Ahhh 2022; just when we thought everything would be great about halfway through it started to end in disaster. And boy what a year. So many highs, lows, and some in betweens. As we look back on all things 2022, we have seen a lot. And I do mean a lot.
Animated Features
Like the past two years, animated features bounced back and forth between theaters and streaming. Especially over at Disney. For Turning Red, which had mixed reviews, it went straight to streaming. For others, such as Lightyear and Strange Worlds, they did go to theaters, but the money was not there. Lightyear was the first mediocre for the Toy Story franchise, and when Strange Worlds came out for Thanksgiving hoping to be the hit of the year, it bombed. It has since become the worst movie of the year, and possibly one of Disney's biggest flops. Minions came out and made money. Meanwhile, independent films like Pinocchio are getting high praise. Dreamworks got it right with The Bad Guys. And Sonic 2 was better allegedly than Sonic 1 with a Sonic 3 on the way. Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers came back as a strange Roger Rabbit type of film, expected to fail on Disney +. Yet it ended up being a major surprise. Bob's Burgers got a theatrical film, and it was a hit with the fans but with the fans only. At least for them it was fine. The Disney Disaster ended with Bob Chaepek saying that animation is for kids. Fortunately, not long after, he was fired and replaced with Bob Igor. A great thing to say about a company founded on animation.
Animated TV Series
As we've stated over and over again, TV cable ratings have been on the decline because of streaming. As a slight result, many of the shows airing on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network were also released on HBO Max and Paramount +. There has been a mixed bag as to what was released and what has continued on. The Patrick Star Show became the top show of the year despite not airing on Nickelodeon that much. We were also treated with a new Looney Tunes series for a younger audience, Bugs Bunny Builders, on Cartoonito. A big surprise hit is Smiling Friends for adult swim. On the Disney side of things, Mickey got his own stop action TV special with Mickey Saves Christmas, Hamster and Gretel is the latest creation from Povenmire and Marsh. Nickelodeon would both giveith and takeith. Casagrandes came to an end after 3 seasons and 65 episodes, which isn't that bad all things considered. But the Loud House continued on with their series and another series based off the success of A Loud House Christmas live action adaptation. Entitled The Really Loud House, this live action series had mixed reactions due to it being in live action as well as some shipping issues (I talk about that in detail on another blog post).
Streaming
The war on streaming ramps up at a much higher level. Many TV series also doubled as streaming series. Shows such as Bugs Bunny Builders premiered on both HBO Max and Cartoonito. Meanwhile some of the latest Nickelodeon shows also premiered on Paramount +. Especially the biggest streaming dud, Fairly Odder, the latest spin off of Fairly Oddparents combining live action with animation. Sounds fun right? Well....no. It was set up like a Disney Channel sitcom......and you don't want that. Disney + struck some sort of gold with the reboot of The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. But the big attention came from HBO Max. Cuts and tax write offs were all over the place as Warner Bros. Discovery plans to combine HBO Max with Discovery +. Many fans began calling out Zaslav as a hater of animation as I said early, but every time something is taken down (usually due to streaming rights contracts), they blame Zaslav and say that he's doing more tax write offs. Was the way he handled the situation unprofessional, yeah very. But, is he just going about cancelling animation nilly willy, absolutely not, or at least the way I see it. Many of the shows and movies were strictly cancelled in fear of being money losers. We had new animation come out this year from Warner Bros even after the start of the slashing and snapping and new shows now in the works. Zaslav hating animation at the moment is not a very good argument, but time will tell if he is legit helping WB or not. He even got blamed for the ending of Looney Tunes Cartoons this year. This was an AT&T move, however, because the contract was made for 1000 minutes of content and for all kinds of platforms, and by the time they were finishing up HBO Max was coming onto the scene. So it WAS supposed to end regardless of who's in charge, but not before giving Bugs Bunny his first Emmy award (Eric Bauza won for best voice acting). Speaking of cuts, there were some major cuts at Netflix as well. While some big shows made it onto the scene such as Cuphead and Sonic, more series got cancelled altogether. This may be due to the low demand for animation now that things are going back to normal (despite what Twitter says) and people are back going outside and doing things such as festivals, fairs, gatherings, and concerts. That doesn't mean the end of animation (yet). Any updates on what happens next with streaming especially with the Looney Tunes will be covered if needed.
Anime
I'm sorry to say that I have again been out of the loop for anime this year, but I did notice some things including the return of Urusei Yatsura with strong reviews to the reboot of the anime classic. Most of the news with anime came in the form of the industry as a whole rather than series and movies, though we did get another new Dragon Ball movie. Sony acquired Crunchyroll which was on sale from Warner Bros. But in a surprise turn of events, the Funnimation brand got absorbed into Crunchyroll bringing a slight end to the House that Goku Built. Couldn't have happened to a nicer company. In the world of Pokemon, Ash has become a Pokemon Master, and by the next year we will have a new Pokemon anime with brand new characters to talk about
