I just like to gush about things I love every now and then, and this list has been on my mind for a while now.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love animation in general, and I feel like there’s been something of a renaissance in western animated shows in the past decade or so. I must first give a nod to Avatar: The Last Airbender, to which all these shows owe some debt for its focused narrative and complex characterization, which it pioneered on Nickelodeon of all stations way back in 2006. Naturally, I’m only shouting it out here because I never loved it, despite it arguably being superior to some of the shows on this list.

#5: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir

This has always been something of a guilty pleasure for me, ever since I happened to catch it on a kid’s cartoon block on a local station around 2017. This is actually the only show on the list that I followed as it aired on TV (if only the first season…and only after it already aired on cable. And that was a few years after it started airing in France). It is highly derivative, being basically just a mashup of the superhero and magical girl genres, but I love magical girls, so that’s fine by me! It features a truly epic (often silly) two-person love square! It’s not amazing writing (as is typical of shows written mostly by men and marketed at girls), but at least up through Season 5, it’s been a fun ride. No guarantees about anything after that (they’ve finished the arc that’s been the backbone of the show, and I have doubts if they can come up with another that’s equally compelling), but it managed to occupy a little corner of my heart.

#4: Over the Garden Wall

This one’s easily the highest overall in quality, only partly because it’s basically a mini-series of ten ten-minute episodes. It’s a complete, compelling story, a Fleischeresque fable, full of mystery and eerie atmosphere. It’s perfect when you’re looking for chill October vibes (in more ways than one). The main reason why it’s so low is that I prefer ambitious messes to masterpieces (and I don’t really connect to the characters), but check it out for yourself!

#3: The Owl House

This is where it started to get difficult to rank my feelings, because while I love all of my top three shows, this settled firmly into third thanks primarily to the sadly abridged third season. The contents of the third season are still amazing, I was just left wanting more of it. Anyhow, this is the better (and more progressive) version of Harry Potter – one for the wierdos and the rebels (Luna Lovegood would fit right in here). This was the only other show I got on board with in the first season (although not as it aired), and though the HP influence was clear from the start, it ended up being telling a far more profound (and more human) story. It does particularly well in its representation of neurodivergence and mental illness.

#2: Steven Universe

The top two both resonated with me in different ways, and they both changed me to some extent as well, so it’s really hard to choose between them. Ultimately, I preferred the shorter of the two, but I feel like I could go either way depending on where I’m at. I’ll also grant that SU has easily the best first season of any of the shows I mentioned in this post (except OTGW, of course, but that has only one season total, so it doesn’t count). Out of all the protagonists of the cartoons on this list, Steven is the one I relate to the most…and that’s part of why I didn’t give it the top spot. Basically the entirety of Steven Universe Future hits really close to home for me, but that also makes it tough to get through, even if I know the ending is really satisfying. It tells a story where someone like me finds a place within a world much like our own, and I need that sometimes.

#1: She-ra and the Princesses of Power

What can I say? It’s a bit of a mess, but an ambitious mess, which I generally prefer to stories that don’t take any risks. I love the writing for the main characters, especially the way in which the character development largely determines the direction of the plot (mainly Catra, but other characters do affect it as well). I don’t love it from start to finish (I think the closest thing to that standard would be Princess Tutu, and that’s half this show’s length), but unlike SU (or even TOH), She-Ra inserts the most frustrating elements of the story into the fourth season, leaving the final season to more or less focus on long-awaited resolutions to the conflicts. Honestly, I think what I love most about this show is how it imagines a world where gender and sexuality aren’t cause for conflict (not so much with its treatment of ableism, but I feel like TOH has that covered). That world has only become more appealing in the years since I first saw it, and at this point, I feel like we need to be reminded that a better world is possible, if only in stories, because that’s the first step to making this world better, too.

Until next time…