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Thundercats returns...kinda


Jman

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9 minutes ago, elfie said:

The only reason those exist is because Disney has the money to sustain those without canceling them midway, and even then, the are wholly disposable. Disney lets those cartoons run for around a season and then ends them, because they're made only to promote the movies anyway.

Reminds me of Agents of Shield. No one watches but they kept it around forever anyway just to promote their cinematic universe.

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Well shit. Little Kuriboh has responded to all the fuss and is now declaring that he won't talk about cartoons online anymore because they proved to him that his views aren't worth anything.

I hope Manbun is proud of himself. This is causing lasting emotional trauma.

Edited by elfie
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LK is actually in the biz now as a legit VA.  (IIRC his most recent work was the Netflix Godzilla movies).  Yeah, I can see why he’d want to not stick his foot in his mouth.

If you ask me, this is just showing the obsolescence of cable TV showing these programs when Netflix and Hulu are investing only God knows how much money in the Japanese animation industry.

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51 minutes ago, Jman said:

LK is actually in the biz now as a legit VA.  (IIRC his most recent work was the Netflix Godzilla movies).  Yeah, I can see why he’d want to not stick his foot in his mouth.

If you ask me, this is just showing the obsolescence of cable TV showing these programs when Netflix and Hulu are investing only God knows how much money in the Japanese animation industry.

I am aware of LK's cartoon footprint.

I just want  CN to GIVE up on cable and just put everything on streaming. They seem to want to do it now anyway.

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2 hours ago, elfie said:

Well shit. Little Kuriboh has responded to all the fuss and is now declaring that he won't talk about cartoons online anymore because they proved to him that his views aren't worth anything.

Personally, I prefer KaiserNeko's response to the whole affair.

 

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39 minutes ago, elfie said:

I am aware of LK's cartoon footprint.

I just want  CN to GIVE up on cable and just put everything on streaming. They seem to want to do it now anyway.

I’m just saying that going off at the mouth towards an industry director when the same CaliArts circlejerk could easily blacklist him is unwise.

You probably don’t remember this, but the classic case of this was Matt Wilson, the director of a web cartoon called Bonus Stage, whose entire shtick was bashing shows left and right...while using his real name.  That resulted in him being pretty much blackballed when he tried entering the industry.

Edited by Jman
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26 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

Personally, I prefer KaiserNeko's response to the whole affair.

 

Hey, I laid into the show pretty hard when it was Toonami, remember?

Of course that wasn’t helped by the fact that the show was apparently saving all its good ideas for Season 2.  Note to all potential writers - DON’T SAVE ALL YOUR GOOD IDEAS FOR SEASON 2 OR THE SEQUEL.  At least hint at them heavily.

Classic US cartoon example - GI Joe Extreme was a pretty poorly received attempt to make a Rob Liefeld style Joe series.  Except a writer on the show admitted Season 3 was going to do something that the first two seasons didn’t hint at except vaguely, that the new “EXTREME!” bad guys were actually the unknowing pawns of Cobra Commander, as Cobra had begun infiltrating numerous governments at the highest levels.  

Cobra is not mentioned once during the run, let alone Cobra Commander.  So viewers didn’t care.

At least give viewers the hook.

Edited by Jman
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7 minutes ago, elfie said:

Holy christ it seems EVERY professional industry artist with a Twitter account is offering their opinion on this!

How many of them are just kissing ass to try and land a job?

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Yeah I just saw a youtuber I regularly watch rant about this. It's funny, I knew they were making another one, but just figured it was for Toonami. Clearly that's not the case. xD Personally I have no real dog in this fight. Thundercats and He-Man and Transformers and whatnot were just barely before my time. I never watched them and was never gonna watch this. It's pretty obvious they just wanted another Teen Titans Go which, even though I actually was a fan of the original Teen Titans, I also just brushed off easily enough, never watching. I do think it's a bit sad that all the cartoons tend to look so similar lately, but considering I'm an anime enthusiast I can't really harp on this too much. I also couldn't help but remember the prequels with some comments I've read of them "raping" the Thundercats and whatnot. I just wonder if anyone actually working on this series ever bashed the prequels, and if so can see the hypocrisy or maybe irony in it.

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17 hours ago, Sketch said:

I

This is such a slap in the face to the people who supported the 2011 series. 1.4 up to 2 million people were watching that show in premieres on CN. That's hardly nobody. It just didn't sell toys (Bandai put out some real shit) and so help me God if this show DOES sell toys.

Serious 'question' - what toys? I never saw any ads for toys and never saw any toys at either WalMart or Toys R Us. And I looked too because I'm a damn nerd. It's not like I live in a tiny town either so toys should have made it to my area at some point. I've only seen toys by going to Amazon and physically searching them out. If toy sales are going to be used as a measure of whether or not to continue a series, then you need to actually put out the toys. :|

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11 hours ago, elfie said:

Holy christ it seems EVERY professional industry artist with a Twitter account is offering their opinion on this!

What do they think of Flint, MI still not having clean water? ^_^

Hey... this belongs in the thread somewhere.

