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10) The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show

This reboot quietly surged onto the Netflix lineup in 2015, the televisual spinoff of the 2014 movie of the same name. Unlike the rough, scattered, and tonally-misguided nature of the film, The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show re-jiggered itself into an odd late-night talk show parody, in which historical figures guest starred among random comedy bits hosted by Mr. Peabody and Sherman themselves. This was mixed with a story more akin to the classic Rocky and Bullwinkle short from which it was derived, in which the dog-father and son save history from some random bout of nonsense. All educational pretext was all but gone by the second season, and by its fourth, the show just delighted in its absurdity, with exaggerated animation reminiscent of Jay Ward’s original designs, but coupled with a whole host of kooky characters, kookier historical persons, and the kookiest ideas in animated TV.

The episodes lived and died primarily on the commitment to its conflicts, and nothing could break them out of a weak story, but with a good premise, The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show was hilarious and inventive, with some great musical bits and solid jokes. Plus, the show never shied from emphasizing how much love that was shared between Mr. Peabody and his son, a fact that overcame some of the weaker bursts of character development. The premieres and finales of each season, which focused on Mr. Peabody and Sherman outside of the late-night talk show venue in some fashion, were so strong that they almost suggest that these characters could function on a show outside of the time-travel elements. The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show implied that there were more episodes coming, but it looks unlikely; regardless, its heartfelt musical finale was a grand culmination of everything that came before it.

9) Tangled: The Series

There’s a bit of an old-school style to Tangled: The Series, particularly as it embraces a more adventurous, bolder direction. It reminds me of the Aladdin or The Little Mermaid TV shows, which thrived with new adventures and characters that work way better than you’d expect, and probably don’t remember. Tangled: The Series focuses on Rapunzel in a post-tower world, reunited with her parents and safe with her love, her best friend, and the Corona castle walls that now protect her. After a promising premiere, Tangled wallowed a bit with some entertaining but ultimately hollow one-offs, even though they did enough to flesh out the world and the kind of characters within it. Still, a lot of those characters, as wonderfully charismatic as they are, are lacking. Many feel random and fleeting, popping into an episode brimming with vitality but ultimately disappearing without making a real impression. And some of the more important characters come out of nowhere and suddenly become integral to the story – Xavier the blacksmith, for example.

But by “Queen For A Day,” Tangled: The Series buckles down, hard. It returns to the complex, confusing portrayal of a woman suffering from PTSD who is thrust into the intensity of a leadership role during a dangerous, strenuous time. It begins the villainous origin story of a young boy hurt from a broken promise, a story that is filled with nuance but never shies away from its “nice guy” toxic masculinity. And it expands the mystical, mysterious elements that backends the Tangled world in a way that feels a lot more substantive and informative than its past episodes did. By slowing down and narrowing its focus on a growing, developing story arc centered around Rapunzel’s insecurities, Tangled: The Series, like its protagonist, found its way.

8) Little Witch Academia

The fusion of eastern and western tropes in animation seem to be small but growing trend in the field of animation, and Little Witch Academia is one of the results. Its story about a young girl named Akko who is so dedicated to her dream of being a witch that her annoyances are as particular as her perhaps unearned determination, to the point that it becomes endearing to watch her refusal to give up a remarkable delight. Immersing oneself into the world of Luna Nova Magical Academy, while following the trials and tribulations of Akko and her roommates, Lotte and Sucy, is worth the plunge; the world and the stories told about it are so unique, different, and hilarious that it’s worth a second watch-through, just to see how smart and expansive it really is. Plus, its long-term story arc comes fast and harshly, changing the dynamic of the second season’s back-half, only to come roaring back with a dramatic, powerful finale.

