Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes vs the Jeph Loeb era cartoons

[Silver Shocker]

Yeah, I'm with Spade on this. While I haven't watched most of the Loeb era shows start to finish, I watched season 2 onward for USM... and yeah, I love elements of that show, but I also found it incredibly frustrating to watch. I can't imagine going back to it ever again, despite the highs it occasionally reached. Both it and Avengers Assemble were based on some pretty poor foundations, USM with it's annoying wannabe TT/anime interjections and talking down to the audience, and Avengers Assemble with it's "MCU but not" tone and style. Both admittedly got better, but I feel like that's in spite of Loeb's influence... he didn't write the shows, he just set up the foundations for them, and those foundations were terrible compared to what came before.

And none of that's going into the animation style of most of them, which tries so hard to be "realistic" and "cool" but in motion often looks dark, lifeless and boring.

I was originally just going to reply with the fact that Loeb was the executive producer and that the writing fell to different people, (which would also keep Loeb the focus and keep this from getting too off-topic) but you guys have given me some good material here to work with here.

I already used up my "you really don't think I can take you" joke in another thread, so I'll get straight to the point: If the only point is that he was an executive producer and thus all the story work that went into the shows as they went had nothing to do with him. Fair enough.

THAT BEING SAID.

You guys went ahead and bashed the shows past that, thus I defend their honor.

1.

And none of that's going into the animation style of most of them, which tries so hard to be "realistic" and "cool" but in motion often looks dark, lifeless and boring.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes's animation wasn't even that good. It looked like someone was going for Bruce Timm and didn't pull it off, and some characters, such as Whirlwind, looked terrible in that art style (Iron Man's armor didn't look too great either)
What's especially bad is one of those characters was Kang, who I often say is my all-time favorite Marvel villain and was a major villain in the show, and he looked like crap.

And even worse, the framerate for the opening sequence was almost as bad as Transformers Animated, and that opening is made up either entirely or mostly of new footage. How bad does the animation in your cartoon have to be that even the animation in the opening sucks? Even eighties cartoons had good animation for the opening. Look at how elaborate the animation they made just for The Rebirth was! And have you seen the original opening to Thundercats?

The aforementioned Transformers Animated has probably the worst framerate of any animated show I've ever seen, and used a blurr effect to hide that they couldn't animate the bots transforming outside of stock footage, and yet the Japanese dub of the show made a new intro that looks like this, yet Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes can't even pull off the rotating "Avengers Shot?" in the intro without the framerate taking a dip? The intros to TMNT Fast Forward, Back to the Sewer and Transformers Cybertron all pulled off rotating shots in their intros without the framerate dipping!

Hell, the animation to Rise of the Ninja Turtles is so good it almost makes up for how terrible the writing is! You have to watch it like 5-10 times just to tell what the heck you're looking at! 

2. "and those foundations were terrible compared to what came before." I'm going to get to that in a second.

USM with it's annoying wannabe TT/anime interjections

EMH also featured Sora/Yoshino/Angie from Digimon aka Ino from Naruto as a version of Wasp who barely looked like Wasp, acted almost nothing like Wasp, and had a costume that I'm pretty sure Wasp never wore outside of that show.  Despite the entire superhero cast across the entire show wearing their iconic looks. I was told "well it's Wasp from the beginning of the comics". NOPE. Even the silver age Wasp didn't look or act like that character, and considering all the other stuff in that show that came from after the first year or so of the "age of heroes" Wasp not being the mature, take charge, very adult-minded character she's been for about 80% of her history stood out like a sore thumb.

As long as I've built up a bit of a habit for being a contrarian, but one with a purpose and conviction, I'm gonna come out and say it: EMH wasn't even that good. I mean, it's pretty good (I have most of it on disc because 1. I was able to get it on the cheap and 2. I was able to get some of it on the cheap before those episodes aired in Canada) but it also had one of the cringiest theme songs I've ever seen attached to a major IP, it was oddly just ok in spots, parts of it oozed that Kyle & Yost smugness I've come to have distaste for (in particular their blatant villain fetish) and some of the characters were pretty badly miscast. Phil Lemarr as Wonder Man? Really? And Master Chief from Halo as Star-Lord wasn't right even before Chris Pratt. This was also during those dark times where Rocket, for some reason, had a Cockney accent. Robin Atkin Downes was pushing it as Zemo. Mockingbird, for some reason, sounded like she was doing a Rogue imitation and wasn't pulling it off. And it had Scott Menville as a pre-Winter Soldier Bucky, using the exact same voice he used (and still uses to this day) as Teen Titans Go Robin. It was an overrated show then, and it is an overrated show now.

