Any good action/adventure cartoons?

[ThirdWizard]

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the best American animated show on the air, as far as I'm concerned, outdoing this "current" season of JLU. Unfortunately the latest season of Avatar is only four episodes long, I think. *sigh*

As far as anime, Adult Swim sometimes shows Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, two of my favorites. I like Full Metal Alchemist, even if it is fairly depressing. The ending is actually good which is something that is... erm... lacking in many anime series (Big O anyone?) I'm just waiting for Monster to be licensed and brought to America. Best. Anime. Ever.

 

[Filby]

I get the impression that the original poster isn't crazy about anime, but since some other folks have trotted out recommendations...

One good anime series which I haven't seen mentioned on this board is Patlabor: The Mobile Police, a show from the late '80s/early '90s, which I highly recommend. While it's ostensibly a light-hearted show about police officers fighting crime with giant robots, the show offers about equal parts action, slapstick, and poignant character studies. It's also got one of my favorite ensemble casts in animation. Just avoid the English version, since the voice acting doesn't do it justice.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Newer stuff; pretty much all I can think of has been mentioned...

1) Justice League Unlimited; maintains the traditional dominance of DC in the Saturday-morning cartoon "genre" (although Marvel had some good stuff with their two X-men series and various Spider Man iterations).

2) Avatar: the Last Air Bender; this one is *really* good IMO; really smooth animation, lots of detailed martial-arts (they even list martial-arts advisors in the credits), very imaginative and cool "magic" (element-bending) and neat characters. Moderately anime style but strong Western animation infuence too.

3) He-man and the Masters of the Universe (2002); made a lot more sense than the original He-man series and the animation was superlative; some of the best I've seen on TV. Main drawback is that the series was cancelled before the story-line was resolved.

4) GI Joe Sigma Six; has a heavy anime style but in a more conservative way. Definately action-packed and really neat/smooth action. Story line seems allright although nothing to write home about yet (dialogue can be rough too). Has the main characters (Cobra Commander, Baroness, Destro, Zartan, Snake-Eyes, Scarlet, Duke, Storm Shadow) but inexplicably replaces other old favourites with different versions of the same archtype (a guy who is basically Road Block but called Heavy Duty, instead of Mainframe they use someone called High Tech).

Shows that came out in the last 10-15 years that were cancelled but worth watching;

1) Gargoyles; I can't say enough about the epic story-line, compelling characters and top-notch animation. But this one is famous enough I doubt I need to say much. The first season is out on DVD and the second is coming out soon.

2) Roughnecks; based on the Starship Troopers movies, it is much better than the film was (IMO of course). Told from the POV of a reporter in the unit containing some of the characters from the movie, it uses CGI graphics that were very solid and had some very deep characters and sophisticated stories. Not sure how many eps were made but it was pretty good.

3) Beasties; some people didn't like this series much but I give them props for tying into the original Transformers story line. Again CGI, but somewhat more dated looking. Avoid Beast Machines.

4) Pirates of Dark Water; fairly short lived but incredibly imaginative. I've always thought it would make a pretty decent D&D campaign. Classic animation style.

5) Disney's Aladdin; better than the movie in many ways. Actually developed the characters a bit and covered a wide-range of Arabian Nights tales and original stories. Very fun stuff.

 

[JoeBlank]

I don't have any new shows to suggest, but I had never heard of Avatar and am now curious. I checked and noted that NIK is airing a marathon on Thanksgiving day. I may set the VCR and see what this is all about.

 

[Dagger75]

All the new cartoons suck and you all know it. The Golden Era was the 80's and early 90's. I can't believe the only good cartoon is JLU. Thats sad.

This is what we had after school

Thunder Cats
Transformers
GI Joe
Batman the Animated Series
Superman the Animated series
Centurions
EXO Squad

Then we used to look formard to Sat cause thats when all the real cool cartoons were on.
Dungeon and Dragons
Pirates of Darkwater
Thundar the Barbarian
Pole Position
Spiderman and his Amazing Friends

And those are just ones I remeber watching. We had tons of them. Now its only Pokemon clones or Anime. Remember when Anime was Japanimation. We had 2 chioces, Akiria or Robotech.

Oh well sorry for my old foogey rant. Still you got nothing, watch the old cartoons.

 

[D.Shaffer]

4) GI Joe Sigma Six; Has the main characters (Cobra Commander, Baroness, Destro, Zartan, Snake-Eyes, Scarlet, Duke, Storm Shadow) but inexplicably replaces other old favourites with different versions of the same archtype (a guy who is basically Road Block but called Heavy Duty, instead of Mainframe they use someone called High Tech).

Heavy Duty's actually from the toy line. I think they lost the rights to the name 'Roadblock' so they needed a replacement (Although Roadblock IS actually in the current comic). An interesting note is that he's Roadblock's cousin.

Mainframe was KIA in the comics and so they needed a replacement in the toyline/new cartoon as Hasbro has a policy of not 'resurrecting' characters in the GI Joe line. I'd have preferred them using Firewall myself, but there ya go.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Heavy Duty's actually from the toy line. I think they lost the rights to the name 'Roadblock' so they needed a replacement (Although Roadblock IS actually in the current comic). An interesting note is that he's Roadblock's cousin.

Mainframe was KIA in the comics and so they needed a replacement in the toyline/new cartoon as Hasbro has a policy of not 'resurrecting' characters in the GI Joe line. I'd have preferred them using Firewall myself, but there ya go.

Yeah I remember the Heavy Duty action figure-I think a friend of mine had him. I didn't realize that the new series was tied to the comic-book story line (which I also follow) via Hasbro policy . Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Kai Lord]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm very curious about Avatar. Is the new Justice League series on DVD?

 

[Lorgrom]

Since someone brought up Robotech, let us not forget Starblazers. Now there was an epic story line and ship. Was the first ship weapon I can remember that had the ability to destroy a planet in one shot.

 

[Filby]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm very curious about Avatar. Is the new Justice League series on DVD?

I think the first couple seasons are, yeah.