The Mysterious Mr. Enter

Oh, phew, I'm glad someone remembered Generator Rex.

I don't think it's Cartoon Network's most underrated show but compared to Sym-Bionic Titan and the like it feels like not many people remember it. Then again, unlike its fellow action shows it actually had a decently-lengthy run, so maybe people being satisfied with how it ended is part of it.

Mr. Enter reviews a bad episode of a good cartoon. I can't believe he doesn't hate No Such Luck.

edited 9th Oct '17 7:34:55 PM by Smasher

I agree with with him on the episode, because the writers made all the gender bent versions of the girls jerks with little nuance to their characters.

Dude, just fyi, you're supposed to provide a description of what you're linking. Site policy.

Before anyone complains, here's the contents of the countdown for the first part.

11. Dance party endings.

10. Rapping theme songs.

9. Lazily animated adult animation.

8. Comedic adult animation.

7. Disney's live action remakes.

6. The Butt Monkey.

Yeah, how many hundreds of millions have #7 made?

I can’t hate a company for being successful.

edited 28th Oct '17 11:15:17 AM by Beatman1

..... what does 8 mean?

If it's for adults and it's animated, it's going to be a comedy, whereas programs for younger audiences have more variety in genre.

Oh so he's complaining about the 1 genre being used for a certain demographic.

Yes.

@ Kyun It means adult animation needs to be an angsty drama like Bojack Horseman to be good, because The Simpsons, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, and King of the Hill are all crap. I'm surprised this kind of bullshit doesn't occur with live action shows.

Also IMHO, there's nothing wrong with a buttmonkey character. Live-action shows do it too, and I don't see people complaining. Besides, there are plenty of funny and well-done buttmonkeys in animation.

edited 28th Oct '17 4:33:11 PM by MagnusForce

Because action shows, mysteries, and general adventures like in Wakfu or Avatar are constantly dark and gritty?

That's not what was implied. What was actually said was that adult animation largely pigeonholes itself into certain kinds of raunchy comedies, which after a while gets stale, especially when many of them are composed of low-hanging fruit shock value jokes. Adult animation should, at least in a fairer world, have a lot more variety to it.

In that landscape, yes the dark existential storytelling with complex characters that Bojack Horseman is a welcome breath of fresh air.

edited 28th Oct '17 4:56:35 PM by Draghinazzo

@ Grounder How did I imply that?

edited 28th Oct '17 5:42:44 PM by MagnusForce

"It means adult animation needs to be an angsty drama like Bojack Horseman to be good, because The Simpsons, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, and King of the Hill are all crap."

How else was I supposed to take that?

Well, Avatar and Wakfu are more of kids shows that appeal to adults than actual examples of adult animation, but point taken. That being said, when I put down drama, I was thinking more Bojack (which is more or less grounded in realistic situations with characters in normal settings) less Avatar (which is more fantastical in nature although it features realistic problems for the characters to face).

I just sometimes feel that people don't want their cartoons to be funny anymore and realistic drama is the "do this or your show will suck" of animation now. Cartoons don't need drama to be good. Hell, Futurama was awesome long before it started doing its Tear Jerker episodes (the first was Luck of the Fryrish, first aired only halfway into the original run) and golden age Simpsons is considered to be the greatest cartoon ever by many even though it was loaded with idiotic jerkass characters who were never given realistic problems or character development even in those days. Besides, there's plenty of shitty drama out there that is full of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy or some other form of bad writing. I know it sounds obvious, but I feel not enough people in the animation fandom know that.

TL;DR: It's okay for cartoons to be goofy comedies. Drama doesn't necessarily mean masterpiece.

edited 28th Oct '17 6:01:12 PM by MagnusForce

Again, comedy is great, I love to laugh. However your argument about drama can easily apply to comedy and arguably that's more relevant in this case: a lot of adult cartoons that aren't the big acclaimed comedies like Futurama, the Simpsons, and South Park are not really that funny either and mostly juvenile lowbrow humor.

It's ok for cartoons to be goofy comedies, but we already have plenty of those and they're not going anywhere. And when the majority of adult cartoons are exclusively comedies (many of which aren't funny), it gets very old.

