@Phlakes: That was the first time Patamon evolved into Angemon. I only ever saw the first season of Digimon before I "outgrew" that type of anime, but I do remember some names and scenes, and that one does stick out.
I have an awesome long-term memory, though, so there's not really anything I remember watching as a kid that doesn't include the name of the show. I dunno if it's just the nostalgia talking, but around the turn of the century, American cartoons really went downhill, the only really good ones I can think of being Spongebob, The Fairly Oddparents (love that show, it's like the Animaniacs of the 2000s) and Avatar: TLA. The new Thundercats looked promising, but what happened to it? Was it cancelled that quickly?
Anyway, as much as I enjoy it I kinda blame anime for the downturn in American cartoon quality as it happened about the time Toonami, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon really brought anime mainstream for kids and led to an explosion of anime on kids' networks. When I left for Japan, it certainly seemed like the majority of animated material airing in the US was anime or Western shows with visible anime influences. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that: I do enjoy anime and if drawing ideas from anime can make Western animation better, that's cool. But the stuff that didn't draw from anime, that I saw, just wasn't very good at all. The ideas and animation quality were poor, and they likely wouldn't have even entertained me as a kid. But it's hard to beat the '90s for animation all-around, especially the late '90s, even if what they make now was good. How do you top Dexter's Lab, Samurai Jack, Hey Arnold, the Angry Beavers, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Johnny Bravo, the definitive animated series of Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men, and infinitely more cartoons of the era I'm leaving out for brevity's sake? Not to mention a modern Golden Age for Disney animated films! But enough ranting from me. This took me slightly less time to write than it'll take you to read.
