So, was Animaniacs any good? Has it aged well? Was the animation up to snuff? Was the music good...

So, was Animaniacs any good? Has it aged well? Was the animation up to snuff? Was the music good? Does it deserve its positive repututation? Was John K right about it?

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I watched some of it on Netflix.

I can't really say that it aged well, but I liked it.

What did John K say about it?

Way too uneven to bother unless you really want to.

I will say the show was a wonderful product of it's time.

I'm pretty sure he hated it. or he hated the art style at least.

It was awesome.

As someone who still watches it from time to time, I came in here to defend it but
Has a point. Its got some great peaks, but also some rough low points. I'd still say the show is good overall though

Hated it like he does with anything made after the 50s.

I remember liking it as a kid but I was kinda disappointed when I tried watching it again recently. It had some memorable moments but some really unmemorable ones as well.

He wrote an article bashing the show in some short-lived animation magazine in 1993 when the show first started. I can't remember the name, but if you've ever read John K's blog, you have the basic idea.

Most of the jokes are about references to celebrities.

Tiny Toons did the "cartoon reality" humor better.

But it gave us Pinky and the Brain, which is still great.

I prefer Freakzoid

youtube.com/watch?v=SzbE0wpqeKc

the only thing i hated about it back in the day was the celeb references. i was too young to know who the fuck Jay Leno was or Prince and because of that some jokes went waaaay over my head but damn did i still enjoy the shit out of that cartoon.

It's a pretty solid cartoon if you're 20+ or culturally knowledgable

He said it had no soul and it screamed 'fake'

Nah, he hated all the talking they did. He liked the animation just fine, but he gave it lower points in his blog because they were all so chatty

A few weeks ago I went to see Animaniacs Live when it came to town. After the show Rob Paulsen and Randy Rogel did a Q&A panel. Caught it on video if anyone is interested

youtu.be/vf_nPH4bb0w

I've just started watching it so I'd have something to fill in the hours of silence I dread so much, and it's pretty fun. The Warners so far are my favorites, but that might be because I haven't seen as much of the rest of the characters. It is dated because it references too much of Hollywood's culture, but aside from that I'd say it holds up. Not was well as other classic Warner cartoons, but that's one of the consequences of being so meta.

>screamed 'fake'
Like wrestling?

He was definitely against the Warners' designs, I remember something on his blog along the lines of "they try to mimic 30s designs and 40s designs at the same time while missing the point of either".

Cartoons shouldn't have writers, they should have incredibly detailed still drawings of hemorrhoid-encrusted anuses.

>aged well
I hate reading this. It may be dated by the celebrities and political jokes but it has better humor and animation than most cartoons in the 2010s.

TMS shill pls leave

No the references are outdated so anyone that doesn't remember the 90's that well or not at all won't enjoy it

So you haven't actually watched the show,aight.

Seriously, I keep reading that apparently it's nothing but references but I just got through 3 episodes, and two had maybe one 2 second reference joke, one I can't remember any, with most of the humor being either slapstick , characters playing off each other or wordplay. Heck, if any show was reference heavy it was probably Pinky and the Brain.

So you've only seen 3 episodes,aight

Just keep watching it

>Nope
>Hell no
>this seems like the bait-iest of all the questions
>of course not
>definitely not
>He absolutely was

Richard Lewis Noah was amazing

The problem with it is not the references, '40s Warner cartoons with lots of references are still funny to kids who don't get them. The problem is it just tried too hard. The Warners are usually trying to be as "zany" as possible, they just never let up. The music hits every single action with a wacky chord while Carl Stalling was actually much more restrained.

When the gags are good, the cartoon works, but Pinky & the Brain were the only characters people could enjoy even when they weren't at their best.

Tiny Toons was worse at its worst but its best episodes are better.

That said there were a few writers like Paul Rugg who could usually write the Warners without them being total assholes, and some individual cartoons like Chairman of the Bored that worked by giving them something different to do. But what they really don't have is charm. They're more like Screwy Squirrel than Daffy Duck.

Sketches like the Goodfeathers were great, but then you have things like the Hippos which are horrible to sit through

This is true

Goodfeathers felt to me like it was better in theory. They were thinking that a lot of old cartoons were ripoffs of popular radio and TV shows, so why not do something similar for a popular movie? But unlike Foghorn Leghorn or the Flintstones I don't think they ever quite got to the point where the characters were strong enough to stand on their own apart from the characters they were based on.

