I was not planing on making this an all-video week but this just kind of dropped right in and I wanted to share.
When’s the last time you heard anything about Thundercats Roar, that nightmare mockstalgia of the classic series? Yeah, me too. There has been nothing beyond the occasional “they’re still working on it, honest” report if you can even find that. The show, which is a “comedic” remake of the original cartoon was not well received. The show itself might turn out to be decent, but it still looks like another trashing of a classic series, and there’s been a lot of that lately.
However, the duo at Clownfish TV uncovered an old Tumblr post from animator Henrique Jardim trying to defend the tone and style of the show, with what appears to be a warning about talking down other people’s work…while talking down other peoples work. Kneon and Geeky Sparkles not only do a perfect breakdown of what’s wrong with this post, but with certain attitudes with modern showrunners and the reasons the tone shift exists that has nothing to do with the audience.
Two things I want to note. There’s quite a bit of swearing in this 40 minute video, but they cover this backstage stuff a lot and have seen more trashing of older shows in favor of the not-stalgia and mockstalgia re-imaginings than I do so they’re bound to be angrier than I am about these kinds of posts. Also of note is that I don’t think it’s right to trash these shows as “Tumblr cartoons” or “Tumblr art” because that’s making the declaration that there is no good art on Tumblr. I see a lot of great art on Tumblr, including some really good instructions like the posts at The Redline Station, which I recommend for artists. I can’t speak to “Cal Arts” as an art style as the term itself is controversial and I’ve seen fair arguments on both sides of the controversy, but Tumblr isn’t immediately horrible. Everything else they say here…pretty much agree with everything.
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