Narm Charm / Western Animation

• Who could ever expect a Battle Cry of "Let Justice prevail!" to sound anything but Narmy? However, when the Justice Guild of America chants their battlecry as they leap to the rescue of the Justice League, knowing victory will cost them their lives but choosing to fight anyway, it just works.
  • A less prominent example from the same scene is the other catchphrase "In Seaboard City, crime doesn't pay" spoken by one of the Guild members. Like the aforementioned battlecry, it sounds perfectly corny in its own right, yet the context of the scene combined with the VA's delivered makes it almost Tearjerking. You can hear the resignation in his voice as he says it, knowing he's dooming himself by fighting the villain.
  • That entire two-parter runs on Narm Charm. It revels in Silver Age silliness, and is incredibly entertaining, all while it slowly turns into a genuinely creepy mystery with a Tear Jerker ending.
• Yes, the Peanuts animated shorts and movies were poorly animated and had subpar voice acting that was literally stitched together. But this gave it a certain kind of charm since the beginning, whether it was the fact that real children were used to record the voices, the catchy Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, or the fact that the productions in general felt like the comics; it helps that the art style of the comic strip was rather stiff to begin with. Either way, the cheesiness of the Peanuts specials provided a certain appeal that stuck around to the point of The Peanuts Movie going the extra mile to accurately replicate it.
  • The first special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, features poorly mixed sound, choppy animation, and sloppy editing, but that's part of what makes it a beloved Christmas classic. In fact, director Bill Melendez was embarrassed to see it repeated every year and wanted to "fix" it years later, but Charles Schulz vetoed the idea.
• Ace Lightning was just one big constant dose of Narm Charm for its fans. Mostly from the CGI characters (who were really supposed to be narmy, since they came from a videogame and were deliberately based on stereotypes) and from the... occasionally dry acting of over enthusiastic humans.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: "Prepare...To... DIE!" is one of the most Narmish things to say. Somehow Ozai makes it work. It helps he shares a voice actor with The Joker, and looks like he has every chance of carrying out his threat.
  • Also the following line from Zuko in "Bitter Work":
  "It keeps blowing up in my face... just like everything always does!"
  • And, when he starts yelling at the sky in "Bitter Work" about how it's always thrown hardship at him, but lightning won't strike him now. He's so conflicted, he can get away with that.
  • Zuko has a couple of those. The main Avatar page lists "You're so beautiful when you hate the world" as Narm, but it and the next two lines ("I don't hate you." "I don't hate you, too.") are very sweet.
  • Zuko's entire character is this. He's an overdramatic Emo Teen, but he's got very good reasons for being an overdramatic Emo Teen.
• The Stop Motion Christmas specials produced by Rankin/Bass are full of these. At one point in Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, a character is looking at her reflection in a fountain... which is a cardboard cutout of the character placed under the fake water.
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! has narm charm almost every episode, intentionally. It even gets away with playing The Chosen One completely straight, Star Wars style.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers lives and breathes this trope. Missing the mark on its beloved Green Aesops with every line, it instead creates a level of awesome simply because it's hysterical to consider a supervillain with nothing better to do with his time but dump a tub full of oil into the ocean because he hates the environment. Also, any episode that attempted to deal with an issue difficult to explain to children, let alone to adults.
  • "AIDS stinks!"
    • And the green mullet. Good God, the mullet.
• Thomas & Friends: The earlier seasons had relatively poor supermarionation (especially by supermarionation standards) and the entire show was styled more like an animated picture book, with the narrator carrying both the narration and the dialogue. This was easily the most memorable period of the show, and it has both an ironic and unironic following for this reason.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the middle of Wilt's Cluster Big "NO!" in "Where There's A Wilt There's A Way", he throws in a teeny, tiny little "NUH-UH!!" for no apparent reason. This doesn't distract from the awesomeness of the scene.
• AQUAMAN from Batman: The Brave and the Bold is the embodiment of this trope.
  • Six words..."We Are All The Doom Patrol"
• Street Fighter has DELICIOUS narm charm! YESSSSSSSSH! YESSSSSSSSSH!
  • The "Final Fight: Double Impact" Xbox Live Arcade port includes episodes of the show where the Final Fight characters appear. This trope is the only possible reason why.
