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Spiritual Successor / Western Animation

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Spiritual Successor in Western Animation.

Shows with their own pages:

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  • MAD:
    • While the show is more of a spinoff to MADtv (1995), it's somewhat of this trope to KaBlam!, featuring many of the same staff (mainly a different cast as well, save for June).
    • It's essentially a slightly more kid-friendly version of Robot Chicken if it aired on Cartoon Network instead of Adult Swim.
  • Mad Jack the Pirate is more or less an animated Blackadder.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack is one to The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy as Cartoon Network's Black Comedy show.
  • Megas XLR is one to the 1981 mecha anime Albegas. While Albegas was released two decades earlier, it was also an Affectionate Parody of several mecha anime that preceded it. Albegas' Goro has a lot of similarities with Coop (a fat mecha anime enthusiast who, despite his manchild behaviour, always saves the day).
  • Middlemost Post: To The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. The show is like Flapjack but at a post office instead of a harbor, and with no grossout. Angus is like K'Nuckles because they're both grizzled captains accompanied by a Cheerful Child (Flapjack and Parker) and a female animal (Bubbie and Russell).
  • Ever wanted to see a French Spider-Man? Miraculous Ladybug is a pretty good approximation, albeit with a female Peter Parker in Marinette Dupain-Cheng and more Magical Girl trappings. Not only is Marinette/Ladybug a very direct Spider-Man Send-Up (a teenage superhero with a bug theme and a form-fitting red-and-black costume whose powers include the ability to swing from buildings, all while maintaining a Secret Identity as an Ordinary High-School Student who has to juggle schoolwork, a social life, and superheroics), she regularly teams up with and has a romantic interest in a fellow superhero with a cat theme, a form-fitting black costume, and a name that directly translates to "Black Cat". The parallels alsi extend to the supporting cast. Gabriel Agreste is Norman Osborn with elements of Wilson Fisk (Being the father of one of the hero's friends who dresses in white and turns out to be her Arch-Enemy and establishor of the Rogues Gallery), while his Hawk Moth identity takes after Thanos in purple color and seeking a McGuffin set. Chloe Bourgeois combines Flash Thompson's role as a mean, popular classmate who bullies the protagonist despite idolizing her superhero identity with Eddie Brock's role in becoming a villain over a misunderstanding. Lila Rossi combines elements of the Sam Rami version of Eddie Brock (being a sociopath who declares a vendetta on the hero for exposing her lies) with the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Mysterio (as Volpina and her season 5 storyline of plotting against Gabriel for firing her from his employ). Show Runner Thomas Astruc has never been shy about the comparisons; some of the original concept art for the show, in fact, consisted of parodies of various Spider-Man covers.
  • My Adventures with Superman: Due to its heavy influence from classic anime, especially Dragon Ball, many fans have happily declared it the closest we'll get to a "Great Saiyaman" show. It helps that Mr. Mxyzptlk looks like one of the Supreme Kais.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is an animated adaptation of Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls featuring anthropomorphic ponies instead of anthropomorphic planets. The Mane Six are strikingly similar to the Girlaxy. The similarities are due to the fact they share a creator. Lauren Faust was trying to pitch an adaptation of Milky Way but Hasbro got her to make Friendship Is Magic instead. Unused pitches for Milky Way shorts show an adventurous theme similar to non-Slice of Life FIM episodes. Later, Lauren Faust would go on to create DC Super Hero Girls, which is both considered to be this for Friendship Is Magic and her initial attempt at making a girl-tailored DC series, Super Best Friends Forever.
  • My Little Pony: A New Generation is an animated adaptation of Fallout: Equestria featuring a Main Character who is a social outcast in her isolated community that gets into trouble over a matter involving a Unicorn, then goes out on a journey across the land that long ago was once Equestria as she tries to repair the damage done to it by restoring the one thing that went missing long ago. Along the way, she meets a cast of colorful characters consisting of: The Unicorn that got our main lead into trouble in the first place, a Lawman Earth Pony that has history with our Main Characters' family, a Pegasus from a high-standing family that rejects the technologically-advanced society that Pegasi had developed following Equestrias' collapse, and lastly a Media Star that uses her platform to talk with the Ponies. Eventually, our Main Heroine gets into trouble with the Pegasi and eventually stumbles across a Cult of Personality that is led by a Red Earth Pony that wants to declare war against the Pegasi.
