 'recommend me some anime' thread? I don't think any of it's going to bother the poll much with a few exceptions (Eva, Cowboy Bebop, possibly Gatchaman if people feel more bound to the 'saturday morning cartoons'?)

After doing some digging, I'm going to give nu-She-Ra another go; I watched the first season and didn't care too much to go on, but apparently it gets much better by S2?

Also, besides Steven Universe it's by far the queerest American kids' cartoon I've ever seen. There's a few lesbian romances going on that are incredibly obvious if not spelled out as such, and Bow is also explicitly to have two dads who are in a loving long-term relationship.

"Bow is also explicitly shown to have two dads"

steven universe is worth sticking w/ imo.

I most definitely is, I would argue SU is the best TV series of this decade, cartoon or live-actiom. But the first season starts really slow, and the first half of it is mostly just establishing the protagonists and the setting (though there are some hints dropped that will pay out later). The big story arc that defines the rest of the series doesn't kick in until the "Mirror Gem"/"Ocean Gem" two-parter, and the magnitude of the story is only properly revealed in the season 1 finale, which is amazing. So if you're undecided, I'd recommend trying to continue until the end of the first season. If the finale doesn't work for you, the rest of the series won't either, but if it does work, you're probably hooked alredy.

feel like i should rewatch some of my old adult swim faves for this like Sealab and Harvey Birdman but also don't want to find out that they're not funny anymore

i wanted to like steven universe and it's certainly something i would have liked to have had as a child, but it can be too corny at times for me and the overall morals of it are a mess - "it's possible to talk to and work things out with your enemies" is admirable enough for a kids show but when it extends that to even the main villains who lead a genocidal alien empire it doesn't really land at all

Harvey Birdman and Sealab are both still pretty funny, Sealab maybe less pleasant overall, and it falls off pretty hard.

luckily i am certain that space ghost coast to coast still holds up

i would love to watch avatar before i file my ballot but i'm pretty sure i won't have time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxECJNYPuA

I really appreciate all the anime recommends. I have a rare amount of time on my hands this month and will gladly devour what I can before nominating. I’m sure at least a couple of new-to-me shows will sneak onto my ballot.

Still enjoying A Place Further Than the Universe. I loved the episode that was just the battling neuroses of two characters (the stubborn one and the one who doesn’t like other people being considerate towards her). I’ve also never seen an anime that felt so naturalistically contemporary.

I'm not an anime head but in the course of researching nominations I somehow stumbled upon this weird show (The World of Golden Eggs) which made me laugh for the few minutes that I watched it and which it looks like no one has ever discussed in the searchable history of ILX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6ZdoWB-6s

Harvey Birdman was excellent, I really should give it a rewatch. I have the DVD box set somewhere.

i can't stop screaming about how brilliant the big o is. i just got into the second season and it echoes evangelion even more than i remembered? in its own very noir way of course, but still folding into complex inward universes just all of the sudden, like it's no big deal

Oh - i have the Birman dvs somewhere too!

I had to bail on Steven Universe. Gravity Falls got more enjoyable as it went along, but SU was the opposite for me.

I'm watching through S1 of Gravity Falls. Initial episodes made it seem like it'd be a slightly "fractured" (per bullwinkle show) Family Values sitcom. It's better than that.

its interesting how a lot of current shows have that same artwork those 2 shows do, with the very curvey heads/big mouths thing going on.

...or I dunno maybe it is just those 2, haha.

Is Neon Genesis Evangelion worth watching? I know there's not really time now. I watched an episode once and wasn't sure...I'm not big into sci-fi/fantasy, unless it has a strong emotional core that transcends the genre constraints.

yes, it has a very strong emotional core that transcends the genre constraints

i consider it one of the major works of art of the past thirty years but ymmv

I never even finished it but yes, watch it

Be prepared for a lot of screaming.

I'm a few episodes into She-Ra season 2, and my socks are still on my feet. However, I'm pretty sure that Catra is secretly the show's main character.

I watched a couple eps of Gravity Falls, and it's pretty funny, though I'm yet to be hooked.

Eva is classic and is, a little bit, set up to lure in casual mecha fans by appearing to merely be a mecha show with some edgy trimming and mysteries etc. It doesn't necessarily stop being that, but yeah the emotional/psychological stuff develops.

Thanks! I’m good with screaming. I will get around to it then. Though alas, not in time for voting. Finding so much that is highly promising from this list!

omg each episode of Pat and Mat is a perfect demonstration of entropy; I adore it so, so much

its interesting how a lot of current shows have that same artwork those 2 shows do, with the very curvey heads/big mouths thing going on.

Sometimes disparaged as the "CalArts Style", usually by everything-sucks-these-days types on 4Chan and social media.

