Ever since I grew up in the 80s watching Saturday Morning Cartoons, I have loved watching animation. When done well, there is a dynamic fun and imaginative freedom to animation that even the most CGI-heavy live action cannot reproduce. With the streaming channels there are a lot of animated series floating around (most of them for kids), but I wanted to highlight 10 that have debuted or returned in recent months which I was excited to watch, to show that animated TV is still something wonderful (and not just for kids), imaginative and full of that old dynamic fun.

The Dragon Prince: The Mystery of Aaravos

This show is one of the best, current fantasy shows. Created by some of the folks who worked on the classic Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, this show started out telling the story of two human princes (Callum and Ezran) on a quest to return a dragon egg to its mother, the dragon queen, in the magical land of Xadia. That is, regrettably, a gross oversimplification of a series that has expanded its world and lore immensely over five short seasons. By season five, the main plot involves the good guys (these two princes and their allies) trying to prevent the bad guys (mainly a not-so-good wizard and his daughter, both dark mages) from releasing a powerful and evil elf mage, Aaravos, who has been imprisoned for a long long time. The synopsis doesn’t sound too special, but what makes this series so wonderful is the amazing world-building: the many side-characters, the magic and spells, the other races and lands, the magical creatures, etc. It’s all very imaginative and beautifully animated. While I enjoyed the first three seasons quite a lot, they led up to a climax at the end of the third season. But we’re now in a kind of aftermath, leading to potentially a bigger climax when the conflict over Aaravos kicks in, and it feels like a bit of a lull. Season four was a bit aimless and felt like filler, but this season is a bit more exciting. A lot of it takes place on the water, so if you like sea-faring stuff with pirates, this season is for you. Unfortunately, even though there’s a lot to love about this series, there are a few aspects that I don’t love. Because the main characters are all kids (or young adults) who happen to be burdened with epic-level responsibility, they act a bit childish and I was bothered by some of their choices: a few times they would jeopardize the entire world-saving mission to save cute animals or otherwise act out of simplistic feelings even when so much is at stake. Similarly, because this show is (to its credit) trying to develop well-rounded characters, even the villains are shown with some positive motives such as protection of family or loved ones. However, they make evil, murderous choices and the show glosses over it with very little consequence. Nevertheless, the series still manages to be a very entertaining, well-written, well-acted, well-animated show that is a lot of fun to watch, and with this latest season I’m really gearing up for the next phase in this epic fantasy adventure.

Unicorn Warriors Eternal

A very different take on the fantasy genre, this series is incredibly unique, high-concept, and (almost) well-animated. This new show tells the tale of three eternal warriors: an elven knight, a dark sorceress, and a mystic monk, who have been reincarnated through the centuries to battle a great evil. Cool, right?! Fantasy nerd-bait, right?! On top of that clever concept, the show has got some great storytelling, starting out with the latest incarnation of the three arriving in a steampunk version of early 20th century London (Cool, right?!): The sorceress Melinda is incarnated into a woman named Emma on her wedding day and, at first, Emma’s persona does not become completely replaced by Melinda’s by their robot guardian Copernicus (who is tasked with finding and awakening the three whenever it’s time for them to return). As a result, we get a lot of Emma’s inner-struggle and many scenes flashing back to the three warriors’ past as it affects the show’s present. (Sorry, this summary is getting complicated because there’s so much fantasy goodness in this show! And I have not even mentioned the mysterious nine-tailed-fox lady who seems to be their nefarious enemy.) As a complete fantasy nerd, I love this show and it’s almost perfect except for one major thing: I hate the visual style so much! The show is the handiwork of animation legend Genddy Tartakovsky, who is behind cult classics such as Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Star Wars: Clone Wars (the non-CGI one). If you’re familiar with those shows you already know how stylized Tartakovsky’s animation can be, but sadly this series adds that 1930s cartoon flavour as well (in particular, think Betty Boop, Popeye, or even early early Disney’s Silly Symphonies). I think it absolutely brings down the epic fantasy tone of this series and makes it kind of a self-parody (which I guess may be the intention). Nevertheless, I loved this story, these characters, and this universe so much that I stuck with the show and pretty much binged the entire 10 episode season over a few days. I cannot remember a time when I was so conflicted over a series, but I would heartily recommend the show for any fans of fantasy. It’s great. There are so many nerd-bait elements that you will be in heaven (or at least a timeless, mystical, cosmic dimension that greatly resembles heaven). Plus, did I mention that there’s a big cliffhanger where Emma/Melinda is determined to rescue someone she loves from the clutches of evil? Oh, and there’s a werewolf! And an elven kingdom! And a magic sword! And an evil inventor! And a giant squid monster! And Merlin! And … 