I did like the one where they were on the set of The Birds though.

Kinda makes you wonder what itd be like with todays political humor

i think it aged well
it is a damn fine show
i suppose humour changes

obama playing the sax

That's what happens when you give an autist like him so much fame and appreciation.

fuck is that IMPOSSIBLE to fucking hear

it was. The problem with the show is that some parts of the shows really weren't that funny.

Yes.
Like milk.
Yes.
Pretty decent and catchy.
Of course, it's not a 10/10 but it's a great show over, sadly as I said, it has aged like milk and some jokes are either stale or outdated nowadays, which makes sense.
Don't know what he said, don't care.

reminder

youtube.com/watch?v=pOtmdHiCJNY

best cartoon of all time
friggen underaged plebs

Yes, as well as Looney Tunes, only the TMS & Startoons episodes, yes, yes and no.

>When Abe ships those ships.
Obama does not play the sax.

I love the news report on this one where Tron Guy is in the background

>The music hits every single action with a wacky chord
I remember even as a kid this kind of annoyed me

>We're Animaniacs! Dot is cute and Yakko yaks! >Wakko packs away the snacks
>while Donald Trump makes the sacks
>"YOU'RE FIRED!"
>WE'RE ANIMANIAAAACS!

The Donald would work better as it keeps the original flow of the song

It relies way too much on references.

>friggen
2003 pls go

So?

Really liked the music as a kid. I got the sound track and listened to it heaps.

kek

This is still awesome even if it's outdated now:
youtube.com/watch?v=5pOFKmk7ytU

Wait a minute... he's a giant chicken!

Who is?

...

This reads like something one of us would've written if this site had existed back then.

Honestly it feels like half of the grumpy old cartoonists would be shitposting here 24/7 if Sup Forums was around when they were young.

>They're more like Screwy Squirrel than Daffy Duck
That's the point right? They're reject characters from the 30's locked away to rot.

>it's bad on purpose
Oh, that explains it.

considering the people who worked on it are amazed at some of the shit they got away with? it WOULDN'T happen today.

A reference to something is not a joke.

Animaniacs is good, but why does no one remember Histeria?

becasue it had an even shittier cast and was also factually wrong most of the time, despite billing itself as edutainment

It's not like Peter Lorre or Picasso references were any less dated in the 90s

...

I feel like the man just hates Spielberg as a whole, not just his cartoons. Has he badmouthed any of his films like Jaws or Schindler's List? Because that'd be amusing.

As for my views on the show... It doesn't exactly hold up all that well. The Warner segments are mixed in almost every aspect, Slappy's shorts fare little better, and every other segment is utterly forgettable with the exception of Pinky and the Brain. Doesn't help that the show had uneven animation quality that could kill a segment almost instantly.

I always felt the show worked when they did their musical shorts for the most part.

Pinky and the Brain got its own spinoff for a reason, it was by far their most memorable characters aside from the Warners themselves

The reference enhances the joke - good
You can't get the joke without getting the reference - bad
The reference IS the joke - terrible

Example:
Bugs Bunny puts on a Groucho mask and slaps Fudd around while walking and talking like Groucho - good, because even if you don't know who's Groucho Marx it's still funny
Babs Bunny says an unfunny line while looking like Groucho - bad, because there's no joke if you don't know who Groucho Marx is.
Animaniacs are at a dinner and Madonna walks past in her trademark attire - terrible, because if you don't know who Madonna is, there's no joke. And if you DO know who Madonna is, it's just a reference for the sake of making a reference.

Yes
No
It was standard tv animation for the time.
Yes
Yes
No.

Pinky and the brain and the pigeons are the only things I remember from the show

>it was okay
>no it hasn't
>it was good enough for it tried to be and tv
>really hated orchestra hits, high-budget version of a whip crack sfx
>It inspired many people with its humor and presentation but I wouldn't recommend actually watching it
>no
honestly I only liked Pinky and Brain: simple formula, likeable characters, better theme song. The references are shit though, i am not american so some humor was completely lost on me.

watched some of it some days ago and i think it aged pretty well

Is aged better than Tiny Toons.

