Which Star Wars cartoon is the best?

[Darthknuxward]

So I've recently watched through every episode of both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. I love both and was actually trying to think which was overall better. I decided to see what your guys thoughts were on these two shows. I added in the others shows as an extra choice.

[BabyTurtles]

I like Star Wars The Clone Wars~ I just like the idea of a bunch of jedi running around kicking butt~ (and I like how everything looks~)

XD plus Ahsoka/Obiwan/Anakin dynamic is awesome~

Rebels is pretty good though~ but I'm just not into Ezra....his whole design just doesn't work for me......(the other characters are cool! though I'm a little salty that they changed Ahsoka so much design wise)

[Peanut]

I don't know if it's "the best," but I really love Rebels, because it's kind of creating its own space in the SW universe with new characters. The Clone Wars was great, but outside of Ahsoka and some of the clones, it was characters who are already well established doing the stuff you'd expect them to do. There was no room for anyone to grow or change.

Genndy Clone Wars is great, too. Ewoks and Droids are both terrible, but I'm super nostalgic for both of them, so I do enjoy them in that campy way. In High School we actually played a drinking game involving watching the VHS "movie" version of Droids and drinking every time someone points out an animation error. We never once got through it.

[TigerClaw]

Originally Posted by Peanut

I don't know if it's "the best," but I really love Rebels, because it's kind of creating its own space in the SW universe with new characters. The Clone Wars was great, but outside of Ahsoka and some of the clones, it was characters who are already well established doing the stuff you'd expect them to do. There was no room for anyone to grow or change.

Genndy Clone Wars is great, too. Ewoks and Droids are both terrible, but I'm super nostalgic for both of them, so I do enjoy them in that campy way. In High School we actually played a drinking game involving watching the VHS "movie" version of Droids and drinking every time someone points out an animation error. We never once got through it.

I liked Star Wars Droids when it first came out, But I gotta go with Rebels since, It's canon now.

[NinjaPug]

It's tough for me to compare 110+ episodes of Clone Wars to Rebels that only has ~ 20 episodes to this point. Overall I'd probably pick CW right now because there was some great stuff from S3 until the end but based on 1st seasons alone I'd go with Rebels.

[PangolinFeets]

Rebels is awesome, but the original Clone Wars takes the cake for me. I'm not actually a big fan of Star Wars, but that cartoon is just so damn bad ass.

[ToTheNines]

Genndy Clone Wars by a FAR, for me. I've tried so hard to get into The Clone Wars, but I can't.

[Mew]

The animated Clone Wars.

[ZariusTwo]

I haven't seen Droids or Ewoks in ages and the lack of DVD releases don't help there, but I did enjoy "The Big Heep" Droid movie. The only Ewok episode I remember is the one that led into ROTJ and was by Paul Dini I think

The 2004-2005 Clone Wars shorts were awesome and did a lot to rope me into the prequel universe more than the movies were managing at the time.

[CyberCubed]

I still don't understand why they don't make a cartoon with Luke/Han/Leia in the most popular Star Wars era. It doesn't make sense.

And I'm not speaking of just now, I mean even back in the 90's or the early 2000's. They could have adapted the Thrawn Trilogy and Shadows of the Empire into cartoon form, any of the major EU comics could have made a good cartoon season.

[JTH]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I still don't understand why they don't make a cartoon with Luke/Han/Leia in the most popular Star Wars era. It doesn't make sense.

And I'm not speaking of just now, I mean even back in the 90's or the early 2000's. They could have adapted the Thrawn Trilogy and Shadows of the Empire into cartoon form, any of the major EU comics could have made a good cartoon season.

Because who would dare have taken on that responsibility of being the one to ruin anything Star Wars?

Especially in the 90s when there was still nothing that was done poorly, minus the "Christmas Special" that seldom even knew about.

Better off just letting George be the one to muck that up himself.

[Leo656]

I do know that for a long while nobody was allowed to touch anything from the original movie timeline, and by the time that changed everything was all about the Prequels.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I still don't understand why they don't make a cartoon with Luke/Han/Leia in the most popular Star Wars era. It doesn't make sense.

And I'm not speaking of just now, I mean even back in the 90's or the early 2000's. They could have adapted the Thrawn Trilogy and Shadows of the Empire into cartoon form, any of the major EU comics could have made a good cartoon season.

