You remember those heady, action packed days of 80s and 90s cartoons, but what do you know of modern action series? I was of the opinion that they were not worth watching but since nabbing the cartoon channels I've become much happier with what's on offer with a few modern series at least. Here are 6 modern shows worth tuning in for:
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: I wrote a blog on why this is worth watching, check it out.
Chances are that you've tuned into some random episode of Generator Rex, not really known any of the characters or what's going on. You've probably thought eh, and moved on. You would be wrong. Generator Rex is inspired by the comic M. Rex, published by Image Comics in 1999. It's got a neat premise, prior to the first episode of the series there was an experiment with nanites that went wrong, there was a massive event which spread rogue nanites over the entire planet. 5 years on from then, everyone on the planet is infected with these nanites and mutate into monsters. Some don't go crazy and can control their powers and live with their deformities. Amidst all this mess, Rex is found, the one human on the planet who can control his nanites and generate machines in order to fight rogue mutants. He joins Providence, an organisation who deals with mutants which the show called EVOs. And from there the plot thickens.
Generator Rex is one of my favourite modern shows, because firstly it's very funny having physical and verbal comedy. It's really action packed and the action is done very well. It also has good writing, continuous plot threads, characters who grow and decent cliffhangers, intrigue and a little romance. There are also out and out comedy episodes featuring Rex's best friend Noah which are sometimes gut bustingly funny.
A few years ago DC Animation made the excellent Justice League series. Now they have a follow up series.
The series follows the lives of teenaged heroes and sidekicks who are members of a fictional covert operation group called the Team. The Team is essentially a young counterpart to the celebrity-level famous adult team, the Justice League. Basically think Batman you think about Robin, think Flash, think Kid Flash. And apart from Wonder Woman most of the big 8 Justice League team members are represented by junior counterparts. Greg Weisman does this series and he did the excellent Gargoyles show back in the 90s.
Also involved is Sam Liu who directs a lot of the standalone movies for DC and is particularly good with action scenes. I have watched the first 10 episodes and it holds up well and stands up there with the other excellent DC animated shows they have done in the past, shows like Batman the animated series and Justice League. It's not B-rate like The Batman or Batman the Brave and the Bold.
The Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Before the blockbuster movie (which incidentelly killed off this excellent show) Film Roman was busy making this great series. They also made a few marvel animated movies some good, some average but importantly they did the excellent Wolverine and the X-Men tv series. The show is fairly slow to start from the first episode: Iron Man is born. It begins before the team is set up and each episode really concentrates on individual characters before the team comes together. Eventually it does and it becomes an entertaining Marvel show, of particular note are 3 plot threads, the Kang Dynasty which sees Kang fighting the team to eliminate Captain America, Asgard which involves Loki screwing around and trying to overtake Asgard and kill off Odin and Captain America in his past and modern exploits against new and old enemies. It's a funny and action packed show which was sadly cancelled after the success of Joss Whedon's Avengers movie so they could do a new show based more on the movie, which is kinda sad considering Earth's Mightiest Heroes was doing if first and had been established for a long time already.
Ultimate Alien is the 3rd Ben 10 series.
For those unfamiliar with Ben 10, it's hard to know where to begin. There are 3 series.
1. Ben 10
2. Ben 10: Alien Force
3. Ben 10: Ultimate Alien
And they are going to do a 4th series called Omniverse I hear. Basically you want to avoid Ben 10 like the plague. It's the characters when they were 10 years old. There are like 40 episodes and only 4 maybe 5 episodes are worth watching.
Alien Force catches up with the characters when they are older, 16, 17-ish and is more watchable. It seems a lot of talent from Justice League was involved in doing the series. It's always decent, infrequently engaging and enjoyable. It has a big send off and then moves the series onto Ultimate Alien.
Suprisingly, as this is a direct continuation -no timeline skipping or aging of the characters- there seems to be much better planning and structure to the story arcs and it's consistently good.
For the undoctrinated Ben 10 was a kid who picked up the ultimate weapon, a watch that can mutate him into many different aliens to fight off threats to the galaxy. He fights with his cousin, Gwen and his badass Grandpa Max. In the latter series he joined up with his now-good nemesis and him and Gwen join the Plumbers, imagine something like an interplanetary police force. It's sort of like Green Lantern and the production team know it, making some art resemble the green lantern logo and shape. It's no good watching the odd episode of this, you need to see if from episode 1 of Alien Force really and put up with a decent but not great series then take to the better Ultimate Alien series.
This is the revamped Thundercats tv series and honestly, going back to watch the sheer repetition of the old 80s series, objectively this is better.
For generations, the Thunderians have lived and thrived in the kingdom of Thundera. However, one night the kingdom is attacked by the Lizard army led by the evil sorcerer Mumm-Ra and Grune the Destroyer. After Thundera is destroyed, a small band of surviving Thunderians led by the young heir to the throne Lion-O (who wields the powerful Sword of Omens) flees in order to seek out the Book of Omens, which is said to have the knowledge needed to defeat Mumm-Ra
It's not perfect and there are some meh episodes but this is a mostly worthy remake with great production values and art which reminds me of the Last Air Bender. It has potential at the moment after 1 series but they seem to be taking their sweet time getting season 2 on the air.
The only cartoons I watch these days are Disney. I haven't paid any attention to other cartoons since the late '80's.
The only episode I've seen of Ben 10 that was at all good did not feature Ben 10.
It's the self-aware irony schtick. I'm SO sick of it. I'm afraid it will never go away.
Can't we just go back to enjoying things for what they are?
Foolz there are only 2 decent episodes of the original Ben 10: one where he goes to future and meets his older self which incidentally was written by Gargoyles creator and Young Justice head honcho Greg Weisman. And this other episode where they body swapped which was funny.
Aspro, Young Justice and Thundercats are fairly straight, but the other series listed here are ironic and self aware but quite funny and entertaining because of it.
I mainly like stuff by Aardman Animations or things in a similar vein
Kim Possible and Phineas and Ferb are fucking awesome.
Kim Possible is all right. Disney hides it on the paid channel here along with TV shows of Aladdin, Little Mermaid and other shit. They have two other channels, one is for live action kids sitcoms the other is for older kids cartoons like the Avengers, X-Men etc.
No idea which series it was in, but I think it was a story about how the colonel from MGS met the aliens or something.