02.06
*General*
There is a wide scope of shows that did not make the list for very specific reasons, be they because they all follow the same formula, or because of the time period this list was made in. A few of these were considered for inclusion on the list but for one reason or another, simply didn’t make it in. Keep in mind that just because they didn’t make the final list and are instead here is not because they are objectively inferior (for the most part), but because they did not compare to the rest of the list in our opinion.
Shows we haven’t seen
Examples: Mysterious Cities Of Gold, Legend of the Galactic Heroes
We can’t rank what we haven’t seen and we can’t have seen it all. We’re only human. Yeah, some of you more cultured animation fans will wonder why neither of these shows are on the list. We can’t blame you. However, the truth is that none of us have seen Mysterious Cities of Gold, and only Insomniac’s watched all of Legend of the Galactic Heroes and in all honesty, we do eventually plan to correct this gross injustice. But alas, don’t take us as close-minded for not scouring through more obscure fare. We’ll be sure to watch the above two and plenty of other under-appreciated classics once we have the time to do so.
Various short-lived shows/OVAs
Examples: FLCL, Clerks
Yes, they’re good, yes they’re fun. No, they don’t really have any lasting impact.
Your 80s nostalgic favorites
Examples: GI Joe, Thundercats, Transformers G1… etc.
Many of these are formulaic, poorly written and animated, and have aged exceedingly poorly. There are certainly some gems hidden in there, but we thought they were a tad outclassed by the rest of the stuff on our list.
Too soon to rank
Examples: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sym-Bionic Titan, Young Justice, Archer
The recent cartoon seasons were home to many new shows, many of which were unique and a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, they couldn’t all make it right now, but who knows what the future will hold? We might have new contenders for our list in the coming years, but these shows are too new to compete directly with proven classics.
Fleischer Studio’s Output
When you get down to it, these were some of the best cartoons of all time. The Talkartoons had the surreality and charm of Disney’s Silly Symphonys while relying on more than just cutting-edge animation techniques to captivate audiences. Betty Boop and Popeye were and are still two of the most popular cartoon characters ever, and had strong enough casts in their shorts to make Mickey and the gang seem boring by comparison. And the Superman shorts were among the first successful attempts at adapting a major super hero character, and their Technicolor bliss were a big inspiration for action cartoons for years on, with Bruce Timm’s Batman and Superman series in particular taking good notes.
These cartoons deserve to be seen by fans of animation all over, but we didn’t rank them on since the shorts have never really aired on TV together, unlike the Looney Tunes, or even MGM’s stuff, like in Down With Droopy D from Cartoon Network in the 90’s. For a lot of fans, we had to rely on public domain releases to see a fair share of these, while from our time, Popeye and Superman shorts would only air sparingly on TV. We also feel like cartoons like these deserve to be ranked elsewhere, and we might do something akin to Avaitor’s Disney posts later, not just for Fleischer, but for other studios like Lantz and UPA. Stick around for that.
Modern Cartoon Network Comedies
Examples: The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack, Regular Show, Adventure Time, Chowder, Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends
Here we have some fun shows, each with a following outside the main demographic. Are they funny? To some people. To others, they’re more akin to headaches, and are a little harder to get into than the early Cartoon Network originals, which were made for everyone and hit a wide range of fans. These shows tend to be preferred by children in the demographic and slightly-older viewers that think these series are “edgy and better than the crap on Nick and Disney”. We’ve tried the Cartoon Network test on our parents and other people around that age, and while the older Cartoon Cartoons tested fairly well on them, the more recent shows got weaker results. Not to mention that the older fans that gravitate towards these shows seem to go away before they end, and they tend to lower in quality significantly around then, and even the few who stay before they end forget about their current favorites for whatever CN just came out with. We considered putting a couple of series on here, but the more recent ones are too new and likely to follow that trend, while the older ones haven’t aged as well as we’d like them to.
