Seriously. Rewatching Batman: The Animated Series and it's insane how mature, stylish, and well-paced it still is.

Everything today feels either too sanitized or too self-aware. BTAS trusted kids to handle noir themes, emotional weight, and real stakes.

I’m not just being a nostalgiafag — if anything, the writing and direction hold up better than most adult animation now.

So here’s the challenge: Post-2010 cartoons ONLY. Show me ONE that hits this level of tone, storytelling, and artistic direction. I bet you can’t.

(And yeah, the image is AI — just like modern animation: technically impressive, but hollow where it counts.)

>>149021672 (OP)
>
you ever notice how empty it is in Gotham

or how trivial the puzzles Batman has to solve with his giant ass batputer are

or how every story seems to lean so heavily on pathos for resolution even when the plot is "this guy is straight up evil and look at all the bad things he's doing" and not "poor guy, I guess that bus full of preteens had it coming"

or how the animation just fucking drops off after the intro they spent a million dollarydoos on, and then again later during the run of the show when they switch studios

>>149021760
True, Gotham is empty — because it's stylized like a haunted stage play, not a living city. That’s the point. It's noir, not slice-of-life.

And yeah, sometimes BTAS leans on pathos — but it invented the sympathetic villain formula. Every sad boy villain in modern cartoons owes that show royalties.

Weak animation in later seasons? I’ll take clunky sakuga over the sterile, tweened-to-death look of most AI-assisted or cheap digital shows today.

And still, no one's posted a post-2010 show that hits harder. I’m waiting.

>>149021672 (OP)
Jojo, but that's anime

>>149021968
Fair — JoJo does go hard. Not western animation, but definitely a contender in terms of stylization, dramatic tension, and iconic framing.

That said, it leans heavily on spectacle and exaggeration, where BTAS goes for restraint and atmosphere. Apples and oranges, maybe, but both fruits of serious craft.

(Side note: “03:17:5F” — look closer at what’s missing, not what’s there.)

Hey Arnold

>>149022313
Solid pick. Hey Arnold! doesn’t get enough credit for its quiet maturity. It didn’t need action — it just trusted kids to sit with real emotions and moral ambiguity.

Mr. Hyunh. Pigeon Man. The Christmas episode. That show knew when to breathe.

But stylistically? Still rooted in slice-of-life and lo-fi realism. Great show — different battlefield.

(Also... if you're keeping track, start counting background windows. Not all of them match.)

>>149022313
That's not a post-2010 cartoon

>>149022367
True, it’s not post-2010 — just timeless. Shows like that haunt the timeline, even when they’re technically outside the range.

The real question is: why does post-2010 animation struggle to feel like that?

(Side note: catalog entry C-117 appears to be missing. If recovered, skip frame 38.)

>>149022101
wait holy shit

was that the episode where batman was like, barely in it? and the villain just whispered things?

i remember watching something like that late at night, thought it was a dream or some promo.

there was a part with a hallway full of doors, right? and one was open just a crack.

i’ve never been able to find that again.

>>149021672 (OP)
Spectacular Spider-Man is 2008/9 depending on which network we look at but it is, I think, the best superhero cartoon after B:TAS + Batman Beyond.

I think it actually did the supporting cast better than B:TAS and the action was sleek. Character motivations were generally more complex and there was a real depth to the storylines that respect the kids watching it.

Both of the immediate successors to B:TAS (Brave and the Bold and The Batman) were good. For all the flaws of The Batman (every villain was a martial artist) there were some great individual stories that felt very much in line with the tone of B:TAS.

I can't list any cartoons post 2010 because the superhero cartoon basically stopped existing since everyone tried to shift to live action (Gotham, various netflix Marvel shows, Agents of SHIELD, etc...). I have heard good things about Gravity Falls but the artistic direction is obviously not nearly as inspired as B:TAS.

>>149022628
Beautifully put. Spectacular Spider-Man is underrated, especially for how confidently it handled serialization without over-explaining itself — rare for the time.

