I think I'm enjoying it almost as much as I did the first time around! You know, back when I used to obsessively tape the episodes in order, cut out the commercials, painstakingly label the tapes with those letter stickers that came with tapes back then, and then break the tabs on the tapes so no one could record over them.
(I later covered the holes with tape and recorded over most of the episodes with ReBoot, alas.)
There is one thing I forgot about, and that is the episode "Water Way to Go", which is cool for introducing Steelbeak but intolerable due to the animation. Oh my GOD it sucks. I remember despising it as a teen and that loathing lives on today.
I recall there were several Tiny Toons episodes done by these same animators. I don't know anything else about them, other than that they should never be allowed to touch a brush ever again.
It's hard to describe why it's so terrible, so I took some screencaps. Now you too can share in the horror.
Fortunately for you, these screencaps don't demonstrate the full destructive power of these animators. After all, you don't have to see the craptastic animation...just the mindblowingly awful art.
The plot of this episode isn't really all that great either...maybe Disney just decided to put all the bad eggs in one basket ;P
[Edit 2006/09/27 12:36 a.m.:] According to Wikipedia, this was actually the first episode produced. Did the animation budget suddenly go up thereafter?
I find the production order very interesting. It would be cool to watch the episodes in an order that made sense. I just watched "Just Us Justice Ducks Part 1", and it's very confusing seeing as Darkwing hasn't actually met any of the Justice Ducks yet ;P And yet this is apparently the order in which the episodes aired! Crazy.
5 comments:
I would love to think that picking up the DVDs for a series like Darkwing Duck would be nerdier than I could handle. Unfortunately, I did read through Darkwing Duck's Wiki entry, as well as several connected Wikis of other various animated series, all while RPing on IRC with a bunch of friends at 2:30 in the morning.
It was a great show, which I rarely caught episodes of. I'm sure that if I had enough money that I wouldn't immediately blow on anime, manga and RPGs, I'd pick up at least one or two of the older series.
It's funny how much quality in episodes of a series can suddenly shift, though I've seen worse in Tsukuyomi (A series which had two episodes where the format changed from 'anime' to 'audio with pictures' for half their run time), so I don't think it'd get worse than that (unless they ran a blank screen with audio playing). I guess that back when the series was running, they had a low-budget team to take care of things while they waited on more cash.
Maybe one of my friends will pick something like this up. Then I will be forced to borrow it.
Waiting patiently for his Yuffie (^_^),
-Tim
hahah, I thought about that Yuffie last night ;) So I haven't forgotten!
As far as anime quality, more good examples of cheapo animators can be found in several episodes of Macross--notably Max Jenius' wedding to Milia. Alas.
My understanding was that they were letting n00bz train.
If I were them, I'd be like, "Okay, you need more practice."
Haha, Darkwing Duck :-)
I used to be a big fan of the Disney Afternoon. Always, after school my younger brother and I would watch such classics as Gummi Bears, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Talespin, and Gargoyles. There were other shows that came and went too like Goof Troop which I don't think caught on with us as well.
Of those series I was a greater fan of Gargoyles than all the others. Being a Star Trek: TNG fan helped -- being that a number of the voices in the cartoon were from that show.
You mentioned ReBoot though. That was one of my absolute favorite series growing up. I looked for the series on DVD for a good while for could only find one of the seasons which I think may have been the last. Maybe I should go look for that one again...
I knew you'd remember it sooner or later. I'm sure you're just practising your 'skills of an artist' before doing it.
The Disgaea Anime was another series that was plagued by low quality animation, which was odd, since it could have been a much better series (The one that stands out to me was when Laharl crashes through a pillar, in a puff of smoke and dust, and exits the same pillar, no angle change, with the puff revealing a non-damaged pillar). Apparently later-season episodes are the worst, they run out of budget to do anything really nice, making the end of a series even worse than just having it end.
I guess the Newbie training is possible, since they have to learn somehow and you can't waste all your time waiting. But with the changing staff on some episodes (Genshiken suffered from a really weird shift in quality one episodes), or stupid misses or cutbacks (Second-tier characters in the background lacking a face in Nanoha), it's bound to happen.
James, I loved the Disney Afternoon too :) Duck Tales and Tale Spin were my other favorites back in the beginning, though I did enjoy Chip 'n Dale too.
I adored Gargoyles when it started coming on. I was really impressed with the realism of the show--when Elisa got shot in one episode (by Broadway, who was playing with her gun, tsk tsk), her injuries carried over to the next episode. Continuity! Amazing!
However, when the show started getting more mystical than sci-fi, I stopped watching. I wouldn't mind revisiting it now that I'm more open to fantasy stories.
Unfortunately, ReBoot seasons 1 and 2 still aren't available on DVD. I don't know why. Season 3 was available for a long time; I don't know if it's still out there. "Season 4" (which is really just two movies) is out on DVD as well. That's the new stuff that aired on Cartoon Network after the fans spent years begging for more ReBoot. Reaction to the new stuff was mixed. I personally thought the new CG style made it feel like a completely different series...and the way they went with Daemon was kind of weird.
Plus, Dot goes insane.
But I can recommend season 3 on DVD! Good stuff.
Tim, someday I'm going to do a post about all the different art styles used in Kyou Kara Maou. There's one that I consider "normal", one that makes everyone look overly cute, and one that makes everyone look overly old/manly.
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