Nostalgia
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood, where they aired the newest episode of the show X-Men ’97. And my god it is such a good show. And we had a guest there, Gui Agustini, the voice of Sunspot.
Now as much as I enjoy this show, I don’t think everything should come back as a reboot or continuation of the old show or movies. We don’t need this, we need fresh and new stories and characters. One example, Night Court, which I was on, just couldn’t find myself, and I couldn’t take the show any longer. I just don’t think it was good at all. I think what is happening is some studios hear fans say something about how they miss certain shows and want them back. But hey, what ever gets more money to the studios and me on set more often.
One thing about me, I was born in the 80’s, and have some memory of them. I do remember some cartoons I watched like Ninja Turtles, and He-Man, and the thing is, a lot of those shows are very hard to watch now. The animation wasn’t bad for the time, it’s just the story and other strange elements added that feel dumb and unnecessary. I would say things started getting better in the late 80’s, because I watching Duck Tales and liked it. Haven’t seen it since but there are others since the 90’s I watched like Animanics, which if you watch again as an adult, you’ll catch on to so many jokes you missed before, making the show even better.
Some other shows like Gargoyles, Batman, Spider-Man and such during the 90’s were also good shows, some I did rewatch later as an adult and they still hold up. Now I can’t say there weren’t any stinkers because like every era, not everything was good. As we were entering the new millennium, I did discover some anime Like Cowboy Bebop and Gundam Wing, which were both good, and had an actual story.
Then one day I decided to put it on Nickelodeon because I haven’t watched anytime from that channel in a long time and landed on Fairly Odd Parents. I laughed so hard and just thought the show as really good, up until season 4 and after which I like to call bad fan fiction. But that doesn’t stop me from cosplaying as Timmy Turner. Animation standards were going up, and there were better stories coming up giving shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I thought was so good I just blasted through it.
I figure the reason animated shows are getting better is because the adults now feel more encouraged to be expressive, and silly. I also believe what’s going on with some of these new cartoons is they know who some of their audience will be, which are adults. Many in their 30’s or older, and gave us other good shows like Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Young Justice, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Then some other stuff not entirely meant for kids like Metalocalypse, which I also enjoyed. Now, I know some old shows were brought back like Voltron and He-Man, both shows being really good.
Over all, nostalgia isn’t always something good. But if you are going to bring something back, do so as part of the story, and improve upon it. But do try for new things. Fortunately that seems to work with some animated shows, but not so much live action.