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September 30, 2001 :: "The ultimate showdown"

When I was a child I loved cartoons. My favorites were the old black and white ones from Max Fleischer. [No, I'm not that old.] A lot of these old cartoons had very high "warp your mind" potential. That is to say, watching them would influence your nightmares. Max Fleischer was a very demented, albeit brilliant animator. He loved surrealism and relished in sneaking odd bits into his animations. His influence is still felt in animation today, particularly in manga and animé. So that got me thinking. Do today's cartoons have the same mind-warping potential as the ones I grew up with? I pitted one of Fleischer's most popular cartoons [Betty Boop] against one of today's hottest [Sailor Moon].
Key: Bullet=definite characteristic || X=does not have this characteristic
Potentially Mind-Warping Characteristic	Betty Boop	Sailor Moon
Over-sized, parade-floats for craniums
Rubbery, wet noodle arms and legs
Squeaky, rodent-like, unnatural voices
Mescaline color palette
Brilliant theme music
Eventually became a useful marketing tool
Sexy costumes and lots of leg.
Bums, hobos, tramps and other vagabonds are frequent main characters
Characters often have knife-like fangs
Characters often have one huge, flat ceramic block in place of teeth.
Protruding proboscises
Unblinking, tombstone-shaped eyes with strangely outlined highlights
Cavernous maws, often with a floating uvula
Spastic, seizure-inducing action
Plot includes questionably good characters against evil
Lots of drool spraying everywhere
Unnatural amounts of violent acts
Adults are always evil
Rube Goldberg solutions to defeat evil
Bad guy is defeated forever at the end
WINNER: Betty Boop	16	13