The Best Ten Animated Shows In The US For The Last Decade (or, My Crappy Submission to the "End-Of-Year/End -Of-Decade" Lists People Do)
Hey if everyone else gets to do a crazy list, why can't I? Of course, I think it's better to do them after the year/decade has already ended, in case something pops up in the eleventh hour.
So before I do my Best Animated Shows of the Last Decade, some caveats:
#8: Xiaolin Showdown -Four young martial artists fight a boy genius and a dead witch for kooky magical items. How many times does a story like that get tossed around? Of course, having the same two villains for two-and-a-half series does wear on a viewer.
#7: The Spectacular Spider-Man - If you watch the intro, you'll notice the people behind the show wanted to go back to the old Lee/Ditka days. And some nice little twists were added for long-time Spidey fans. However, Spider-man isn't new, and much like the 90's version only so much fighting was shown (I mean, he is a superhero, right?)
#6: The Boondocks - What was once a comic at Maryland's Diamondback and then a regular in papers like the Washington Post became a quiet hit on Adult Swim. It's a well-drawn show that's not afraid to slap you in the face with political/social commentary. But like all things Adult Swim, Huey, Riley and Grandpa are victims of long breaks between seasons.
#5: Codename: Kids Next Door - An international group of youngsters using equipment that would impress MacGyver to battle every sinister adult stereotype you can imagine. All the main characters ended up getting their own "season," and there were more odd connections than an episode of LOST. Personally, what hurt this show the most was that the series was so short.
#4: The Venture Bros. - The creators said the show is about failure. In a strange way, how can going by that premise go wrong? Isn't that what the creators behind "Married...With Children" ended up doing? Except here, the failure was basically a parody of everything promised to those who watched or loved those action/adventure shows of the 1970's: cool space-aged inventions, the ability to travel anywhere and do whatever you want without consequence, and children who were smart, resourceful and never in any danger (even on an island full of dinosaurs). Other than the Adult Swim format, what held this show back was its decision (which couldn't be helped, really) to have season-long story lines.
#3 and #2: Justice League and Justice League Unlimited - These guys will probably not be on the big screen anytime soon, so this is as close as we're going to get. Other than X-Men incarnations, Marvel has pretty much sucked at trying to do the "team of superheroes" thing. The guys behind JL and JLU kinda lucked out; after developing Batman and Superman for as long as they did, and expansion only seemed logical. So after adding a young Flash, a novice Wonder Woman, a distant Martian Manhunter, a by-the-book Green Lantern and an aggressive-yet secretive HawkGirl, you had a show. And when the threat started growing and the characters got established, they expanded again. Nice touches include the HawkGirl-Lantern tryst, the shift from two-parters to just half-hour long episodes and of course the Cadmus story-arc. The negatives? The Bat-embargo, Superman having to be weakened to make some stories work and the revelation that, powers-wise, a whole bunch of these guys became redundant.
#1: Naruto - This show has every good thing the shows above it has, and very few flaws. Character development? Oh yeah. A good combination of action, drama and comedy? You better believe it. The show deals with a school of super-powered ninjas (I know, how is that fair?) but at the center is the story of the show's namesake: a kid, who when he was younger, was forced to carry a demon inside him in order to save his village. Because he's housing evil, he didn't make that many friends. But despite this, he still aspires to be a future leader of his village, if for anything, to make sure that no one there will ever be as alone as he felt. Oh, and did I mention that the kid has the ability to make like a billion clones of himself? Awesome!
So before I do my Best Animated Shows of the Last Decade, some caveats:
- It has to be something that aired in America for the first time in 2000. Sorry, that excludes Family Guy (which first aired in the end of 1999).
- Animation matters: I've seen too many good stories ruined by inconsistent animation (X-Men the Animated Series, I'm looking at you).
- Story matters: I've seen too many awesome-looking shows ruined by dumb stories (cough-cough Yu-gi-oh! cough-cough).
- Generational Appeal: It's has to be a show that could appeal to more than one age demographic, and if not, it should be just as good five-to-ten years down the road as it is now.
#8: Xiaolin Showdown -Four young martial artists fight a boy genius and a dead witch for kooky magical items. How many times does a story like that get tossed around? Of course, having the same two villains for two-and-a-half series does wear on a viewer.
#7: The Spectacular Spider-Man - If you watch the intro, you'll notice the people behind the show wanted to go back to the old Lee/Ditka days. And some nice little twists were added for long-time Spidey fans. However, Spider-man isn't new, and much like the 90's version only so much fighting was shown (I mean, he is a superhero, right?)
#6: The Boondocks - What was once a comic at Maryland's Diamondback and then a regular in papers like the Washington Post became a quiet hit on Adult Swim. It's a well-drawn show that's not afraid to slap you in the face with political/social commentary. But like all things Adult Swim, Huey, Riley and Grandpa are victims of long breaks between seasons.
#5: Codename: Kids Next Door - An international group of youngsters using equipment that would impress MacGyver to battle every sinister adult stereotype you can imagine. All the main characters ended up getting their own "season," and there were more odd connections than an episode of LOST. Personally, what hurt this show the most was that the series was so short.
#4: The Venture Bros. - The creators said the show is about failure. In a strange way, how can going by that premise go wrong? Isn't that what the creators behind "Married...With Children" ended up doing? Except here, the failure was basically a parody of everything promised to those who watched or loved those action/adventure shows of the 1970's: cool space-aged inventions, the ability to travel anywhere and do whatever you want without consequence, and children who were smart, resourceful and never in any danger (even on an island full of dinosaurs). Other than the Adult Swim format, what held this show back was its decision (which couldn't be helped, really) to have season-long story lines.
#3 and #2: Justice League and Justice League Unlimited - These guys will probably not be on the big screen anytime soon, so this is as close as we're going to get. Other than X-Men incarnations, Marvel has pretty much sucked at trying to do the "team of superheroes" thing. The guys behind JL and JLU kinda lucked out; after developing Batman and Superman for as long as they did, and expansion only seemed logical. So after adding a young Flash, a novice Wonder Woman, a distant Martian Manhunter, a by-the-book Green Lantern and an aggressive-yet secretive HawkGirl, you had a show. And when the threat started growing and the characters got established, they expanded again. Nice touches include the HawkGirl-Lantern tryst, the shift from two-parters to just half-hour long episodes and of course the Cadmus story-arc. The negatives? The Bat-embargo, Superman having to be weakened to make some stories work and the revelation that, powers-wise, a whole bunch of these guys became redundant.
#1: Naruto - This show has every good thing the shows above it has, and very few flaws. Character development? Oh yeah. A good combination of action, drama and comedy? You better believe it. The show deals with a school of super-powered ninjas (I know, how is that fair?) but at the center is the story of the show's namesake: a kid, who when he was younger, was forced to carry a demon inside him in order to save his village. Because he's housing evil, he didn't make that many friends. But despite this, he still aspires to be a future leader of his village, if for anything, to make sure that no one there will ever be as alone as he felt. Oh, and did I mention that the kid has the ability to make like a billion clones of himself? Awesome!
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