Cartoon Karma

Hey all. Been a while, hasn't it?

At this stage, after nearly five years, I'm pretty obviously not returning to YouTubing. It was a good ride, don't get me wrong, but my tastes and interests have shifted beyond quick-fire videos rattling off points that are barely negatives or positives to begin with. I certainly don't watch such things anymore. And I'm finding it healthier to engage in pastimes that don't take up so much time to relatively minimal benefit; the way YouTube has changed such that success or even personal fulfilment is only possible with frequent videos on a long-term commitment doesn't help.

That said, my passion for animation hasn't faded one iota, and I am still showcasing that online, if you're interested. I now log most of everything I watch on Letterboxd in mini-reviews (typically 500-800 words). Perfect evolution of the style I developed here into written form, but much more succinct and layered, quicker to get out, and not wasting time on plot recaps. I already have over 50 reviews up there: including, most recently, the newest Wallace & Gromit in 16 years, Vengeance Most Fowl. Which I had the pleasure of catching on the big-screen for its one-week cinema engagement prior to its BBC Christmas airing. Posted just in time for its worldwide Netflix release! Given my Wallace and Gromit videos were easily my most successful on this channel (a little over half my views these days comes from the videos on those four shorts), I know it's something many associate me with.

letterboxd.com/cartoonkarma/film/wallace-gromit-ve…

I've also moved over to Blue Sky, if you'd rather follow me there. Not up to a huge amount, but a lot more than on YouTube, anyway. Plus, if you lack a Letterboxd, it (or my Twitter) will let you keep up with any and all reviews.

bsky.app/profile/cartoonkarma.bsky.social


Hope everyone is well, and has a good 2025. My 2024 was a murky affair, so I certainly do!

1 year ago | [YT] | 11

Cartoon Karma

Apologies that the channel's still dormant, folks. Sadly, it's likely to remain so for a while longer. I have every intention of returning, but only when I'm in the right place to produce content semi-regularly (I'll never be a 'weekly videos' channel, that much is clear). When I do come back, I want it to be justifiable – if I can't compete on quantity, I want the quality to be higher. And when I come back, it'll be a fresh start, with new branding and a new format and everything. Best way to tackle it!

Oh, and it's probably pretty obvious, but the 'Everything Right and Wrong With' videos aren't coming back. Having no drive for them is the reason the channel went dormant in the first place, and every attempt I made to resurrect them over the years tapered off quickly. I hope that my reformated dissecting and discussing of animated films and tv shows, in a more flexible form, will still hold your interest, when that comes.

I'm still active over on Twitter, so follow me at twitter.com/toonkarma to keep more up-to-date with what's going on, and my comments on wider going-ons in the cartoon and animation community.

3 years ago | [YT] | 10

Cartoon Karma

I may still be taking an extended break from making videos, but I'm not off YouTube fully! Check out YugiBrony's final episode of Cartoon Millionaire, where I show up as the 2nd contestant! This was a ton of fun to do.

4 years ago | [YT] | 6

Cartoon Karma

Update: Progress on the next Pokemon Challenge video (a Minimum Battles Run of Ruby/Sapphire, much more difficult then Gold, Silver & Crystal) is going well. Should be out on October 2nd. After that, it'll be back to a cartoon video - can't stray from the channel's namesake for too long, can I?

In slightly more alarming news:
So I was browsing through my YouTube analytics, when I noticed that my old Everything Wrong & Right With video on Ice Age (1) had no views last month. Turns out it got blocked with a copyright claim on July 29th, and I was never emailed about it! YouTube has reached a new low.
Anyway, I've disputed it, and it should be fine - this video was claims three times in a few months in 2017, but the claim was dropped on all occasions (after appeals). These are Fair Use, after all. The video should be back and public within the month. Hopefully.
UPDATE: The claim got released super-early this time! Normally Fox is among the clingiest studios. Maybe being under Disney, a little looser with these things, is to credit? Regardless, the video’s back public and viewable to all. Enjoy!

5 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 10

Cartoon Karma

Cross-posting and adapting a few tweets from my Twitter here, because this is too important to avoid more not hearing about this...

The Powerpuff Girls has had a live-action series announced as being in development.
variety.com/2020/tv/news/powerpuff-girls-live-acti…
And, well... I think I’ll let this extract from the article speak for me:

"In the updated version of the series, the titular superheroes are now disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?"

Aging the characters up, going for a stock “being superheroes sucks, I have no agency” scenario that does far more damage then positivity to any female empowerment message might be intended, leaving behind animation when the show is a stylistic triumph that can only work in that format...

