Animaniacs

I'm so glad you care for us too!

Since TMS Entertainment of Japan was one of the few studios that did the animation for the 1993 Animaniacs, are there any accidentally animesque elements and moments within the original 1993 Animaniacs?

What a weirdly specific question

In answer to your question,probably,I don't recall anything standing out as anime like

Season 2 of the Animaniacs revival comes out November 5.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheAnimaniacs/status/1423720534261518346

Edited by jessicadicicco610 on Aug 6th 2021 at 12:37:47 PM

Still hoping it comes to more streaming services in the future

Imagine if the show also started being put on HBO Max (since the show is on HBO Max in Latin America).

That reference to Tucker Carlson really blew my damn mind. I know the original referenced people like Howard Stern and all but even back then, it didn't make sense. How do you reference things or people kids don't even know about? And if it's for the adults, will they find it funny? References by themselves aren't jokes.

Edited by HBarnill on Aug 6th 2021 at 2:07:19 AM

The joke isn't that "Hey, it's Tucker Carlson", but rather, "Hey, it's Tucker Carlson getting humiliated by the Warner siblings". For the kids who don't know who Tucker Carlson is, he comes off as a generic snooty, self-absorbed TV reporter.

Watching the Season 2 teaser, the gag of Wakko's eye popping out, combined with the fact that he has Black Bead Eyes, looks really disturbing.

All the audience needs to know is that the Warners are heckling an ass. Even if the ass is based on a real ass, the audience doesn't really need to know that in order for it to work. Knowing just adds an additional level of enjoyment.

Edited by Robbery on Aug 6th 2021 at 8:56:46 AM

The use of real, modern people is indeed a Bonus meant for adults, and still in line with the Looney Tunes as they would constantly make references to then-current people. As others have pointed out, the kids don't need to know who Tucker Carlson or Jimmy Kimmel are, they just need to know they're strange television personalities that get into conflict with the Warners (or Pinky and the Brain in the latter case).

Plus, if there's anyone who deserves to be tormented by the Warners, it's Tucker Carlson.

Looney Tunes literally had a whole cartoon of Humphrey Bogart demanding Elmer Fudd cook him a rabbit. I've never seen a Humphrey Bogart movie and I only had the vaguest idea of what some of his movies were while growing up. If kids could grow up with reruns of those cartoons, I'm sure Animaniacs making digs at more modern popular figures is fine.

Not only that, but a lot of Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera characters are actually explicit caricatures of celebrities that have been pretty much forgotten to time, so it's not like this is a recent thing, either.

Hell, even the Scooby gang were based on the leads of a long-forgotten teen drama.

Edited by lbssb on Aug 6th 2021 at 9:47:34 AM

Oh, really? Which one?

It was called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The Scooby connection is even mentioned on the trope page.

Yeah, Shaggy was based off Bob Denver's character on that show.

It sounds like something out of the Harem Genre.

Oh yes, a lot of old cartoon characters are actually based on the celebrities of the time. Sometimes even their names come from the celebrities they're inspired by, like Foghorn Leghorn named after Senator Claghorn (a radio character portrayed by Fred Allen), or Yogi Bear named after baseball player Yogi Berra. But then the Weird Al Effect happens, and the cartoon characters remain popular while the original celebrities get long-forgotten.

Heck, even among the main Animaniacs characters, Wakko has his voice and accent based on Ringo Starr, and the Brain on Orson Welles, and kids nowadays are probably more familiar with Wakko or the Brain than with the famous people their voice is based on.

His voice is no longer that deep...

That's rather besides the point. It was originally based on Orson Welles, but evolved over time.

I meant Wakko...

In my defence, that was an ambiguous statement.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis bears a great deal of resemblance to the classic Archie scenario (you might be forgiven for thinking Dobie Gillis ripped Archie off, but by all accounts it didn't, even though Archie predates the short stories on which The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis were based by about 3 years; I should say that the TV show bears much more resemblance to Archie than the short stories do, so I suppose it's possible that the makers of the show were thinking of Archie when they created it). Another very similar concept was The Aldrich Family, which began life as a stage play and then became a radio comedy focusing on teenaged Henry Aldrich (the opening to The Aldrich Family radio show had Henry's mother yelling "Heeeeen-Reeeeee!" which you can hear referenced in a number of old Looney Tunes). The stage play focused on the family in general, but the radio show focused more on Henry, and it was the radio show that bore a striking resemblance to Archie (The Aldrich Family and the Archie radio shows are practically indistinguishable). So the roots of the Harem Genre go back farther than you think, even in the US.

But all the elements are in place, in all of these. Good-hearted but naive (you might say "dim," but that's not always the case) male lead, his goofy/eccentric pal, and (at least) two girls between whom he splits his attention. The Scooby Gang was indeed based on the Dobie Gillis characters (though obviously not the scenario—that came from another old rado show called I Love a Mystery), though Fred looks considerably more robust than Dobie ever did; Skip from Funky Phantom reads more like Dobie that Fred does. Early drafts had a third male character, and the characters that eventually became Velma and Shaggy were siblings.

Interestingly, the success of Filmation's Archie animated series led Fred Silverman, the head of CBS daytime programming, to commission HB to make another show about teenagers in a rock band, which was the original concept for Scooby Doo when it was called House of Mystery and then Mysteries 5. Eventually, HB gave CBS Josie and the Pussycats to fulfill the "kids in a rock band" request (which is why Josie is in a rock band; prior to the cartoon, Josie was a gender-flipped, college-aged Archie), and Scooby became what it is. Fred is named for Fred Silverman, by the way (he'd previously been named "Ronnie"—you can even see that name on some of the storyboards for "What a Night for a Knight"—and before that, "Geoff").

Edited by Robbery on Aug 7th 2021 at 11:46:52 AM

Why exactly are people complaining about stuff the original show would have done back in the 90s?

Edited by Aldo930 on Aug 7th 2021 at 1:47:39 AM