*Action*
Explosions! Carnage! Ohmandidyouseethat?! Yes, there have been a lot of brilliant action shows over the years and deciding on the best of the best was tough work! So tough in fact that we were still trying to cut some of these shows late into the list’s life. While we feel the best of the best were chosen for our list, here are a few other contenders that just barely managed to make our list for various reasons of their own.
Wolverine & The X-Men
Wolvie was this close to making the list, but lost due to only lasting one season and ultimately not doing as much in its run as Evolution did in its. We still would have left it in if Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes didn’t finish its first season while we were still doing this, and accomplished more with its characters than W&TXM did. Not to mention that we already had an X-Men show on here, and there wasn’t too much of a major distinction between them as opposed to with Batman: TAS and Brave & the Bold. Good show, but we just had better options.
90s Spider-Man/X-Men
Both of these were childhood favorites for a few of the AR staff members and even helped us to get into the characters. Watching them again though, they just don’t hold up that well. Poor animation, weak voice acting given out by solid performers, lame censorship, and half-assed attempts at some of the comics’ best stories, these shows were outclassed by Batman: TAS then and by later X-Men and Spider-Man shows since their arrival. Even then, they’re still among the best Marvel cartoons of the 90’s. Remember Avengers: United They Stand and the first seasons of Iron Man and Fantastic Four? Yeah, same.
Samurai Jack
Genndy Tartakovsky is a much beloved figure here at the AR, as you can see by how high Dexter’s Laboratory ranked on our list. Sym-Bionic Titan was another big favorite of ours, and we all thought his Clone Wars series was the best part of the Star Wars prequels. And yeah, Samurai Jack is awesome. It’s an absolutely vibrant experiment in western animation that is unforgettable for all those who see it. But there lies one fatal flaw: It didn’t have a proper ending. So until Genndy can finally put some closure to this project, the void of a conclusion stings too much for us to give a proper placement on the list.
Macross (by extension Robotech)
Another classic that just missed making the list during the initial selection. Of all the classic candidates from this genre, Macross is considered second only to the original Gundam in influence and believe us, by all means deserves a placement on a list such as this. Unfortunately, we felt it just wasn’t enough to make our list in the end, but feel vindicated in the fact that it almost did.
Dragon Ball Z & One Piece
I’m sure we’ll no doubt get a ton of heat for not ranking some of the most popular shonen of all time on our list. Now, to be fair, its not that we think any of these particular titles suck or that their overall stories themselves haven’t aged well or anything like that. I myself highly enjoy Eichiro Oda’s deservingly popular manga One Piece, and many of us at AR have enjoyed DBZ for what it is (and yes, we have watched the series with its original voice acting in Japanese and its original soundtrack). The main problem that keeps these titles from being proper material from our list can be summed up in one word: Toei. Whether you like the adaptations on the whole or not, it just can’t be denied that Toei blatantly subjects these adaptations to extremely cheap budget animation for a majority of each series, slows their plots down with horrible pacing (often-times dragging out small portions of the respective manga to last entire episodes), and while each series has its strengths through some great voice acting and fantastic musical scores, it ultimately isn’t enough to save them from all of the other things that Toei does wrong with them in the long-run. The fact of the matter is that we have to look at the bigger picture when judging these shows for a list such as this. For a show to rank on our list, one of its key requirements is that it must be easily accessible to a wide variety of people in terms of being something that most people would want to invest their time in. With the pacing that these shows go at, we highly doubt that we could convince most people to watch either anime when both take multiple episodes to get out a single plot point or fight that most series could finish in the span of half an episode. So, we aren’t denying that these adaptations do have some great moments of brilliance, but the problem lies in how much boredom one has to slog through to get to those moments.
Fist Of The North Star
One of the most important shonen there is, but unfortunately, it just missed the mark of making our list due to the excess of padding, wildly fluctuating animation quality, and for being a bit too formulaic overall in most episodes. A great show, yes, but not one we could rank over others for much the same reasoning as other shonen favorites like DBZ or One Piece.