To briefly give an example of the more inspired nature of Avengers Assembled voice casting, when it came time to do the Masters of Evil and Thunderbolts, the entire voice cast altered their voices to maintain the classic ruse, particularly the often excellent David Kaye as Zemo/Citizen V and Jennifer Hale giving Screaming Mimi a comics-accurate southern accent that she reduced for Songbird. Over in Guardians, Hale also gave Mantis a broadly comics-appropriate voice that could best be described as "Space cultist." which was matched by Ali Hillis on a Lego game.

The Loeb shows also likely contributed heavily to Kamala Kahn and Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider becoming mainstream hits, as those shows are also likely the reason why Marvel Rising existed at all, Ghost Spider was aided by the casting of Dove Cameron , which resulted in her using her musical career to promote Marvel Rising when she came back to voice the character again. (and the name Ghost Spider was borrowed from the final season of Ultimate Spider-Man) and characters appearing outside the comics, even if not in movies, helps their exposure, as seen with Harley Quinn and Deadpool. Marvel Rising brought in America Chavez, Inferno, the new Patriot and Quake. What characters did EMH help get exposure? Outside of maybe Scott Lang and Winter Soldier (who was already in the works in the MCU), I can't think of any. And when you bring DC's cartoons into the bunch, it's especially bad that EMH did almost nothing to add exposure to their franchise full of characters, especially given that She-Hulk was probably the best character in the UPN Hulk and Super Hero Squad, whatever else you can say about it, featured a very impressive variety of lesser characters. We even had multimedia characters in the case of Reptil and the Ava Ayala version of White Tiger, created specifically to appear in the comics AND the cartoons in order to promote each other at the same time (Star Wars, of course did this with Dash Render and Starkiller, to great effect, as they're fondly remembered by some SW fans to this day).

In terms of accomplishments, running for more seasons (especially in the modern era, where a lot of action cartoons in notable franchises struggle to get past 2 or 3 seasons - Transformers has never done it) and getting steadily better as it goes, and the sheer amount of stuff not in the MCU (some of which still isn't in the MCU yet) and the way it switched up the cast in later seasons, and not being by Kyle and Yost, I'm going to straight up say it: Avengers Assemble is the better show.

Avengers Assemble with it's "MCU but not" tone and style.

EMH added a voiceover to its opening credits to explain who the Avengers are in the second season of an Avengers cartoon in a move that could not have been more blatantly designed to promote the 2012 Avengers movie if they spliced in footage of it like it was a long-running anime like Pokemon or Bleach advertising an upcoming flick. And Tony's voice actor in EMH was literally the guy who subs for Downey in the video games.

I think my hatred of the terrible animation in those shows and my deep and lasting resentment that they arrived by killing a vastly better show are both well documented at this point, ha.

You and Tomato both mentioned the poor animation, so I can address both of these together:

1. The animation for the final season of Avengers Assemble was heavily changed for its "Black Panther's Quest" season, and that animation is similar to the animation in Marvel's Spider-Man (the Avengers guest-stars match those new designs - Black Widow in particular has different hair) so that criticism doesn't apply to the final season.

2. The pilot for Ultimate Spider-Man had the best animation I'd seen in an American-made Marvel or DC cartoon I'd seen in years. And if I recall, like a long-running anime, it also got an animation bump near the end of the finale. And the animation for those episodes held up on a rewatch on Netflix a few years later. The animation quality petered out outside that, but the fact that it could have an animation bump speaks to its quality. Almost no American-made Marvel and DC shows have had any since Batman TAS simplified the art style for The New Batman Adventures (one notable exception I rewatched recently being the Roxy Rocket episode of Batman, which had surprisingly good animation), something that was specifically done to lower the budget and keep the animation consistent, and I know this because the creators of the 2003 TMNT outright said that the budget was the reason they did the exact same thing in their later seasons (both of these shows, btw, had better art styles in all of their iterations than EMH IMO, with the possible exception of Ninja Turtles Fast Forward)

EMH's animation style was so blocky, minimalist and cheap it left little room to ever improve or have any animation bump.

"my deep and lasting resentment that they arrived by killing a vastly better show are both well documented at this point, ha."

As fans of Transformers Animated know, it is not fair to hold it against a cartoon in a franchise because it follows another cartoon in a franchise that reboots every few years, especially when that show ALSO gets really good as it goes.

