I turn on Cartoon Network, Disney or Nick nowadays and laugh. Or cry. It's a mix, never really sure what comes out til' I see whats on. Either way though, it's not good. Squirrel Boy? Hannah Montanna? Nick I'd prefer not to say anything about since they had Avatar up until recently, but I'm still annoyed. I recall Wrack doing something or other similar to this, so I figured I'd do it now.

Here are some good TV shows that are no longer showing in most places, and unjustly so with today's lineups IMO(Apologies about no, for lack of a better term, shojo series', but I tried reading one once and even watching an episode of one, and I didn't much like it. Felt too much like a soap opera);

2005 - Avatar: The Last Airbender - Admit it, you thought it was anime too when you first saw it. You wouldn't hesitate from calling it that if you didn't know it was American either, would you? It had a well-thought out story, characters who were fun when the show tried for humour, deep when it wanted to delve into their backstories, villains who actually had motives, families, and proper acts of good nature rather than just existing to be evil. The fact it had nifty magical kung-fu fighting and a giant, flying, six-legged buffalo/bison. I'm still kicking myself for missing season 3, and kicking myself to find season 3 online.

Also 2005 - Naruto - I know it got repetitive and dull later on. I'm talking about beforehand, back when there was still some non-cliched original material, back when it was more than a kid in an orange jumpsuit running around shouting "Believe it!" in the generic cliche underdog story, but with ninja. It's apparently gotten better since Shippuden, but I never found the time to watch it again.

Anyway, kid becomes ninja. Makes no sense, but already you have the target audience's attention.Now you throw in a few life lessons and stuff and it begins becoming decent. Then you make it worth watching with suspense, fooling the viewer and impressive combat scenes. Sadly it began getting drawn-out and unoriginal about the time the hokage got killed around the time of the Chunin exams, if not earlier. Again, apparently Shippuden is better, I've not found time to watch it again, so I don't know.

It wasn't the best, but it had potential, which it used for a while, and that potential is shining through a bit in the Naruto RPG in CoT.

2003 - Rurouni Kenshin - I'm not positive 2003 is the year, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I loved, and still love, this series. And it's hard not to. The animation was to-notch, characters could be anywhere from lighthearted to downright scary, often from the same character. Throw in some top-notch art direction, a great backstory for most of the important characters, skilled writing and you have yourself a show good enough to have one of it's fans still searching for the last episodes online so he can finish it, years after it's canceled.

The show also taught me two lessons. The first being the bigger moral of the story; forgiveness doesn't always come at, for lack of a better term, equivalent exchange. The main character is a lighthearted traveler who refuses to kill, can cook and is good with kids. Surprise; he lost everyone he loved as a child, then became a legendary manslayer in the ensuing war. He repents by protecting people without killing who he's protecting them from. Rather hard to do with a sword. He managed though, and there are a bunch of similar characters in the series. It really did give me that idea that you don't always get fulfillment from revenge, and that he who asks for forgiveness is stronger than he who denies those who ask for it.

Another lesson it taught me was that no matter how bad things look, you can, in most cases, work with it and have things just as good. This one was mainly from the third(?) story arc, in which the 13(?)-year old character most of the viewing audience is to sympathize with gets a rival. This rival proceeds to get bad damage to his right arm. He'll be fine, he just can't use a sword in it again. Which is sad for the character you were supposed to sympathize with, because in anime, who doesn't secretly like their rival? Anyway, they get attacked near the end of the story arc and the rival manages to defend himself with his left arm. He then gives he cliche vow he'll come back someday once he masters whatever he and the character he's a rival with are rivals in, and beat the main character bad. Even though he lost the use of his right arm for sword dueling, he managed to get by fighting left-handed. I guess you can take it or leave it, but I found that pretty motivational.

2002 - YuYu Hakusho - This is another anime series I miss a bit. It went over my head at the time(I was 9 though, it wasn't hard to go over my head), but looking back on what I can remember, it was a good series.

It also started things off different than how you expect. By killing the main character. Seriously. I know it happened within the first ten minutes, but I think it may have happened within the first minute, can't remember whether it was a proper timeflow or whether it was main character death, then a flashback leading up to his death. Anyway, he comes back over a long process that lasted about half the first season.

This was also the first show for me to include demons. ^^ The ones they had were pretty cool IMO too. It also stuck with me rather well. Plus it had god as a giant demon with his son being the guy who runs the show while having the appearance of a baby, who had a blue Oni as his assistant, and the devil was this kind woman who floated on an oar. It was hard for me not to like it.

The show also dealt with a big issue. Death. They kill off the main character quick, you know death will be a recurring theme. This wasn't all that bad though, I loved the series and I have a deep respect for life, so it's possible that respect was caused by how heavily death is talked about in this series.