My Adventures With Superman

Another new series that is pretty good, this time Superman’s story is rebooted in a quasi-anime style in the modern-day world (but in fictional Metropolis again). Clark Kent, is a young man, just starting out as a reporter (actually just an intern) for the Daily Planet where he meets the highly-driven Lois Lane (another intern) and works with his roommate Jimmy Olsen (also an intern). Clark also is just starting out as Superman after the trio get caught up with some villains transporting illegal, futuristic tech that is giving them super-powers. It’s actually Lois who names him Superman after Clark’s alter ego shows up to stop the super-villains. The animation on this series is very good: anime without being too much so that it loses its light-hearted flavour (and the characters’ eyes are not too big). I think they’ve also race-swapped a few characters, including making Lois Asian, maybe? The voice actress (Alice Lee) is Asian and her character seems to have slightly Asian eyes and features (though it’s hard to tell with the anime style). There is a fun, easy tone to the series that is fitting for the many rom-com aspects as the show follows Clark and Lois’s burgeoning romance as well. The character designs are really cool and top-notch, plus the voice acting is excellent – especially ubiquitous nerd-bait Jack Quaid as the surprisingly bashful voice of Clark/Superman. Each episode involves different super-villains all connected to some suspicious tech, but it seems to be leading to a culminating story arc (which I think is disappointingly predictable – we’ll see if I’m right when the season finale is released). Despite oh so many reboots, this version of Superman still feels pretty fresh and enjoyable.

Skull Island

Sadly, Netflix’s Skull Island continues the King Kong vs. Godzilla “MonsterVerse” franchisein the same mediocre vein that has been the curse of all the movies so far (and I hope is not also the doom of the upcoming live action TV series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, on Apple TV+). I think the big problem with this series is that it follows teenage protagonists (presumably because the intended audience is teens and tweens) who, through a series of cinematic circumstances, end up fending for themselves on another mysterious island populated by gigantic oversized creatures (I always wonder how these creatures, especially the ones that can live in the ocean, such as giant crabs, stay confined to these tiny islands). It’s not that I don’t like teenage characters (I mean, I love the Harry Potter franchise so much!) but they are too often ridiculously written: cracking supposedly clever jokes in the midst of life-threatening danger, squabbling over the most trivial arguments, or making stupidly emotional decisions. It’s as if the writers have only ever met the most acerbic, brainless, and superficial teenagers around. In any case, these kids make their way across Skull Island searching for their remaining parents (it’s dangerous out here) while the adults are working out some kind of dastardly corporate plot to take control, or maybe sabotage, or carry out some schemes that include capturing the girl who is one of the teenage trio. Overall, the animation of this show is serviceable, but hardly spectacular, but the episodes are pretty repetitive and not super interesting. I love the MonsterVerse concept (the idea that there are secret monsters living somewhere in unexplored corners of the planet is very cool to me) but I hate how this series and the movies before are just satisfied with having gigantic animals smash things and each other.

Futurama

Amazingly this animated sci-fi comedy series from the makers of The Simpsons has endured almost as long as that original show (except it’s been canceled and rebooted many times over the years). Its last season ended in 2013 and now, 10 years later, everyone is back to pick up where they left off. Literally. The season picks up right after the time-looping ‘series finale’ left time-displaced Fry finally living happily forever after with one-eyed mutant love, Leela. Many winking meta jokes are made about the reboot (which almost seamlessly continues the show with the exact same look, characters, actors, everything), including its logo which starts out reading “Hulurama” (in honour of its new network home) before spinning into “Futurama”. The comedy has always poked fun at current topics in nerd culture and the latest season starts out in kind with Fry feeling the need to binge TV series non-stop (requiring him to don a special binge watching encounter-suit) – a great way to start, since streaming TV was not even a thing when the show last aired. We also revisit previous plot threads including the spawn/children of Kif and Amy (who were tadpoles when we last left them, now teenagers – take that, Gen Z and Gen Alpha!). I love that the show is continuing, but I definitely don’t laugh as much as I did in the early seasons. It’s both comforting and dull that the show has not really reinvented itself 10 years later. Since they are now further out in the future than they had been before and look back at real-world events of the past 10 years with satirical eyes would have been fresher than just their own previous plots. An episode coming soon is called “Rage Against the Vaccine” so I hope there’s some COVID or anti-vax humour. We sure could use a laugh at all that.

Solar Opposites

Continuing with the satirical adult humour, Solar Opposites is back. This series about a family of aliens among us is undergoing a bit of a reboot itself after co-creator and main voice actor Justin Roiland was fired. Humourously, they decided to recast Korvo with one of my favourite actors, Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens. He’s a pretty versatile actor but I’m grateful that they didn’t make him imitate Roiland’s original take on the uptight mission leader Korvo and went with an appropriately sci-fi explanation for his voice and accent change. It’s par for the course for this show’s fourth-wall bending tone to acknowledge that his voice was changed by being shot with a voice changing ray and now he’s British. Deal with it. Even with Stevens’s polite-sounding voice, the show is still as coarse in its humour as it has ever been. Nevertheless, so far, the main couple Korvo and Terry are working for a rake company (yes it’s as dull as it sounds) in order to live a normal sci-fi free life; so there’s a bit of office-satire. It’s not been the most fun that the series has had, though – that’s still reserved for the world inside the wall, where humans shrunk by the ray-gun of alien teenager Yumyulack have established their own post-apocalyptic world within a vast array of interconnected terrariums (think Apple TV+’s Silo but more brutal, funny and with giant insects). Though the show seems intent on ‘avoiding’ sci-fi weirdness, there is a whole city (where Terry goes to pitch a deal to be the exclusive rake supplier) of plant and tree-based people (which I only now realized was a call back to last season’s episode where they got lost in the woods and used an “emergency urbanizer” raygun to create this tree city themselves [forehead smack]). Like Rick and Morty, this series skirts the line of how much crudeness and violence I’m willing to tolerate in a genre show, but sadly it doesn’t compensate by being as clever as Rick and Morty.

