I just have a question for Cartoon Network: why do you keep showing Teen Titans Go and yet Thundercats did not get renewed?
First off let's talk about Teen Titans vs Teen Titans Go. It has come to my attention that fans are not happy with the new series, and I agree, it's crap. Teen Titans was based on a DC comic series wherein Robin, Batman's sidekick, goes off on his own and forms a team with other superheroes, specifically other teenagers of possible sidekick origin like himself. In the cartoon the team consisted of Cyborg(the least imaginitively named character ever as he is literally a cyborg, but still cool) Beast Boy, a green guy who can change into any animal limited only by the fact that he is always green, raven, a dark brooding sorceress, and Starfire, an alien with the power to fly and shoot laser blasts. They gave more background to Starfire as an alien who played like a foreign exchange student who didn't understand our culture, customs, or subtle nuances of language. They gave even more background to Raven who is the daughter of a demon and has the power to potentially destroy the entire world and is constantly suppressing this power. The boys don't get much background though, even Robin manages to avoid any mention of Batman so you have to know in advance, though most people do. And Beast Boy is a vegetarian because when he can be any animal, he finds it hard to eat something he was at one time. The new series has the same cast of characters and the same voices, except that the original was serious and dark in line with Batman. The original show was badass and cool about superheroes saving the world from legitimate threats. Teen Titans Go is a self-parody that jokes about the Titans every day lives blown up to superhero proportions and very rarely has anything to do with actually saving the world, or saving anything for that matter. Admittedly, i only catch it when I first wake up on Sunday and my TV is still tuned to that channel after watching Toonami the night before, but I see enough to know the voice actors should be ashamed of themselves for letting their hard work be diminished by this reboot.
On the other end of the spectrum we have Thundercats. A few years ago Cartoon Network rebooted the classic Thundercats. I know some people didn't like the reboot and complained that it wasn't as good as the original, I actually saw a few of the original episodes rerun a few years before the reboot, that old show was crap. We liked Thundercats because we were kids, we had no standard of taste and animation studios weren't giving us any credit so we ate whatever crap they fed us and Thundercats was the best of it's time, but compared to what has followed since, the new Thundercats was a much needed breath of fresh air making the show what it should be. The remake changed the story up a little bit, in the original the Thundercats were humanoid felines from Thundera who end up on thir earth fighting mutant Beastmen and Mumm-Ra who all have different origins and are now in conflict on this new world where none of them belong, whereas in the remake the Thundercats are one of a number of species of humanoid animals that once served Mumm-Ra but rebelled leading to everyone being on Third Earth and Mumm-Ra is finally awakened and seeks revenge on the Thundercats who are now determined to stop him by any means possible. The cast is basically the same, just a few details changed to make sense in the new world as opposed the old canon, in both versions Lion-O is the lion-like leader with the Sword of Omens and a gauntlet/sheath, Tigra is the whip wielding master fo invisibility, Cheetara is the female cheetah who runs real fast and wields a quarterstaff, Panthro is the big old strong gruff fighter with nunchucks, Wily Kit and Kat are kids who rely on tricks more than serious weapons, and Snarf is their mascot, while the antagonists include Mumm-Ra the mummy who is just pure evil, Slythe the lizard man and the unimagintively named Jackalman, Apeman, and Vultureman. The animation was done by Studio 4C, a Japanese Anime studio that does a lot of American projects and makes them the most badass cartoons ever. The voice cast was pretty good(they even got the original Lion-O to voice the new Lion-O's father) and the writing actually made some impressive episodes. One that stood out to me was an episode about tiny plant people who go through their entire life cycle in one day. It starts with a baby being born and then we see a little boy grow up rapidly befriending Lion-O and dying of old age in one day, and then you realize he was the baby born at the beginning and we just witnessed his entire life, and it was quite moving how he made the most of it. Another good episode was when Lion-O meets a sword maker and a swordsman who claims the weapons of his opponents, a story which played out like a cheesy samurai flick, but with enough spirit to actually pull it off. Most of the rest of the series actually followed a storyline with purpose, mostly nodding to the original series and reusing old characters to tell a fresh new version. Sadly, after just one season when they had just picked up steam and had really gotten rolling, the series simply ended with no renewal.
So I ask again, Cartoon Network, why is Teen Titans Go still running and you cancelled Thundercats?
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