for
12/16/2000
Writer's Note: This is reprinted from the Internet Movie Database's "General Television" forum, in response to an interesting thread. I'll have to come up with something better for Christmas next week. At least this update is on time.
The best animated television programs I've seen are as follows, in no particular order.
1. The Simpsons
Love it or hate it, this long-lived show's formulaic blend of farce, satire and spoof is the envy of television comedy. Perhaps I'm being too academic about it. It's just funny. All the time. Think about that.
2. Neo-Genesis: Evangelion
This import takes the old-to-cliché Japanese Giant Robotic Suit ("mecha") vs. Giant Aliens concept and builds an unexpectedly surreal, poetic, horrifying and, above all, psychologically intense human drama from it. Originality is in the details.
3. Serial Experiments: Lain
Another Japanese animé, this one doing much the same as above with a version of our modern cel-phone-and-modem world. Surreal and unresolvable, visually brilliant, rhythmic and unforgettable.
As animation for all ages plays a much larger role in Japan's film industry (yes, there are even animated pornos in Japan), it's probably best to leave most of it off this list. Even weighted, these two shows come out in the all-time top 5, though.
4. Batman the Animated Series
FOX aimed subtly higher than the kid's audience with this version of Batman, and it shows. The goofiness was gone, the darkness was tinted, and somewhere in the middle ground rose a place for good scripts, competant voice acting, excellent animation and a lifelike, engaging show.
5. grab bag -- there's good stuff out there
Here I have come to number five, and I can't choose one. MTV's "Daria" manages to be a biting satire that has whole, lifelike characters--an astonishing balancing act. "The Tick" translated beautifully to animation. Disney's "Gargoyles" was an engaging and original show but, in all fairness, suffered at the blatantly visible hand of execs asking for it to be made more kid-friendly...
Much the same for FOX's "X-Men," which actually had a theme for the first season--painfull dialogue, though. The grandfather of the Disney Afternoon shows, "Ducktales," a sort of James Clavell's Tai Pan for kids, remains one of my favorite shows of all time, but probably isn't mature enough to be on this list. More protests from my inner-kid demand that "Eek the Cat" be put in, for its bizarre plots that always managed to become a spoof of something that we shouldn't have seen by that age. Heck, throw "The Critic" in there, too; it was funny once it got off NBC.
Why television? Why animation? One reason: it's inexpensive. That allows comedy shows to be produced when they don't have as large a guaranteed audience (think of "South Park"). It allows fantasy (science fiction, technothriller, spells & sorcery, or simple surrealism) to be produced when the locations for a live-action show would quickly rupture its budget.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Touch the Toast