Teen Titans
This is a good show, but not one we particularly liked. It has a lot of things going for it, and a large fanbase to boot, but a few things about it just tended to rub us the wrong way. The plot development was often too sporadic, only a couple of villains really interested us, and we didn’t find the comedy all that funny. On the whole, it’s an enjoyable watch with some nifty animation, but not one we’d really consider a classic.
Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex
This is a great show, filled with complex plotting, interesting philosophy (though not nearly as much as in the movies or manga), and memorable characters. So why, then, did it not make the list? Truth be told, this is simply because it is a very divisive series; even more so than Evangelion among the staff. To include Stand Alone Complex on our list would have meant dropping something else that everyone (or nearly everyone) agreed was worthy of being called one of the top 65 cartoons of all time, and after painstaking construction we realized that we had crafted a list no one here would have done any differently.
Other shonen series (Naruto, Bleach, Hitman Reborn, etc.)
No, we don’t really have all that much against shonen series that focus on battles and the like (not all of us, anyways). However, aside from various pacing and filler problems akin to what was mentioned with One Piece, FOTNS, and DBZ, these series also have notably weaker stories on the whole, and when or if they do show some strengths, they are typically short-lived and each of them lack any form of consistency in terms of overall quality. If you like or enjoy any of these shonen series that we didn’t rank on our list, then that’s absolutely fine. That said, the reason they don’t rank on our list is because we find that they lack quality altogether, and often succumb to the same general issues, ranging from generic and/or annoying characters to bland execution of their formulaic plots. They aren’t necessarily bad or terrible, but they certainly aren’t anything that stand out nearly enough to make a list such as this.
*Comedy*
Comedy was a bit harder to choose for our list. There were quite a few comedies that made the cut and were subsequently cut once more after review, it was a hard road for many of these shows. Comedy is a lot more subjective to judge than action can be, so if you feel offended that we didn’t think your favorite comedy was all that funny, don’t take it to hard. In any case, here are the most popular comedies that did not make our list because we felt they were either not funny, consistent, or original enough to make enough of an impact or fell just short of making the list.
Spongebob Squarepants
Though the first three seasons and the movie are quite enjoyable, everything after that just feels phoned-in and barely serviceable. And while The Simpsons also succumbed to such a fate, it at least managed to fight it off for around a decade. As much as some of us hold nostalgia towards the sponge, years of mediocrity and over-promotion by Nick haven’t really endeared it to us in recent time.
The Venture Brothers
Though quite the interesting experience and unique parody of the Quest formula, what started off as a clever look into a unique world quickly turned in on itself and by the third season was no longer a thriving and developing world, but a string of in-jokes and winking nods to the fans killing a lot of its appeal in the process. We’re not one to knock a show for having fanservice, but centering entire episodes (and seasons) around such shallow ideas makes the overall product suffer. The Venture Bros. suffers hard for how they changed the focus of the show, and it is that exact reason why it has not made the list.
Family Guy/American Dad
We understand that both shows are quite popular and deserve their followings, but in the grand scheme of things, we on the AR just staff prefer other comedies to Seth MacFarlane’s sitcoms. It’s kind of hard to make a full commitment with Family Guy when the show’s entire purpose now is to use characters with next-to-no personality offend the audience as much as they can for a half hour, and while we appreciate American Dad for taking the initiative to use the Family Guy formula with more round characters, the cast ends up being either dull like Francine, useless like Hayley and Klaus, or borderline unbearable like Stan and Roger. There’s also the severe lack of consistent quality in each show’s output to guarantee them spots here. Both shows have some genuine laughs at least a couple of times an episode however, so we can say that we at least respect their efforts, unlike The Cleveland Show, which takes the worst qualities of both shows and just makes for an unpleasant experience.
Ren & Stimpy
About a season’s worth of good episodes from the Spumco age + about less than a season’s worth of good episodes from the Games age + nothing of merit from Adult Party Cartoon= one horribly inconsistent run. The good is still very good, but even that we’re burnt out on. We just had better options than Ren & Stimpy.