Little Witch Academia’s narratives move so fast and deeply that at times, major plot information that’s crucial to understanding a story are dropped so quickly and nonchalantly that it’s easy to get very confused about what characters are concerned about. It also short-changes some of its tertiary characters, who feel more established to flavor the world than add to the overall impact of Akko’s goal (although I will not entertain any bad-mouthing of Amanda). The shift from an insular, strange school of diverse girls to an adventurous team-up between Akko and pseudo-rival Diana, while well-supported in the narrative, does feel somewhat narrow, perhaps in a broad attempt to push against the cliche of the passionate novice vs. stuck-up veteran conflict between them. Yet even though the show never quite hones in on exactly why Akko is as fervent as she is about wanting to make people happy with magic, it comes close enough, and just accepting that motivation provides just the right context to enjoy what this show offers.

7) Future-Worm

As mentioned last year, Future-Worm brilliance, and its comfort in its brilliance, is not only in re-establishing Rick and Morty’s aggressive-yet-ambivalent sci-fi milieu away from that show’s overwrought intellectual nihilism into a nonsensical, yet heavily endearing story (all unofficially sanctioned by Justin Roiland himself), but also in its able to do all that via its specific format, in which every episode is divided into thirteen, seven, and three minute segments. This structure allows for Future-Worm to play with continuity and time in unique, hilarious, and inventive ways, in which events from various segments infuse, correlate, and connect to others in unexpected manners. It’s a show that structurally and narratively binds itself in knots yet manages to maintain a sense of clarity that continues to amaze. (Imagine the time-jump stylistic storytelling of HBO’s Westworld, but told via TV segments vs. one multilayered episode; add the the Rick and Morty post-credits endtag, and you get a broad idea of Future-Worm’s tone.).

I will admit that I was somewhat disappointed by the recent episodes, which never quite utilized the bizarre structures and visuals like the first run of episodes did. There were some great moments, like bringing together Neil Degrass Tyson and Bill Nye as super powerful, buff soldiers with telekinesis, and the even hysterically throw-away origin story for Future-Worm himself, which takes up about fifteen seconds of screen time. But even as the characters move forward in fun ways, including some much-needed development of weirdo outside characters like Presto the wannabe child magician, it was unfortunate to see it never take control of those narrative/structural dynamics like it did earlier. But in some ways, that’s the point: Future-Worm never compels its audience to pay attention to the details. There’s a wealth of depth and connective tissue in the backstory underlying almost all the stories and asides that pop up in an typical episode, but Future-Worm almost demands you ignore it, since Danny and the cast mostly does as well. It’s smart, but never demands you have a certain amount of intelligence to get it.

6) Hotel Transylvania: The Series

Who would have expected this seemingly throwaway TV spinoff based on the decidedly average Hotel Transylvania movies would be as quietly sharp as it is? The fact that Disney bought the rights to a Sony Animation show should give you a clue. Hotel Transylvania: The Series possesses a comfortable narrative understanding of its stories and the characters within it, allowing a secondary motivational effort to drive the plot beyond the tropes that would springboard most animated protagonists. Mavis bounces between wanting to be a “normal” teen and desiring the respect from her evil aunt, while growing more and more lonely from missing her father, Dracula himself (he’s away on some kind of vague vampire conference). A solid cast of monsters surround Mavis’ antics, and what makes it stand out are the clever takes it has on various monster tropes. A brief aside in which Mavis sees herself in the mirror for the first time is wonderful, and the old trope of “humans being scarier than monsters” is tweaked a bit so the humans have more variety among them.

There’s a certain confidence in how Hotel Transylvania: The Series executes itself. Similar to Fairly Oddparents, the gags are fast-paced but specific, rewarding those who pay close attention to who says what, and when, and how. The characters are cliched but feel functional on their own, often expressing their disapproval and/or resigned sentiment over yet another one of Mavis’ ridiculous plans, a certain writers’ way to acknowledge its tropes in a meta fashion, allowing it to subvert, disrupt, or exaggerate the storyline, leading to a new, unique, or deeper direction. Mavis starts out as a kid who seeks any crazy way to act a teen within the walls of a corporate monster hotel, but it gradually becomes clear that her behavior is a result of both a desire to appeal, in some way, to her aunt, while deeply missing her father. There’s a quiet heart there, in between the clever uses of monster imagery, over-the-top nonsense, and characters that come close to being too much but never going overboard (Wendy, in particular, is an amazing, clueless sweetheart.)