EDIT: Also, your assessment of Bojack is a little misleading. It's a dramedy, the world in Bojack is full of ridiculous, absurdist situations and jokes that are setup for a ton of jokes, in a way not too dissimilar from shows like The Simpsons. It's true that the dark existentialist drama is unquestionably the reason behind the show being successful, but that's not entirely what the show is about either.

edited 28th Oct '17 6:23:07 PM by Draghinazzo

In response to the video

11) Isn't the "dance party ending" mostly a Dreamworks thing? And even then, they haven't really done it that much in their more recent films. Still, ok, an actual cliche. Moving on.

10) Are there really that many Rapping theme song? I can think of maybe 3, buts thats about it. Wouldn't really call it a cliche when there are so few examples.

9) Not a cliche. The way a show is animated is not a cliche, it is a stylistic choice. It can be a bad choice, but its still a stylistic decision. Not a cliche. You wouldn't call the "Disney Renaissance" style of animation a "cliche", would you?

8) Again, a trend, not a cliche. Now, there are a lot of cliche plots to be found in just about every adult animated cartoon, but that would actually require a modicum of research to talk about, and we can't have that, so lets just throw an entire subgenera of animation under the bus, I guess.

7) "Live Action Remakes".........so, not animation, then? Why is he talking about it if it isn't animated? And again, it not a cliche, its a different medium. That's it, a medium switch. Also, there have been like, what, 5 in total? Eve assuming that a medium-shift can be a cliche, 5 examples, in total, by one company, is not enough to make a cliche.

6) Oh my god, an actual cliche, finally!. Personally, I have no opinion on the Butt-Monkey; I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done poorly. Wouldn't really call it near the worst cliche, but different tastes and all that. Then again, it is only number 6.

On the live action issue, it doesn't help that Walt Disney Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures are separate studios under the Disney banner so it comes off as complaining that Cartoon Network is going down hill because The CW doesn't have any cartoons. It's also somewhat odd he brings this up during a time where Disney Animation is on average releasing a film a year, the highest they've ever done.I admit, I'm hoping for good films from that division because I want to see a Hunchback of Notre Dame remake with the most of the original score and a revised script that either minimizes or significantly changes the gargoyles. To me it's like the Disney Jungle Book, a good film that Disney has a second chance to make into a great film.

The second part is now out.

5. Animated parents, specifically Abusive Parents, the Bumbling Dad, the naggy mom, the Disappeared Dad, and the Missing Mom.

4. Making new stereotypes to replace old ones (such as One of the Boys).

3. Comic reliefs in every animated movie even when it's not necessary.

2. The twist villain.

1. Disney Death

And here are the honorable mentions.

All animated movies must be 3D unless they're TV shows, stop motion movies must be creepy, twins being exactly the same/clone plots due to laziness, interrupting songs with dialogue, the two douchebags cartoons, memes, gross-out/shock humor, movies about anthropomorphic things, adding in useless characters for ratings, Not Allowed to Grow Up, Dreamworks Face, trailers must be the exact same, everything about Shrek, and Voices Are Mental.

Next time: The Emoji Movie. Prepare your butts.

edited 9th Nov '17 6:00:53 PM by Weirdguy149

5. I don't understand why animated parents are awful. The only real good parents in Western Animation seem to be some of the Disney parents (like Maurice from Beauty And The Beast and Mufasa) and Professor Utonium (only in original series, though).

4. I don't have a very strong opinion here other than stereotypes are annoying each time they get used.

3. I agree with Enter on this one. My least favorite characters in animation tend to be the comic relief. I don't get why they become so popular. I can somewhat tolerate characters like the Gargoyles and Donkey. However, I dislike the Minions and Olaf.

2. Was interesting the first time Disney used it, but people can predict what's going to happen if they're Genre Savvy enough. I think they are doing this because kids apparently aren't Genre Savvy enough to spot a cliche, which is underestimating they're intelligence.

1. I don't agree that much with Enter in that I don't think it's damaging, but I do agree that it's rare for heroes to perish. Part of it I think is because producers are afraid to kill off their protagonist because "how will we continue this series". Even anime is not completely immune to this.

As for honorable mentions, I do agree that 2D animation should be given a chance. It's just that everytime it's been a chance in the theaters, no one seems to be interested in seeing it. I will also state that animation should be seen as a medium and not a genre, but unfortunately, Animation Age Ghetto is still a thing.

edited 10th Nov '17 9:45:32 AM by powerpuffbats

5) That is way to broad of a category. "Parents" are not a cliche. I have parents. You have parents. Everyone (except for orphans) have parent. An animated character, by default, will most likely have parents. Labelling every cartoon parent, both the good and the bad, as a "cliche", is just stupid.