"So imagine you had this adorable puppy that you loved more than anything in the world, but it got hit by a car. And the driver of the car gives you a new puppy to replace him. Nothing's really WRONG with the new puppy. It might be a REALLY AWESOME puppy. But still, at least at first, you RESENT it. That's basically how I feel about Transformers Prime."

Key phrase being "at least at first". TF Prime WAS a "really awesome" show, and yet exactly equal to Transformers: Animated in very similar ways. Three seasons, and got epic at the exact halfway point. And Avengers Assemble, by the end of it, since it seems to be over now, was a pretty awesome show.

It brought us a flawed but functional Masters of Evil and Thunderbolts, as did a similar outing for The Black Order, and did strong outings for Ultron, Thanos, Kang, Teen Tony, and the modern influx of Inhumans (something I would have otherwise thought impossible - and it made me a fan of Iso, who I otherwise would never have even heard of - that's exposure), built up the Guardians (with help from Ultimate Spider-Man) enough for them to get their own show, did an excellent Squadron Supreme, had crossovers with the other shows in a similar manner to the MCU, and built up enough of its own mythos to have an excellent iteration of Civil War with an opposing team entirely composed of characters they'd already introduced earlier, including Songbird. The fourth season was an adaptation of All-New Avengers with Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Vision, Ant-Man (Scott Lang) and Wasp (Hope) and ended with Secret Wars (which admittedly, wasn't all that good, and yet).

And as I mentioned earlier, Kamala Khan has been heavily featured in these shows, to the point that she was a main character in the fourth season of Avengers Assemble - and this iteration is by far the best iteration franchise-wide, and the version in Lego Avengers was voiced by Ashley Burch. She's better in these cartoons than she in the actual comic books (I predict she'll be topped by the MCU version). And the number of Marvel characters for whom that is true (being better in a cartoon than the comics) is, unlike DC, miniscule. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head, without marking them up because of the voice actor, are Doc Ock, Hank Pym, Sha-Shan, and maybe Shocker. (And no, it's no coincidence that I named myself after him)

By comparison, EMH had Civil War IIRC, Secret Invasion, Dell Rusk (AA had a similar plotline), a pretty good Doctor Doom, Winter Soldier (who was also done in AA, arguably better), a very well done Hank Pym who grows and switches identities over time, a pre-Paul Rudd comics-accurate Scott Lang and a second season that brought in quite a few characters just in time for them to team up in the finale, none of which I recall being particularly good. It's one notable achievement outside of Hank as far as I'm concerned, is Cassie Lang shows up in one episode, voiced by the same person as Wasp. That's it, for the most part.

Also, time for an inconvenient truth. EMH would have cancelled even if Loeb hadn't torpedoed it. As I already mentioned, very few action cartoons from the 2000's forward in a notable IP get more than 2 or 3 seasons, and while it proved Loeb a massive hypocrite (and I pointed this out back in the day) the shared universe (which is still going on - Guardians and Avengers folded into Marvel's Spider-Man in a manner that would make DC proud) likely helped the success of these shows a lot. By comparison, I can't imagine a shared universe spinning out of EMH. If it did one, I imagine it would be pretty dull and generic, since most of the guest stars in season 2 were exactly that.

[Tomato]

I'm not going to go into this too hard, but... I far prefer EMH's animation style. You're free to disagree, but EMH is bright, colorful, expressive. the USM staple of shows are darker, muddier, and because of how detailed they are, do not allow for the same range of dynamic animation. Period.

Beyond that, the story EMH has to tell is 10 times better than Avengers Assemble, at least the first season. Season 1 in particular had story after story built up and expanded, with each 4 episode arc leading into the next. Seeds from the pilot shorts come to fruition well into the season. Frankly, I got the sense that they were slowly building this universe and had even more they wanted to set up but never got a chance (I suspect Galactus was actually intended for a third season, but they rushed it forward when it was clear they weren't getting it).

Avengers Assemble... look, I like elements of it, I think some of the character bits blow EMH out of the water (the coffee bit with Cap and Tony is classic) but the core premise of Season 1 is AWFUL.  Red Skull gets him some Iron Man armor, and now all the other baddies are now working with him to take down the Avengers Masters of the Universe style, including DOCTOR DOOM. DOCTOR DOOM is working with RED SKULL. And yeah, you can hand wave it that Red Skull isn't a Nazi in this universe in the same way he was in the comics, but it's still so jarring that it legitimately takes me out of the show. Beyond that... we're told the Avengers broke up. Why? We don't know. It's never explained. We're just supposed to accept that they were a thing, they broke up, but they're back together whatever it's fine now.

