On Finishing Batman: The Animated Series
When, a while ago now, I reached what I'd decided would be an adequate stopping point for watching DVD sets of The Simpsons, I pondered a few other options for watching North American animation and wound up returning to Batman: The Animated Series. Some years before that, I had bought the first DVD collection of that show, part of a general mix of "finally being able to really afford anime" and "keeping up with assorted cartoons," if one that did leave me thinking I really ought to at least try and watch some live-action stuff. (That urge added a bit of impetus to starting the new Battlestar Galactica, although when Doctor Who returned not that long after I thought more "this ought to be interesting" than "this will be somehow 'good' for me.") When I never saw the package the second collection was supposed to be in on my doorstep, though, I went to slight lengths to get the anime I'd missed out on but just sort of left Batman.
Once equipped with this new motivation, however, it wasn't that long before I'd managed to get the three remaining sets of the animated series. It just took a while to watch them, as my habits had shifted bit by bit to prioritizing anime and squeezing in "other stuff" into occasional moments. I suppose I did resort to episode guides and old memories to decide on what episodes to skip over early on. With the final collection, though, I watched every one of the "redesigned" episodes, having not managed to have seen any more than brief glimpses of them before. Where some people didn't seem able to get over the characters having been redesigned, I seemed able to focus on the stories and accept things.
All in all, I suppose I've thought that Batman: The Animated Series "came along at just the right time." The Simpsons had been on TV for a while already, of course, but perhaps I'm imagining it alone would have pointed just to the edgy late-night animated comedies of the present day. At the time, I'd been feeling not just intimidated by the long continuities of superhero comics but also uninterested in their escalating violence and other "not for kids" content; I had actually bought a run of the comic that used the animated series's character designs only to find myself resisting the "edgier" content every issue. It wasn't until the special "Mad Love" (adapted into one of the last episodes of the series, one I'd been looking forward to) that one of those comics really worked for me.
It does seem that for almost as long as I was revisiting or just visiting these episodes of the animated series, I've also had "the next thing to get around to" in mind. Batman: The Animated Series was only the beginning of a series of "DC superhero" cartoons, but I've been thinking I want to get to something different, and have Avatar: The Last Airbender to open up.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/194599.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
Once equipped with this new motivation, however, it wasn't that long before I'd managed to get the three remaining sets of the animated series. It just took a while to watch them, as my habits had shifted bit by bit to prioritizing anime and squeezing in "other stuff" into occasional moments. I suppose I did resort to episode guides and old memories to decide on what episodes to skip over early on. With the final collection, though, I watched every one of the "redesigned" episodes, having not managed to have seen any more than brief glimpses of them before. Where some people didn't seem able to get over the characters having been redesigned, I seemed able to focus on the stories and accept things.
All in all, I suppose I've thought that Batman: The Animated Series "came along at just the right time." The Simpsons had been on TV for a while already, of course, but perhaps I'm imagining it alone would have pointed just to the edgy late-night animated comedies of the present day. At the time, I'd been feeling not just intimidated by the long continuities of superhero comics but also uninterested in their escalating violence and other "not for kids" content; I had actually bought a run of the comic that used the animated series's character designs only to find myself resisting the "edgier" content every issue. It wasn't until the special "Mad Love" (adapted into one of the last episodes of the series, one I'd been looking forward to) that one of those comics really worked for me.
It does seem that for almost as long as I was revisiting or just visiting these episodes of the animated series, I've also had "the next thing to get around to" in mind. Batman: The Animated Series was only the beginning of a series of "DC superhero" cartoons, but I've been thinking I want to get to something different, and have Avatar: The Last Airbender to open up.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/194599.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.