Gravity Falls suffered some long delays between episodes in its initial run (a very common problem with cartoons lately), but it was a really fun series to follow and discuss as it came out, with all the codes, cryptic clues, spoken or visual hints of the larger plot, etc. A fundamentalist Christian put up a video rant on Youtube about this evil show transmitting "Satanic symbols" to unsuspecting children, which was jokingly considered essential viewing by the fanbase.

I adore Steven Universe, but agree that, while Peridot and Lapis' character arcs were done quite brilliantly, some of the later character "redemptions" definitely felt too convenient and far-fetched. The plot pacing takes sudden leaps at times too.

Guys, I might've had one or two too many last weekend and ordered the GI Joe and Transformers complete series on DVD. That may have happened, who can say, really. But rather than feeling regret and shame in the wake of a grievous lapse of judgment I'm pleasantly surprised to announce that I'm finding GI Joe a goddamn delight. It's no wonder it appealed so heavily when I was age eight because it was clearly created by eight-year-olds. Like Tom Sciolli's revisionist history seems positively restrained the longer I watch this stuff. I don't think I've had such a 'this is nuts but I love it' permagrin plastered across my face since the last time I read Kirby's New Gods material.

I don't think I've had the chance to share this beautiful Yoko Kanno/Maaya Sakamoto opening theme on any other threads. The Record of Lodoss War TV show was pretty bad so I think the song has largely been forgotten

https://youtu.be/9aUfGClzhdI

i'm surprised to see that Gi joe seems like it holds up better than the Transformers cartoon (i'm assuming through omission).

also: the Zim Movie came out on Netflix yesterday! watched it immediately. was not disappointed.

I adore Steven Universe, but agree that, while Peridot and Lapis' character arcs were done quite brilliantly, some of the later character "redemptions" definitely felt too convenient and far-fetched.

Personally I really like how it sticks to its guns and refussd to show violence as the ultimate answer to any conflict, and that there are always other options. Yes, some of the "redemptions" are quite convenient (though the show isn't still over, so we still might sees some repercussions of them), but on the other hand they never come from out of nowhere, it's always estabishled why and how someone might change their minds. Also, it's not like the show has ever said all the deeds of the antagonists are totally forgiven and forgotten, rather than that the antagonists are so powerful that fighting them would be futile, as they would only win, or (in the best case) everyone would die in the fight, with both of those options resulting in massive destruction and collateral damage. So the protagonists trying to come up with a third alternative to that doesn't strike me as bad moral, even if the nuances of guilt and forgiveness are beyond the scope a kids' sci-fi cartoon.

Sorry to be Claymation Guy again but...despite being an Aardman fan I'd never seen Rex The Runt until bow. It is the absolute best! Fine-spirited bonkers meta British surrealism, with a sense of humour well ahead of its time and some of the best callbacks I've seen. If you've ever smiled at Wallace & Gromit, give it a go

I don't love Aardman but always had a real soft spot for Rex the Runt.

So far I've only managed to do Neon Genesis Evangelion out of my 'to-watch' list but it will definitely make my ballot, it's ace.

I think I might have heard the shit things about John K before but forgot them completely until they were raised upthread. I'm torn about what to do but Ren & Stimpy was so ridiculously formative for me that I can't leave it off.

Same. I can’t justify leaving R&S off, but I’ll probably never be able to enjoy his cartoons in the same way. So dropped it down accordingly.

Ditto about Ren and Stimpy. I hadn’t heard anything about the guy until this thread (also, didn’t he get fired in 1992 or something?) and that will make a difference to how I reflect on it, but as an early introduction to surrealist humour (surrealism in general?) it is unparalleled for me.

*surreal humour, maybe. If there’s a difference?

Anyway, I can’t wait to see that anime about the princely girl and the rose queen.

Really digging Gravity Falls now, Mabel is my hero, and the theme song is definitely making my ballot.

when ppl talk about voting for R&S itt seems reasonable to assume they are voting solely based on the first season and a half, which really are amazing cartoons.

oh shit, the deadline is coming up. will hastily assemble a list

can theme songs only come from nominated series?

wanna vote for that catdog theme

ren and stimpy is a tough call because the cartoons (the early, good ones) do hold up beautifully, and a lot of non-awful ppl were involved in their making. but the fact that their creator used them to groom his victims makes it hard for me to vote for it.

i watched some of john k's later cartoons before he was outed as a predator, and they are probably some of the worst cartoons i've ever seen -- not funny, weird timing, incredibly inappropriate adult humor. i saw about 30 seconds of his R&S revival and that was more than enough for me.

as with series themselves, theme songs can be from unnominated works but you risk your vote being discounted if I can't figure out what you mean.