And while I think done in one stories have their place, frankly I much prefer EMH's stories building off each other and building up the world, as opposed to "today the Avengers fight X". I get that they had arcs in the same way as USM did (again, my knowledge base is far more there than with Avengers Assemble, which I've never managed to get through) but EMH just feels... tighter.

[Silver Shocker]

I'm not going to go into this too hard, but... I far prefer EMH's animation style. You're free to disagree, but EMH is bright, colorful, expressive. the USM staple of shows are darker, muddier, and because of how detailed they are, do not allow for the same range of dynamic animation. Period.

Art style is a preference, so that's fine. Animation, unfortunately I don't have the time to check 6 different cartoons, one of which changed the art style in its final season, to compare the actual animation, so I'm simply concede your point. But animation means "movement".

Beyond that, the story EMH has to tell is 10 times better than Avengers Assemble, at least the first season. Season 1 in particular had story after story built up and expanded, with each 4 episode arc leading into the next. Seeds from the pilot shorts come to fruition well into the season. Frankly, I got the sense that they were slowly building this universe and had even more they wanted to set up but never got a chance (I suspect Galactus was actually intended for a third season, but they rushed it forward when it was clear they weren't getting it).

Sure, the first season, but I was never comparing two seasons of EMH to 1 season of AA, I was reviewing 2 seasons of EMH to five seasons of AA. You can have your 10 times better, I won't debate that in the slightest. But I'll argue the final product was at least 1.5 times better than EMH. Anyone who's willing to debate the final product is welcome to binge the series on Disney + (along with EVERY season of the other shows, since that was the original comparison- I still have to finish Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel Rising) and come back here and state your case.

I mentioned this in the Transformers thread, but after watching Rise of the TMNT and the first season of Netflix TF, I've come to the conclusion that I view animated shows as a ven diagram. You have to overlap in several areas. Three areas to be exact (I leave out music because that field is uniformly solid in the shows and franchises we discuss) 1. Animation 2. Voice Cast 3. Writing/Story. You can include "cast of characters" under #2 or #3, which ever you prefer, but my policy is ALL shows must be strong in at least two areas, and one of them is story. Animation will ALWAYS be the least important field unless you're making something like this. (or, again, in the case of the openings) Most shows pull off two, with "story" being one. Quite a few pull off three. EMH pulls off ONE, because it has serialized storytelling. Outside of Batman, almost every action cartoon I've ever watched in my life, that's come out during my lifetime, has serialized storytelling, and most of them do it far better than EMH.

What you've told me sounds like "plot point happens, therefore it is good." We read comic books, so we know full well you have to have more than just plot points happening, because that's uniform across the board.
Now, if your answer was you felt the characters were better in EMH, and therefore the characters and plotlines complemented each other, I think that's a fair argument. Characterization and banter and attempts at humor was an issue with AA and each of the other shows, but it wasn't a deal breaker for me personally, I found many of the longer plots rewarding, and many of the stories in EMH LESS compelling. And part of the reason I bring this up is further down this post I'm going to say all the things I liked about EMH and characterization is going to come several times in key areas, something I like to think all of us can agree on.

but the core premise of Season 1 is AWFUL. 

That's one season. The core premise of Young Justice Outsiders is awful too, but the series is a classic, and I look forward to what I'm hoping will be the actual season three when the next season comes out.

The Clone Wars had a weak season 1 as well, and Transformers Animated had a half-and-half season 1. Reboot got a lot better in the second half of S2. The first season of "Justice League", while admirable, was much less than what it became. Legion of Superheroes had a much better season 2 and so did Green Lantern. As I understand it, S2 of Sonic Boom is a lot better because they leaned into meta humor and fourth wall breaking jokes. And that's without even getting into anime. Fans of those shows and others (TMNT 2012 is another great example) judge those shows on the full series, not just how it started.

Red Skull gets him some Iron Man armor, and now all the other baddies are now working with him to take down the Avengers Masters of the Universe style, including DOCTOR DOOM. DOCTOR DOOM is working with RED SKULL. And yeah, you can hand wave it that Red Skull isn't a Nazi in this universe in the same way he was in the comics, but it's still so jarring that it legitimately takes me out of the show.

There's actually a lot to unpack in this one it here. I double checked two different wikis get my facts right on this.

1. In the comics, Doom brought his own mother back to life with magic, then immediately killed her and turned her into magical leather armor and sentenced her to hell. In another storyline he tried to force the Scarlet Witch to marry him. At best, Doom is a complicated man, who appreciates a tactical advantage. Anyway....

