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What were the best animated shows of the 1980's?

UberTag

Member
I agree. Personally, I find many of the Japanese shows produced in the '80s more easy to digest than even the stuff being made today.
That goes without saying.
Anime's been in a downward spiral since the early 2000s... which stands in stark contrast with how television quality has improved across the board almost everywhere else.
 
That goes without saying.
Anime's been in a downward spiral since the early 2000s... which stands in stark contrast with how television quality has improved across the board almost everywhere else.

Do you chalk that up to how reductive and stifling the Japanese culture as a whole can be? And I don't mean this as an insulting way, but just how insular and closed off they tend to be. Everything is gundam suits, kaijus, monster hunting, or Dragon Ball Z, at least in my observation.
 

C4Lukins

Junior Member
It was all bad. As a child of the 80's. I have some fond memories of the time.... But revisiting that era as an adult, it was mostly shit. We did not know better, and thankfully better has come.
 

Tsunamo

Member
Only 80's anime that comes off of the top of my head is that version is Astro Boy. I'd still pick that over the other versions of the show.
XTeeSWXSWho-Remembers-The-Trap-Door-1063571.jpg


The Trap Door was a lovely claymation series. I rewatched it recently, and I think it's still entertaining for all ages.
Speaking as someone who grewup in the 90's but had this air here when I was a child, it was indeed.
 

Fritz

Member
Ulysses 31 - holds up really well. The setting and the retelling of a classical epic is really enjoyable.
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Count Duckula - it is seriously funny. some good writing
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Let's see...
Captain Harlock in 78, Captain Future (Captain Flam in French) in 79.

The second half of One Upon a Time... Man in 81. I really enjoyed it.

Then the sequel Once Upon a Time... Space in 82. My kid brother was 8 and absolutely loved that show. He thought himself to play the theme song on the keyboard...

I caught a couple episodes of Ulysses 31 and I though it was so-so.

He-Man and the Master of the Universe is one of the most boring thing I've ever seen.

Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light had potential but it was canceled after a short season.

That leaves Transformers and GI-Joe. I think those were the popular shows.
 
He-Man and the Master of the Universe is one of the most boring thing I've ever seen.

I was having a good time watching 'She-Ra: Princess of Power', recently. It was so cheap, so awful, badly acted, and filled with recycled animation that I couldn't help but laugh at it the whole time.
 
Seriously, what animated shows from the 1980's hold up well today that was not attached to a merchandise, movie, or toyline? I recently had the chance to check out the old Tom and Jerry cartoons from the 1940's and 50's, and damn do they hold up to this day! By contrast, everything I enjoyed back in the 1980's was crap, if I'm being brutally honest. Going at it from an animation snob's point of view, what's probably the benchmark of 1980's television animation? The only thing I can look to in the 1980's would be The Little Mermaid, Secret of Nihm, American Tale, ect., but those are feature films, whereas one could make the argument that Batman the Animated Series and the Simpsons were as much pop culture cornerstones on the 90's as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.

So were there truly any pure animated television gems of the 1980's? I really can't think of any strong examples, and yes, we all have our favorite guilty pleasures, but do they hold up today on their own merits, like Roadrunner vs. Coyote, or are they too tethered to marketing that they come off as cash ins, like G.I.Joe, Ducktales, and Masters of the Universe?
.

Shout-rocks-JEM-and-The-Holograms-The-Truly-Outrageous-Complete-Series.jpg

Yes. Jem and the Holograms.

Don't worry about it not holding up. I watched this for the first time when it appeared on the HUB in 2012 I think. Funny and fuckery abound.
 
too tethered to marketing that they come off as cash ins, like [...] Ducktales

Did you just call DuckTales a cash-in?

Seriously.
OP, go ly down


Yes. It's tied in with an already existing property. It's a product of its time. I know a lot of people have fond memories of the show, but I just don't think it's transcendent on the level of a Simpsons, or even BTAS, with its unique noir style art deco.

Criticizing Duck Tales for being "tied in with an already existing property," and in the same paragraph mentioning Batman? Really?


Today, you have [...] Lego Batman

Two merchandising properties in one!
The "Lego <x>" "series" of stuff is horrific merchandising.
 
Since DuckTales was brought up, it's worth bringing up a 1987 article recently linked on Twitter which indicates how the working conditions of the Japanese animators to whom the show was outsourced made its creation possible.

It is cheaper for American studios to ship the work out than to pay union wages here, but Disney Vice President of Television Animation Michael Webster and "DuckTales" associate producer Tom Ruzicka insisted that cost was not the determining factor in the decision to make "DuckTales" in Japan. (At $300,000 per episode, the budget for "DuckTales" is good, but not extraordinary.)

"When we started, the yen was at 240 to the dollar; it's now at 143 to the dollar, so our costs went up 40% just through shifts in the currency," said Webster. "It is not cheaper for us to do it over there. But they have a talent pool of fantastic draftsmen that we don't. We have some talented artists over here, but nowhere near enough to handle the massive amounts of footage we need. And the work ethic in Japan is phenomenal: They all work six-day weeks, and probably at least 10-hour days. Some of them work all night. I've gone into the studio in the morning and seen guys sleeping under their desks--it's unbelievable."

The Japanese studio TMS animated for a lot of American-produced cartoons in the 1980s and 1990s, such as The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Animaniacs, and Batman: The Animated Series.