• This was invoked in Moana - at one point, Maui attempts to have a serious conversation with Moana... when he has the head and torso of a shark. She finds it just as funny as the audience does.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Return of Harmony, Part 2", after Twilight Sparkle has lost both her friends and all hope and is walking home sadly, it's hard to decide whether to cry... or laugh, at the ridiculous things Discord has done to Ponyville. Pies fall into the sky, a pony walks along the top and side of the screen, there are dancing bison in tutus, and the whole world is plain old messed up.
  • From later in the series "A Canterlot Wedding". From Cadance and Twilight's Secret Handshake to Cadance and Shining Armor defeating the Big Bad, Chrysalis, with The Power of Love, this episode is full of things that could be incredibly goofy, yet because of the context still work.
  • The final battle against Tirek in Twilight's Kingdom Part 2, the Mane 6 all get rainbow-powered Super Modes and have a Dragon Ball Z style brawl with him with Twilight firing massive energy beams at him. Cheesy? Yes. Over-the-top? Yes. Glorious? YES!!!
  • In the end of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", when reformed!Discord said "friendship is magic". It's narmy and awkward, but still heartwarming.
• While some of the voices in My Little Pony may sound exaggeratedly goofy, they typically work well for the characters. Not just the voices, but practically everything about the franchise is like this, be it the cheap animation, the Merchandise-Driven nature forcing the writers to squeeze in what characterization they could, or occasionally shoddy writing just makes it cornier. Be it, the surprisingly plucky and resilient if still adorable ponies defending their home against creepy monsters and races straight out of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, the semi-realistic struggles of ordinary tween girls dealing with mundane problems from arguing friends to overcoming weight issues, or a tomboyish princess learning to stop running away and take responsibility to help save the world's colors from draining away. You can be sure the stubbornly optimistic ponies with The Power of Friendship and a catchy song or two will spread a message of friendship and forgiving even the apologetic villains is still sweet, and just might make the viewer smile by the ending credits, if only just a little.
• The scene where Kid Flash screams Artemis's name when she supposedly dies, and then later has a yelling fit complete with slamming his fist on the bioship console in the Young Justice (2010) episode "Failsafe" may qualify as Narmy, but the drama of the previous event plus the fact that Kid Flash has NEVER reacted like this to ANYTHING, makes it touching, and a Tear Jerker.
• In the 2003 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Shredder's catch phrase of sorts is "None of you will leave here alive". In the two parter "Rogue in the House" he actually utters the phrase "None of you will leave this boat alive". For an otherwise serious take on Shredder, this line seems corny, even cartoonish, but it somehow manages to work.
• The ThunderCats (2011) version of Lion-O resently pulled this off, perfectly.
  Lion-O: THESE BEARS ARE NOT YOUR PROPERTY!!!
• Phineas and Ferb was able to pull this off with the death of a balloon. Imagine this if you will: A balloon with a realistic face painted on it and attached to a robotic body just rescued an "evil" scientist, a panda bear, and a teal platypus in a fedora from an army of flying robots with lasers, after previously appearing to be on the bad side but changing his mind. As the evil scientist is happily gushing about all the good times they can have now and things they need to catch up on (him and the balloon used to be best friends), one of the robots, not quite destroyed, sits up and just manages to shoot the balloon before collapsing. The robotic body falls to the ground as the scientist lets out a series of Little Nos, begging him not to leave him a second time. And as he holds the balloon's limp, rubbery remains in his hands and cuddles them up to his face, he finishes the scene with the following words: "I can feel my heart...popping." Goofy? Yes. Bizarre? Completely. Possibly the most heartbreaking thing the show has ever done? Absolutely.
• Stanley has this in the song "Good As Gold". It has Dennis (a goldfish) dressed up in an Elton John costume and playing piano on a darkspotlit background, with three female fish backup singers, but it's still a touching song about how much Stanley's friendship means to him.
• Codename: Kids Next Door is famous for having rather ridiculous, Rule of Cool-heavy plots that manage to be compelling and sometimes even emotional.
• Many of the ending music video segments on ChalkZone have their moments of being very cheesy and goofy (one example would include "Chunky"- the song is a rock number about...painting your room and going to the moon with chunky peanut butter), but the catchiness and the fact that the voice actresses for Rudy, Snap, and Penny are all very good singers make them enjoyable for many fans.