2. Doom is a dictator and a fascist, and the only reason any of the heroes put up with him is because of his diplomatic immunity (this is an explicit plot point in USM and AA S1, so you already know this). For Doom to refuse to work with Skull because Skull's a Nazi and Doom's people were victims of the Nazis would make Doom a massive hypocrite. Even Magneto was usually depicted as believing his cause was justified, Doom, in at least a fraction of the material featuring him, has zero proverbial effs to give.

3. Doctor Doom doesn't appear in a single episode outside of S1. I also didn't mention S1 in any capacity because of outside of Hyperion, who was seeding Squadron Supreme, the things I like is exclusively in S2-5.

4. You're wrong. I checked. Doom doesn't team up with Red Skull. He fights him for control of an Asgardian relic from Ulic to control the Midgard Serpent, then teams up with the Avengers because Red Skull was gunning for him in retaliation, and in retaliation for Doom refusing the offer. As I'll say a bit lower, I marked down EMH because I forgot about a major component of the show, but in this case I made sure to check my work.

Here's one I just remembered, so I'll bring it up:

Beyond that... we're told the Avengers broke up. Why? We don't know. It's never explained. We're just supposed to accept that they were a thing, they broke up, but they're back together whatever it's fine now.

S1ep8: "Molecule Kid", featuring the son of the Molecule Man, featured a flashback that implied that the events of EMH or something similar to it happened in the past. If it WAS meant to be a continuation (and I'll concede it's possible that scene was depicted the way it was in a spineless attempt to placate people who didn't like the show because it replaced EMH and had a really bad S1) the continuity doesn't gel, but the continuity in Transformers' "Aligned" continuity didn't gel either, AND the way GotG and AA blend into "Marvel's Spider-Man", making it clear it was a similar continuity with broadly similar yet distinct events.

I should also point out the series had tie-in comics, and I'm pretty sure I haven't read them all, and they ALSO blend the EMH tie-in comic and the AA tie-in comics together. Now, you may say "Well that's a comic, that's no excuse for the show to be confusing or not deliver on the plot points." Fair point....and Young Justice Outsiders did it too, and I know this because I read the tie-in comics while Outsiders was coming out, and Red Martians, Ocean Master, and some content involving Kaldur were in the comic and brought into the third season.

And while I think done in one stories have their place, frankly I much prefer EMH's stories building off each other and building up the world, as opposed to "today the Avengers fight X". I get that they had arcs in the same way as USM did (again, my knowledge base is far more there than with Avengers Assemble, which I've never managed to get through) but EMH just feels... tighter.

I think that's fine, you stated your case, and your preference. If you know, do you think you can tell me exactly how far you got through AA, because I'm curious.

I'll concede that this Loeb verse has its flaws. I found the way the Darkhawks were used in the final season of Guardians to be rather disappointing and Star-Lord especially suffers from the failed attempt to capture the jokey MCU banter and voices. Star Lord's genuinely unlikable in that show, and that is a pretty significant flaw. A particularly notable story involving Yondu near the end of the show's run, while well-intentioned, suffered pretty badly from what I assume was tv censorship and rights issues (they were fighting a army of sloppily recolored Brood, and when Yondu kills them with his arrow, they simply glow and disappear like an enemy from Legend of Zelda or something. And, while I really liked the voice for Mantis, for some reason the writers decided to make her an unrepentant villain and she headlines The Universal Church of Truth. They took some risks and made some calls and not all of them paid off.

But that's what happens when you take risks. EMH played it very safe, and as a result, I personally found it very bland, in spots at least.

I'll state my case, but I'm willing to mark down the shows in areas too. I did that for USM back in the day too. While I liked the later take on Doc Ock, I cannot overstate how much I hated Kane in that show.

Let's talk about art style and animation, a bit more.

The final season of GotG did an entire arc about the Black Vortex, only instead of giving everyone "extreme makeovers" it transported each individual Guardian into their own personal equivalent of Wandavison, each one in a different, excellently executed art style.

Gamora was a reluctant Disney Princess, with an art style to match. Groot was CGI, Rocket was in a Steam-boat Willie style animation, Star-Lord was in an art style based on claymation, and Drax was in the style of Silver Age comic books. This was again in the final season, when they (like the final season of Avengers) changed the art style, and they likely put a lot of the budget and attention into these episodes, because 1. They were excellently animated and realized, ignoring my preferences for each specific one and 2. The animation in the last few episodes was quite a bit lacking, with open-mouth-shut-mouth and characters occasionally moving their head or blinking during talking scenes.

