- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
Certainly very unique for its time when such graphic details in animal were hard to come by.
Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)
- Thread starter Morbid Boredom
- Start date
-
Want to keep track of this thread?
Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
Create account
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
Along with The Plague Dogs, it's one of those films that could only have been made at its time - the 70s/early 80s. For whatever reason, animated films in that era - even the kids' stuff - was much more mature and sophisticated in its themes than what you generally had before. (Excepting Disney's, of course. That wasn't a really good period for Disney animation.)
And then, come the mid-80s, that period ended and films based on half-hour toy commercials - Care Bears, Pound Puppies, Transformers, etc. all got movies - were the order of the day. And the American Rabbit, of course. And then The Little Mermaid came out and we've never been able to fully recover...
And then, come the mid-80s, that period ended and films based on half-hour toy commercials - Care Bears, Pound Puppies, Transformers, etc. all got movies - were the order of the day. And the American Rabbit, of course. And then The Little Mermaid came out and we've never been able to fully recover...
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
You could put Don Bluth's Secret of NIMH there I suppose. Aside from the Disney-like animation, it otherwise had a pretty mature premise. It was an interesting time for experimenting.
Certainly a short dry spell.
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
As well as some films already mentioned such as The Last Unicorn, Shinbone Alley... I might be missing a few there.
I don't think the dry spell's really ended. After all, the 90s was the era of Disney Renaissance films and their many awful ripoffs; the 00s the era of DreamWorks films and their many awful ripoffs... what era are we in now, I wonder? The era of Disney films that go by one-syllable names and their ripoffs that I have yet to see?
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
Now I'd love to see someone do a Zootopia clone! There's at least one that I know of that's being produced in China (technically animated in the US) called "Rock Dog".
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2013
It's funny how this is supposed to be a Chinese film, yet the voices and animation are clearly American. Animation itself isn't all that bad too, considering the budget.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
Ironically the original graphic novel is nothing like this too.
http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2015/05/18/tibetan-rock-dog-coming-fall
http://www.danwei.org/books/zheng_juns_tibetan_rock_dog.php
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/tibetan-rock-dog
Seems like the US guys went for the "little guy leaves the farm for the big city" trope. The film also went through quite a long time in development it seems (noticing one designer's blog showing images from an early draft). It was slated to premiere in China last October but never did for some reason, but sometime this year wherever. Depending on Zootopia already nearing it's release dates next month in most country this would definitely be placed in that clone category than try to predate it as it was.
Similarly, there was another film from a few years back that went through the same sort of process of some Chinese group getting a Western outfit involved on an animated feature that was screen there and in some other parts of the world (excluding the US) called "Little Big Panda". The film seems to be something of a Fern Gully, tree-hugging sort of quest for the main protagonist. This film was animated in Spain using a lot of talent throughout Europe.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2016
When I was a child, I loved the Russian piratecopy of Tom & Jerry, "Nu Pogodi" (Ну Погоди, roughly translating into "Oh just you wait"), before the chaos of the perestroika killed it.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
I remember! They tried to make a few after that but they ended up shilling for some company that sold Nokia cell phones and pagers. And of course there was that episode a decade ago where Wolf imagined himself as spider man!
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2016
Then I remember watching Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck, Pepper Ann, Anna Anaconda, Rocko's Modern Life, Ren & Stimpy, Animaniacs and a few others on daytime German TV. Ahhh, they days....
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
I take it you're from the East (if I'm wrong, I apologize).
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2016
Yes, I am and why do you apologize?
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
In case I was wrong. I was only going by the note you've watched Nu, Pogodi as a kid and then saw the American stuff later on. I'm not sure how East German TV was like in the 80's, but I'm certain it went through quite a transformation once the country was unified (though I'm sure it didn't stop some form picking up West German signals in the meanwhile). I've learned quite a lot about history of this period in high school so it's a fascinating subject for me see how the end of the Cold War played out.
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2016
I know very little about East German TV. I know, that they had a version of the "Sandmännchen" and imported Russian cartoons such as "Nu Pogodi", but not much more
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
I know their version of the "Sandman" is still used to this day throughout the country (because I guess nostalgia really is that strong).I know very little about East German TV. I know, that they had a version of the "Sandmännchen" and imported Russian cartoons such as "Nu Pogodi", but not much more
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
If you want to know what East German, or really, what all Communist TV was like - animation-wise, you would never find any Western imperialist animation on their TVs, never at all, though with glasnost in the 80s, this began to change and by the end of the decade, you could find DuckTales and Tom and Jerry on TV in many Commie nations.
The ban on Western animation turned out to be something of a good thing, as the Russians (as well as the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, I could go on) developed their own animation industries, with their own idiosyncratic quirks that made some very interesting films and TV shows.
The ban on Western animation turned out to be something of a good thing, as the Russians (as well as the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, I could go on) developed their own animation industries, with their own idiosyncratic quirks that made some very interesting films and TV shows.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
Interesting to see.
That is true, I used to see some of that on TV back in the 80's when Nickelodeon once had on a show that mostly served as a depot for a lot of foreign animated junk mixed with live action puppet/human segments (a la Sesame Street). I never realized how often the stuff I had saw came out of the Soviet Bloc back then, much of it I felt was better than the Saturday morning junk I was also seeing.
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
I just realized this hadn't been posted yet - so why not?
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
I've been trying to catch up on American Dad lately. I saw the new season premiere the other day and it made me laugh a lot. It's one of those shows that started out kinda not that good at the beginning and got better with every season for the most part. Out of all the shows that Seth MacFarlane exec produces, I still enjoy this show the most right now. Bob's Burgers is starting to interest me again, so I'll be trying to catch up on that too.