That goes without saying.
Anime's been in a downward spiral since the early 2000s... which stands in stark contrast with how television quality has improved across the board almost everywhere else.

Do you chalk that up to how reductive and stifling the Japanese culture as a whole can be? And I don't mean this as an insulting way, but just how insular and closed off they tend to be. Everything is gundam suits, kaijus, monster hunting, or Dragon Ball Z, at least in my observation.

I'm rolling my eyes very hard over here.
 
Galaxy Rangers and The Real Ghostbusters (syndicated episodes), hold up extremely well, both shows tried to push the limits of what an animated could do and show at the time anyway.

This is the one North American series I gave some serious thought to mentioning. Its humor is timeless.
A lot of the gags get recycled so all of the episodes blur together eventually but it holds up just fine today.

Also, even though it doesn't get held up to the same nostalgia standard as DuckTales, there are some one-off episodes from Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears that I would consider to be first-rate. The quality is sort of all over the map. Most of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers aired in the 1980s as well.

1988 seems to be the turning point for a lot of these high water mark shows to materialize.

Well that was around the time the Saturday morning rules started to get broken a bit, and characters would eventually be allowed to punch and have serious conflicts, and do episodes with messages.
 
--->




Seriously, the criteria for the OP is so strange.
Especially when they're apparently alright with Batman and Lego Batman.

Yeah, Batman's always been used to push merch. Like, I'm pretty certain the only reason Man Bat is in every single Batman cartoon is because of toys.

manbatfigures.jpg
 

mclem

Member
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Cosgrove Hall was responsible for a ton of appealing and visually distinctive shows.


BD8D5fE.jpg


Still love The Trap Door, it had a wonderfully handmade feel to it.

Edit: Glad to see mentions of specific Cosgrove Hall titles and The Trap Door upthread, too.
 

UberTag

Member
OMG, you like Jem too! YAAAASSS! What's your favorite episode?
I didn't go to bat for Jem in this thread but it did have its moments.
I'm partial to the ep where Kimber and Stormer left their respective bands and enjoyed success as a duo while the Holograms and Misfits struggled.
 
I enjoyed Dinosaucers and Dink the Dinosaur really anything with Dinosaurs I watched.

In the 80's if you had any amount of success you had merchandise and a toyline, it shouldn't be held against the show for being popular.

Yes thank you. I'm really getting sick of these 90s kids (and it is 90s kids doing it) using that as an excuse to mock 80s cartoons as if theirs didn't.
 

Wag

Member
If we're including anime I'd say SDF Macross. (You can say Robotech for the western version)

Otherwise I always was a big fan of Dungeon and Dragons.
 

ckohler

Member
If you are talking actual animation quality (and not story per say) most of the best looking stuff was produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha. While they didn't always do full seasons of shows, they were contracted out to produce certain epiosodes or openings for various shows and the quality of thier output was leaps above the average crap animation seen in the 80s.

They did work on stuff like:
Early Tiny Toons Adventures
Mighty Orbots
Galaxy High
Batman: TAS
Alf Adventures

Tiny Toons in particular is a show where you can really see a difference in animation quality in the TMS produced episodes versus the later stuff which looked like garbage by comparison. TMS also animated the excellent looking "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" mini-movie.
 
Starcom, technically amazing for its time and very adult for a kid's show
Fully agree with this. Show was ace! Too bad it only ever picked up in Europe. If it had been a succes in the US, it might have been picked up for a second season. Toys were great too!
 

retroman

Member
Pingu_Show.png


Pingu was a great series with charming animation and a jolly sense of humour. I loved to watch it when I was a kid, and nowadays my daughter is addicted to the series :)
 

Toxi

Banned
There were some pretty great anime in the 1980s.

Stuff shown in America though? Yeah, it sucked outside very few exceptions like Real Ghostbusters and Ducktales. Even that stuff wasn't phenomenal. The 90s were a massive renaissance for western animation.

Mobile Suit Gundam, for one.
That was 1979.

But Zeta Gundam was fucking great.
 

City 17

Member
Wanted to say Cuttlas or El Bueno de Cuttlas, but it was aired during early 90s (91 to 94), it was great stuff though.

Also there were many good to great anime at the time.
 

Nepenthe

Member
This is a good one. Animation's decent too, altho I guess it counts as anime.
Not a lotta 80s cartoons dealing with apartheid, a fascist dictator and mechanization.

Well, guess what I'm about to watch today.

As for my contribution, that's...kinda hard. The 80s cartoons I loved the most outside of Disney were squarely in the Hanna-Barbara vain: lots of small creatures running around saving the day, sometimes in secret. I'm talking shit like Shirt Tales, Paw-Paw Bears, Kissyfur, and Pound Puppies. That was my happy, rainbow-colored crack as a kid, although I'm hardpressed to revisit any of it.
 
Well, guess what I'm about to watch today.

As for my contribution, that's...kinda hard. The 80s cartoons I loved the most outside of Disney were squarely in the Hanna-Barbara vain: lots of small creatures running around saving the day, sometimes in secret. I'm talking shit like Shirt Tales, Paw-Paw Bears, Kissyfur, and Pound Puppies. That was my happy, rainbow-colored crack as a kid, although I'm hardpressed to revisit any of it.

Don't forget about the Monchichis!

monchichis.jpg



Or the Biskitts!

biskittsariane.jpg


None of that assembly-line Hanna-Barbera crap holds up at all today, but it's still pretty fun to re-visit from a nostalgia POV.
 
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