You could argue that counts as poorly allocating budget and effort, since The Black Vortex was a goofy side-story and the final arc was several episodes long, but if nothing else, they were doing something different and interesting animation wise. It seems to me that's far more ambitious and interesting than anything EMH was doing with their animation.

So anyway...

Here's probably the more fun (?) part:

Thanks for the feedback! Not sarcastic, you took the time to read my enormous post and respond to it and state your case, and I think that's just super. And if you checked out any of the openings I posted links to and enjoyed them, even better!

I wanted to state my case, and I did. And I get that most people probably don't like hearing their favorites shows/movies ect bashed, which is how we got here, so I've decided we'll all enjoy it if I state what I LIKED about EMH. 14 of them, and the first one is me correcting a pretty notable blunder on my part.

1. I did the show a HUGE disservice last night....because I forgot Carol Danvers was in the show! Jennifer Hale's Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel is excellent, probably the second best character after Hank, and is IMO the best adaptation of the character, better then the versions in the Loeb verse and the MCU. She's arguably better than the comics version since she doesn't have the Roy-Harper-sized baggage the original did. She's far more down to earth and likeable ("Guys? Why am I floating above the hospital bed?") So yeah, DEFINATELY had to make that right. Plus as Ms. Marvel, she's wearing one of my favorite costumes for the character.

2. Other than Hale, and maybe Hank's voice actor, the show has at least three excellent castings/performances. Fred Tatasciore as Hulk, Kari Walgren as Enchantress, and Jeffrey Combs as the Leader. But that's hardly surprising considering how consistently excellent Fred is as Hulk and the other two are in basically everything.

3. Hank Pym is excellent in this, and is indeed better in the comics, where he's kinda terrible for something like 50% of his content. This version is, I think, the best character in the show, has all the positive qualities of Hank Pym without the crap, and is likely a big part of the reason why all y'all like this show so much. So it's only fair I compliment the show on how good a job they did on him.

4. I fully concede, Hawkeye is a much better character in EMH than AA. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I like my Hawkeye the way I like my GA: where he's cocky but still very smart and capable and he only complains when there's a pretty good reason for it. Hawkeye being an obnoxious moron is, for me, one of the most annoying things in all of Marvel, and it's in AA. I don't mark down the whole show for that though, because he's a lesser main character.

5. On her own merits, Wasp is a pretty good character. I can't remember everything that went down in that show (feel free to correct me if I'm off base here), but my memory is that most of her agency in the later half of the show is based around reacting to whatever's going on in Hank's life. Which isn't much better than the boy-crazy "Because I'm going to marry him [Yellowjacket], that's why!" character from the Silver Age comics. Jan (along with Hope and Nadia) has proven in the comics that she doesn't need Hank around to be an interesting and bada$$ character, and that's something the show could have reflected more IMO.

6. The show has a few neat plot twists.

7. Red Hulk is a better character in this than in Hulk: Agents of Smash.

8. It's one of the earliest adaptions of Winter Soldier. I don't remember the version in the show being particularly good, but it was neat to see it in a cartoon for the first time.

9. Technovore is always fun. I forgot Technovore is in this.

10. Cassie Lang is in this, and she's in character and nothing bad happens to her. It's Kyle and Yost, so that accounts for a lot more than it SHOULD.

11. It's kinda neat Vision's in this. I don't find this show's version of Vision is particularly good (AA's version is better) but it's still neat he's in it, and in fairness, AA brings him in off screen, which is a bit lazy.

12. Despite the controversy, Drake Bell as Spidey in this is actually really good. And here's your olive branch. A big part of why is because he's reading an EMH script. Josh Keaton probably would have been better, but Bell was good in this. The Daily Bugle supporting characters were also good in it.

13. Malakith was better in this than in Thor: The Dark World!

14. Because the show doesn't try too hard, it doesn't fail too hard. That is a double-edged sword though (pun not intended).

So yeah, I think that's about it.

One more correction, that's NOT specifically about EMH. I said Transformers has never gotten a fourth season. I found out just the other night that tragic record is finally being shattered. The excellent and underrated Cyberverse is getting a fourth season, and I for one can't wait to see what they've got in store.

[HarryTrotter]

To go back to USM- It had a nice animation style for the most part,good voice acting,good villains...but also Family Guy-lite humor,tried too hard to do the broader MU instead of focusing on Spider-man,and most annoyingly negative continuity. Spidey has to learn a lesson about teamwork, friendship or responsibilty...only to forget it by the next episode and do the same things all over again. Some plots like Taskmasters connection with SHIELD are just forgotten.

