The Best Modern Cartoons

You always like to hear about how everyone's generation had the best shows, music, people, etc and fact is none of them are right because they are all incredibly biased. Yeah I'm sure there were awesome things about your generation, but to assume that you're the best that's ever existed is pretty damn ignorant. That being said, let's talk about cartoons. Everyone always likes to think that they had the best cartoons growing up, especially 80's/90's kids, who love to say how awesome cartoons were back then despite the fact most of them were god awful (The GI JOE cartoon sucks!) sure they had some greats like Batman, Gargoyles or Animaniacs, but most shows were really poor in quality and the only reason they like them is because of nostalgia. Now i'm not saying you shouldn't love these cartoons, but at the very least admit that they're not brilliant. I mean I LOVE the Pokemon anime with all my heart but I'm not gonna act like it's an amazing show, it's stupid as hell. But there are plenty of cartoons that I grew up with that are still fantastic, Avatar, Teen Titans, Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. Yet a lot of the 80's/90's generation will say that my cartoons sucked despite the fact that they haven't FUCKING WATCHED ANY OF THEM!!!!!...sorry, sorry, it just really annoys me when people do that; just assume that my cartoons sucked simply because they didn't grow up with any of them. So, I'm gonna talk about some of the more popular modern day cartoons of the 2010's and give my take on them, but before I begin I just want to point out that I haven't seen: Sym-Bionic Titan, My Little Pony, The Looney Tunes Show or Regular Show, so I have no idea if these shows are actually any good. But with that being said, let's talk about some of them.

Adventure Time

This is easily the most popular of modern day cartoons, everyone knows it and everyone watches it and I...just think it's okay...it's not great, it's not bad, just sort of okay. The entire gimmick of the show is that it's weird and can do whatever the fuck it wants, which is fine, I love silliness, the problem is, there's not really any sense of boundaries for this show. Which means when the characters react to something weird, I don't really know if it's weird or perfectly normal for the world. But even more so, I don't think it's that funny, I mean don't get me wrong, it has some good jokes but nothing mind blowing. Also I feel like the show is so aware of it's adult fanbase that it doesn't even bother putting anything in there for kids anymore. If you love if, then that's great, but after watching a season and a half I just personally couldn't get into it.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Every kid has a group of superheroes shows to grow up on, and one of the ones that this generation had was Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I've only seen a season of this show and I'll say this, it's pretty good, I don't think it's great, it's not the next Justice League or anything. The animation is decent, the characters are well represented, but there's just nothing amazing about it...except for the theme song. The theme song to this show is just simply incredible, it kicks all kinds of ass and is the main reason I began watching this show in the first place. I haven't seen Avengers Assemble and I hear it's not very good, I believe it, I don't really care though.





Gravity Falls

So you can probably tell by now that a lot of these shows don't really live up to the hype for me...Gravity Falls, completely lives up to the hype, this show is fantastic. It has great animation, a great opening and most of all, is a very, very funny show. This show knows it's a kids show but it still treats its audience with respect and never panders. It's jokes are fresh and the characters are brilliant, my favourite being Mabel, who I'll talk more about tomorrow, all I can say is, if you want to watch a funny show, then watch Gravity Falls.





Legend of Korra
A spin-off from Avatar: The Last Airbender, my all time favourite childhood tv show, this show had a lot riding on its shoulders, trying to live up to the greatness that is Avatar. And I can sum up each season in one word each. One: Okay Two: Bad Three: Great. I will say it doesn't rely on the Avatar brand in order to be a success, it's definitely been able to be successful all its own, and I respect it for it. But its best achievement is having the best animation on all of television, visually, this show is stunning, truly the best looking show on childrens' TV, and again, it takes its audience seriously, you have no idea how important that is to me in these type of things.




Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)
In case you didn't know, I'm a huge Ninja Turtles fan, I have watched almost everything Ninja Turtles related, even that god awful Next Mutation program...*shudders*. And despite numerous adaptations of the turtles this show did something that no other version had done...it made them act like teenagers! I know right! It is kinda weird to think about it, in every other version, do they actually behave like teenagers? In this version I think they pretty much nail the turtles. But the best character upgrade has to be April, this is without a doubt the best interpretation of April O'Neil that I've ever seen, because she's not just a red head in yellow that's there as the Turtles' cheerleader, she has an actual personality and has to save the Turtles just as much as they save her. The animation is...well it has a very unique style to it that I really like, but the actual character designs and textures kinda bring it down for me from having great animation. Overall I thoroughly enjoy the show and any real Turtle fan should give it a watch.

Young Justice
And the final show that i'll be talking about, and in my opinion the best modern show is Young Justice. How do I describe this show? Imagine Teen Titans meets Justice League...yeah, it's that good. This show had spectacular animation, very well written and developed characters and some damn great action scenes as well as an engaging story, it took the best parts of TT and JL and brought them together...and then it was cancelled after 2 seasons and replacing with that fucking piece of shit Teen Titans Go! (Don't worry, I'll have a separate rant one of these days for that show). Fact is this was the best show on kids television, I absolutely loved it and I highly recommend it to anyone who's a major DC Animated fan.


-Danny