I believe I have 5 ballots so far! Surely there's at least 20 of you floating around waiting to vote.

i'm doing due diligence and finally watching eva this week before i vote

i've been watching stuff too as if my potential ballot needed to be any longer. eventually i'm going to have to prune 40 show down to 25. (it was hard enough getting the list down to 40)

btw if I end up being the only Homestar Runner voter you're all fired

do u like happy tree friends too? i nom'd it but it won't make my list unfortunately i'd love to vote for them all if i could

nah I never got into that

xp i wouldn't worry about that

I wish I had time to watch a bunch of stuff before I made my own ballot but it's probably not happening.

I voted. For this poll, I checked out 10 series I hadn't seen before, and 5 of them ended up in my ballot. I'm glad that Steven Universe and Bee and Puppycat are now in my life.

August 25th is a soft deadline, need confirmation on the actual deadline

Was David The Gnome actually good? How about the original TMNT? X-Men? Etc... I will vote some of these because of nostalgia but I have at least 10 shows from the past decade that I know are good so I don’t really care. I probably will even put Garfield And Friends on my list (I haven’t started).

Oh hey, David The Gnome wasn’t even on the nom list. I’m voting for it anyways.

The hard deadline will come with an unknown amount of warning sometime between Sunday evening and the end of the end of time.

It’s entirely #valid to vote for Garfield and Friends just to honor the inimitable Lorenzo Music

garfield and friends was good

Secret fact: I know G&F was good and own a few seasons on DVD

it features garfield's famous catchphrase, "they should be dragged out into the street and shot"

Damn that's cold, Garfield

i nominated homestarrunner and will def be voting for it! tho wow this deadline is sneaking up and I am moving this weekend so uh

David the Gnome should be on the nom list because I nommed it! Just watch the last episode if you're unsure whether it's up to snuff.

I have never seen any of Garfield & Friends but I don't have any trouble imagining it's Evanier's third-best fictional work

xp and it's all on youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKttx8SgnHA&list=PLrEuz9dJQmAkIYkhcB4iZpoOlUDnMNDif&index=26

My recollection of Garfield & Friends is that it was pretty much a proto-Gen X cartoon. About as sardonic and cynical and meta and edgy as a Saturday morning cartoon could've been at that time, and obviously a big promoter of slack life.

I was going to extend a vain hope that the G&F DVDs might get a reissue after Nickelodeon's recent acquisition of PAWS but I see that someone is rolling out cheap new sets right now.

Ok found it: World of David the Gnome, The

I picked a good episode to watch: Shadowless Stone EP 19

a problem with G&F is that the orson's farm sections were entirely forgettable, and they were half the show.

Yeah, they pushed U.S. Acres a little too hard.

Hell, the tenure of those animated segments far outlasted the comic strip they were based on.

The farm bit was good in its own way but suffered from being the opener to a highly anticipated 3rd act starring Garfield.

Any consideration for setting the ballot deadline after Labor Day?

I can probably give it an official bump back sure

I start a new job on September 9 (!) so no matter what happens I will be sending compiled results to Leee and Thermo to run a rollout before then.

Ah, cool that it's being bumped back, I was just coming on to say that I wouldn't be able to submit by tonight.

Old Lunch- Have you seen the GI Joe Animated Movie? I'm not really into GI Joe but that's honestly one of my favorite films, very funny and gross film. People might say I just like it because I was a kid when I saw it, but I still love this and mostly don't care about Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Power Rangers etc.

I think the Ghostbusters cartoon was often better than the films.

Might give Steven Universe and Inhumanoids a go someday but anything that looks like it taken less than a few months to make is a very hard sell for me now.

i could have agonized over this for another few weeks i'm sure but i doubt i'll ever be happy w/ my ballot so i just submitted it as is

thx Mordy :)

I will catch up with submitted ballots over the long weekend and issue a final deadline

Voted!

Here is the second best theme tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVXlCRl_sxU

RAG, I have seen GI Joe: the Movie and I loved it as a kid but haven't seen it since. But since I'm apparently only watching GI Joe (which remains surprisingly great, Transformers...much less so, unfortunately) in preparation for this poll I'm sure I'll get to it soon.

Imho the GI Joe movie does not stand up well at all.
Original animated Transformers movie, otoh, is still fantastic.

The last time I watched the GI Joe movie was in college, and it was as bonkers and awesome to me then as it was when I saw it as a kid. (Kid-meee also found it scary at times too.)

I've reached the last handful of episodes of Gravity Falls and, well, WOAH.

i'd never heard of roobarb but that is a pretty killer theme tune!

If you like synthesizers a lot, sure.

I just found this and I will vote.

The Jem theme song gets stuck in my head 2-3 times a year and idk I think it's pretty sick.

It's not nominated but I love "Tales From The Tour Bus"

For me, the Gi Joe film is the best squicky horror film and most hilariously quotable film ever. "Even their airforce is ugly!"

