#New thundercats series#

They created a whole world out of Thundera, one with history and richness and conflicts. Joe or He-Man - and fleshed it out wonderfully. The people making this show took a goofy ’80s toy cartoon concept - and let’s admit that it was even more razor thin than G.I. Longer version (with some spoilers): I’m sure I sound as guilty of hyperbole as I did when mocking the Spidey musical song below, but I’m really not. When anyone wants to talk about how the beloved franchises or our youth should be revived in the modern age - for instance, like when I go stand in the corner and start screaming about Masters of the Universe - all we need to do is point to the new ThunderCats as an example of how it can be done. Better than 2002 He-Man, better than any Transformers adaptation, even better than G.I.

#New thundercats series#

ThunderCats Roar comes to Cartoon Network sometime next year.?Short version: The new ThunderCats is the best relaunch of any ’80s cartoon series ever. So maybe this new approach for ThunderCats Roar may improve the fortunes of the series but it definitely feels like some of the artistic craftsmanship has been lost in favor of something simpler, which is a shame. However, no-one watched it and the show was subsequently canceled. The sad thing in all this is that we already had an excellent ThunderCats series back in 2011, with a fantastic production behind it. I also think my aspirations to be a comic book illustrator as a kid piqued my interest in watching more of these Japanese animated shows because they displayed a level of draftsmanship, environmental design techniques and cinematic film composition qualities absent in Looney Tunes/Hanna Barbera shows, yet mirrored the approach comics illustration styles which appealed to me. This is also something that artist, writer and director LeSean Thomas talked about when I spoke with him last year on how this kind of classic approach to animation still matters. It’s not about taking ThunderCats seriously or anything like that but purely down to the artistic approach being used here, after all the original series was often humorous and silly. So when I see the vociferous reaction to the simplified and somewhat goofy art style and tone in ThunderCats Roar I can understand why fans feel this way. So that was why he was really into the series and likely why the animation is quite special and at such a high quality. So believing in his strong desire, I had Taniguchi do Layzner's character designs and a lot of the animation direction. However, Taniguchi who is the same age as I, said that he himself felt that he hadn't done anything yet. Back then, I thought I was getting old and out of date, maybe I should resign. Moriyasu Taniguchi made Anime R and we're the same age. This is why Layzner likely had such good quality animation, as many top animators worked at Anime R. When I interviewed Ryosuke Takahashi about his work on series such as Layzner, he also had this to say about Taniguchi and Anime R.Īs for the mecha action, Anime R was the studio which had the best quality animation in Japan at the time.

To see what I mean it’s worth looking at both the first and second openings for Layzner, as these were also animated by Taniguchi. While the character design styles between Layzner and ThunderCats are clearly different, the treatment of the characters, as well as the effects used, are stylistically similar.