New episode 'ono the tickbird'

[Elton John]

I dunno if you know, but marketing execs and executives in general have been woefully out of touch with general audiences for ages. Kids are smarter than what people give them credit for, and are faster learners than adults.

From my generation, most of the popular and beloved animated programming (that people look fondly on) were shows like batman: the animated series, sonic satam, animaniacs, freakazoid, roccos modern life, gargoyles etc. Shows that didn't talk down to younger audiences. They had sharp writing, proper characterization, and were much smarter than a lot of other animated programs at the time.

When I was really young my three favorite shows were david the gnome, ducktales, and eurekas castle. For david the gnome, it was fairly sophisticated for a show seen on nick jr. Ducktales, while toned down compared to the stories it was based on, was still quality. I havent seen eurekas castle in ages so I can't comment on it much.

But studio execs are typically risk averse and often underestimate audiences. Cartoon network cancelled an awesome Thundercats reboot 7 eps in a few years back likely for some stupid reason. Havent forgiven them for that.

[zerodix]

kimcartoon has it. iy is the substitute for the taken down kiss cartoon. the episode was ok but the song sucked.

[Kallo]

As far as ignoring censorship and not underestimating the target audience goes, cartoons pretty much hit their peak around the mid-2000s. Some of my favourite shows come from that era, such as the 2002 He-Man reboot, 2003 Turtles reboot and Avatar: The Last Airbender. They had very smartly written characters and stories, and felt more aimed at grown-ups sometimes. Especially Turtles was surprisingly dark and I'm surprised with some of the stuff they got away. It had Shredder beheaded in one scene, Leonardo stabbed with a sword, another villain hung by meathook and that one episode where all the turtles had some kinda brutal injury and ended up dying in the end. I think, oddly enough, the only episode that got censored from TV was where Stockman turned into this zombie thing and got his jaw kicked off. That was an otherwise pretty messed up episode too, though, so I guess it makes sense. He-Man didn't hold too much back either in some of its stuff, and I think everyone knows what a masterpiece The Last Airbender is. All those shows are still very cartoonish and lighthearted, of course, and nothing by adult standards, but still... with how tight the censorship usually is, I'm surprised how many of those cartoons from that era got away with so much.

Of course, my favourite cartoon ever is Moomins from 1990. It's very much the opposite of those shows and for much younger audiences, but it's still great. It never had a single bit of violence, but it created very intense scenes with its atmosphere. It's super smart with its humour to the point I find it funnier now than I did when I watched it as a kid. And it taught everyday lessons, but I never noticed that stuff until I was an adult, and that some of it had even stuck with me. Those lessons flow so well with the story, dialogue and the slice-of-life feel of the show that they're still barely noticeable. It's a show that a lot of other series that seem to have very tight censors (such as TLG) could definitely learn a lot from.

[Elton John]

I don't really see much censorship in tlg. Most of the choices in the show seem to be the directors vision, unless there was plenty of executive meddling going on behind the scenes.

How do I put it? What I view censorship as? When Animaniacs was created they would often do a lot of super raunchy jokes, and then some fairly minor but still perverse jokes. When shown to the people who dictate what content can be broadcasted they often ignored the minor jokes. That's how they got away with some of the more crass or lewd humor.

In the 90's spider-man cartoon on Fox, sm wasn't allowed to throw punches. In the x-men cartoon wolverine could only use his claws on metallic objects like doors and robots. You could not use the word death dead kill etc. These were all corporate mandates. Real guns weren't shown. Like Transformers G1 or GI joe, laser rifles were used instead.

In Rocco's modern life several scenes were banned from broadcast. These scenes I consider to be more perverse than the infamous 'finger prince' joke from animaniacs.

That's what I consider to be censorship.

[Kallo]

I'm pretty sure the director's vision is how it is on TLG, due to them knowing that if the show goes any further with stuff, they'd get censored. I'm sure they wouldn't mind going a bit further with the action scenes and wouldn't mind having more heavy-hitting emotional stuff and all that, if they were allowed to. I mean, they already had to edit one episode (quite a bit apparently) because it got censored, and that one barely had ANYTHING censor-worthy in it.

Speaking of censorship on cartoons, there's a funny trick used by directors to get their original ideas through censoring. Basically, you make a scene super over the top on purpose, so that there's no doubt it will get turned around, after which you tone it down to your original vision. That makes it seem much tamer and apparently it works more often than not. Kinda funny.

[Elton John]

"Speaking of censorship on cartoons, there's a funny trick used by directors to get their original ideas through censoring. Basically, you make a scene super over the top on purpose, so that there's no doubt it will get turned around, after which you tone it down to your original vision. That makes it seem much tamer and apparently it works more often than not. Kinda funny."

That's almost like what I mentioned with Animaniacs.

[Solar]

I'm finally caught up with the whole show, so now I can comment on the newest episodes. Woot!

I thought this episode was really cute. I love having another Ono episode so soon after the really amazing one two episodes earlier. Ono is one of my favorite members of The Lion Guard. Though it was more of a comedy thing than a character development moment, I still thought it was great.

Kifaru and Mwenzi were REALLY cute. I actually remember learning about symbiosis and Rhinos/Tickbirds when I was a kid, so it was really cool seeing that. I thought it was clever having an episode about those two kinds of animals.

The song was alright, I liked how it was a little spread-out jingle rather than a big musical number. Wasn't my favorite song from the show by any means but it wasn't bad, at least for me.

All in all it was a cute episode and I liked it

[PridelandsPhantom]

I actually liked this episode quite a bit myself. I like Ono especially because he's voiced by Brick from The Middle which is one of my favorite sitcoms (Sue is my fav and then Brick) I like how Ono has a lot of common knowledge and I do remember learning about tick birds back in biology and zoology, it's just been a while like someone mentioned . I guess I spaced out on rhinos having bad eyesight, though. I did like the rhino character and tickbird, especially the bird's Aussie accent! Jasiri and a lot of characters on TLG seem to be Aussie, is the show cast in Australia or New Zealand? Anyway, back on topic the song wasn't needed for me. MLP does have songs but not every episode (I'm watching the new MLP episodes). I don't mind songs when they accomplish something and have a good beat and lyrics, but one isn't needed all the time to keep kids attention. The classic Disney films were more Broadway style, hence, the songs, but this just seems to be a song for a song's sake.

[AnonLion]

It was a nice episode, I really like how they introduce new characters and use it to show animal behavior. I had no idea rhinos had bad eyesight and thought was really interesting. The song was okay, but I'm glad it was just a brief jingle instead of a full song.

With season 2 starting this summer I'm wondering how many episodes season 1 will have. Here I'm hoping we get to see more Kion family centric episodes.

[Squeely]

Reading through the latest batch of comments here, I am reminded of Steven Universe. It does SO MUCH with just an 11-minute runtime, and Kallo, I think you'd like it as it deals with heavy subjects sometimes, such as loss, war, abusive relationships, and even rape, all while not being inappropriate for kids.

That being said, I don't think an 11-minute runtime would work well for TLG. It would be too short to tell the stories the writers want to tell (and SU admittedly suffers from this on rare occasion), so bring on the songs!