What’s your favorite cartoon?

…but my favorites have changed as I’ve gotten older and consumed so much content. For those of us lucky to have access to Cartoon Network in the 90’s, you’ll know a bit about what I’m talking about.

When I was growing up in Colorado school started at 7:30am, which meant I was generally up somewhere between 6:00am and 7:00am. There were a wide variety of Hannah-Barbera cartoons that I would catch in the mornings. The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo, etc. I enjoyed most of them but I don’t recall ever really having favorites among them. Maybe some I preferred over others, but that was about it. Then came along Pokémon. That was one I could say was a favorite as a kid.

Beyond that, when I was going into middle school, Cartoon Network eventually added the Toonami block in the evenings, and that was where I got hooked on anime. Dragon Ball Z, Big O, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star. So many that passed through the Toonami timeslots that I greatly enjoyed. Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star were definitely my two favorites at that time.

Through high school, my siblings and I got our hands on DVD sets for a few different anime that we all still talk about to some degree. Hellsing, Fushigi Yugi, The Twelve Kingdoms, and Trigun. I watched through Trigun dozens of times! That one was definitely a top favorite at the time. I’ve gone back and watched Hellsing and The Twelve Kingdoms once or twice in the last ten years, so they’re definitely up there as well.

Early on in college I got sucked into Naruto and Bleach but eventually gave up trying to keep up with the anime, and I read the manga instead, so those won’t count. However, it’s at this point that I really deviated from anime as a whole. It wouldn’t be until after college (and really, after I finally moved out on my own) that I dove back into watching anime.

Aside from the rewatches, I learned I was a huge sucker for the Isekai themed stories, which shouldn’t be surprising considering how much I enjoyed The Twelve Kingdoms and Fushigi Yugi. (If you don’t know what Isekai is, it’s basically when someone gets transported to another world and has to survive there. Think Spirited Away.)

Once the Isekai genre started to dominate the market, it became kind of stale, and I eventually had to start being picky. They can’t ALL be great, but that’s my completely subjective opinion. So, after watching probably a dozen or two, I did come to a few I could say were favorites. Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy is right up near the top of the list from recent years, along with the first season of The Rising of the Shield Hero. Those two had great concepts/premise, and character development. I haven’t watched Shield Hero beyond that first season (again, I got hooked into reading the manga) and I’m eager to see a second season of Tsukimichi. Then there’s Kumo Desu ga, nani ka?/So I’m a spider, so what? which was a lot of fun in its own way. Sadly, again, nothing new to watch yet for that one.

Well, this could seriously go on for a while, so I’m going to stop with the reminiscing and close out with a favorite that I’m watching right now called Spy x Family which has quickly become a favorite to the point of watching each new episode as soon as they’re up on Crunchyroll. A world class spy from a neighboring nation has to go undercover and needs a fake family to help him get close to his target. What could go wrong when he adopts a little girl who can read minds, and fake marries a woman who is actually an incredibly strong assassin from the nation he’s spying on? (And of course they don’t know each other’s secret and the only one who knows their true identities is the little four or five year old telepath they adopted.)

Alright, I need to leave it at that. This post got way longer than I initially thought it would. I need to go to bed.