Ponies, Smurfs, and Avatars

My Little Pony, as I've been learning lately, has had a multitude of makeovers in its production line. Whilst researching voice actors for random characters (a hobby I've always enjoyed), I discovered this page: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc3/my_little_pony. While most of it is pretty standard and a bit boring, scroll down the "My Little Pony Cartoons" section. Whoever wrote those pieces was quiet the comical genius. I literally laghed out loud many times, and even Walter cracked a few grins. As a sample: 'I am left with no idea of what I am supposed to have gained from it, other than the potent knowledge that Sea Ponies are most excellent dancers'. Now, if that doesn't get at least a small chortle out of you I don't know what would. It is actually quite slanderous to the family of ponies, but i agree with it all 100% :D So, if you think ponies are ridiculous (you know who you are ;D) then give that section a read.

Smurfs? Well, since this article was so entertaining we began looking at other 80's Saturday morning cartoons we remembered as overly campy. Oddly enough, I've done a bit of research on smurfs before so I knew they've always been hugely popular in other countries but this page made me realize that a comeback in the US may be on the way as well. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc2/the_smurfs is the page that will tell you all you wanted to know about Smurfs....and much much more. I still can't say I'm excited...

Sadly, the Thundercats article which we both agreed was probably the all time most campy, was not entertaining at all. At any rate, if you remember any show you watched in the eighties, give it a search on that site and you'll most likely be in for a pretty good laugh.

Now, a picture of Tiana who, when asked to put on her clothes decided she only needed some undies and the scarf Brenda made for her ^_^
Quite cute :)

And now on to Avatar. I've looong known I'd be hooked on and fall in love with Avatar: The Las Airbender if I actually sat down to watch it. Once we let our cable go I only occassionally held the DVD in target longingly and took it no further. But of course, if anyone knows me, they know I'm quite resourceful in entertaining myself. So I found the torrent for Avatar and started downloading it (believe me if I had money i would NEVER use torrents, but would buy things and contribute to the success!!!!!!) which is currently at 26% of 3.6 GB. Being impatient as always, I headed over to http://youtube.com/ (if you want to know how to capture the vidoes let me know b/c I know how - but the quality sucks) to look for whole episodes to watch online until it finished downloading. Of course, as wildly popular as it already is (being the first American 'anime' and all!) I have already gotten through episode 11 and can't wait to see more!! There are a couple moments of lack of plot execution, but otherwise it's awesome! Check it out if you ever get a chance...it's a great story with great characters and animation.

Which sadly brings me to one last point. I have noticed a common theme of young (12 to be exact at least in introduction) enthusiastic, courageous and talented young boys (usually with blond hair no less..) for most of my favorite storylines. Not to say I don't seek out similar female characters (which I did find with Miaka in Fushigi Yuugi actually) but they just aren't as....I dunno...exciting. There's typically too much girly fluffy stuff in the Shojo type stories (young girls as leads battling evil or exams or whatnot) to really keep me interested even if the story starts out good. But give me those Shonen manga and I'm much happier. Not that I really prefer war, fighting and demons and blood or anything, but the stories have more.....I dunno, action i guess, to them. I don't like lots of fights either, but with something like Naruto the action is so intense and meaningful (not jsut a bunch of people trying to kill each other..). Some of the best character development we see happens in the middle of important battles.
That, or I just flat out prefer shonen stories because the lead characters are more independent. Female leads just seem to usually rely on luck or other people to take care of them...even in Naruto the kunoichi are strong but usually take a back seat to the guys. At least they can take care of themselves.... Naruto, Max, Aang...the list goes on....disturbs me a bit but as long as I'm not clammering over DBZ or Star Wars I'll just take it that those stories have exceptional plots and characters and not that I really do have the entertainment enjoyment level of an 8th grade boy ..... At least Chichiri was like 26 :)

Enough of that! I'm enjoying blogging waaaay too much :)