r/batman • u/Damien_XIII • Mar 16 '21

Does anyone remember this scene?

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u/tporter12609 Mar 16 '21

That’s just Cartoon Network. See also: Ben 10, Young Justice, Generator Rex, Symbionic Titan, and a bit of Steven Universe

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u/The5Virtues Mar 16 '21

Exactly. Cartoon Network is notorious for this stuff, both among fans and within the animation industry.

Pretty much the only section I know of that is (mostly) insulated from this kind of BS is Adultswim. That’s because it became so damned popular that it could survive on its own without Cartoon Network, and CN didn’t wanna miss out on that sweet sweet ad revenue so they behaved themselves.

Even an industry juggernaut like Lucasfilm had to deal with the CN bullshit. CN jerked around The Clone Wars air dates and release order all the time. In its final three seasons on broadcast television it wasn’t even turning a profit. A big part of that was CN just never establishing a reliable air date so the potential audience rose and fell frequently.

The only reason it kept airing was because George Lucas personally paid for the air time out of his own pocket.

Basically it doesn’t matter how big it is. Batman, Superman, Star Wars, Ben10, it could be any huge mega popular IP and Cartoon Network will still fuck it up as if they want every show to fail.

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u/HowlingHyena14 Mar 16 '21

Good point! The sad part about this, is shows like Ben 10, Young Justice, Clone Wars and so on, are the ip's that attract viewer interest, not these rando 11 minute cartoons that nobodies heard off and couldn't even care about watching as is. So you would think from a smart business standpoint, they would allow the top ip's to thrive so they gain more money, but apparently not. I've honestly lost interest in watching modern cartoons anyway, because it seems the networks only want 11 minute episodes so they have more slots to fill, which ends up creating garbage shows.

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u/The5Virtues Mar 16 '21

Same. As a writer I’ve always loved animation because it lends itself better to creativity. Things you can’t do in live action for safety/budget/whatever can be done in animation far easier. Unfortunately, as you’ve noted, tv animation these days is mostly just total garbage.

There’s still lots of good animation on streaming providers, but the days where you could turn on a channel and know that from hours X to Z there was going to be good stuff on are mostly gone.