[Silver Shocker]

Fair enough. And we all did the rounds on USM long ago. Cloak and Dagger, Cho, Agent Venom, Spider-Verse, Miles, Mary Jane becoming a superhero, Harry, MJ and Aunt May learning his secret...those are all good stuff, and you can either think of them as positives that don't save the show, or think of the negatives as negatives that don't sink the show.

I've been focusing on Avengers, with a slight emphasis on Hulk, GotG, Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel Rising because 1. The comparison was with EMH and 2. I know full well I'm the only one who watched them, and you all admitted it.

[HarryTrotter]

I get that,I just wanted to mention USM since it came up in the previous thread. The only Avengers cartoon I actually finished was Disk Wars,which is basically Pokemon with Marvel characters. Carry on.

[Silver Shocker]

They dubbed one of the recent animes and put it on D+ It's on my list.

Carry on.

Barring any further responses for me to respond to, I'm done. I've said my peace. This isn't Young Justice vs JLU. It's impossible to debate these shows when I'm the only one who's seen them.

Actually no, I've got one more thing to say, because I checked over the post:

the USM staple of shows are darker, muddier, and because of how detailed they are, do not allow for the same range of dynamic animation. Period.

Before, I start, keep in mind, I'm trying very hard to not be too insulting, and edited this post because a bit of it was a bit too confrontational for my delicate sensibilities. This post is also heavily edited to be shorter than it originally was. That having been said...

If it's a matter of preference, that's fine. If it's because they're "too detailed" NOT PERIOD.
The art styles for Ultimate Spider-Man and Assemble are not even that detailed. USM looks kinda like Brave and the Bold with the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book character designs for Peter and MJ. It's not exactly Afro Samurai. Which, by the way, is of course, considerably more dynamic than EMH, but it's only only 5 or 6 episodes long. 

If it's too detailed it does not allow for range of dynamic motion. You watch anime. You know full well that's not true. They put stuff like this out while putting out an episode almost every week of the year. Often on a shoestring budget. Batman TAS had more dynamic movement in season one than in the New Batman Adventures, and the original run of the show was more detailed, and that, like a lot of the best shows from the 80's and 90's was put out by the same studios putting out the anime.

Yes, that level of quality in the clip only lasts about 80 seconds, but that's because maintaining that level of quality for longer than that is not only economically unfeasible but probably impossible. The character in that clip has a swordfight using seven swords and they knew full well they've have to budget and plan for what I have to assume was the better part of a year to adapt that scene from the manga into a 80-second swordfight. And yes, I've seen that episode and the rest of it looks really good too.

That clip I just linked to was a from a show by Studio Pierrot, which was, based on what I've seen of their work, which is well over 200 episodes worth, probably one of the worst high-profile animation studios currently working in Japan, whose work coined the sarcastic phrase "Quality freakin' animation.". And if they're not one of the worst they had to stretch the budget and rush things so bad the episodes only looked good for maybe a third of the episodes, and sometimes just individual scenes.

I know I stacked the deck unfairly by using the opening intros as examples, though I was doing that specifically to compare to the intro to EMH, which I notice you made no comment about, but let my clarify about Rise of the TMNT. THE ACTUAL SHOW LOOKS LIKE THAT. (36 minute mark, massive spoiler warning.)

Compared to most of the better-looking stuff in the anime industry being put out on a conveyer belt schedule that would make the MCU blush, DC and Marvel's animated output look like glorified fan productions. And surprise, surprise, like The Real Ghostbusters back in the 80's, a lot of DC's better looking stuff in recent years (including yes, Young Justice) is going for an anime-inspired look. One of the best looking thing DC ever put out was an anime short called "The Batman of Shanghai.", which looks like an anime mated with a water painting and also looks like what Avatar: The Last Airbender would probably look like if it was under 1-and-a-half minutes long. Speaking of which...

Teen Titans Go is animated in Flash., and makes changing the art style drastically a running gag in almost every episode of the show, and has over 300 episodes and two movies.

Here's the Spider-Man vs Venom fight from USM. 1:47 mark. Looks pretty dynamic. And I'm pretty sure that's a S1 episode.

Here's the Avengers vs Graviton. I mean, it's good, and it's better than the rotating shot from the opening.

