User:Krup3253/sandbox

Environment and children's cartoons

In many animated cartoons, the environment has a major impact on the interactions within the story. Often, children, or adults, consuming the media such as cartoons do not realize the impact ecology and the environment play a role in how the plot or the characters progress. Characters are a product of their environment, and good writers know this, so including effects of the environment within their writings is one way to make a better story.

A common usage of the environment and cartoon characters is said characters looking at or picking flowers or plants.

Examples

One example of this interaction between characters and plants is in the computer-animated cartoon that aired in early 1996, Beast Wars: Transformers. The 10th episode of Beast Wars: Transformers, was called “Gorilla Warfare” written by Greg Johnson, has many effect of the environment during the opening scenes. The leader of the Maximals aboard the Axalon, Optimus Primal, and the former Predacon, Dinobot are the first characters shown in this episode. Optimus Primal, originally a scientific researcher, observes a plant and begins to discuss the plant with Dinobot, then the importance of knowledge of the territory during war and battle. Dinobot refused to take Optimus Primal’s interest in the plant seriously and mocks both Optimus Primal and the plant. Suddenly the plant “spits” a seed at Dinobot, who turned his back on the plant, and hits him in the middle of the backside of his neck, where Dinobot cannot reach (NOTE: Dinobot”s “Beast Mode” is based on a velociraptor, therefore his arms are too short to reach the back of his neck). After, Optimus Primal removes the seed from the back of Dinobot’s neck, Optimus Primal explains that is how the plant spreads its seed and reproduces. Again, Dinobot mocks the plant and Primal. Now at the climax of the episode, Dinobot “learned something” and throws the cyberbee (Cyberbee is a parasitic like drone which attached to Optimus Primal and made their systems one with each other and if the Cyberbee was removed Optimus Primal systems would shut down.) at their enemy, Megatron (Beast Mode - T-Rex), at that same spot in the neck where the seed attached at the beginning of the episode. Megatron was unable to reach to remove the cyberbee, and he and the Darksyde sustained heavy damage, due to an explosion. Dinobot was able to save the day, and gain more of the Maximal’s respect and began to understand Optimus Primal’s way of doing things. Dinobot was the character that was being developed in that episode, he learned from the plant that “attacked” him, and was able to use the knowledge gained to help save his leader.

Again, children's cartoons and other media types, especially shows like Beast Wars: Transformers that are extremely affected by the environment, and many other aspects of ecology play a massive roll on how people perceive the environment and the world around them.