Because cartoons primarily exist to sell sh*t to kids, especially back then. Do you really think they needed a cartoon to give Star Wars toys a signal boost? Ewoks made sense, because they tried to spin that entire thing off into a thing, which obviously never really caught. Droids was killed pretty quickly, which I've read (somewhere at some point) tied in directly with how poorly the toys sold.

They tried two low risk cartoon adaptations and both sh*t the bed, so I'm sure they had no faith in any potential future projects. Why risk tarnishing the golden goose with something as risky as a cartoon when the merchandise sold itself by that point? By the time it mattered again, you had the prequels, so there was never really a good time for it.

[PangolinFeets]

Hur hur.

[sdp]

You have to understand two things one is that Star Wars was basically dead at one point and the other that George Lucas loves the SW universe and is very protective of it especially after the Holiday Special which didn't come out as he had planned. He's also not really driven by money as most people think; he just doesn't mind making money. I mean he didn't care if he lost money on the Clone Wars, he still tried to give them the budget they needed and from what I read this has always been the case even back to the early attempts with Droids.


After RoTJ Lucas tried to continue the Star Wars saga, he thought the Ewoks would be a good choice and he was mostly thinking about his daughter at the time and basically made a movie that she would be able to enjoy. It was successful enough that it got a sequel. Lucas also liked the idea of animation and expanding his universe, he was still unsure about what to do for subsequent films so for his animated projects he went with characters that would be fun for kids but still wouldn't clash with any ideas he would want to use in future films. There were still restrictions by the networks and ratings weren't too excellent so only Ewoks got a second season but it wasn't something Lucas really wanted to pursue. After this Star Wars was basically dead until the Special Editions and Lucas didn't even know if the property was still viable and it was when the Power of the Force figures became a hit as did the Special Editions and since then we've gotten constant Star Wars stuff one way or another, it really only was a less than a decade that the franchise was a little "dead".

So yeah at this point Lucas was too busy planning the prequels and likely didn't want to over saturate the market with SW media outside of the movies and printed material. It wasn't until after the prequels ended that he showed interest in a tv show and new cartoons. So I guess that's the long explanation as to why they never created a show with those characters. Now those characters did get enough stories through comics novels both before the special editions and after and have been very popular and Disney now that they're re-starting the canon they also started with books/comics dealing with those characters. I guess it also has to do that it's more difficult to write X number of episodes in a tv show with characters that you can't change too much from what was already shown on screen and making it compelling TV while a book or comic allows them a little more room to play with what happens. In any case I do think we'll eventually get to see those characters in animated form whether its cameos or something. Also there was that other Star Wars parody cartoon Detours which completed its episode order which had all of the OT characters. It's finished and could air whenever Disney wants but they're holding on to it for the right time so...

[Groverman62]

I dont have any real memories of the 03 clone wars show. But I really loved the 08 Clone wars.

Rebels is also good because its cast is original so the writers are more able to do what they want with them.

I think Lucas gets too much grief.

[Foombamaroom]

03 Clone Wars is great, and 08 Clone Wars is great, too. However, I like 08 more because that is my dream Anakin. That's how he should've been portrayed in the prequels: this great warrior, not a whiney little bitch. Ahsoka's character development was SUPERB, and the clones were fantastic, too. It's nice to see an actual WAR, but you also had the slower episodes. I also liked the arc-style, but I wish they would've had a story as well. Asajj Ventress was another one of my favorites, and her story really didn't have an ending, which bothered me. I dunno. I wish they'd make a 7th season so we could have our proper endings.

Rebels is a show that I like, but think it would be better if it could get mature as Clone Wars. However, I love the fact that it's following the one main plot. And I love that Rex and Ahsoka are in there, especially Ahsoka. We all know there's going there's going to be some sort of confrontation between Ahsoka and Vader (I'm honestly going to be happier with an emotional one over a lightsaber duel.), and that's what makes me watch the show. I loved The Inquisitor, and the other ones seem pretty cool, too.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I still don't understand why they don't make a cartoon with Luke/Han/Leia in the most popular Star Wars era. It doesn't make sense.

I suppose they could've done a cartoon that took place during the immediate years after Return of The Jedi. If they did one during the time between either A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back or between TESB and ROTJ, it would've suffered from the same thing that The Clone Wars suffered from. There would've been no way to make it interesting since the fates of most of the characters would've already been set in stone. That's the reason that I think when Rebels is said and done, it'll be superior to TCW. There's so much more potential for the characters since their fates aren't already set in stone.