But it's hardly proof that you can't do dynamic animation in Ultimate Spider-Man, because it's "too detailed." Plus "darker" refers to color and that has nothing to do with movement. Either that or what you're vaguely referring to as "darker" is called "shading" and, as seen in the sequence with Ultra Magnus in the TFA opening, or the Thundercats opening, or literally every episode of Batman TAS S1 (and the original run of TMNT 2003) is usually considered a sign of good animation. And you know this because you agreed with me that Mask of the Phantasm is narratively overrated but pointed out that it's visually gorgeous.

Like, as I've said, I didn't like the animation in Into the Spider-Verse, but I still recognize it had the budget and effort expected out of a theatrically released film. There's a reason I called Sub-Zero a "quick and dirty cash-in." And The only anime I know you've seen are Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super (which has animation so mediocre it became a meme and they had to touch it up for the home release, which the dub was of course based on) and My Hero Acadamia (which I haven't seen) and I have to assume that if you called EMH's animation "dynamic" in a way that can't be matched with more detail, I can only conclude that MHA has incredibly mediocre animation.

This is the Trunks vs Freiza fight, which I never got to see in its proper form until Kai because of the tv edit, and when I saw that, I couldn't believe how incredibly crap the ending to it looked. This was one of the big "wow" moments of DBZ, and you tell the exact moment it switched to the next DBZ episode because the animation immediately turns into a hot mess. I know it looked like crap in 1991 because Macross, Gundam and Fist of the North Star already came out before that. (On the other hand, I really liked the modern dub, and scandal or not, the Yamamoto score is amazing!

I mean, like what you like, that's great. I've said that many, many times. But between avoiding saying how far you got in Assemble and making the most blatantly wrong statement about traditional animation someone could possibly give, you're really shooting yourself in the foot here.

Anyway, if memory serves, this fight scene from EMH is also the first episode, and as I've said, the first episodes tend to have good animation and the ones in the middle tend to be worse. I supposed I should be watching fight scenes from about half a dozen different episodes of EMH to be sure, but guess what, I have to sleep sometime, and I have less than a month to read almost an entire month's worth of Empyre comics and redeem the digital codes before they expire.

The art style (for EMH) still looks unappealing to me, but I've already proven pretty definitively that the art style is in no way a barrier to dynamic animation. I'm not sure what you're talking about though. Just because you used the word "muddy" more than once doesn't mean it's going to make any more sense the second time you said it.

And lastly, outside of USM and, again, it doesn't sound like you watched past season 2 of Assemble, it's pretty hard for you to judge the animation OR the writing for the 6 different shows I mention because they each have their own art style, and two of them changed it to be more simplified and stylistic in their final seasons, and they featured stories, characters, and in the case of Avengers, a main cast, that was completely different than that of AA S1.

Black Panther's Quest looks nothing like USM or Assemble, so I guess it stands to reason the animation would not be crippled by the muddy look of USM. Makes sense.

Forgot Zemo came back for that season. Damn good show. 

Well let's see how it looks in action:

Huh. The art style got simpler and more stylistic, but the animation itself, outside of Thor twirling his hammer, isn't as dynamic.

And none of these shows even HAVE a animated intro sequence outside of a logo on black, so all of the budget is going into the episodes themselves, yet they has no concrete bearing on the animation quality.

It's almost like your argument is, as you like to say, nonsense.

But don't worry. That's just a fan edit by me anyway. It's not like that's a real show that came out three years ago that exactly one person in this thread has seen every episode of in addition to seeing episode of EMH, including seeing the first season TWICE. No, not at all. 

[Tomato]

Honestly, after a fairly recent (couple years ago) watch through of EMH inspired by the voice actor threads, I pulled up the whole of Avengers Assemble to watch it as well. But where EMH kept me engaged, wanting to see the next episode, even going in years later, knowing the heights usm reached, I found AA just... Trailed off for me. I don't remember when I stopped because honestly, I just started pulling up youtube compilations of the best dialogue because that's all I cared about by the end. I didn't like actually watching it because of the animation style, I didn't find the stories engaging, and after a few episodes I'd basically shut down on the show, so how far I got I legitimately couldn't tell you because it became a chore for me to watch.

You can tell me the show is great, and that's cool. I may even check out Panther Quest sometime. But much like SHIELD was it's first season or so, that doesn't mean I'm always gonna be willing to sit through it to get to that point.

Yes, I probably mischaracterized the animation, but end of the day that animation was one of the biggest reasons I couldn't get into the show. I just didn't like watching it for long periods. And while USM was able to keep me mostly invested despite that by pulling on my love of spiderman lore, what I saw of AA just... Didn't.