Yeah, not looking too good, folks! Social media’s having a field day bashing this, and for good reason; the show’s not even in production yet, has no cast yet, none of that, and it still seems doomed to suck. I do hope it never leaves development limbo - stone me why it was announced before entering production.

A few other thoughts:

The plot scenario honestly makes it sound like Riverdale more then anything else, and having reflected on that, it sounds exactly right. While it obviously won’t be that - the creatives did The Arrow, so I’m sure it will have superhero stuff - it just seems like unnecessary melodrama at this stage. Speaking of which...

There is no way the developers of this adult-focused reboot are not aware that very nearly every piece of Powerpuff Girls fan media ages them up to high schoolers or young adults. Not just fanfiction; fan art, very popular fan comics, parody animations, indie films, and so on. Even for the property alone, this is tired, well-work material. It’s honestly quite rare to find Powerpuff Girls fanwork that leaves them as five-year-olds.

Now, the creatives behind this have made some allegedly stellar superhero shows the past few years, most notably The Arrow. That’s all well and good, but that’s not nearly enough to inspire confidence. There’ll be so many corporate overlords to please here, I seriously doubt those involved will have the ability to reach far and go ambitious, so any hopes for something artistically fulfilling and ambitious should remain low.

I’m probably letting the sour taste of the 2016 reboot colour my opinion, as well as my general distaste for live-action reboots/continuations of animated properties. But this news is just ice to my heart (or ectoplasma, to be technically accurate). Best we can hope for at this stage is that it changes the characters, settings, etc. into its own thing so much that it doesn’t feel like Powerpuff Girls at all, and whether it sinks or floats thereafter, it can do so without dragging the corpse of Craig McCracken’s original around with it.

5 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

Cartoon Karma

That Pokemon Challenge Run video for Gold & Silver in the least amount of battles possible recently wasn't a once-off thing - I enjoyed it so much I'm back for another round! A video for a Minimum Battles Run in Crystal will come out tomorrow, my friends. Look forward to it - I'm working on another already too. What is it? Ah, well, it's teased at the end of this video, that's all I'll say.

This video would have been out nearly a month ago, were it not for my old computer giving it in, and delays in retrieving the data from it to continue making this video.

Cartoon Karma's 5th anniversary is coming up in late September, and while this year has been... very slow, it's getting better. It's a bit too soon to have any major videos for that date, but I am going to try to aim to use it to usher in a more regular rate of videos. Since they still take a lot of time to make, be them on cartoons or games, the initial goal is to get back to a video per month. If that becomes regular, it's a foundation to build upon, I think.

5 years ago | [YT] | 6

Cartoon Karma

‪Hey folks, thought I should share that the reason for no videos during July was because my computer of nearly 10 years finally gave in. So the lack of content was totally out of my control! Pity, I was in full production when it stopped working. Nothing worse then being on schedule and then missing it due to external forces.

I have a new computer now, so the forced two-week sabbatical is over, though I missed my original upload date of last Friday. Still, it’s not all bad; a new desktop means much faster processing. And 4K is so sharp too! I’m working on uploading for early August now. It’s too early to say yet how much this computer will speed up production for this video and future ones, but it definitely will a little.
Have a good day, my friends!

5 years ago | [YT] | 9

Cartoon Karma

Just an update to let you all know that I’m okay. The lack of videos is down more to the pandemic derailing my interest for a good spell. Rest assured, I’m perfectly fine, I haven’t contracted COVID-19. Mostly because, you know, ghosts can’t catch it.

Anyway, I have some good news - I have a video coming out this Friday! This video is something ambitious I’ve been working on for quite a while. Big milestone - It’ll be my first video not to do with cartoons. This one is to do with video games instead.
That’s all I’ll say for now, Friday’s pretty close, after all. I’ll share more nearer the time.

What of the channel after that video? Well, best not to promise anything yet, but I am working on many things. The plan to finish the Everything Wrong And Right With videos with a few last entries still applies, folks, and I intend to get those last few videos out this year, to the best of my ability.

5 years ago | [YT] | 8

Cartoon Karma

Despite it not being June, May or November, a Pixar film came out this weekend in March, the first time the studio has released a film outside of the Summer or Winter holidays. Hey, March can be a great slot for animated films. Find my spoiler-free review of Disney-Pixar's Onward below the break.