    • Also in the TV Series, there is a mysterious Alicorn that has some sort of personal history with Twilight Sparkle who is now setting herself up to be the Big Bad that our Main Character must inevitably face off against at some point.
  • Over the Garden Wall is very much a dark, kid-friendly adaptation of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy based on its characters, plot, and themes. Even 9 of the 10 episodes and locations are taken from the Circles of Hell in the poem.
  • PJ Masks would be the best, Kodomomuke-esque thing you'll get to an animated adaption of Juukou B-Fighter, right down to the color schemes and the female heroine being red like her live-action counterpart (Owlette to Reddle), and the battles being less life threatening.
  • The pilot for Pound Puppies (1980s) had the dogs run a secret adoption network from the pound, a la Hogan's Heroes. Naturally, comparing the pound to a Nazi stalag didn't suit the networks, so for the series proper it became a benevolent animal shelter. The evil Katrina Stoneheart wants nothing more than to see all canines rounded up, but Holly knows better, and helps the resident canines see every lost dog given to a better home.
  • The animated franchise Pucca is just as similar to Monica's Gang, except the show takes place in a fictional South Korean town instead of a fictional Brazilian neighborhood. Both Pucca and Monica are young girls who wear red and have Super-Strength and a Hair-Trigger Temper, and they both have male acquaintances who are in complicated relationships with them. In Pucca’s case, she has a crush on Garu, but he (usually) doesn’t return her affection and does not like her chasing him, while Jimmy Five is one of Monica’s best friends, but he frequently teases Monica to purposefully piss her off.
  • The holiday special Rankin Bass' Jack Frost reads very much like a Gender Flip of The Little Mermaid (the original story, not the Disney film). In both, an elemental being unseen by humans falls in love with a human after saving him/her from drowning. She/he chooses to become human, but according to the magic's rules, can only remain human if the beloved one marries her/him. As a human, she/he and the beloved one become good friends, but sadly, the beloved one falls in love with and marries someone else. In a Bittersweet Ending, the elemental leaves the human world (although Jack doesn't die, he just goes back to being a winter sprite) and invisibly kisses her/his beloved in the air at the end.
  • Ready Jet Go! is pretty much a cartoon version of 3rd Rock from the Sun, but with more positivity and educational elements.
  • ReBoot is this to TRON, but limits the User to Player Character in Games and Deus ex Machina, focusing on the lives of the programs instead. Also increased the premise's scope beyond a single system by factoring in the internet.
  • Recess:
    • The show is essentially Hogan's Heroes: The Animated Series. Just replace the POW camp with an elementary school and you get the idea.
    • The episode "Dodgeball City" is both a Western parody and a playground version of the Achilles in His Tent plot line in The Iliad. In both the Greek epic and the episode, the main characters are engaged in a war (in this case a dodgeball war with the fifth graders), but the greatest fighter/player of them all (Achilles/Gus) refuses to join them (Achilles out of anger at Agamemnon, Gus out of guilt that he hurt someone the last time he played). But when someone the hero personally cares about is hurt (Achilles' best friend Patroclus is killed/Gus's kindergarten friend Hector is hit by a ball), the hero charges back into the fray and scores a victory. Ironically, the cartoon uses the name "Hector" for the equivalent of Patroclus, while the role of the mythical Hector, Patroclus's killer, is taken by Lawson.
  • Regular Show:
    • It's this to Sam & Max, only set in California rather than New York - Sam and Mordecai being the taller , laidback straight men to the short and easily annoyed Max and Rigby especially. In both shows, the characters have been inseparable friends since childhood, find themselves in extremely strange situations, and solve mysteries, and are basically the only people who can put up with each other. The main difference is obviously that Sam & Max are freelance detectives, whereas Mordecai and Rigby are park workers under contract to Mr Maillard (albeit with Benson supervising them).
    • It also makes for a good cartoon adaptation of Nedroid, a web comic about the surreal adventures of a tall blue bird and his short brown animal friend, with a cast of other weird anthropomorphic animals and objects.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show to Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, both overt (if quite twisted) homages to the works of Bob Clampett and Tex Avery.