5) The Amazing World of Gumball

The Amazing World of Gumball continues its strong run of impeccably great visuals and hilarious characters, not letting off the pedal. The story of a young cat boy and his adopted fish brother still remains a smartly funny, brilliant show, with episodes that manages to go to some dark and deep places. “The Worst,” for example, has some pretty trenchant commentary on sexism, while “The Copycats” manages to narrow that idea into a single, brutal takedown of an real-life knockoff of the show itself that inexplicably ignored Anais. Bringing in the “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” people to do a delightfully demented take on the danger of blind nostalgia is another highlight of the show. Beyond anything, Gumball can still bring a confidence in itself that’s unlike any other animated show on TV.

There’s a sense that Gumball is losing its specificity though, as sad as this is to say. It’s still frequently sharp and visually inventive, but the recent run of episodes have struggled to focus on the specific points that usually mark Gumball’s greatest moments. Episodes like “The Nuisance” wants to push back against criticisms of TV and the whole terribleness of most TV characters but gets too caught up in an class-based exclusionary plot – two separate themes the show excelled at before. It feels like the show is also struggling to get to the heart of its weird, varied cast, with moments to develop them tossed aside for an increasing reliance on facial expression gags and smarmy commentary. (The less said about “The Best,” the better.) Still, when Gumball is on, it’s on, with episodes like “The Console” being a pinpoint parody of RPG games, and “The Weirdo,” which explores the pain and the beauty in being odd, in seeing the world differently than the rest of society. Gumball may have loss some of its dramatic heft, but it’s still there when it counts, and its animation continues to be top notch no matter what.

4) Bunnicula

This modern update to the classic book series, in which the titular Bunnicula, Chester, and Harold are in the care of a girl named Mina in a New Orleans apartment complex, while battling (and befriending) various weird creatures and monsters, has, beyond anything else, a strong sense of place. Not just in its setting, which utilizes the iconic Louisiana location in a lot of cool, nifty ways, but in the comfort level of its character interactions. While the first season had a lot of weird, great gags that often propped up the unique love between its characters (despite their many conflicts), the second season really dug its heels and sharpened a lot of the characterizations to make the show pop more. A lot of that may have to do with what appears to be a more streamlined show, with Maxwell Atoms helming the scripts, whose approach seems to prop up creator Jessica Borutski’s direction – which has gotten much richer and more dynamic.

The sharper, bolder feel in both visuals and narratives have pushed Bunnicula in a stronger direction – the rabbit himself is portrayed a lot more heroically, for example, which helps to counter some of his more lightly cruel moment. Harold, a character that never quite found his footing in season one, has finally become a perfect balance between being lovably adorable, immensely loyal, and amusingly ignorant. And Chester is still Chester, but more, which rounds out the cast perfectly. Add to all that a stronger commitment to action and tension – scenes feel a lot more scarier or action-oriented than the first season – and you have yourself a not-perfect but still well-rounded, executed animated show.

3) Steven Universe

Of course Steven Universe would be on here. This show, now pushing into its fifth season and counting, continues to be the rare show that brings heart and respect to its characters still battling a quirky, expansive war between humanity and the Gem-based figures from outer space. At its center is Steven Universe, a lovable, optimistic scamp who has grown into a deep and powerful character himself. Steven continues to be the rock (or, more accurately, the half-Gem) that holds the show together, and it’s through him we learn and see how various characters cope with rather deep issues, such as loss, grief, trauma, abuse, and the complexity of relationships.

