I'm not going to lie, Spider-Man: the Animated Series was one of my favorite cartoons growing up. It was a delightful contrast to Batman: the Animated Series, and while I did enjoy the colorful animation and sarcastic humor, this is one cartoon in a long line of many that just doesn't hold up very well. Specifically, in the case of Spider-Man, it's nearly unwatchable.
To cut straight to the point, what ultimately does Spider-Man in for me is its excessive content and horrendous pacing. Every episode feels like it tries to pack too much into 20 minutes, and the pacing doesn't give anything room to breathe or settle. Each episode shifts between multiple scenes relentlessly, employing shoddy transitions that make everything feel like its running together. From the change of scenery it's obvious when a scene change has been made, but it doesn't feel that way, often coming across like one big scene that has trouble deciding when to end.
Another thing that really bothered me is how artificial the emotional side of the show could be. Whenever certain tragic moments would come up, their emotional impact would either be diminished because of the bad pacing, or would be devoted to for all of ten seconds in order to explain why a character decides to go from A to B.
For example, in the Man-Spider saga when Punisher is about to kill Peter, a doctor with the means to help cure him convinces the Punisher not to by literally summarizing his origins in a couple seconds, even complete with a split-second shot of a tear running down his face. It's a moment that exemplifies this aspect of the show for me, because A) it takes this emotional part of a character's life and reduces it to a simple plot point, and B) it shows just how intimate the show was willing get with its characters.
It's all of these factors together that really turn Spider-Man into a chore rather than enjoyment, and while I understand that the show's desire is to create silly, escapist entertainment for children, it just doesn't translate into a high quality product, and had the crew worked harder then the result might've been a show that would've been worth watching, at the least.
To cut straight to the point, what ultimately does Spider-Man in for me is its excessive content and horrendous pacing. Every episode feels like it tries to pack too much into 20 minutes, and the pacing doesn't give anything room to breathe or settle. Each episode shifts between multiple scenes relentlessly, employing shoddy transitions that make everything feel like its running together. From the change of scenery it's obvious when a scene change has been made, but it doesn't feel that way, often coming across like one big scene that has trouble deciding when to end.
Another thing that really bothered me is how artificial the emotional side of the show could be. Whenever certain tragic moments would come up, their emotional impact would either be diminished because of the bad pacing, or would be devoted to for all of ten seconds in order to explain why a character decides to go from A to B.
For example, in the Man-Spider saga when Punisher is about to kill Peter, a doctor with the means to help cure him convinces the Punisher not to by literally summarizing his origins in a couple seconds, even complete with a split-second shot of a tear running down his face. It's a moment that exemplifies this aspect of the show for me, because A) it takes this emotional part of a character's life and reduces it to a simple plot point, and B) it shows just how intimate the show was willing get with its characters.
It's all of these factors together that really turn Spider-Man into a chore rather than enjoyment, and while I understand that the show's desire is to create silly, escapist entertainment for children, it just doesn't translate into a high quality product, and had the crew worked harder then the result might've been a show that would've been worth watching, at the least.