diaryofasugarfiend:therobotmonster:thedurvin:thedurvin: Shout-out to all the furry/funny animal show
diaryofasugarfiend:therobotmonster:thedurvin:thedurvin: Shout-out to all the furry/funny animal shows, comics, games, &c. that I haven’t seen fandom for on here…may your pointless CGI revival be quick and painlessI feel a little bad including a classic like Usagi Yojimbo with the rest of these Ninja Turtle knockoffs, but “you get to be pretentious about reading it” is the only thing I know of setting it apart from the rest Reblogging this old post from 2016 because I think about half of these have been rebooted by now Ah, the “Battle Animal” genre.No one will be surprised to know that I am a fan. Here’s some thoughts from an old salt who saw all this the first time around.Bucky O’Hare and Dinosaucers are both off the hook for being TMNT knockoffs. Bucky O’Hare was trying to get off the ground as a comic in ‘84, and Dinosaucers hit in ‘’87, a full year before TMNT. Dinosaucers is best categorized as a Thundercats coat-rider, but it had the structure, pacing and story beats of Transformers or, more accurately, GoBots, in that the heroic cast is kinda blandly helpful and the colorful badguys are completely lacking in menace. Bucky O’Hare is 70s space opera repackaged with anthro aliens for the 80s audience, and it would have worked if someone had picked it up sooner. The difference between 1986 and 1988 in terms of toyetic tastes was huge..It’s a bit of Star Wars, a bit of Marvel’s Micronauts, and a bit Blake’s 7, and its bad guys are a critique of capitalism and mass media in a surprising twist.CowBoys of Moo Mesa is certainly riding TMNT’s coattails, but if I remember correctly its creator was friends with E&L and they helped get the project going, so its “in the family” like UY is.BattleToads is straight-up coattail-riding and I don’t think it ever pretended otherwise. The real dividing line in the Battle Animal genre, to me, isn’t about if something is or isn’t biting TMNT’s style. The real division is whether humans exist. Cowboys of Moo Mesa, Usagi Yojimbo, Samurai Pizza Cats and SWATKats, are all human-free universes populated solely by animal people. There may be more than one kind of animal person, but animals take the place of humanity, Duckberg style. Technically Darkwing Duck is a show in this genre. I do not make the rules.TMNT, Dinosaucers, Extreme Dinosaurs, Street Sharks, Garygoyles, and Hong Kong Fooey (again, I do not make the rules), exist in worlds with human beings. They don’t have to live in secret from them, but the coexistence of normla human beings and weird animal people is a part of the story. Bucky O’Hare is an isekai, with the other world being a humanless Battle Animal universe. Silverhawks, Tigersharks and Thundercats are border-cases, as the first is about as antrho as Battle of the Planets, the second is essentially cast with science-lycanthropes, and the third is just the ongoing adventures of the Jellicle Cats beyond the Heavyside Layer.Again, I don’t make the rules. Don’t forget my favorite one.Is it a TMNT coattail-rider? I don’t care, I like it better than TMNT. If we’re going by @therobotmonster ‘s rules, it’s a mix of existing in a world with humans and isekai for the Ducks and Saurians ‘cuz they’re from another dimension. To elaborate, when I speak to “riding the coattails” I’m mostly talking about from the money side of things. When refering to work that takes after another creatively, I prefer the term “inspired by.” KidVid goes in cycles, and whatever becomes a big ruanway hit creates a wave for anything superfivially similar to ride in on. Essentially, anything Battle Animal post 88 had a door kicked open for it by the Mean Green Machine even if it wasn’t directly inspired by it, I don’t know the behind-the-scenes on Mighty Ducks, but given it’s impacted you enough to rank it high means at least one person on the proudction was really trying to make something good instead of just a cash-in, and enough of that survived the marketing and TV development process that the show as able to keep its heart. That’s something the showrunners should be proud of.Was it a toy ad? Sure.But so is the WWE. -- source link