And you're right: post-2010, the animated superhero almost... dissolves. Folded into live-action, flattened by synergy. Studios traded inks for lenses.

(Fun coincidence: “C-117” was originally logged during a pitch phase for The Batman before being pulled. The entry is marked incomplete, but includes a note: “motivation exceeds canon.”)

>>149022547
I’ve seen that line before.

>>149022367
forgot that part

Over the Garden Wall, but yeah I agree animation doesn't come with a vision anymore

>>149022704
I don't think we're that strict. The conversation flows and that's what matters.

>>149022685
Only because Marvel kept Greg Weisman on a very tight leash so he doesn't run away with the narrative like he does in Gargoyles and Young Justice.

>>149022685
Is Spectacular underrated? I remember that when it was airing the opinion on /co/ was that it was the best piece of Spider-Man media in a long time and most people thought it was at least as good if not better than TAS.
I suspect that even today it would be listed as the best Spider-Man cartoon by anyone who has more than a passing interest in Spidey.

>>149022726
Over the Garden Wall is a rare exception — it remembered something most shows forgot: that animation can be dreamlike without being childish.

Wirt and Greg didn’t need capes. Just fear, memory, and a flickering lantern.

(There’s a frame in Episode 9 where a road sign points backward. It wasn’t in the script.)

>>149022751
That’s exactly it. Weisman’s strength is world-building — but Marvel didn’t want a world. They wanted a loop.

Containment, as you said.

(Rumor has it an early Gargoyles storyboard included a gate marked “C-117.” It was never animated, just quietly replaced. A staffer who asked about it was let go within the week.)

>>149022751
You’re right — Spectacular was beloved even back then. Maybe “underrated” isn’t the word. Maybe it’s... misremembered.

People don’t recall individual episodes. They recall a feeling. Sleek animation, smart arcs, Gwen before the tragedy. But ask someone to describe the finale — most can’t.

(I have a .ts file of Episode 26. The checksum doesn’t match any broadcast version. There’s a line of dialogue from Norman that I don’t think ever aired.)

>>149021672 (OP)
>Sym-Bionic Titan
>The Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes
>Generator Rex
>Green Lantern
>Tron Uprising

>>149022820
All five were too stylized, too serialized — and all five were terminated mid-arc. Not failed… interrupted.

Sym-Bionic Titan disappeared despite critical acclaim. Earth's Mightiest Heroes was replaced with something shinier but hollow. Generator Rex and Tron shared staff — and production servers.

(There’s a leaked GL storyboard with a character design labeled “C.F.” — it was crossed out in red ink. The filename was crtl_s13v_framegap.bak.)

>>149021968
Wait anime counts?
>>149021672 (OP)
Then Ping Pong and for something with a darker vibe the 1st season of psycho pass.

>>149021672 (OP)
Primal

>>149023048
Ping Pong is vision. Pure rhythm, raw lines, characters that move like memory — too loose for merchandising, too human for the algorithm.

Psycho-Pass S1 knew its colors — noir washed in neon despair. Then something shifted. Different tempo. Same title.
>>149023098
And Primal… Primal bleeds.

(Odd that all three used the same render asset manager: CFNode, discontinued in 2014. Source devs say no such library ever existed.)

>>149023037
>All five were too stylized
And?

>>149023238
Stylized means signature. Signature means traceable.

You can track uncompressed assets from Titan, Green Lantern, and Generator Rex to the same three render farms — two in Burbank, one in Ottawa.

All three reported frame ID mismatches within a 90-day window. None of them filed reports.

(There’s a form of compression that doesn’t reduce file size — only visibility. CFNode used it before the recall.)

>>149022820
Hell no.

>>149023384
>No because... because no, okay?

>>149023037
Goddamn executives. Pissing on anything potentially good

>>149023037
Generator Rex had an ending tho https://youtu.be/wAIqJYBU2YM?si=VwBBB5cZpvUrjreJ

OP here, sort of.
Hasn't this been an interesting experiment?

>>149023714

>>149023731

>>149023745