  • Rick and Morty was inspired by a short film that Justin Roiland made spoofing Back to the Future, and while the show removes the direct references, it still makes for a great unofficial Animated Adaptation, albeit with far more R-rated humor and sensibilities.
  • Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends makes for a pretty good animated adaptation of The X-Files. The episode "Target: Hero" even makes for a more entertaining Superman story than anything Superman: The Animated Series had to offer much like The Iron Giant and Disney's Hercules.
  • Schoolhouse Rock!: Kermit and Fozzie's guest appearance singing "Unpack Your Adjectives" during the 50th Anniversary Singalong is the closest thing to Kermit returning to his Sesame Street roots.
  • Some consider She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (and the '80s original for that matter) to be the Wonder Woman cartoon we've strangely never gotten. Both star "warrior princess" type characters who find themselves learning to be heroes while adapting to a new way of life, Adora with life outside the Evil Horde and Diana with life off Paradise Island. This is especially noted in Adora's relationship with Catra in the 2010s series, which mirrors Wonder Woman's relationship with one of her most famous enemies Cheetah. In several incarnations, Cheetah is Wonder Woman's Evil Former Friend, just like Catra with Adora, and they're both cat-themed.
  • The Simpsons episode "Kamp Krusty", in which the kid protagonists take over a terrible summer camp and establish their own Lord of the Flies-esque regime, is about as close as you can get to showing an adaptation of William Butler's The Butterfly Revolution on prime-time television. (The Butterfly Revolution did receive an official live-action film adaptation, titled Summer Camp Nightmare.)
  • From the island setting, mutated animal cast (with a orange protagonist leading the fray), science fiction overtones, and emphasis on slapstick comedy, Spliced is probably the closest thing we'll ever get to a Crash Bandicoot animated series.
  • The post-sequel episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, primarily the ones starting from Season 10 onwards, can easily be seen as a modern revival of The Ren & Stimpy Show, having much more Deranged Animation that utilizes squash-and-stretch and grotesque imagery more often, as well as amplifying the sense of Surreal Humor found within the writing. The fact that Bob Camp, who became the showrunner for Ren & Stimpy following John Kricfalusi's departure, became a head storyboard artist for the show starting with The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water only adds to the adaptiveness.
  • What would happen if Urusei Yatsura was an American cartoon instead of a Japanese anime? You'd get Star vs. the Forces of Evil. This becomes ever more apparent from Season 2 onward, when the romantic relationships between characters get more prominence, in addition to being a better Lighter and Softer Mortal Kombat animated show than the actual one.
  • Star Wars Rebels bears many similarities to an animated version of Firefly... only set in the Star Wars universe.
  • Steven Universe:
    • The show can be compared to to The Powerpuff Girls and (to a degree) Teen Titans (2003). All three are acclaimed superhero-type Cartoon Network shows with some anime inspirations. Steven Universe is also seen as a western Dragon Ball Z.
    • The show is in many ways a great western take on Dragon Ball. Steven’s “artist born to warriors” role is pretty much identical to Gohan’s “intellectual born to warriors” and their sensitive nature in contrast to being obscenely powerful due to their hybrid nature leads to similar conflicts. The race he comes from is also a bunch of violent conquerers. Multiple people take on aspects of Vegeta’s personality, both pre and post-redemption, Garnet is basically Piccolo (complete with permafusion), Pearl is Chi-Chi and Amethyst is Krillin, older yet basically the same age in personality (and a dwarf). One could see Steven as a reconstruction of Gohan, since the biggest difference being that Gohan’s peaceful nature is shown to have actually made things worse (even being directly responsible for Goku’s death) and Steven’s peaceful nature is actually what tends to save the day.
    • Steven Universe: Future is a successor to Ben 10: Alien Force as a Darker and Edgier sequel to a Cartoon Network original series featuring the Kid Hero of the original show grown up into a teenager.

    T-Z 
  • Teen Titans Go! is this to Justice Friends, a series of shorts that aired between episodes of Dexter's Laboratory, which also starred a group of incompetent superheroes who were more interested in goofing off and getting into wacky hijinks than fighting evil.
  • The Mask is pretty much about an unlucky guy who instead of becoming a supervillain becomes a superhero with him having the same traits such as being genuinely insane, a sense of humor and is feared by supervillains but otherwise is harmless and a good hearted man which makes it a light-hearted animated series of The Joker and especially his Earth-3 counterpart the Jokester.
