Note: For this, I limited myself to television animation, much like we did for the anime recs/favs thread, meaning I left out things like Disney and Warner shorts–that could’ve made that a lot messier. This was a lot harder to put together than my anime list and it’s wild how different tonally the two lists are whereas I feel like there are some really strong themes running through this list, and I could even arguably say that this reveals my taste in American cartoons to all be various permutations of a core aesthetic preference, whereas I feel like my anime list was more varied. Yes, these are all American (I am trash).
Rocky & Bullwinkle: Jay Ward & company’s madcap cornball fast-and-loose parodic antics make my brain all happy, and a couple of really unfortunate 60-year-old prejudices aside, I love this thing dearly, and will watch any of it whenever. I almost broke out Mr. Peabody & Sherman into its own square, but I came up with another 8 things I wanted to add. Mr. Peabody is the height of comedy to my garbage brain and my partner hates him so much, despite being on board for everything else Rocky & Bullwinkle.
Over the Garden Wall: Funny, lyrical, poignant, wise, and just scary enough to make for mandatory fall viewing in my house now.
The Professor Brothers/Creased Comics: Brad Neely’s pre-China, Illinois internet output is great. I think about the wizards in Babycakes’s town and cat people screwing like the wind all the time. The shorts are largely driven by Neely’s idiosyncratic writing style and vocal performance, but his hyperlimited “animation” is often terribly visually witty and perfectly timed.
Darkwing Duck: I’ll be honest, despite loving so many Disney Afternoon shows for so much of my life, watching them lately has been harder, both because of overfamiliarity and, my biggest complaint, the endless assault of the overactive soundtracks reusing the same one hour of music for every goddamn moment. Darkwing’s always been my favorite (when I was a teen, I ran the most popular Darkwing fansite on the internet for a minute) and it’s the perfect storm of action cartoon, witty writing, and good visual gags for me still. Honestly, it’s hard for me to talk about because it’s been such a big part of my life for 30 years. Darkwing’s the onyl real “fandom” I ever engaged with. I feel like I’m being real negative, more than I should be. Darkwing’s great and I love it (and despite the best of intentions, the comic series revivals just have never been able to match the show’s wit and heart).
Home Movies: Hands-down my favorite American cartoon. Coach McGuirk is one of the great comic characters of all time. There’s just enough melancholy and insight into family and friendship dynamics behind the wacky antics to make the absurdity and dynamite comedic wit and distinctive syncopation of the dialogue really sing. So fucking good.
BoJack Horseman: Everything I want to say about this is over-the-top praise bordering on precious right now and I already feel like I’m using too many superlatives and I need to stop.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast: The original and still my favorite of the Williams Street/Adult Swim house style of limited animation Hanna-Barbera-satured remix cruft. Absurdist non sequitirs are common in American animation, but I love them most in the six-dozen frames of animation employed by SGC2C.
Adventure Time: I need to come clean and say I haven’t gotten into the whole of the post-AT action/comedy cartoon scene with Steven Universe and OK Ko and all that, and I still haven’t finished AT, but AT’s real good and serves up endless strange and varied delights.
The Animaniacs: You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you’re not a man, you’re a Chicken Boo.
Things that didn’t make the 9-square-grid cut
Simpsons seasons 1-5: I love this dearly, but also who needs to be recommending the Simpsons to anyone in the year 2020. I and my babysitter got in trouble because I watched the premiere of the show while my parents were at dinner when I was 6.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: I got real tired of this show by the end–and the Williams Street sensibilities are represented on this list by Space Ghost–but man, the first couple seasons of this were inspiring. Master Shake is a masterpiece of petulance.