Most of this is from the series but very funny too. "C'mon Slaughter, kick his face in!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUdmetykD6o

submitted!

oh i submitted last week, ended up filling my ballot out with recent anime due to the threatened proration rule so it's impossible to say if it's good or not

How much time do I have? My hastily compiled ballot is ready, but could use some tweaking.

Just got back from my holiday, assumed I'd missed voting in this, but there's still time? I could throw together a ballot tonight if you'll allow it Silby!

There’s still time, I might allow the remainder of the week. I’m still hoping a few Brits who have been participating in the threads will get ballots in. Also, people who are not men are heartily encouraged to submit ballots, especially if you are just lurking. If you’re reading this and have an ilx account you are an eligible voter!

Very cool, will get to work.

Ballot update! So far I have 16 ballots, voting for at least 166 different shows.

Waiting on ballots from quite a few who have been active in the threads! Trayce, imago, TT, mh, Brad, DJP: be part of history

deadline

I shall be tabulating final results and communicating them to rollout associates Leee and Thermo at an unspecified time over this upcoming weekend. Ballots received after Friday 9/6 Anywhere on Earth (https://time.is/Anywhere_on_Earth) may not make it in, so consider that your deadline.

just submitted a very 90s baby ballot

Mine was 2010/80s baby split

is "TT" me? because i sent mine in a while back.

oh you send me an email! nm!

tt not TT

Yes lol sorry

worry not, we'll be there!

SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron
I'm not sure how my all time favorite animated show missed the nomination list but I'll be voting it #1 in show and theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI8ZDzMCjMI

Despite not being important enough to get a shout out in the "ballots, please" list, I'll try to get something in by tomorrow.

emil.y you are absolutely important enough I just ran out of steam typing people's names I feel badly for excluding you

Aw, sorry for making you feel bad, I'm just already in a wallowing-in-self-pity mood today. Need to console myself with some '80s kids toons or something.

Half thought about doing this but I'm not sure if just typing out The Raccoons 30 times would be helpful

Crap sorry I forgot. I have a list done just not sorted, will try and finish it today.

Oh shit, I don't think I ever raised this but now I'm actually sorting my ballot: Liquid Television was an anthology show, rather than one consistent animated series - does it actually count? It was ridiculously formative for me, but I feel like it goes against the rules of the poll to vote for it...

Anthology shows are probably more out of scope than in but it's on the list so plz vote for it if you like

It contained at least one of the other entries (Aeon Flux) iirc

Only partially, right? I.e. the series was full-length (20-something minutes).

Yeah, series was its own thing spun off from the Liquid Television shorts.

I decided to cut it out, I don't think it does fit the brief even though it was ace. Have sent my ballot through now, it was massively rushed but I've not really had the right head on to do this properly so I just went with my gut/ruthlessly cut.

trust your gut, it's all in fun, we just want to have a fun list to look at in the end! Thanks emily!

compiling a ballot. as it stands, my top 3 is the two most wholesome things on the nomination list sandwiching the least

will be turning in a ballot by tomorrow at worst

Sorry, I completely forgot about this, but I will send a ballot today.

Tuomas! 🙌

Done by tonight. tt as well

are you sending confirmation emails?

Yes, but upon processing, not receipt.

sent! (twice, bc i screwed the first ballot up by forgetting to vote for something)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0wkHixS6iA
good theme

lol the subject line of the ballot I sent was accidentally "Animated ballot FlopsyFuck"

Sent my ballot too.

Voted!

x2!

ilx's favorite bloc

Sent!

sent mine!

don't wait for me, won't be able to send one..

Likewise, alas, but looking forward to the results.

There’s still time, I might allow the remainder of the week. I’m still hoping a few Brits who have been participating in the threads will get ballots in. Also, people who are not men are heartily encouraged to submit ballots, especially if you are just lurking. If you’re reading this and have an ilx account you are an eligible voter!

― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Monday, September 2, 2019 6:23 PM (six days ago)

The deadline was Friday but I agree that more female input would of been good. I cut Sailor Moon from my theme song list. I didn’t realize that a top 25 would have so much competition.

The official deadline has passed but it’s not too late until I’m done and I’m not done yet :)

Sent. Sorry it was so late, I dont look at ILX as much as I used to and I plum forgot.

With Trayce's ballot in under the wire, I have sent the top 77 animated series of ilxor dot com to my lovely and talented Rollout Assistants. Once they're ready to go, I'll put up a results thread! In the meantime, go ahead and kibitz!

what's the # of points for #77? i'm curious how many ballots you need in one of these things to get to 77 without single-voter entries

The ILX Animated Series Poll Results Thread is part of this complete breakfast