  • Time Squad is just Sherman & Peabody, if Peabody was a gay robot and Sherman had Peabody's genius mind and were accompanied by a Cowboy Cop.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures is the best adaptation of Bloom County that we're ever likely to get.
  • Much like the Flintstones/Honeymooners example above, Top Cat was basically Hanna-Barbera's animated version of The Phil Silvers Show, only with a cast of talking cats. They even got Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, as the voice for Benny the Ball, while Arnold Stang's voice work for the title character was an impression of Silvers' voice as Sgt. Bilko.
  • Totally Spies!:
    • Especially considering the ahem, pandering aspect, the series is a more "PG" family-friendly version of Stripperella.
    • The show's campy premise of three girls kicking butt and taking down villains in Los Angeles while working for an old man makes it more or less an animated adaptation of Charlie's Angels albeit with a spy agency instead of the LAPD. Even an ad for it on Cartoon Network where the cartoon was airing on parodied the opening to the latter show.
  • Total Drama started out as a parody of Survivor. However, its preestablished relationships among the cast, the focus on challenges, and the Drama actually makes it pretty closer to an animated adaptation of The Challenge.
  • Much like the Flintstones/Honeymooners example above, Top Cat was basically Hanna-Barbera's animated version of The Phil Silvers Show, only with a cast of talking cats. They even got Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, as the voice for Benny the Ball, while Arnold Stang's voice work for the title character was an impression of Silvers' voice as Sgt. Bilko.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender is a spiritual successor to some other works:
    • To the franchise of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It features many previous writers and artists from both Last Airbender and Korra, as well as the animation studio of the latter, Studio Mir. The characters have many similarities to Avatar characters; Lance-Sokka, Keith-Zuko/Mako, Coran-Varrick, Allura-Yue/Katara/Asami, Pidge-Korra/Asami/Toph, Hunk-Bolin, etc. The lions also represent the elements.
    • To Thunder Cats 2011. Both are Animesque re-imaginings to popular cartoon shows from the 80's. Instead of just retelling their stories, they combine elements of their original series with Science Fantasy while giving the characters different backstories, personalities and motivations.
    • It can be seen as the closest thing to an animated Power Rangers series minus the Henshin Hero stuff. It also can be seen as the closest thing to a Robotech reboot given that like said show, the war continues after the main Big Bad is ultimately killed off, which is due to the fact that the showrunners cited it as an influence in a Hypable interview and the Robotech influences becomes more noticeable in the second half of season 7.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) is not so much a Spider-Man show as it is a Deadpool show. The man himself pokes fun at this in the episode he appears, dismissing Spider-Man's costume as a knockoff of his and staging a Hostile Show Takeover.
  • The Venture Brothers is this to Jonny Quest as it shares not only the same premise, but the same continuity as well. (Race dies at the beginning of a season 1 episode, and adult Jonny becomes a reoccurring character.)
  • Wacky Races is fairly close to being an Animated Adaptation of The Great Race.
  • We Bare Bears and Clarence could be compared to Ed, Edd n Eddy and by extension Rocko's Modern Life, as all four are (mostly) down-to-earth shows featuring the misadventures of three "misfit" protagonists with different personalities (the silly/fun-loving one, the serious/abrasive one and the dorky/neurotic one) dealing with the world around them, the main differences being that two of them have pre-teens operating in the suburbs with relatively small, well-defined casts, while the two others have young adult Funny Animals living in the 'burbs but having most of their pursuits in the city featuring a wide collection of characters, as well as the fact Bears and Clarence are quite idealistic and light-hearted while Ed... and RML often border on Sadist Show grounds and are renowned for subtle adult humour.
  • Work It Out Wombats! is like a modern version of PB&J Otter, as both shows star a trio of animal siblings who help people in their community.
  • The ZhuZhus is essentially a successor to Littlest Pet Shop (2012), both being Canadian-American cartoons about a young girl who can talk to eccentric colorful talking animals. Helped by how The ZhuZhus started airing in the same year Littlest Pet Shop was ending members
  • Team Umizoomi is one to Blue's Clues, as both combine live-action and animation, and share a lot of the same staff members.

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