Another nice thing about this series was it got darker as you got older. It wasn't one of those shows that tried to appeal to one age group; it captured one age group, then got successively more mature to grow up with them so the viewers who made it popular can still enjoy it later. You go from a demon man who turns a rose into a literal rose whip in season 1, story arc 1, to a demon kid who used his blood as a weapon in season 2, story arc 4(?). Somehow through all that, it managed to keep a Y-7 rating for most of it's airing when not on Adult Swim though.

Sometime in the 2000's - Static Shock - It aired on WB's Saturday morning lineup originally, so looking back you don't have high hopes for it. It was pretty neat though(think X-men, with a lightning-based main character). First, you had superpowers. Any writer can tell you in a Saturday morning kids show, superpowers are almost always a must-have.

This did more than the normal superhero show did though. First, the main character wasn't an adult, he was still in school still living with his father, so more or less the viewer could relate somewhat. Second, although not as much as the above series', this series made their villains more than "bwa-ha-ha!" villains. Often they were villains because they had serious problems, not just because they wanted more power or money or something. Second, it dealt with important issues that were intermittent with the main character. He was African-American, so it could deal with racism, his mother got killed in a riot, so it could deal with various things related to riots, his friend gets shot in the leg by someone trying to get revenge on a school bully, so it could deal with school shootings, and the show was set in a city, half of it in a less reputable part of the city, so it was also able to deal with drugs. It really dealt with pretty much every issue you needed/need to know as a kid/teenager in a form kids who watch Saturday morning cartoons can understand. Plus it ended most episodes that dealt with these issues with a little 30 second-1 minute segment on the issue spoken about in that episode, so even if you didn't get it between the superhero fights, you still got the message.

X-Men - 2000 - I know the first TV series debuted in the 90's, but X-Men Evolution was the first one I saw, so it's the one I'm talking about, but what I mention about it applies to the entire series, so it works.

Anyway, it's a cliche superhero show. We all know that. Unlike most superheroes that focused on one character though, there were a bunch of main characters, so nearly everyone likes someone. Didn't like Wolverine? Watch Cyclops. Didn't like Cyclops? Watch Storm. Didn't like Storm? Watch Xavier. And shame on you if you don't like the PSI-gifted old wiseman in the wheelchair. Sure there were occasional episodes made for one character, but the point though, is that nearly anyone could find someone. Everyone had a favourite, and every favourite probably has a fansite now. Plus it dealt with an issue almost all of us deal with at one time or another; prejudice. Let's face it, everyone's different, so everyone gets beat-up by someone. And if you were really different like I and my friends were/are, you got a lot of that. The show taught us that you shouldn't feel bad about being different, and that you can not only live with that difference, but often use it to your advantage.

It probably also didn't hurt that it often had battles between two militia's of superpowered mutants.

1996 - Pokemon - Putting this down seems dumb with today's series, but back 10-12 years ago, Pokemon was a great series.

No-name kid gets a superpowered lightning mouse. Already it sounds neat IMO. They then go off to try and rise to greatness, only to fail close to succeeding, to a new friend no less. But it's alright for him because he has good friends to fall back on. Sure it's cliche now, but back then it was a novel idea. Plus my first memory of TV was the episode of Pokemon where they introduced Brock originally being sprawled across the 26" CRT Satellite TV we had back in Oklahoma, so it has a special place with me.

Going a bit into the future, it also invented a few cliches. For example, the first movie. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who cried when Ash got frozen. Sure he just got frozen in stone, and only temporarily, but still, while they'd had near-death experiences in dozens of series', very few people had ever killed main characters, much less in a children's show's first movie. Yes, he was just frozen in stone and not actually dead, but everyone had a moment where you thought "No way, Ash isn't dead, is he?".

Speaking of crying to Pokemon, let's jump ahead a couple years to the first few episodes of the first season set in Kanto. For a while it, like the games, recycled the same old formula, although they shook it up here, especially with Team Rocket's lineup. I don't remember the exact reason why, but for one reason or another, James and Jessie let Koffing and Arboc go. I was crying here similarly to the first movie. Yes they were evil characters with little to no backstory there just so the villains/comedy relief group had something to do, but I love snakes, so over time I really came to like Arboc/Ekans, watching him/her/it leave for the rest of the series was sad for me. Sadly about then they went back to the same old song and dance, probably because some parent probably called the FCC and complained it made their child cry, the FCC proceeding to make them go back to the old formula.

So yeah, that's what I could think of. Since as I said, my first memory of TV as TV was that episode of Pokemon, I'm not going further back, but feel free to mention any you think I missed from 1996-2008.