• Samurai Jack's Season Five, Jack has crossed the Despair Event Horizon after decades of fighting losing his sword - the one weapon in existence capable of destroying Aku. What traumatic event could have possibly led to him turning into such dark turn? He killed a couple of sheep in anger. Sounds absolutely ridiculous, but the scene itself is played with complete sincerity and manages to be completely tragic due to the fact Jack killed innocent creatures and therefore, his sword abandoned him due to finding him unworthy.
• The evil hat apocalypse from Meet the Robinsons. It sounds silly, probably not any less silly than the rest of the movie. But... after all the comedy, it's played completely straight and seriously, making it genuinely unsettling. To quote the Necro Critic:
  "That... would be unbelievably silly if it wasn't so frightening..."
• The Marvel Super Heroes: For all the show's cheap Limited Animation using Xerography, it still largely adapted the Silver Age Marvel Universe stories faithfully with the full kinetic energy of master artists like Jack Kirby brought to exciting life.
• In Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Cash, as well as everyone clapping after it, was kind of cheesy, but it really showed how much Ben had grown as a character, and many fans were under the impression Cash had been asking for this for a long time.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Part of what makes "King Ramses' Curse" such a memorably creepy episode is the titular King Ramses, who's animated with some jarringly out-of-place, early-2000's CGI. Rather than diminishing his creepiness, however, it instead adds a massive Unintentional Uncanny Valley factor to the character, making him even more terrifying.
• The Owl House episode "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door" has an In-universe example. Luz is horrified by Hooty's garishly cheesy Tunnel of Love, while Amity finds it charming and flattering, if also a little cheesy and embarrassing. Justified since while Luz is implied to have been rejected in the past for her wacky antics, affection-starved Amity happens to like Luz for who she is and just wants validation for what she is feeling, and thus is incredibly touched when she thinks Luz put this together, regardless of the quality.
• A large part of the appeal of Ready Jet Go! lies in how campy and over-the-top it is. It helps that it uses voice actors from The Ocean Group, who were responsible for a lot of campy anime dubs. Yes, you WILL empathize with characters named Carrot and Celery — and no, they aren't talking vegetables. Speaking of which, their relationship may be sugary-sweet, but it's impossible to hate it because of how sincere it is.
• VeggieTales: As a tribute to/parody of sad soft-rock ballads based around a fairly ridiculous-sounding premise that was clearly being Played for Laughs, the Silly Song "Pizza Angel" sounds like it should be the complete opposite of a Tear Jerker. Yet Larry is so anxious as he awaits his missing pizza that it makes you feel legitimately concerned and sorry for him, especially when it turns out that the pizza delivery boy got lost looking for Larry's house and ended up eating Larry's pizza, after a Hope Spot no less, and Larry's heart utterly breaks.
• WordGirl may be an Edutainment show all about teaching vocabulary to young children, but the show gained a strong Periphery Demographic due to its sharp sense of humor. But the last episode "Rhyme and Reason" showed the show was capable of surprisingly effective drama as well, centering around a tearful falling out between Becky and her best friend Violet when Becky's secret identity was Wordgirl is discovered. When the show became popular again in the New 20s year after it ended, many expressed surprise to find themselves emotional over a scene where a child is confronted as a liar for secretly being a grammar-themed superhero. Even the narrator of the show is unable to stay chipper during it.
  Narrator: Well, uh, this is, uh... Huh, I don't, um... I don't really know what to say, uh... so, um... stick around? Maybe? Because maybe we can resolve all this, get back to a little harmony? Hopefully? On the next episode of... WordGirl? Oh, goodness.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "A Star Is Burns," Barney makes an independent film about his alcoholism. Despite being a hilarious parody of arthouse dramas, it still creates a genuine sense of pathos about a serious societal issue.
  • "A Fish Called Selma": The In-Universe musical of Planet of the Apes (1968) is a parody of musicals based on films. But damn if it isn't catchy and with great rhymes.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: "Operation: Big Blue Marble" has a very Anvilicious Green Aesop in a show that's prone to pull Spoof Aesops but the message is delivered well and it manages to be a very fun special regardless.