Do You Still Enjoy Cartoons As An Adult?

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

I've always liked animated TV shows. I preferred them way more than any other type of show for a long time.

At some point my peers within my age range started watching other shows besides animated ones. So I tried expanding out. I liked a lot of different stuff, but when it came to watching a cartoon over anything else, I'd always pick the cartoon. Even when I turned 18 and onward, this was still true.

I used to wonder if I was weird for preferring to watch a Spongebob rerun instead of something like The Big Bang Theory. People talked about The Office, or Breaking Bad; but I cared more about Adventure Time, and The Amazing World of Gumball.

People I knew still liked animated stuff when they got older, but it shifted more to shows like Family Guy, The Simpsons, and South Park. The only one I ever watched was South Park. I didn't care for Family Guy, and I never sat through an episode of The Simpsons in my life (which probably sounds crazy).

I used to wonder if it has to do with me being an artist that I gravitate to animated shows over live action ones. For me it really was a combination of the visuals, plus a lot of the shows I watched had some aspect to the writing that kept me hooked.

Regardless of me being able to see value in animated television, I do think there's still a bit of a stigma surrounding watching animated shows as an adult, not so much from younger generations probably, but definitely from older ones. I don't find watching animated shows as an adult strange at all, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder to myself if it was an odd thing to do.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter of course what television preference someone has, but I do find it interesting that older people tend to devalue any type of animated show.

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

I love animated shows. I don't really understand the whole stereotype of them only being for kids, or people acting like if you watch cartoons as an adult you're childish and should watch "actual" TV. I find I don't like most live action shows, usually for the sake of "maturity" they end up being boring or depressing. Give me a DVD of Transformers, Batman the Animated series, etc and I'm all set. They're funny, well made, and I can sit down and have fun watching TV without having to sit through talks on real world issues. An absolute win.

 

[MightyMario]

Of course! There’s no rule saying you can’t watch an animated show once you grow older. I have a large appreciation for shows like Chowder and Gumball, plus I enjoy Family Guy and The Simpsons!

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

Tom & Jerry is a frequent go to.

 

[LegendOfMeesh]

I love Bluey. so much.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

absolutely, and even beyond shows from childhood, some of the shows I've seen the past few years and have enjoyed are The Owl House, Moon Girl, Hilda, Kipo, The Dragon Prince, Infinity Train, and probably a few others that aren't coming to mind
might be more selective nowadays but I'll always find animated shows appealing

 

[Turo602]

I feel like there's been a serious decline in the quality and ambition of animated shows. We used to have great cartoons in the 90s and early 2000s that pushed the boundaries of censorship and storytelling like Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men: The Animated Series, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) that despite airing on a children's block, retained the great action and complex storytelling found in their source material, giving it a far wider appeal than its target demographic.

While there's been great follow ups leading into the 2010s, a lot of it also ended up getting cancelled early and not just the action/superhero shows either, but legitimately interesting reboots of classics like Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated and The Looney Tunes Show. Even Disney's 2017 DuckTales reboot just seemingly ended for no real reason despite its popularity that saw it expanding into an animated universe with a backdoor pilot for a Darkwing Duck spin-off that never came to pass in favor of a separate Darkwing Duck series on Disney+ that has yet to come to fruition.

Now, the days of Saturday morning cartoons seem long extinct and even though streaming services are the perfect avenue for animated content, it's clear that there's no real intent on making animation a priority with Netflix cutting their budget for animation and Max pushing away their upcoming animated projects onto other networks.

I still enjoy watching cartoons, but there just hasn't been much that has caught my attention in more recent times. Everything is either a complete downgrade of something that came before or gets altered beyond recognition for a dumber generation with shorter attention spans who prioritize flashy colorful visuals over character and storytelling. The good stuff never lasts and there just doesn't seem to be any interest in pursuing these type of shows anymore in today's landscape like there was in the past.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Yes.

If anything I think cartoons have gotten significantly better over the past decade with stuff like Owl House, Castlevania, Star vs the Forces of Evil, and Steven Universe. I think there's a lot more stuff that can be done in the realm of animation when you don't have to rely on blending the more fantastical elements of the cartoon with physical actors on screen.

 

[thePlinko]

I don’t tend to watch a lot of TV in general these days, and when I do it’s usually just the first thing I see on that I’m willing to watch which mostly just leads to me watching Seinfeld for a half an hour while eating. Sometimes I’ll think about watching a show for the first time or rewatching a classic, and usually that will be something animated, but then I realize that I have a lot of other things I’d rather be doing.

 

[Dizzi]

Theres not really very many cartoons on the channels that i watch...

 

[CynicalSquid]

I tend to enjoy animated shows over live action. Futurama and Avatar are my favorite shows of all time and I still love them to this day.

 

[GrooseIsLoose]

It depends on the show. Don't wanna watch Ben 10 anymore. But Gravity Falls >>

 

[Ganondorf]

I don't have cable, so I haven't really watched anything new in several years. However, online streaming anime is still a cartoon, so yeah? Heehee.

 

[A Link In Time]

I love animated TV shows.

I think animation as a medium does a much better job of conveying fantastical powers than live action. Seeing powers creatively expressed through animation looks so much more appealing to me than wonky CGI in live action.

That said, I feel like there aren't as many quality animated Western TV shows these days as there were from the 1960s through the 2000s. I love old school episodes of Scooby Doo as well as Tom and Jerry and shows like Avatar The Last Airbender and Courage the Cowardly Dog. There haven't been as many good shows in recent years. Samurai Jack Season 5, Primal, and The Legend of Korra are some of the few good modern animated Western shows.

I think that's part of the reason why I'm watching more anime in recent years because it fills the gap in Western animation. A lot of anime today is some of my favorite ever like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Bleach The Thousand Year Blood War.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

I love animated TV shows.

I think animation as a medium does a much better job of conveying fantastical powers than live action. Seeing powers creatively expressed through animation looks so much more appealing to me than wonky CGI in live action.

That said, I feel like there aren't as many quality animated Western TV shows these days as there were from the 1960s through the 2000s. I love old school episodes of Scooby Doo as well as Tom and Jerry and shows like Avatar The Last Airbender and Courage the Cowardly Dog. There haven't been as many good shows in recent years. Samurai Jack Season 5, Primal, and The Legend of Korra are some of the few good modern animated Western shows.

I think that's part of the reason why I'm watching more anime in recent years because it fills the gap in Western animation. A lot of anime today is some of my favorite ever like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Bleach The Thousand Year Blood War.

I highly recommend Arcane, great visuals, and really good writing