Back in the late 90's early 00's a lot of cartoons had "heatwave/summer day" episodes where the entire plot was the main characters trying to escap the heat.
It feels like it's been ages since I've seen this plot in a show.
Do they just don't do that any more? What happened?
not many more shows about everyday non-magical life in a normal world like our own
That's weird considering how obsessed people are with everyone "relating to the characters" and "being represented".
Why not make plots kids can relate to instead.
because few care about the quality of a program anymore only that it lines up with their ideals
Because kids aren't the target anymore because kids don't give feedback on social media or create internet cults based around the shipping potential of your characters.
They were all adopting the heat subplot of the popular film Do the Right Thing.
you know damn well why, why even ask?
having a character superficially look like you, not ones that really remind u of urself
(but only look like you when it comes to checking arbitrary boxes of oppression, not actual appearance you can telate to, like being black or whatever. I mean I know from experience that as a kid I saw dark skin as just another feature, like curly hair or blue eyes. and if I as a curly haired kid saw a character whos black but had curly hair, or was white and had straight hair, they'd both have the exact same amount of "representation" for me in my book.)
Are there hot summer days in WBB and BCG?
What about PnF, the ultimate summer cartoon?
Can't remember more than that one.
Now we talk about Bermuda's triangle episodes.
I believe PnF did
idk what BCG is, and I dont watch or care about WBB because its boring, and not even meant to be fun or relatable for kids. its ultimately a cartoon for teen and young adult chicks who drink Starbucks read buzzfeed and think "dont talk to me before my coffee" is hilarious
WBB*
Dude what.
Mention almost any show of the time and there's a pretty good chance there was a heatwave plot.
Kids aren't forced outside anymore.
subconscious climate anxiety. people don't want to think about extreme weather these days because deep down they know what's coming next. personally I love heatwave episodes, everyone is sweaty and stripping down.
Kids don't go outside anymore. The thought of trying to stay cool outside of their air-conditioned home would be a completely foreign concept.
Due to the state of the world, people are looking more towards escapist fantasies. They're what sell these days, especially if you want your IP to appeal beyond kids (e.g. adults with money to buy supplemantary content)
Climate change means heatwaves aren't rare anymore, its just how summer is. So people are used to it.
That's pretty grim.
BCG has "Heat Beaters"
TV tropes has a trope called "Heat Wave" and you can find Rugrats, EEnE, Ducktales (1987), Darkwing Duck, Powerpuff Girls. I'm personally trying to find a Catdog episode, because I'm sure there was one.
now I'm depressed
The biggest thing is the expansion of indoor central air conditioning and structural updating.
The 00s were a very busy and lucrative time to be a HVAC guy. Pretty much every building in the US has a HVAC unit that is rated for it, and works consistently.
This mostly has to do with the advent of cheap microchips and the move away from coolant powered AC systems - prior to the 90s the cheapest and most effective mass AC units were mechanical monsters that dumped tons of ozone damaging coolant down a tube. After those were banned, everyone switched to more expensive, but vastly more effective compressed air units which in the 00s became smartly governed by microprocessors.
Before the 90s, when the 90s animators grew up - a serious summer heatwave was genuinely inescapable.
Now it's considered criminally negligent not to be able to find a vulnerable person, like an elder or a child, a place to remain cool.
That's the scale of the silent technological shift in AC there.
Even slice of life style cartoons have to have some sort of drama, so they go for more unique events that not every kid goes through, but kids might go through - Bullying, going on vacation, being the new kid in school, scary new babysitter coming around but they turn out to be cool, a talent show (you wanna talk about every 90s cartoon having a heatwave episode, how about a talent show episode? To this day they still have them). Heatwave episodes were one of those. But now, rather than be something dramatic and new and interesting, if they did a heatwave episode it'd just be an ordinary summers day episode and thats boring. Kids know how to deal with a heatwave.
What the fuck can kids relate to nowadays then? Growing up with three lesbian alien moms? Being a lonely cuck in a post-nuclear hellscape of mutant dogs and talking candy?
Vidya games
There's always gonna be fads that some kids are left out of, there's always gonna be bullying, cliques, new kids, loner kids. All that shit. And Cartoons still fucking love their talent show episodes to this day. But yeah, what you said is the reason there isn't a lot of slice of life style cartoons these days, they always have a fantasy element to them.
You should be, like sure everyone is born in a age where x things happen especially since humans live about 80 - 100years. And in the 20th century a person could’ve lived to experience the Great Depression, WW2, Korean War, Cold War, Civil rights movement, and the chaos that was the 60’s - 90’s. But that does really matter because it’s not what You’re personally experiencing in the now. Like it for the most part growing in the 2000’s you can be blissful unaware of most things, and the Middle East wars were a “over there thing” and the recession wasn’t as bad as things could’ve gotten. So relative peace as a American, but then BOOM. A pandemic, global depression, climate change, social unrest, corruption on local and federal levels. Like these things have always been there but now they’re coming to a head and you realize just how helpless and how little control you have outside your small bubble.
Clarence had it
Craig of creek had it
I also think we don't see a lot of these styles of cartoons these days as its a lot of hassle to do them as issues that you used to be able to easily cover in the 90s and 2000s are now seen as "political" and "controversial" and then you'll have people on twitter ranting about how the show has a political agenda and how it's influencing their kids and they don't want their kids watching it, a bit like what they're doing now with Sesame Street which hasn't changed at all and is simply continuing to do what its been doing for the past 40 years or so. Its just easier to make a show where lasers go pew pew, and sure those shows can still have issues but to the parents eyes their kids are just watching a show where lasers go pew pew against alien spaceships or whatever. It's sad and a little funny that the people who claim on twitter and shit that cartoons these days are "too political" will often wish for cartoons to go back to how they were in their childhood, you know, stuff like Hey Arnold and Rugrats. That dealt with racism, and single parenthood, and divorce and feminism.
Do cartoons ever do snowstorm episodes though? Whenever I think of winter episodes I always think of comfy Christmas episodes but never snowstorm or extreme cold ones.
I hate that you're right
>stuff like Hey Arnold and Rugrats. That dealt with racism, and single parenthood, and divorce and feminism.
But they dealt with those things by acknowledging that they weren't all that great, but in the end it was up to the kid to find the positives and deal with it, and that adversity would make you a stronger person.
These days that's considered a bad (wrongthink) moral. Racists have to be beaten up violently and the whole town has to clap, single parents are better than normal parents, divorce only happens to straight people and feminism is above and beyond reproach and more infallible than the pope.
Tells you something when even British and Canadian shows don't even have heatwave episodes anymore.
Maybe
Maaayybeeee
Maybe ITS HER FUR
Yeah, and like said, Big City Greens had one. The heatwave episode isn't extinct at all.
Why don't they just go inside?
A heatwave for British people is when the temperature reaches 12°