GI Joe Animates series

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

PolarBlues

Legendary Pubber
Joined
Dec 22, 2017
Messages
2,872
Reaction score
8,679
I don't know much GI Joe lore other than having seen the live action movies, but I know there are a lot of fans on this forum.

I noticed that there are a whole bunch of animated GI Joe series, from 80s onwards, with names like Real American Hero, Sigma-6, Renegades, Resolute. It is a little confusing.

I was wondering, are any of them good? Is there any sequence they should be watch or is each it's own thing? The older ones look pretty rough (as you'd expect) but Renegades seems to be, graphically at least, pretty high quality.
 
Resolute is good, if it's the one I'm thinking (a 3 part miiseries). Other than that, they are all pretty bad, espeially if one doesn't have the nostalgia-tinted glasses required for viewig the 80s series these days.

The Marvel comicbooks are really the heart and soul of the franchise, from the guy who created every one of the characters and wrote the data files card for every action figure.
 
I think Resolute was fairly good. It's probably been a decade since I saw it. I've never been a big GI Joe fan. Regardless, Resolute was pretty easy to get into and enjoy the ride.

I'll say that GI Joe: The Movie (the animated one) is pretty bad. But it's in that category that it's so bad and transparently about marketing toys that it's pretty fun.

I've watched a couple of episodes of Real American Hero on YouTube (Hasbro posts the episodes for free). For me, outside of the context of being a kid in the 80s, they hold no entertainment value. The character churn and the need to spotlight and hype all the toys makes GI Joe and Transformers almost unbearable to watch as an adult. Of the Hasbro/Marvel/Sunbow shows, only Jem manages to sidestep that problem because of the toyline being focused on repeating variants and accessories of a core cast.
 
I'll still watch Jem. It's one of a handful of 80s cartoons I can still enjoy to this day - along with Galaxy High, Jace and the Wheeled Warriors, the first season of Real Ghostbusters and...hmmm, that might be it.

Edit: Oh the D&D cartoon still ain't bad
 
Last edited:
I'll put Resolute and Renegades on the notional watchlist. See how that goes.

In the mean time, I gave the original All American Hero a go, just as causal background viewing. It's an 80's cartoon, so I knew to keep expectations low. I was mildy impressed that the whole 5 episodes were all one story, rather than the five self-contained adventures with a the obligatory end of episode gag. That showed some ambition. The title sequence though is shockingly bad.

A funny thing I noticed is that right at the start of the series, Cobra destroy of the Eiffel Tower, which is exactly what happens in the live action movie. Is destroying the Eiffel Tower a GI Joe thing (like Hulk fighting Wolverine)? Did the movie rip off the cartoon (that would explain so much)?
 
I was a kid when the original cartoon series and Transformers first came out, so I like them, but man was some of the writing bad.
Sigma Six, I know nothing about, but have heard bad things.
Resolute was written by Warren Ellis, and has ties to the original cartoon, and has Cobra Commander not acting like a moron, which I love.
Renegades was good, not my favorite, but I liked the A-team vibe of it. Cobra as a massive corporation that has ties to the government and are secretly controlling everything is fun. Having Duke be a newbie and instructed by Scarlett was a nice change.
 
Well, this is the greatest cartoon intro in my mind. It was for the G.I.Joe movie in 1987. Whatever you think of the movie itself, this kicks ass. It was originally supposed to be the end of the movie but because they went in a different direction with the story, it ended up being the intro. You actually see people die and bullet casings, which was not the case for the regular show.

 
I don't think we got the show in the UK although we did have a couple of VHS cassettes from somewhere. I remember being disappointed it was so American (Action Force as it was known here was very international).

For the UK history the only place to go is the Blood for the Baron website. This has the very early Battle Action Force comics before it segues into the renamed GI Joe comics.

 
I finally got round to watching the animated series GI Joe Renegades and it was amazing. In terms of quality, it up there with classic DCAU shows (though the character design reminds my more of Wolverine and the X-Men). Gosh I miss those days when animates shows ostensibly for kids could be as gripping for adults as any live action show.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top