Digman!

A new satirical animated sitcom to follow in those footsteps is Digman!, co-created by Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Andy Samberg (who also voices the lead character Rip Digman). It centres around a washed-up, Indiana-Jones-type, swash-buckling archaeologist, who suffered a career-ending tragedy that lost him his mojo. Now sporting a beer gut yet motivated by his new keener assistant, Saltine, Digman tries to re-establish himself as a celebrity archaeologist. All the while he’s competing against his former assistant, Zane Troy, whose own unscrupulous ways have brought him a level of success that has eclipsed Digman completely. I enjoy this kind of genre-spoofing animated show which reminds me of Disney’s Gravity Falls, crossed with Jackie Chan Adventures, crossed with Nic Cage’s American Treasure. However, though I have watched half of its eight-episode first season, it has not quite hooked me yet.

Strange Planet

This odd series, full of blue, balloon-headed people living their ordinary lives is both imaginative and mundane, and I am here for it. I wasn’t sure I would like it as I don’t find animated satire particularly compelling unless there is some kind of gimmick (such as a science fiction premise). This show kind of has that, as we are ostensibly viewing another world, but these balloon people are basically analogs for us, except they speak about things very plainly. They minimize using specialized words for things, preferring to use more accurate descriptors over metaphor or figurative, colourful language. For example, teeth are called “mouthstones”, a glass of water is called a “hydration cylinder”, a parent is a “lifegiver”, coffee is “jitter liquid”, and my favourite is how alcohol is called “mild poison”. Based on a webcomic, this series is clearly intends to be slightly satirical or allegorical by stripping away some of the cultural context and looking at many regular human experiences in a plainer way and from a simpler perspective. While some characters recur, other stories are one-shots only. I enjoyed the opening episode’s story of a flight attendant whose relationship with their colleagues changed after they received a promotion (I can relate!) and another episode where one person went through the ordeal of cat-sitting to impress someone who they were attracted to. I have to confess that after watching four episodes, I am already feeling a little bored (only a little) with the series. Nevertheless, it’s also got a coziness that makes me want to watch an episode when things get a little crazy on my planet.

Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire

Even though this is kind of a kids show on Disney+, I also really love the high concept and artistic tone of this series, which is an anthology of animated stories within the “Afro-futurism” subgenre. Probably the most well-known example of this sub-genre of sci-fi would be Marvel’s Black Panther (and the fictional nation of Wakanda). It essentially puts futuristic technology and sci-fi concepts within the cultural context of African and African-inspired environments. Each episode tells an unconnected story created by an African animation filmmaker and often involves the language, mythology and setting of various African nations (as imagined into the future). The animation is quite impressive and often stylized and dynamic. I confess that some of the stories are a bit confusing to me because I’m very unfamiliar with African culture so I don’t easily pick up the implications and motivations behind characters’ choices; nor am I very familiar with any of the mythological touchstones (and so I probably miss a lot of allusions). Nevertheless, I am really fascinated by this attempt at widening the creative landscape (especially when Disney seems to be suffering from a bit of a creative drought). Most memorable for me so far is the episode “Surf Sangoma”, where gangs compete by surfing amidst a slum town surrounded by raging waters, and a young man needs to live up to the legendary surfing legacy of his grandmother. “First Totem Problems” is more cute (and reminds me a whole lot of Pixar’s Coco) and yet the main character ends up in a kind of afterlife with a couple of her ancestors as she tries to earn her adulthood totem. This series is definitely fresh and unique. 

Invincible: Atom Eve

Finally, this was a TV movie rather than a series, but I wanted an even 10 on this list, so let’s talk about Atom Eve. If you remember the first season of Prime Video’s Invincible (I agree, it’s been so long that I’d forgotten a lot of it also). She is the over-powered superhero who at one point rescued Invincible and eventually they became friends and a couple (“power couple” you could say. Ba-dum-bum!). This movie is her backstory (which I think could have easily been wrapped into the series as a flashback interlude. Anyway, the story goes through the somewhat tragic story of her birth and the mistake she makes in learning to use her powers as a hero. It feels kind of similar to many super-hero origins and “growing up” stories, but it’s still pretty good to watch – especially with Invincible’s cynical, darker-but-not-quite-The Boys tone. The animation is also pretty reminiscent of the original Invincible series so it feels completely like we’re in the same universe. I think it’s not essential viewing for fans of that series but it’s a nice little morsel to hold us until season two finally arrives.