Ahem . . .
Disclaimer: The following is strictly point of view, if I happen to insult a cartoon you like I'm just stating how I feel about its animation style unless specifically noted otherwise, you can go right on ahead liking it because I don't actually care.
Moving on . . .
I'm rooting for Animorphs the Anime the golden age of cartoons with nice action, plot/character development, and good animation quality for their time like Batman, Gargolyes, X-Men and Exosquad (Wingcommander, though no one agrees with me there) are gone and dead, Avatar tried to give them a comeback and it was pretty much like one of those scenes where one guy stands up to lead a charge and no one follows him. Oh, and it was kind of sort of semi-cancled because Spongebob is cheaper, more addictive to kids, and did I mention always freakin' on!?
We're reduced to the likes of Transformers Animated which I hate with a passion, Total Drama Island, which is the sort of thing a college kid could animate on a weekend, that barnyard thing, and other trash like that, mind you I'm talking about animation quality and alleged style, not to how good these shows may or may not be plotwise (not that TFA has one) wheras with Anime yeah you get some utter trash too but you also get some really fantastic stuff, like Record of Lodoss War, Robotech, ZOIDs, Blood: The Last Vampire or Cowboy BeBop, heck even DBZ which mostly consisted of powering up and speed lines to indicate where a fist probably is but is moving to quick to see.
For Animorphs to be treated decently it's going to need to be an anime because cartoons kind of stopped trying when Sailor Moon and DBZ came in to kick down their sand castles and steal their ratings. For that to happen someone in Japan would have to somehow get the rights to it, start it up and get enough of a viewing audience that it gets to the states, which . . . well, honestly, probably won't happen, so we're stuck with live action, bad animation, or 3D animation (like said barnyard thingy, or Clone Wars) which would make it too high budget and thus too high risk if it didn't blow Spongebob out of the water in exactly the way that Avatar didn't, and given how utterly braindead most kids today are, I don't see anything with a plot keeping them entertained, I've lost far too much faith in humanity.
Kids today don't want to watch war stories or see character development, or see tragic romances about hawks and teen idols, they dont want to think of the morality behind life and death decisions, if there's action they just want action, if there's humor they only want really simple humor, if there's plot it had better be restrained to a single epsidoe they can easily skip. They want bright flashing colors, lack of anything remotely inteligent, characters who are clearly dumber than they are.
The exceptions . . . well, they read books so they'd be all set with the Animorphs book series.
Even educational shows are getting dumber, look at Dora the Explorer . . . for starters no kid I know actually remembers the spanish they learn from that show for more than a flippin' hour, and she seems to demand common sense rather than brain straining. "Which shape is freakin' glowing kids?! Which shape is surrounded by light!? Guessed yet? Huh? HUH!? Well let's just stand here fore ten seconds while I let you figure it out! Come on, which one's glowing!?!? Just in case you guessed wrong I'm going to tell you, then pretend you got it right, you stupid little pile of stunted growth!! Pay my studio money! Do it now! Buy my dolls! Buy theeeem!"
It's great for self esteem I guess . . . my little brother is always so thrilled with himself when if guesses right . . . nevermind that he's like eight years old by now, knows what a square is, and still doesnt speak a word of spanish beyond "hola", "amigo" and "uno". Anyway animation just keeps going downhill, its like when Dumbledore says we can choose between what's right and what's easy, the studios keep picking what's easy and nothing new gets made, when it does it's just the same as the current crap but with a different face, characters named differently, same boring tale.
. . . then you go to Anime and you've got chicks in short skirts with abnormally large chests and thin waists sure, but you've also got more proportionally correct vampire girls in skirts that, miraculously actually go past their knees chopping demons in half with swords in exactly the way Buffy wishes she could, giant robots beating the crap out of each other, people, sometimes main characters dying, main characters actually learning things, subtlety and . . . so many cat girls you can tell they're just waiting to get their hands on morphing technology!
I grant you sometimes Anime is uber repetitive too, i.e. Tenchi, Ranma, whatever the crap all about one mildly attractive teenage guy with martial arts ability very noticibly not acting like a real teenage guy and taking advantage of the large number of unrealistically eager girls who apparently don't notice all the other guys in the series, shows like Robotech, Zoids, Gundam (feel my hatred!) Big O, all about giant robots who don't like other giant robots, Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, all about kids nobody seems to be supervising enslaving little monsters and making them battle for their amusement, the difference is when compared to the utter sameness of the current US lineup, which is about five different shows about idiotic main characters who prance about showing off their lack of intellect, three shows that are pale imitations of the shows they're supposedly remaking, and two shows about some kid who turns into like fifteen aliens and hangs out with his cousin because none of the writers can in good concience pretend someone likes him enough to be his friend, giant robots fighting, men with actual restraint and monsters beating the snot out of each other actually sounds worthwhile!
Or maybe I'm getting too old, maybe I just can't let go of the past . . . but then that's probably because shows with stories, characters you can relate to rather than feel superior to, and all that, actually demand enough of an emotional response to be worth remembering in my old age. I expect nothing less from an Animorphs movie, or an animorphs TV seriers, sadly I don't think the people with the power to make it happen actually . . . hmm, what's the word . . . oh yes "care"
