digimon - just shut up and listen okay? its fucking great. argh. let me start by explaining why not only is it better than pokemon but why it isnt even really comparable. for a start the animation in pokemon is the cheap and nastiest animation since beavis and butthead (actually its worse) and the digimon animation is one of the best seen in kids cartoons (just check out the films). but more importantly is the depth. pokemon has wooden characters with no development. team rocket are the emptiest bad guys ever. the main characters in digimon have decent characters that develop through the series. they actually have depth (okay you may have to watch a few episodes but they do). and then theres plot. in pokemon theres that jumped-up-little-shit trying to capture certain pokemon (why hasnt animal rights complained about this cartoon having a bad influence anyway?) and become a pokemon master or whatever. there is no plot and the episodes barely follow on. digimon has a proper plot that works on different levels. theres plots and sub-plots and it actually procedes and develops unlike pokemon. i still cant believe that young kids actually follow half of it. its not just about "agumon digivolve to wargreymon. wargreymon defeat bad guy. kids celebrate" theres a hell of a lot of stuff going on. oh. and digimon was actually around before pokemon. so thats that sorted. i could go on. but dont want to bore you too much (whoops). so what is digimon about? well. its kinda hard to explain. in the first season a group of eight kids are transported to the digital world because its in danger from this great dark power that is also threatening the real world. the kids are the digidestined and were picked because they witnessed two digimon in the real world when they were young. the first set of episodes are pretty formulaic but it develops pretty quickly and when they go back to defend the earth it goes into a league of its own. it trancends the rather lame pokemon easily. the first series has an ending to rival the 'city of gold's ending (yes they found it). the second season is set in the real world a lot more and is even better than the first. it has a lot more characters and seriously kicks some shit. its kinda let down by two sucky bad guys (arukenimon and mummymon) but theyre only puppets to a larger dark force anyway. and then theres the film which has some of the greatest fight scenes this side of manga. a cartoon classic (of course its no where near akira or ghost in the shell. but what is?). how can you not like a cartoon with characters as amazing as silphymon (an androgenous cat-bird cyber-angel thing) blackwargreymon (a mega-level anthropomophic cyber-dinosaur made from pure evil) and piedmon (a kinda harlequin jester freak). its kind of hard to cover digimon cos theres so much in it. but theres some great websites out there if your curious.



invader zim - more funny than it is amazing. invader zim is one of the best damn cartoons ever. hats off to jhonen vasquez. its about this lil alien dude called zim who is kinda sent to earth by the irken empire to fuck shit up. but they think zim is a bit of a gimp like. this is the lamest of explanations ever. but it doesnt need a good one. you just gotta see it. which may prove a little hard cos nickelodean cancelled it and theres no chance theyll sell it on. oh the assholeness. luckily you can download nearly the whole first series from here. the downloads are uber slow tho. but its clearly worth it. zim has the robot sidekick dude called gir. he totally steals the show. its the cutest damn thing ever.



samurai jack - clearly one of the most over stylish cartoons ever. i love this program and often babble on about it on my news page everytime i see a new episode. its like the powerpuff girls for boys and intellectuals. (laugh away philistine). and its genius. jack is this samurai dude (or was that obvious?) who had this big fight with this evil wizard called aku. he was about to win but just before he struck aku sent jack into the future. without jack in the way he then took over and now rules the world and is all powerful. so jacks quest is to find a way to get back into the past and destroy aku. does that make sense? i could word it better. but hey. what is the essence of samurai jack? its like this. long atmospheric scenes. minimal dialogue. amazing fights. random widescreen. subtle plots. and some of the episodes are too awesome for words. its not as epic as the mysterious city of gold. but i think it comes close.



spaced - its just one of the cleverest comedy series ever. ummm. so theres tim and daisy and theyve got nowhere to live so they pretend to be married couple to get a flat. thatll do for an explanation. im doing really badly today. maybe i should redo this sometime. haha. anyway. okay. ill do better. they live below their landlord marsha whos this alcoholic and they live above brian. the tortured artist. its a total of 343 minutes of genius.



malcom in the middle - its not the simpsons but its so close yknow. i just love it. yes no maybe. whatever. its funny and its american and its not the simpsons. how can this be? who knows. i have no idea what to write about it. theres always a big debate in my house as to whether it is actually better than the simpsons or not. its a toughie. and obviously to better than the simpsons.. well yknow. winning formula and all that. sorry. i have nothing of any actualy use to say about it. just stop reading.