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Yeah, because I made the mistake of posting while angry. At least the mods deleted it, but then again, I basically begged them to.

And being political on social media isn't really a bad thing to do at this point, if only because the current political climate basically requires it. Just look at DeMarco's feed; you might also see his likes if you follow him, which only makes it stronger.

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20 hours ago, Daos said:

Yahoo best answer

 Best Answer:  It was cancelled for many reasons actually. 

Lack of viewers/ratings. The series went on a steady downhill slide in ratings after the pilot. 
Lack of merchandising sales. The toys really didn't sell well at all. Design and shipping problems added insult to injury. The DVD sales did worse than toy sales. Some Wal-Marts were putting the DVD's into their $5.00 bins within three months of release. 

Wrong crew for the job. Probably the biggest reason for the cancellation is the crew itself. The storylines were unoriginal rip-offs of other more popular media such as Star Wars, NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, Moby Dick, Oliver Twist, HALO, Final Fantasy, Indiana Jones, and so on. The overall story never felt like it was Thundercats. As a matter of fact, one of the stated goals of the crew was to remove just about everything that made the 1980's Thundercats so popular and replace it with a "darker story." 
What they didn't understand was the target demographic of 6-12 year-olds weren't looking for a dark story. 
Of course we can't forget former WB art director Dan Norton (who worked on TC's) meltdown at fans on facebook and deviantart. He pretty much had a mental breakdown that went semi-viral and really hurt the show. 

Fans just didn't respond to the characters. For example, turning Tygra into a xenophobic prick who serves as a bigger antagonist to Lion-O than Mumm-Ra and the mutants combined upset more fans than it won over. Matt Mercer being an egotistical jerk didn't help either. 
Pumyra being a traitor was another big middle finger to the fans - both old and new. 
Cheetara was another thing that hurt the show. The crew took her from strong female lead with an interest in Lion-O to a cheerleading bimbo who forsakes her duty and friends for Tygra - who tried twice to kill Lion-O - all over a 30 second flashback about a flower. 


All in all, the Thundercats reboot serves as an example of what NOT to do in a cartoon.

This is why you don't go to Yahoo Answers.

The 2011 version runs circles around the original.  This person is on crack.  They're really reaching with lots of this to the point I have no idea where they are getting it from.  Still, even with all its faults, the original ThunderCats is light years better than Roar.

Edited by ben0119
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https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997541096946270209

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997582695038255104

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997770794439618561

Lol ok then.

"Beautifully animated" by not you, out-of-house.  But with designs that look like shit.  But yeah, we shouldn't take the clip with Lion-O or the promo art you released to inform people about the concept of the show as what it's like.  Just the intro.  Alright lol.  By the way, there were plenty of old cartoons with awesome intros whose actual content was crap.  And this intro doesn't even look appealing.

Jesus Christ.  That really inspires confidence, and explains a lot.

Edit - By the way, how do you embed Twitter posts?

Edited by ben0119
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By avoiding any videos or promos of this, I might just be able to stomach giving the show a chance. I sorta vaguely tried to watch OK Go. Too generic-kids-show for me, but at least it didn't seem inherently awful. Craig reminds me too much of Clarence artistically to give it any attention. So, while the art here looks somewhere on the spectrum between Steven Universe and OK Go, I'll hold onto the belief that it might not be totally atrocious. But it's certainly nothing close to what Thundercats fans would want out of a reboot. Creators getting defensive about it certainly doesn't help, either. But by the end of this, somebody's going to be eating their words.

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6 hours ago, ben0119 said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997541096946270209

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997582695038255104

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jpolgar1/status/997770794439618561

Lol ok then.

"Beautifully animated" by not you, out-of-house.  But with designs that look like shit.  But yeah, we shouldn't take the clip with Lion-O or the promo art you released to inform people about the concept of the show as what it's like.  Just the intro.  Alright lol.  By the way, there were plenty of old cartoons with awesome intros whose actual content was crap.  And this intro doesn't even look appealing.

Jesus Christ.  That really inspires confidence, and explains a lot.

Edit - By the way, how do you embed Twitter posts?

For one thing, I do not link to the mobile versions of the pages.

Also, Polgar is one of the best action animators I know of today! Here's some of his OWN work, so you can look at them and cry that we can't get something this good looking. 

 

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6 hours ago, ben0119 said:

This is why you don't go to Yahoo Answers.

The 2011 version runs circles around the original.  This person is on crack.  They're really reaching with lots of this to the point I have no idea where they are getting it from.  Still, even with all its faults, the original ThunderCats is light years better than Roar.

A lot of the criticisms are on point. Fans at the time seemed very lukewarm on it. They were expecting something more in keeping with the original story, where 6 survivors of the planet Thundera crash on Third Earth and encounter all the different lifeforms there. Ironically Roar is actually going to use that story.

They didn't really like a lot of the characters either if I remember right. In terms of story it was better than the original, but the original was just a monster of the week show with no real story most of the time.

 

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Between all the yelling, the writing in Reboot the Guardian Code, the writing in half these shows from CaliArts grads, I’m convinced that Western animators are among the most self loathing people on the planet.