This season has focused on a unique, strange “murder” mystery at the center of the entire show, giving some of these later episodes a Law and Order feel, but it still manages to maintain enough excellent filler that deepens the characters as it moves forward. The Homeworld arc, in which Steven and Lars fight for survival on the Gem’s Homeworld has a depth and beauty to it that few shows could match, although the most recent arc struggled because Connie’s motivation to ignore Steven felt undercooked as a catalyst for a full five-parter (it made sense, but I think it needed to explore more thoroughly how Connie arrived at that feeling). But still, with such a great cast, and its commitment to the the warmth and depth of the unique world it exists in, Steven Universe continues to impress.

2) Home: Adventures with Tip and Oh

A surprising, confident, much-needed animated show on Netflix right now, Home: Adventures with Tip and Oh surpasses many quirky shows of a similar type by virtue of being funny, unique, and progressive in small, specific ways – mainly by letting its lead, Tip, drive the show. Tip and Oh are a pair, of course, and together they have the kind of borderline-obnoxious like-love between them that many cartoons pursue in greatly exaggerated directions (similar to the Spongebob/Patrick dichotomy). But Tip herself is such a unique character – a strong, confident, clever, goofy, irritating brash girl: a one-of-a-kind character that is perfect and flawed in her own unique way.

Coupled with narrative improvements that kicked its second and third season into deeper, richer storylines and characterizations, Home embraced a more “fun” sense of itself while minimizing the kind of grotesque dumbness that is usually Thurop Van Orman’s stock-in-trade. Tip’s mom is provided a complex relationship with her sister, while Oh himself has to deal with the wilder-in-context sides of humanity’s weird habits. (He also remains a funny, clueless alien who’s antics with one-note characters like Donny and Kyle allow all the characters to raise their game collectively). But it’s Tip who runs this show, no question. Allowing Rachel Crow, Tip’s VO artist, to read her lines with delicious aggression, and providing more opportunities to allow the former American Idol contestant to sing, Tip, with Oh in tow, prove that safety characters like Sherzod aren’t needed to make this show particularly funny, heartfelt, and special.

1) Neo Yokio

I will acknowledge up front that this entry at number one is deeply, wholly personal, and perhaps not even worth being no where close to being the actual number one in any list. But, by god, no matter where I am or what I’m thinking about, my mind always go back to Neo Yokio, a singularly weird, gloriously perfect, highly specific animated show that almost defies description. At its core, it’s the story of a privileged but depressed teen who’s forced to perform exorcisms at the burdensome request of his aunt, as well as the need to maintain his high-class status – quite literally, as he’s battling for top spots upon an elitist leader board of some sort. But in the aggregate, Neo Yokio is an egregiously, nonsensically logical satire of Eastern animation, Western animation, and television tropes, all mashed up into one delirious six-episode run. Shows a dime a dozen are defined by their commentary and their meta-commentary – “This is a show making fun of other shows!” But Neo Yokio is beyond that. It’s a show that makes fun of other shows… making fun of other shows.

And miraculously, it doesn’t go up its own ass to do so. Neo Yokio is so keenly perspective on how even the details of television tropes are executed that many viewers were left perplexed on whether it was taking itself seriously. It wasn’t, but the hidden impression that it was is a testament to its calculated brilliance. Classical music fills the soundtrack over visuals both breathtaking and inane. An amazing Wes Anderson-sequel shot of tiramisu in front of Kaz Kaan (that name!) is lovely, until it’s interrupted by an amazingly dumb line. Purposely bad sexist politics are bounced around a rip-off Ranma 1/2 storyline. A typical “I may be a celebrity but I’m just as normal as you” character is buttressed by a quick gag so perfect that it’s extremely easy to miss. Also Steve Buscemi voices a crazed judge/jury dude for no reason. The show is wild, and that’s only a small segment of the full craziness of the show.