Onward is an interesting Pixar film for a number of reasons. Other then it being their first non-sequel since Coco over 2 years ago, it's also their second film directed by Dan Scanlon (who also co-wrote), who previously directed Monsters University (which he also co-wrote for). One notable trend through Pixar's lackluster decade of the 2010s is that no one who directed their first film has yet to go on to direct a second film. The directors of Cars 2 & 3, Brave, The Good Dinosaur and Toy Story 4 (it's recent, I know) haven't directed anything since. Why does this matter? Seeing someone direct again gives a much better insight as to their personal style, and also allows them to work out the kinks they may not have solved on their previous film. So with Dan Scanlon behind the wheel again after the entertaining yet not spectacular Monsters University, how does Onward fare?

It fares fine. Not great, not mediocre, just fine. I'd bet, even if you didn't know, that you could tell this film came from a lot of the same minds as Monsters University, for it shares a very specific, and very pervasive, structural flaw with that film, as well as a similar point at which it drastically improves.
Like that film, Onward is, for most of its runtime, a generic easy-going hang out movie that largely runs on autopilot, with the earnest soul it possesses either fighting to share screen space with generic kids' movie shenanigans (college movie for Monsters University, road trip movie for Onward), or getting largely buried under said shenanigans. And, like Monsters University, around the third act, the emotional core and some of the tough realities of life come to the forefront and present a mature and unusual lesson that is absolutely worth it, and leaves the film ending on a greater note then the sums of its parts. You can probably tell the characters' journey was where Dan Scanlon's loyalties lie here (the setup of two brothers whose dad died when they were young and too young to remember him, respectfully, is a personal one), and that's what ends up working the most. Everything else? Well...

It's probably time I started being more specific: the high concept of mixing traditional fantasy with a modern everyday 'boring' world somehow ends up being both too much concept and too little (and the late 70's vibe does end up being off-putting throughout: I'm convinced this being baked into every aspect of the film's visuals and character design contributed to its underwhelming opening at the box office). As the two brothers, Ian and Barley, venture on their quest, in a plot that takes every opportunity to blatantly lampshade and replicate tabletop RPG mechanics and tropes, it's a dead certainty that any given scene is likely either the modern world except for aspects of the character design and architecture, or a palette swap for old school medieval fantasy. The graft of this world never really holds together much, and the end result is that large aspects of the world and the magic within it seem to often happen largely because the plot says so.

The visuals are similarly uncreative. Technically amazing, of course, it is Pixar, but there's only a few moments throughout the film where any aspect of the characters or architecture feels more then sufficient (again, this feels much like Monsters University, where aside from the late-film horror sequence in the human world the visuals and design felt playfully done with a surplus of visual creativity).

With all of that being the case, the film is still largely watchable and enjoyable, mostly on the grounds of its two charming and likeable leads, voiced with perfect awkwardness and gusto by MCU superstars Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. There's some likeable comedy throughout, even if, like some other lower-tier Pixar efforts, it's more amusing then funny. While the emotion of the central plotline is only really allowed to break through in the final act, it manages to shed a few tears there, and make a profound and important statement on the importance of roles in a family being what you make of them.

Still, whenever the generic material dominates, the film is rather uninspiring to watch (the opening act, where this is most proficient, is especially dire in this case, and the opening 30 minutes could easily be shortened by five minutes in a flash). It's not a Cars 2 misfire, and I predict most people will like it better then The Good Dinosaur (the world building here is largely uninspired, compared to the tatters in that one), but otherwise Onward is one of the weakest Pixar films around. However you feel about Monsters University is likely to reflect how you feel about Onward, though that film at least had the benefit of goodwill and a wonderful universe from the original Monsters, Inc. to work with, and so I would probably reach for it first. Onward is a fine, enjoyable film, and shows that even Pixar at nearly their weakest is still worthwhile and largely good, even if you dearly wish it was far further up the Pixar scale.

5 years ago | [YT] | 14

Cartoon Karma

Even three weeks since the video on A Matter or Loaf and Death, I still have Wallace and Gromit on my mind. They’re worth having on one’s mind, as it happens. It got me curious, - what’s your favourite film of theirs? I know mine, and I know the general consensus of how they tend to be ranked - but I’m curious as to how you all feel. And please, do comment on your ranking and thoughts of them too! We can always do with some more Wallace and Gromit discussion. Here’s my ranking, without comment:
1. The Wrong Trousers
2. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
3. A Close Shave
4. A Grand Day Out
5. A Matter of Loaf and Death
6. Cracking Contraptions (omitted from the poll due to space; not enough of the shorts are sure-fire hits to rise it up, alas).

Also a friendly reminder that A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon is now available on Netflix in the US & Canada and you need to watch it right now, folks.

5 years ago | [YT] | 7