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On 5/20/2018 at 9:05 PM, CountFrylock said:

what's next? video games just becoming nothing more than low budget flash games because why play a video game when you can watch the video game play itself on the big screen?

Not flash games per say but mobile games have diminished people’s interest in owning consoles a fair bit. That’s a closer comparison. On the other hand, movies have lost steam to console games which are like interactive movies.

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6 hours ago, elfie said:

 

See.... what likely 20 somethings like him miss about 80's cartoons is that they were intended for 5 to 12 year olds. They didn't have complex plots, things got resolved at the end of every episode, no one ever died, and no one ever had sex or mentioned it. No one even really had relationships. It seems obvious that Lion-O would get with Cheetarah... but in roughly 200 episodes they never touched it.

When they finally did try killing Optimus prime in the Transformers movie, kids freaked out and absolutely hated it. The reaction was so negative that they altered Duke's death in the Gi-Joe movie by dubbing lines in they said he was going to be ok.

Thundercats. He-Man, Gi- Joe, and Transformers were the big ones and all existed solely to sell toys. You can't say that any of them would really "hold up" against more modern cartoons that are intended for all audiences. Especially He-Man.

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On 5/21/2018 at 4:43 PM, katt_goddess said:

Serious 'question' - what toys? I never saw any ads for toys and never saw any toys at either WalMart or Toys R Us. And I looked too because I'm a damn nerd. It's not like I live in a tiny town either so toys should have made it to my area at some point. I've only seen toys by going to Amazon and physically searching them out. If toy sales are going to be used as a measure of whether or not to continue a series, then you need to actually put out the toys. :|

I worked in a Walmart toy section from 2011-13 and I remember us having boxes of leftover Thundercat toys. I think most of them were some kind of Panthro's car playset thing, but my memory's pretty fuzzy on the exact items. I'd put dozens of them on the clearance shelves and I think we sold a grand total of two of them. I'm pretty sure by the time I left that job there was still an entire pallet of unwanted Thundercat toys shoved in a corner of the back room.

Also this entire thread is cringy as fuck, y'all.

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4 hours ago, EmpressAngel said:

I worked in a Walmart toy section from 2011-13 and I remember us having boxes of leftover Thundercat toys. I think most of them were some kind of Panthro's car playset thing, but my memory's pretty fuzzy on the exact items. I'd put dozens of them on the clearance shelves and I think we sold a grand total of two of them. I'm pretty sure by the time I left that job there was still an entire pallet of unwanted Thundercat toys shoved in a corner of the back room.

Also this entire thread is cringy as fuck, y'all.

Not enough muscle men DNA in this thread for ya?

I can see kids not being into the new Thundercats. There wasn't much that was kiddie about it, it was more like an anime.

 

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1 hour ago, Daos said:

Not enough muscle men DNA in this thread for ya?

I can see kids not being into the new Thundercats. There wasn't much that was kiddie about it, it was more like an anime.

 

The art director flat out said he was aiming for 14+.

Considering the ratings, he was successful.

The thing is, shows can do that and still deliver toys to the kids.  You know where I saw the first ad for the 2012 TMNT?  A freaking Bellator MMA card.  They literally took two minutes between fights to show a clip from the first episode.  That was clearly going for an older audience but kids were on board too.

Edited by Jman
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Didn't see 2012 turtles, what age would you say it was for?

Keep in mind TMNT is a much more well known franchise than Thundercats. The original cartoon ran for a staggering 10 seasons. It has had at least 5 live action movies and what... 4 animated shows and a bunch of animated movies? I'm just gonna guess... 20 video games?

Thundercats had 2 or 3 video games total. All awful.

If they wanted kids to buy Thundercat toys they would have had to advertise the hell out of them, they're not gonna sell themselves like TMNT toys.

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38 minutes ago, Daos said:

Didn't see 2012 turtles, what age would you say it was for?

Keep in mind TMNT is a much more well known franchise than Thundercats. The original cartoon ran for a staggering 10 seasons. It has had at least 5 live action movies and what... 4 animated shows and a bunch of animated movies? I'm just gonna guess... 20 video games?

Thundercats had 2 or 3 video games total. All awful.

If they wanted kids to buy Thundercat toys they would have had to advertise the hell out of them, they're not gonna sell themselves like TMNT toys.

Probably the 8+ age group.  It was trying (and succeeded IMO) to strike a balance between the overly comedic original show and the more comics accurate but kinda up its own ass at times 2003 series.  The idea of advertising on Bellator was “Hey, remember this thing you liked as a kid?  It’s back with better writing!  And if you have kids, bring them too!  They’ll love it!”

Roar is “Hey, remember this thing you liked as a kid!  It was for babies and we’re making it for babies if you complain you’re a man baby!”  

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1 hour ago, OwlChemist81 said:

It's CARTOONS, you idiots--NOT worth f-ing DEATH THREATS!

...and apparently now I'm a "Centurion..."

Our ASMB / UEMB community has generally, with a couple of exceptions, far moved past the whole death threat / threat of physical harm shit that used to plague most arguments at ASMB. Apparently the Internet as a whole still has a long ways to go.

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