Personally, I believe Mario's cartoon would've been better off if they had gone with some other animation company. In fact, in an upcoming fanfic parody I'll be doing of the show, I'll have Mario remark, "I knew I should've picked Warner Bros. to produce my animated series!"
Later on, in "Misadventure of Mighty Plumber", I'll have Mario ask Luigi, "Do you ever think of how different things would've been if we didn't pick DiC to do our cartoon?" As they continue throught the episode, Mario lists off reasons why DiC isn't as awesome as they claim to be. Here are those reasons.
1. They have trouble hiring decent animators. As mentioned before, Mario's show is very badly-animated.
2. Lack of originality. How many DiC shows do you know aren't based off of an existing property? Not many, I'll tell you that. Most of the DiC cartoons I've seen include Mario and Sonic's cartoons, which, along with "Double Dragon", are based off of video games. I've also seen "Heathcliff", "Archie's Weird Mysteries" and "Sabrina - the Animated Series" (later retitled "Sabrina's Secret Life"), which are based off of comics, and "The REAL Ghostbusters", which is based on the movie. About the original thing DiC's made is "Inspector Gadget", and even he's based off of something else - "Get Smart". Plus, it doesn't help when you realize that practically every episode of Mario's first season was based off of some other story that would've been better parodied if it placed Bugs Bunny in the starring role, and in Sonic's weekday cartoon, they overused the mind control plot to the point that it wasn't funny anymore.
3. Horrible anme dubbing. I don't like it when anime fans treat 4Kids like they're the worst anime dubbers ever. A good reason is because DiC does an even worse job of dubbing anime. Remember what they did to "Sailor Moon"? They practically chopped that show in half! The thing they have going for them here is the fact that they allowed Funimation to release the unedited version on DVD. And on the subject of changing things, that brings up the next reason.
5. Inability to be true to source material. Take a look at Mario's show, for instance. Of course, seeing how Mario and Luigi did use to have pants that matched their hats, they themselves are exempt from the search, but what about Bowser? He looks nothing like he should in the cartoon, and it really gets confusing in the second and third seasons, where his kids look as they do in the games but he doesn't. And how about Sonic's show? Sure, his Saturday morning show was awesome, and his weekday show at least had a lot of humor, but his third DiC incarnation has him traveling with his siblings who didn't exist in the games, singing bad songs like as though they've got their show confused with "Alvin and the Chipmunks". And poor Heathcliff! Not only does his kid master look completely different in the show, but the animated Heathcliff talks, something I don't recall him doing in the comic strip. And just look at this picture of the animated GhostBusters, who look nothing like the actors who played them in the movie, by the way:
Matter of fact, the only character who looks the same in both the movie and the show is Slimer. And yet they call the show "The REAL GhostBusters" with an emphasis on "real". (Apparently, it's to avoid confusion with the OTHER GhostBusters cartoon, the Filmation one.)
6. False ownership claims. As if's not enough that DiC makes up stuff about the properties they turn into cartoons, they also seem to act like they made them. How do I know? Watch the SMB Super Show credits sometime, and you'll notice that not once do they mention Shigeru Miyamoto for creating the Marios. Same thing with Yuji Naka for Sonic. And while I haven't seen "Heathcluff" in a while, I'll bet they didn't give credit to George Gately for creating the character. Sheesh! Even the SMB Movie gave credit to the creator of the source material!
So there you have it. Mario really should've picked Warner Bros. to do his cartoon.
