Man, that period in the late 80's to the mid-to-late 90's when we had the Japanese animate our cartoons: primo stuff. Even for the worst of shows, characters moved with such fluidity despite the complexity of staying on model. A really great time for cartoons here in the States.
Oh, my, yes. Specific kudos to the animators of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe for using motion-study clips of actual people to get their movement and such, a la Disney back in the day.
That said, I never much cared for G.I. Joe or any of the toy-related shows that were around before Spielberg stepped in to give a kick in WB's ass.
Many of them I felt had an interesting kernel that could be pursued by good creative types, but the companies rushing for their share of the pie had little to no interest in the creative potential. Hasbro is especially notorious, here. The lore that grew up around Transformers in the comics and cartoons was utterly lost on them. By the time they decided to jump on the nostalgia train in the "oughts" and gave it to Michael Bay, as far as they were concerned it was still just "giant robots from space". All of the deeper, mythic stuff, all of the science -- of them being inorganic life-forms and not "robots", of their subspace and mass-shifting tech, of their morphing and smart-material tech... Poof.
Although, with G.I. Joe, I really liked the imagery (I love Cobra's rogues gallery, and to this day, still adore Cobra Commander's mirror helmet look) and "premise"; I just felt they never did anything really good with it.
The way they have recently gone back and remastered Space Battleship Yamato, I would love it if they went back and re-did Robotech (yes, I prefer the gestalt story Carl Macek came up with over the originals) and -- especially -- G.I. Joe. I don't mean some of the recent cartoons. Those have been...
okay... But I mean something that acknowledges the more grounded beginnings of the '80s' RAH characters and not the zany crap that followed. Better thought given to COBRA's motivations and methods. I always loved the Crimson Twins and the Crimson Guard -- deep cover, economic and political terrorism. Chilling stuff. A longform story would be so much better than foiled-COBRA-plot-
du-
jour. Real character evolution, too. The complex relationship between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, the behind-the-scenes politics that led to leadership shifting between Duke and Flint, and the impact on the team... And, for the luvva Mike, dial down Cobra Commander at least eighteen thousand notches.