One of the great joys of running a passion project publication dedicated to an extraordinarily specific topic is watching other sites that cover “culture” put together beautiful, wild, expensive-looking pieces on the topic you cover that make you salivate with jealousy. This year, The Dot and Line read along with outlets from Vulture to /Film and Vanity Fair to The Hollywood Reporter put out stellar stories covering, among other topics, the secret history of DuckTales’s violently catchy theme and what the deal was with reports of finding Scrappy Doo’s corpse in Miami. Here, we present you, as we did last year, with what is likely a woefully incomplete list of the best American writing on animation not from this site and published over the past year, in (almost) no particular order and with (opinionated) recommendation blurbs. Enjoy your toons.
Important Note! We read as much as we possibly can, but we’re neither perfect nor do we wish to live in a world filled with only our opinions. If you feel we missed a particularly awesome piece of writing, analysis, or storytelling about animation, send us a note at thedotandline@gmail.com and we’ll include it and quote you!
Why Were So Many 2017 Animated Movies So Bad?
This is a question we asked ourselves plenty of times while walking past subway posters for The Emoji Movie every sweltering day this summer.
How Today’s Most Daring, Weird Cartoons Transform the Minstrel Aesthetic
Freelancer extraordinaire and first-time (!!!) Vulture contributor Lauren Michele Jackson examines the history of blackness and minstrelsy in American animation.
Scrappy-Doo Found Dead in Miami, Explained
This may have been one of the weirdest stories in a very weird year.
‘Attack On Titan’ Season 2:Production Notes 12 and Final Impressions
A careful, bullet-pointed, heady dive into one of contemporary anime’s biggest titles from a small yet mighty Japan-centric animation journalism website. Sakuga produces probably the best English-language recaps of the nitty-gritty details behind anime on the internet, and this entry from the latest season of Attack on Titan proved it.
How Toonami Became an Anime Gateway for Millennials
Formerly of The Verge and now working for another publication that begins with the letter “v,” the always-superb Emily Yoshida’s interview with Toonami producer Jason DeMarco gave fans everything they wanted to know and more about the pioneering TV bloc.
The Story of the ‘DuckTales’ Theme, History’s Catchiest Single Minute of Music
Darryn King went really, really hard. Read this, listen to it, and for duck’s sake, go watch the reboot! (Then read his story on finding Charlie Brown’s little red-haired girl.)
‘Batman’ at 25: Hirings, Firings and Other Last-Minute Changes Behind the Animated Classic
The history behind what is clearly the best screen adaptation of the Caped Crusader ever made is as complex and dramatic as the Dark Knight himself. The Hollywood Reporter sheds some light on the details.
How ‘Broad City’ Made an Animated Episode Using 14,000 Drawings
Now THAT’s how the sausage is made.
Exclusive: Genndy Tartakovsky talks ‘Samurai Jack’ Season 5 and beyond
We have made no bones about how much we love Samurai Jack here at The Dot and Line. This made us love it—and its creator, Genndy Tartakovsky—even more, if such a thing is even possible.
I Lived ‘Neo Yokio’
A Netflix anime series Eric had no time for and John found surprisingly enjoyable in spite of its flaws gets a whole new life in this delightfully humorous personal essay.
How Rebecca Sugar Turned Cartoon ‘Steven Universe’ Into an Empire
Eric Thurm is a high-ranking priest in the church of Steven Universe. He goes for a different metaphor here. It works.
Meet the Women Behind ‘Rick and Morty’s’ Third Season
This one is for all you knobs who are too sexist and stupid to realize that your favorite show is better thanks to the women writing for it.
Sexual Harassment and Hollywood’s Earliest Cartoons
We featured the excellent Gabrielle Bellot on last year’s list and would be remiss if we didn’t note that, once again, she is writing some of the most important words on cartoons that are out there for the reading.
Can a lifelong anime skeptic learn to love it?
Sean O’Neal is a newshound’s diction hero, and this piece is a great one, even if all the conclusions he comes to are so, so, so, so, so wrong. (SO WRONG!)
The Animation Studio That Made ‘Castlevania’ Explains Why It Was a Dream Project
A Netflix anime series Eric and John actually agreed on (it was weird!) was, apparently, a dream project for more reasons than just having Warren Ellis helming the script. Who knew!
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