Beavis & Butthead
Mike Judge’s lovable metalheads have the right idea, being somewhat appealing morons who were able to make you laugh by poking fun of society and poking their butts at the same time. B&B has a lot of laughs in any given episode, but in terms of satire in animation, Judge’s other show and its spin-off do it better and are overall superior shows to Beavis & Butthead. It’s quality, but we had better options for the list.
Scooby-Doo
See: The 80s, except continuous over the past 40 years, a couple of odd highlights aside.
The Jetsons/Top Cat
Two of Hanna-Barbera’s funniest originals, the former takes similar ideas from The Flintstones, keeps the class and wit of the early seasons, puts them in space, and makes for good times, while the latter ups the class and wit to a whole other level. They’re fun shows that hold up fine, but only lasted a season each, didn’t do make as much of an impact in the industry during their sole season as Jonny Quest did or are held in as high regard as Flintstones is. To be fair, The Jetsons has 2 additional seasons from the 80’s… but the less said about those, the better.
Sheep In The Big City
Sheep came out around the peak of Cartoon Network, when the originals were still full of life and energy. While there was plenty of wit and love put into the show, it didn’t last as long as Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy or Powerpuff Girls nor left as much of an impression as Megas XLR, and when it comes to the best of the best, it just barely misses that cut. We still highly recommend it if you’re a fan of these shows, however. It holds up about as well as any of them.
Kim Possible
Wait, why did Jake Long make it into the list, but not Kim Possible? We appreciate both shows and think that KP did a fair amount right, but rewatching both shows, Kim doesn’t really hold up as well as we remembered. The first season is good enough, but eventually the quirks that made the show fun at first became tiresome. Kim’s perfection, Ron’s stupidity, Drakken’s incapability to do a thing without Shego, and Rufus’s existence in general became old before long. Not to mention that the last season existed solely for fanservice, like bringing Team Go back for no reason. While American Dragon improved after a promising but faulted first season, Kim took a promising first season and slowly went south after.
And just for reference, here’s the list in full again.
1 – Looney Tunes
2 – Batman: The Animated Series
3 – The Simpsons
4 – Rocky & Bullwinkle
5 – King Of The Hill
6 – Monster
7 – Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy
8 – Cowboy Bebop
9 – Jonny Quest
10 – Yu Yu Hakusho
11 – Neon Genesis Evangelion
12 – MGM department umbrella
13 – Gargoyles
14 – The Flintstones
15 – Rocko’s Modern Life
16 – Justice League & Unlimited
17 – Futurama
18- Mobile Suit Gundam
19 – Daria
20 – Dragon Ball
21 – South Park
22 – Home Movies
23 – DuckTales
24 – Tiny Toon Adventures
25 – Animaniacs
26 – Invader Zim
27 – The Boondocks
28 – Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (When They Cry)
29 – Pinky & The Brain
30 – The Huckleberry Hound Show
31 – Lupin III
32 – Dexter’s Laboratory
33 – Space Ghost: Coast To Coast
34 – Batman Beyond
35 – The Powerpuff Girls
36 – Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law
37 – Darkwing Duck
38 – The Spectacular Spiderman
39 – Batman: The Brave & The Bold
40 – Full Metal Alchemist
41 – Johnny Bravo
42 – Duckman
43 – Freakazoid!
44 – Avatar: The Last Airbender
45 – GTO
46 – TMNT: 2K3
47 – Death Note
48 – The Critic
49 – Beast Wars
50 – Superman: TAS
51 – The Angry Beavers
52 – Paranoia Agent
53 – X-Men Evolution
54 – The Real Ghostbusters
55 – Megas XLR
56 – Courage the Cowardly Dog
57 – Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid
58 – ReBoot
59 – American Dragon: Jake Long
60 – W.I.T.C.H.
61 – Hunter X Hunter
62 – Cow & Chicken
63 – Excel Saga
64 – Baccano!
65 – Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Written by AR staff
Originally posted on Sunday, July 10, 2011.