If you listen to the old Looney Tunes scores (the DVDs have a lot of music-only tracks) Stalling doesn't always mickey mouse everything. If something is covered by sound effects, like an explosion, he'll turn off the music or keep it minimal.

Some of the Tiny Toons scores also followed this, but by Animaniacs it was like everything everybody did had to have a xylophone beating out whatever they were doing.

That's the price for making jokes of the time, but the overall slapstick and non-referential jokes were great

Meanwhile Freakazoid still holds up today but no one gives it any credit.

Nah. The fag with the mustache and bony toes is just skinny.

The part with Buttons and Katie Kaboom were so unfunny.

I hate mean spirited humour.

>has it aged well

It holds up better than anything made today. Easily.

Debunked.

>there's small nuggets of good here and there
>it hasn't aged well
>animation vary's greatly but for the most part "up to snuff" (TMS and Startoons work was usually good enough to great)
>music was good
>debatable
>what did the old man say about this stupid show?

Mean spirited humor can work, but Buttons and Mindy was the worst segment on the show, which is incredible considering it's on a roster with the hip hippos and the Goodfeathers. There was a point where I thought the relentless references to culture of the time was the worst part of the show, but Button's fucked up segments proved me wrong when I went back to it. It's well-known that those two only got in because one of the staffer's daughters like it (Maybe it was one of Spielberg's kids?) and it shows. They had no idea what to do with these characters and every episode is a reskin of "man what if Mindy fucked up and as a result Button eats shit for 8 minutes". Usually I wouldn't boil down something like this to such a basic element but that's all those shorts had going for it.

Katie Kaboom was a one-trick pony. Chicken Boo was a one-trick pony (his theme is catchy as fuck though). Mindy and Buttons was a one-trick pony. Minerva Mink was a one-trick pony and thankfully just trashed after only 2 segments dedicated to her. Most of the cast did the same thing for all of their shorts and got boring after a while.

The Warner's themselves are really hit or miss and work best (in my opinion) the less they speak. The reliance on physical comedy and less on spoken dialogue that consists of shitty snarky jokes the writers jerk themselves off over in-show, helps. They've had a few segments that are okay and they're usually pretty good when they're paired of with Dr. Scratchensniff.

Freakazoid's first episode is the whackest shit and season 1 is all over the place in terms of writing quality, but they get their act together for season 2 and that's all pretty good stuff.

Tiny Toon and Animaniacs are top-tier american animated TV series from the 90s, and better than anything that came out after the 90s.

The writing and the animation were both uneven, but when it scored, it scored big

-Macadamia Nuts music video
-Parody of Apocalypse Now with Jerry Lewis in the Brando role.
-Pinky and the Brain

> It's well-known that those two only got in because one of the staffer's daughters like it (Maybe it was one of Spielberg's kids?)

Yeah, the story was that when they were deciding which pitches would be in the show Spielberg's daughter said she liked Mindy & Buttons.

Spielberg did seem to have a thing for this kind of story though. It's the exact same setup as Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman, and supposedly Spielberg insisted all the Roger Rabbit short cartoons had to follow that formula instead of letting Roger do new things.

I don't think Spielberg has a very sophisticated sense of humor anyway. His idea of comedy is very loud and very broad (and I actually like 1941).

I never really got the criticism as to the animation being uneven

Not really, that was Slappy's role, and you can really tell since she has some of the worst shorts on the show. Hell, the Warners literally have a rule that actively prevents them from being Screwy Squirrels. The problem is that they still tried to find ways around it rather then actually make them more calm and likable.

Histeria was even more dependent on unfunny and irrelevant references. The episode that really sticks in my mind is the one about the assassination of Julius Caesar, where Caesar and the conspirators were played by Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

I don't know, I found it amusing

I adored it when I was a kid, but watching it now, it doesn't grab me. Even putting aside all the 90s references, most of the characters are just smug. Half the jokes are the characters looking at the camera and giving the audience a snide remark. Watch an episode and count the times a character turns their head to the camera and makes a dumb joke. It gets obnoxious after a few minutes.

it's because the show outsourced to many studios at the same time. As such, the animation quality could change depending on short. Even among the companies themselves, there'd be shorts better animated than other ones they did.

Holy shit, same here. I just started rewatching it on netflix and it still holds up really well.