And yet, that nonsense is there in its own way to ridicule the kind of bad nonsense that shows might come up with to, say, satirize income inequality, class and status, and emotionally, tortured protagonists whose privilege will always remain front and center no matter how aloof they are; the casting of Jaden Smith is the ultimate narrative wink in the whole endeavor. Neo Yokio is defined by nonsensical juxtapositions, from the Eastern/Western aesthetics of its animation and pacing, to the pointed depictions of black Americans controlling spaces both anime-influenced AND wealth-influenced, a depiction that most likely doesn’t exist on TV anywhere in the world. It’s bold in its inanity, comfortable with how it satires, homages, and parodies its various pastiches of televisual tropes, and still manages tell a strong, layered, complex story through it all, even if the final moments are predictable in the way that such narratives tend to be. But Neo Yokio obfuscates its execution with the best “stupid” plays on all the tropes it can muster, making it unlike anything on the air right now. Neo Yokio is off-putting, but in all the right ways, which earns it number one spot here.

The setting in The Lion Guard – a gorgeous, detailed, lush savannah of forests, grasslands, plains, and mountains – is at once both wondrous and dangerous. In fact, it’s downright oppressive. The Lion Guard takes from its source – The Lion King – its central ethos, The Circle of Life, and culls a deeply uncomfortable caste system and social regulatory system of control and power. The Lion King already had problems with its weird-to-examine politics. Hyenas were always just an evil, and once they were in power food and water magically disappeared (I don’t know how to parse the Hitler imagery either, but that’s a topic for another day). The Lion Guard doubles down on that. The Circle of Life suggests that all animals should have access to the food they need, but in particular carnivores can only eat what (or in this case, who) they need. The implication is that the various villains in the show are (meat)eating more than their fare share, which is why they need to be stopped, but also, they have to do so in their clearly demarcated regions. And anyway, after the first few episodes, the show just portrayed the carnivorous animals as a net bad.

This leads to a lot of problems in terms of what clear lessons that The Lion Guard tries to espouse. But I wonder if The Lion Guard is even trying to espouse any lessons at all – or more accurately, I wonder if the show is trying to espouse the kinds of lessons we’re used to seeing in our pre-school, toddler-aimed, animated programs. The show will play lip service to lesson-learning for sure.  There’s episodes about acceptance and tolerance, not judging books by their cover, trusting one another, lies that go too far, recognizing and acknowledging that you’re overworked and need help, thinking things through, etc. Nothing you’ve never seen before in preschool-demo animation. But there’s a clear paradox at play. How can an episode of The Lion Guard espouse a lesson of love, tolerance, and acceptance, when the very existence and adherence to The Circle of Life mandates a pretty uncomfortable segregationist policy? Those core lessons and overall worldview can’t really co-exist. I’m somewhat reminded of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, how its ponies are branded for life with a singular lot, and how that show has to jump through hoops to justify its natural world forcing its characters into specific roles for life. (The show mostly skates by this by suggesting ponies cutie marks are their best, most natural talent, and in sharing it with others, it fulfills them one hundred percent. No pony seems to regret or detest their mark/life’s position. It doesn’t really work for the most part – the show is better off avoiding the issue – but the scant few episodes that do question this tend to be the most interesting. Sorry for the aside.)

Unlike My Little Pony though, The Lion Guard has the savagery of the natural world to content with. It doesn’t really play coy with the nature of the animals in this show, other than avoiding any and all visuals of the carnivorous animals eating one another. It’ll spout facts about various unique creatures indigenous to Africa, which is pretty cool and greatly informative. But it’s hard to tell if the writers are aware of how incompatible it is to teach basic lessons while butting up against its Circle of Life natural philosophy and nature’s blunt cruelty. The Circle of Life is the show’s strained way of injecting a sense of a “civilized order” to its nature-based characters, the way through which it can channel its lessons in some sort of narrative form, but the contradictions and paradoxes and outright failures of the combination of the two are too hard to ignore (and a few critics I know have noticed this). And honestly? I think the writers are distinctly aware of it too.

