Toonboy

Just for the record, I hate wrestling. What grates my nerves even more are shows that try to seem like they're highlighting some culture but instead wind up looking pandering. Mucha Lucha is that atrocity that somehow manages to combine both of those and throw in a touch of cheesy superhero cliches. You won't develop an appreciation for the hispanic watching this show. There are some quite good cartoons that do just that. All you get is a headache watching costumed clowns transform into a manner of oddities to pull of crazy wrestling moves.

This is one of the weirder Don Bluth movies, but certainly not the worst(I think that dishonor goes to A Troll In Central Park). If I'm not mistaken, this movie actually begins briefly with a live action sequence and goes into animation when, once again, the hero gets knocked unconscious. The characters are actually very cute, but what the point of having the main character being transformed into a cat is, I'll never know. The villain is unmenacing, but his sidekick is just flat out annoying, with his constant need to say everything that rhymes with "ation."

The original Dragonball is played more for laughs. Dragonball Z ups the ante a hundred fold in terms of violence and things getting destroyed. There's a plot buried somewhere in all this nonsense. Apparently superpowered alien villains want to control the galaxy and enslave races, and if you find and gather all the dragon balls, your wish will be granted without question. But this overstuffed, overrated anime is just an excuse to show off triangle-eyed, muscle-bound freaks who can cast mountain-destroying powers and fight at superhuman speeds. The episodes are always the same. Hero A gets his butt whooped by Villain B so Hero A goes "I must gather all my power or all is lost". So Hero A somehow discovers yet even more power buried within himself, and that turns out to be just enough to beat Villain B. The anime is nothing but yak about power levels and everybody just keeps going up and up without limits. But Dragon Ball Z isn't just about fighting. The heroes and villains talk trash to each other so much that a fight or a story arc that should last only 30 minutes gets dragged out on and on to several or more episodes. It's enough to make one pull out one's hair and go "Get it over with already!" And Goku is the worst superhero ever made. He dies multiple times and always comes back to life. How are we supposed to feel any emotional connection to something like that? I really don't see the appeal of this show.

Caught somewhere between Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer(awful) and My Little Pony: The Movie(decent) in terms of quality, Care Bears the Movie II is good for a really rainy Sunday afternoon but isn't worth your time other than that unless you're a huge fan of the Care Bears. It's not even nowhere near as watchable as the first movie and it messes around with a few key details that were shown in the first. The animation is Saturday morning cartoon level, naturally, but it's the story and plotting that makes this movie really wretched. Everything is weak and filled in by a whole bunch of unnecessary and awful songs. And the villain is just truly pathetic. The only ray of hope for this movie is the actually very cute song at the end.

I never considered this show to be a "big cartoon" like G.I. Joe, but it's still amazing this show lasted all those episodes. It's obviously inspired by Gatchaman, and shows like this went on to inspire crud like The Power Rangers. In its defense, it's still better than when Voltron got remade into a CGI series and the lesser known Vehicle Voltron. While not quite as campy as Thundercats, Voltron is still an exercise in repetitiveness. Ugly supervillain tries to make trouble. Five heroes try to take on trouble with their lion robots. Five lions fail to do the job. Form Voltron. Save the day. Rinse and repeat. The highlight of the show is the fake techno-geek speak the main character utters when they form Voltron.