Cartoon Corner- Zombieland Saga

This show went and did a thing, and it works hard to undue some of my goodwill toward it.
Don’t set up a redemption arc for your abusive asshole character unless you’re willing to really put in the work folks.

Cartoon Corner- Gravity Falls (Season 2)

Dipper Pines and the Quest for Manliness (Part 2).

Cartoon Corner- Gravity Falls (Season 1)

The thing about perpetually coming late to the party, especially for a completed series like Gravity Falls, is you tend to get people’s impressions based on how things end, not how they’re received as they air.  So in that respect the oddest thing about Season 1 is how much of a slow burn it is.  ‘course, considering it spent a year and a half airing 20 episodes, and included a lot of overt elements to intrigue fans between episodes, it’s a fair argument to say that watching all of them over the span of a few days isn’t the intended means.

Cartoon Corner- Steven Universe (Season 1)

Steven Universe is the show humanity needed, and I hope it wasn’t too late.

Cartoon Corner- Batman Beyond (Season 1)

Okay, so… what if Spider-Man… but BATMAN?

Cartoon Corner- One Punch Man (Season 1)

One Punch Man is a strange show; not quite parody, not quite a regular comedy, definitely not straight shonen.  And as usually happens in those cases, I’ll be forming thoughts on this one in the writing, because organization is for chumps.

Cartoon Corner- My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (Season 6)

I don’t have much to say on the lowpoints this season, so lets knock this one out right away and move on to what’s working.

Hellsing

A bit of production history for this one.  Hellsing is adapted from a manga of the same name… but specifically the first two volumes (with a smattering of material and notes from later I suspect).  Said manga ended up being 10 volumes.  So essentially in 2001 they produced about 6 episodes based on the existing material followed by an addition 7 including whatever nuggets Hirano deigned to give them with a more or less original story.

Cartoon Corner- Star Wars: Rebels (Season 2)

Originally posted at the DL September 2016

Well that escalated.

Cartoon Corner- Bob's Burgers (Season 1)

Originally posted at the DL August 2016

So I'm used to H. Jon Benjamin as Archer.  It's pretty amazing how he can use almost the same voice yet be so distinctly two characters.  And that's almost all down to how sharp this show is.  They don't really do anything in terms of visual gags or the like (anuses notwithstanding) but they still managed to just crack me up a few times each episode.  It's kinda stands out to me actually, they make this work entirely on the strength of the scripts and the actors.  I'm not sure anything else I've been doing lately has the confidence to do that.

Cartoon Corner- The Pirates of Dark Water

Originally posted at the DL August 2016

You can definitely tell this is a Hanna-Barbara production.  The use of color, their signature animation saving techniques, and the basic construction of the main party fit their particular quirks.

Cartoon Corner- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 5)

Originally posted July 2016

Last season unexpectedly went full DBZ.  This season instead has cultists and full throttle time travel fuckery.  Handled well though; the emphasis is on how terrible of an idea it is.  Similarly while it's noteworthy for being unusual in the context of the show, it's not really a standout episode in other respects.

Cartoon Corner- Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation

Originally posted at the DL May 2016

I knew I'd seen this at the point after they cut it up for syndication, but only really remembered one of the plot threads.  This was only partially true: a couple of the smaller stories I remembered just fine, but thought they were independent episodes.

Cartoon Corner- Teen Titans (Season 2)

Originally posted at the DL March 2016

Let's go ahead and knock this one out.

Cartoon Corner- The Slayers Next

Originally posted at the DL February 2016

OP2 (Give a Reason)- The single best remembered song in Slayers, and with good reason.  The intensity of it builds in a way that gets you to follow one rhythm just before it ramps again, and it's almost impossible not to move along with it.  There's also this very real sense of incredibly sincere emotion to it that I just don't.... quite know how to explain.  We're moving to Megumi's rhythm, but she's really baring her soul here, y'know?

Cartoon Corner- Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Originally posted at the DL February 2016

So this finally happened.

Cartoon Corner- Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 2)

Originally posted at the DL January 2016

A lot of this season feels like background noise to me.  There's a seeming reluctance to put the main characters in the same place too much, so they're having to juggle a lot of plotlines all at once to keep everyone in the loop as it were, and I think the show overall suffers for it.

Cartoon Corner- Star Trek: The Animated Series

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

If I were being lazy I could probably just post this:

Cartoon Corner- Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 1)

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

Let's knock this one out right away.

Cartoon Corner- Star Driver

So this show was pitched to me as basically fusing Utena with Gurren Lagann.  Which is certainly true, it wears both of those influences on its sleeves.  Of course, those are both all-time classics that redefined their genres and one of them is probably my favorite show full stop, so I mean… I don’t want to pretend Star Driver lives up to those.