Think about it like this. The Disney execs saw an episode in which the Guard, a bunch of young kids essentially, constantly beat up a family of jackals who just needed to eat. They violently prevented them from eating in the still-lush regions of the Pridelands, forcing them back into the food-starved Outlands as a looming dry season approaches, and that includes the jackal family’s kids, too – kids who aren’t portrayed as evil, soulless creeps, but innocent, endearing, passionate easily swayed moppets. The Disney execs saw all this, wiped their hands, and gave it their stamp of approval. If this was American Dad, it would’ve been a dark, but exaggeratedly hilarious, bit. If it was Rick and Morty, it would have been an extremely bleak, highly disturbing bit that resulted in laughs solely to wall off against the cruelty. In The Lion Guard, it’s just all so matter-of-fact, so normal, just part of the world and the rules in which everyone follows. No one seems even hint at the moral grayness of this situation.

The Lion Guard doesn’t let its characters, and by proxy, its young audience, change or even question the ecosystem, the environment in which their placed. It instead portrays them as characters who can simply manage, or survive, or enforce, that system. The Lion Guard isn’t going to ask Kion, Ono, Fuji, Beshte, or especially Bunga, to question their worldview, and all the problems in it. Why should they? They’re fucking kids. Looking at a problematic world and finding solutions should be the parents’ job. But the adults in the world are locked in their ways, refusing to even bat an eye at the idea of, let’s say, a family of seemingly-poor (however you’d define this in animal terms) jackals searching for ways to feed their kids. If that sounds disturbing to you, which includes scenes of very young jackals conniving to feed themselves, only to actually get their asses kicked, well, don’t expect the show to comment it. This is your world, out world, and the savannah only reflect that.

Instead, The Lion Guard basically refuses to showoff concrete lessons about sharing or tolerance (they’re there, but there’s always an asterisk on those stories). In the wilds of the Pridelands, the show prefers emphasizing the rules of civilized survival and managed control, and, in its most surprising truth, is one hundred percent okay with the utilization of violence for that goal. It pretty much has to be. Nature is savage, and try as they might, no amount of glossing over it will hide its objective harshness. That the show tries to “justify” it with The Circle of Life is questionable at best and laughable at worst, and as these episodes pass by, it’s a bit clearer that the writers are questioning and laughing along side of us. If you had to combine the savagery of nature, the hierarchy of the food chain, and the nonsensical animal stereotypes that The Lion King traffics into something digestible and manageable, The Circle of Life is the grossest but easiest thing you could come up with.

And in the macro sense, there’s something deeply serious worth discussing here – if The Circle of Life is the defacto rule of this world, then the Guard are a special police squad out to enforce a level of control at the state level (handed down by so-called (super)natural, spiritual forces, as per Rafiki’s magic paintings, and authorized by Simba, the king), which is deeply troubling, but admittedly an extreme reading of things. The more likely reading is that The Pridelands and The Circle of Life are clearly problematic in combination, and the show is presenting it all in its full, uncomfortable glory. If you’re troubled by the the contradictions at play, at how the episodic lessons seem to not-at-all reflect the world’s rules-by-decree, it’s simply just a reflection our our world and our society, a society that espouses lessons of love, tolerance, acceptance, and all those things claimed by a “civilized, orderly” world, only to contradict itself with violence, segregation, war, and discrimination. If you’re looking for the young kids of the Guard to question this… why? That should be Simba’s job, or Nala’s, or Zazu’s. Not one adult who should know better is self-reflective enough to call The Circle of Life to task, so looking to mere children to do so is even more asinine. The Lion Guard’s “positive lessons” are contradictions are hard to parse, until you think about it in terms of our so-called civilized society as a whole, and the show is really a reflection of that —

— and the abject violence that The Lion Guard is all to willing to engage in.

And I think we should talk about violence, and violence in cartoons, and The Lion Guard (and Disney as a whole, natch) is a good jumping off spot. This is going to take an extremely long time to parse and will be continued in another essay. For now, it’s good enough to simply reflect on The Lion Guard and its contradictions, and how the discomfort it causes is probably more satirical and allegorical of how human society works, more than we’d like to admit. It’s a show with a society of birds that engage in elaborate bureaucracy only to rarely get anything done. It’s maybe more knowing than you think. It’s just weird that Disney Junior cartoon.