I have no idea why I have not made a topic about this show ever since I've been here, but now I will. I'm pretty sure every child from the 1990s, including myself, have seen this show at one point during their childhood. No matter how amazing and emotional Avatar is, funny 1999-2004 Spongebob is, or how fun many Disney cartoons have been over the years, Arthur is my all time favorite cartoon and it has been since day one. <3
If you don't know, the show revolves around the life of an 8 year old Aardvark named Arthur Read who lives in Elwood City, attends Lakewood Elementary as a 3rd grader, and spends the time with his family and friends. Arthur is based on the books by Marc Brown and I have read a lot of them as a kid. The show is well known for tackling family, social, and medical issues children face every day such as asthma, cancer, nocturnal enuresis, dyslexia, Asperger syndrome (Autism), and etc. The other issues include fighting, violence, bullying, death, lying, peer pressure, and more.
I absolutely adore this show to death. The reason why this show is so special to me and beats out all the other cartoons I've loved over the years is because I relate to everything the most such as the characters, the morals/issues, emotions, and childhood behind Arthur himself. Specifically, in example, I had a rough childhood growing up since I was diagnosed with Autism and I received the most help I could get from my school and parents. When I was little, I had difficultly socializing and I used to be scared of certain things that you wouldn't expect such as flashing cameras and balloons popping loudly. My eye contact with people was really bad at the time and I've improved dramatically growing up as a child into my pre-teen/teen years. My socializing has also improved as well, but I still have some trouble since I'm not the most social person out there. Due to my Autism, my education was different while attending elementary school and since it changed, I was held back one year.
I was happy when I saw Arthur tackle my medical issue because I was waiting for that to happen since they handled the other kinds of issues before that. Even though he's not a main character, I always feel sad for George whenever he's isolated by his classmates and I really relate to him on that aspect. Since I was little, I have been isolated by classmates before and it gets very lonely being by yourself when others are together. He's seen to not be that intriguing by his peers and I still deal with that in school because I often describe myself as a "Student Manual", in which means that students only talk with me mainly if it's about an assignment or if they want to borrow something. I may not have dyslexia like he does, but I've had Autism since I was a baby and the handicapping sure is difficult. I also had nose bleeding issues when I was little. We have wild imaginations that go on for quite a while and can take a hold of us. I also relate a lot with D.W. (Arthur's sister), Arthur, Binky, and Jenna.
I would probably call this show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" of the 90s because even though this show is targeted towards young kids like MLP is, both cartoons have a large fanbase that consist of older male and female audiences who are at least in high school/college. Pretty much every person who watches Arthur today are people who grew up with the show since they were little back in the 90s. In addition, it contains a lot of pop culture references such as South Park, The Godfather, Harry Potter, Dexter's Laboratory, The Twilight Zone, Beavis and Butt-head, Indiana Jones, That '70s Show, Oprah, and etc. Ironically, there was one episode where Arthur started watching "The Loveducks" (a parody of The Teletubbies), which was considered a "baby show" and people started making fun of him, but later followed into watching the show with him. That episode pretty much foreshadowed what would later become the My Little Pony phenomenon about 10 years later.
If you are a fan of Arthur or have at least seen the show, what do you think of it?
I was impressed by some of the themes they tackled and how close to modern life they kept, with inclusion of blogs, no less! in the recenter episodes I'd watched. I'll always remember the episode that copied the styles of other cartoons like 
Anyway, that was cool. I also remember the purely song episodes 'When you've got a library card' and 'Jekyll, Jekyll, Hyde...'. 