And assuming that he is only referring to the bad ones (which I'm sure he meant to, but, again, contextualized this point very poorly), you have to be very specific for something to qualify as a cliche. "Bad parents" are not a cliche, the term is too broad; there are many different types of bad parent (abusive parents, neglectful parents, idiot parents, etc.) and labelling them all under a giant umbrella term is reductive. Also cheating.

4) Has Enter never heard of the Dead Horse Trope? Stereotypes, whether positive or negative, come around and are associated with things often by accident, and are rarely thought up wholesale. Ten years ago, the idea of the Hipster (as we know it today) was a fairly new concept — now, ten years later, people use the phase in everyday conversation, and dozens of shows and movies use the "hipster" archetype for their characters. You could say that the "hipster archetype" is a cliche. But ten years form now, it will most likely be on it's way out, replaced by something else. The change in public tastes and trends is not a "cliche", it is a sign of heathy change in the entertainment public, and often is a reflection on what is acceptable as a society in our entertainment. Old cliches get replaced by new ones — if anything, it's a sign that the entertainment industry is healthy, and to suggest that this is a "bad thing" is to argue for stagnation.

3) Comic relief exist everywhere. This is not a problem emblematic solely to animation, and, if anything, I find is a bigger problem in live-action movies and shows. Was Suicide Squad really improved by all of the forced jokes and awkward attempts at "comedy"? Most critics seem to agree that it would have been better as a straight forward action movie.

On the flip-side, would a show like "Avatar" have been better without comedy? Oh sure, it would have still had action and a nice plot, but would it have been as fondly remembered if that's all it was? Would "Moral Orel" have been nearly as good if it didn't use it's comedy to offset the pitch black story it was telling (and sometimes the reverse was the case, with the pitch-black "comedy" being balanced by the emotional storytelling). "Kung Fu Panda" may have a few too many fart-jokes, but i'd argue that it's humor helps to better balance it: compare KFP to the oft-forgotten "Legend of the Guardians" which had next to no comedy, but was completely forgettable despite having amazingly animated action scenes. Be Careful What You Wish For and all that, eyy Mr Enter?

2) Like I said about Live-Action Disney movies above, what are there, like, four examples of this? And all in films by the same company? Sure, you could say that Disney (which is but 1 company, not an entire industry) is starting to use the plot device as a crutch, but considering it's a pretty new cliche to have, and has so few examples, seems like he's jumping the gun a little bit placing this one at #2.

1) Holy-effing-shit, an actually well known and numerous cliche! Hallelujah!

As for this one, meh, if a movie is going to be rated G, or even PG (which are the only films that the majority of an animated feature's market can go see, considering most of their viewers are under 13), you can't get too violent when it comes to showing death. You can cut away, or use trick camera work, or have them die in an explosion, etc., but the instant you show blood (well, more than a scratch at least), your film is going to be instantly slapped with a PG-13 rating (this holds true for most live-action films too). So there is really not much that can be done in regards to this when making kids movies.

HM) ..........JFC, again, not a cliche, a trend, and a stylistic decision. He may not like the decision, but it is still just that.

edited 10th Nov '17 10:58:37 PM by Eldritcho

The point with 3 wasn't the existence of comic relief. But making one character "the comic relief character". He even said that the jokes should be more evenly spread around. Of those you listed, none of them have "a comic relief character" because a lot of character tell jokes, and the ones that tell a lot of jokes (such as Sokka) have more going for them than just "they're funny."

Upon checking the video again, you are correct... to an extent. I didn't pick up on his point very well the first time because, well, he rambles a lot and goes off on tangents in the middle of explaining his point. I zoned out through about half of his video, and apologize.

Id still argue that this cliche isn't as numerous as he seems to think it is, at least not anymore. Perhaps in the 80's and 90's, but i feel that if anything we've moved away from the "comedy relief character" into what could be called the "comedic relief cast". Just look at any film by illumination, or most of Dreamworks recent output — they are almost entirely made up of comedy relief characters, with only the "straight man" lead played seriously (and maybe a love interest too). It's impossible for there to be a comedic relief character in such a film, because everyone is one. And these films seem to be the norm now (Despicable Me, Minions, Rio, Ice Age, Secret Life of Pets, Storks, Trolls, The Nut Job, etc.).

edited 10th Nov '17 11:12:33 PM by Eldritcho