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PostPosted: February 26th, 2008, 7:03 am 
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After feeling this way for about twenty years, I've decided to post a message on the internet and find out whether I am alone. Whilst I think most cartoon/fiction heroes are deserving of their role as "leader", and in a lot of cases are the most interesting characters, there are a few cases where I think: What's he the leader for? Three examples spring to mind:

Watership Down

I begin with the one probably least likely to be well known by people watching cartoons in the 80s/early 90s. For those of you who don't know, it's a novel by Richard Adams (and there is a very good animated film adaptation) about rabbits who have to leave their warren and, and go and make a new one. The most interesting characters are the big thuggish rabbit who does all the fighting, and the psychic runt who senses danger and urges the small band of rabbits to go away with him. His name is Fiver; the rabbit who eventually gets to become Chief Rabbit is his brother Hazel, who is extremely boring.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I do believe that Leonardo has leadership qualities. However, I also believe that he is the least interesting of the Turtles; I've always thought so. I don't think they put much effort into developing his character.

Thundercats

The ultimate. Panthro has super-strength. Tigra can make himself invisible (just like a real tiger!). Cheetarah has super-speed. Wily-Kit and Wily-Kat don't exactly have super super powers, but they are very wily (and they're only young). Which is more than can be said for Lion-O. He doesn't have any special powers. He's just the leader.

In conclusion, I suggest that there are two possibilities. The first is: This character will be the leader. And for some reason they think that's enough to make him (this doesn't seem to apply to females like Kim Possible and She-Ra) interesting, so they don't need to bother with anything else.

The other is: We have a boring character. Ooh, I know what'll make him interesting - he'll be the leader (and I think perhaps our own dear Roland Jackson suffers from that a bit, no?).

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PostPosted: February 29th, 2008, 2:33 pm 
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I think a lot of the problem can be this: making the leader "worthy" seems to mean "taking away every possible flaw." He's perfectly brave, perfectly honest, and never shows weakness. Which means, yeah, he's kinda dull.

Take another notorious example: Scott Summers, "Cyclops", field leader of the X-Men (or at least one X-Men faction) for the last forty-five years. He was Xavier's first student. He had one of comics' most epic romances with Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix. His brother is a powerful mutant in his own right, and his Dad's a space pirate. Via temporal convolutions his son Nathan Christopher (via a clone of Jean during her most famous "death") grew up to be one of my favorite Marvel characters, Cable.

Scott's often berated by fans for being as dull as dishwater. Of course, it doesn't help that he's on a team with overrated attention hog Wolverine (but then again, 3/4 of the Marvel Universe is now on one team or another with moody loner Wolverine...).

So what did the writers try to make him more "interesting"? They turned him into a manwhore who flirted with Psylocke, cheated on his wife with slutty ex-villainess Emma Frost, and leaped back into Emma's bed before Jean's body was cold following her most recent "death" (You always have to use quotation marks when referring to Jean Grey Summers dying...) I think I liked him better when he was dull.

The original Ghostbusters kind of spoiled us in that regard, didn't it? Venkman is the nominal leader, though Egon comes across as the real leader many times in the RGB cartoons and comics. Noone would ever accuse either one of them of being boring.

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PostPosted: March 1st, 2008, 12:57 am 
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Yeah, like Dr. Foreman on House. I get what you mean. I personally like how they always seem to decide to have the leader develope the same traits as their mentors too. It gives the illusion of a personality. :roll:

Can we include roland into this list?

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PostPosted: March 1st, 2008, 5:14 am 
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ghostdiva wrote:
Can we include roland into this list?


Well, I kinda nearly did already.

Shortly after EGB was on, I watched a series called Extreme Dinosaurs (it might have been made around the same time, I don't know, but in the UK they showed about three episodes after school and then about a year later gave it a slot in the middle of the night because I was the only person who watched it) - I was drawn to the title. In that, the tyrannosaurus rex got to be the leader. He was a great character, and he was certainly flawed. My favourite was the pteranodon for some reason, but after that, with the nerdy stegasaurus and the triceretops who had pretty much no character at all, T-Bone was a close second (I think I could still tell you all their names, if you really wanted me to).

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PostPosted: March 1st, 2008, 6:31 pm 
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that show was a spin off of street sharks and I think it came first . I't hared to say bc everything had Extreme in it .



cool post 200

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PostPosted: March 2nd, 2008, 5:01 pm 
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First character that came to mind here was Freddy on Scooby-Doo. I wouldn't say he's hated within the SD fan community, but he's the least popular char by FAR, and not without justification.

Fritz wrote:
I think a lot of the problem can be this: making the leader "worthy" seems to mean "taking away every possible flaw." He's perfectly brave, perfectly honest, and never shows weakness. Which means, yeah, he's kinda dull.


Funnily enough, one beloved leader character that this could be applied to is Optimus Prime. At least within the G1 cartoon. He was always portrayed there as an upright, classic hero who always knew the right thing to do...then when Hot Rod became Rodimus Prime, people hated him for showing flaws and being conflicted over his new leader role. The result being of course that Hasbro brought Optimus back at the end of the third season. (I'm not knocking Optimus at all here, BTW). But then again, this IS the Transformers fandom we're talking about.

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PostPosted: March 2nd, 2008, 5:52 pm 
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WHAT?

oh no you didn't just bash the Prime . ( JK )

I can remember one episode were some decepticon were asking him for help and Optimus just left them to die .

To me it would seem that he wasn't all that much of a goody goody like the would gave him do to day .

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PostPosted: March 3rd, 2008, 7:43 am 
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Jason knetge wrote:
WHAT?

oh no you didn't just bash the Prime . ( JK )



Quote:
I'm not knocking Optimus at all here, BTW


My point was, however, that Transformers is one case where the flawless or near-flawless guy gets the plaudits and the flawed guy gets endlessly bashed.

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