I've got the first season on DVD and I can't seem to stop watching these. This was one of the cartoons I grew up watching, and now that I'm an adult they haven't gotten any worse...in fact they almost seem better, considering all the adult jokes that now make sense to me.

This cartoon was a mix of the very best in everything. Deanna Oliver's writing is never anything short of genius. The music displays the best in both quality and comedic timing that I've ever seen in a cartoon. The voice-acting is original and unique (Yakko is my personal favorite), and the variety of characters never ceases to keep the viewer's interest. Simultaneously the series manages to educate viewers on everything from astronomy to geography to history, or even finer points in art history, with sundry clever references to popular musicals, films, and directors.

To be honest it's a shame that this series isn't still on TV...even if it were reruns it would be better than many or all of the cartoons out there these days. Even the Pinky and the Brain series that spawned from this was one of the better cartoons, and it certainly didn't beat the Animaniacs.

Anyway if you're looking for a comedy cartoon with every kind of quality, whether for yourself or your children, I strongly recommend the Animaniacs.

It's been some years since I've seen an episode of Animaniacs and my prevailing memory of it now is that it outclassed everything else on the air at the time. It was as if all the shows around it were plunking out three-note banjo melodies and then into town rides Animaniacs and its philoharmonic orchestra.

I'd kinda love to sit down with the creators of the show and simply ask--"what were you thinking?!"... its characters, the format of the show, its tone... the show could flip from those crazy musical numbers that the Animaniac siblings would do to these longing ballads with Rita and Rex... and get away with it. The show was not what you would expect to be sucessful in the modern television landscape... filled with its Pokemon clones and hip action stars... and yet this was a show that was wildly successful with both adults and kids.

This is one that I'll be picking up on DVD at some point...

Warner’s television high point (well from an animation point of view), my favourite show during the time of its airing and still a show that as enjoyable to watch after ten plus years after it was made.

Even though I’ve just got the recent DVD release (which is of high quality, with none of those DVNR problems that can plague animation), I also still have stacks of episodes on VHS, some of which won’t get replaced until vol.4 eventually comes out (after all this was my favourite show); looking through them I can’t find much I don’t enjoy immensely. Maybe some segments like Chicken Boo and Katie Ka-Boom could have been better off being axed or not created at all; fortunate, then that they never got full episodes.

I think I’ve learnt more actual facts with the help of the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister naturally) than with any other number of edutainment shows, especially WB’s Hysterica. Truth is, what other cartoon has attempted to render in song all the nations of the world, or all the US states and capitals; not forgetting the US Presidents. Of course the first and later may have changed since then (especially the World), but its right for the time it was made. The wow factor for me is how could someone (or a team of someones) be able to write a fun little song about the world nations, let alone have someone sing it?

In some cases, watching the two giants of golden age animation return to the forefront of what was a terrible time in animation history (i.e. the eighties) was a reflection of what they did before. Disney went with the pure artistry, with quality shows with excellent craftsmanship. Warner Bros, with Amblin, went back toward the brasher, comedic element that helped the WB dominate short subject animation in the forties and fifties (along with MGM).

Effectively the Warner’s themselves bear more than a close resemblance to that of the Marx brothers, at least in some of their mannerisms. Yakko has some quite strong similarities to Groucho, with his fast-talking and walking style; watch the episode “A Christmas Plotz” and tell me that he’s not pretending to be Groucho, he’s even got his fingers on an imaginary cigar.

Wakko is kind of like Harpo Marx, their prankster, with the ability to talk thrown in. Where does that leave Dot? Although one might say Chico, if you go one step further and imagine the Marx Brothers having a sister (who appeared alongside them in the act) then I would imagine they would have had someone like Dot.

Watching the “Newsreel of the Stars” at the start of the first episode I realised something that had eluded me before; the identity of their supposed creator, at the animation desk is sat Tex Avery; creator of much of the cartoon lure that this show used in its running. This ties in nicely with the style of everything, which is definitely Avery in flavour.

The Goodfeathers were a set of parodies of gangster and masculine movies like Godfather, the Rocky films, etc. Rita and Runt ditto with epics crossing the world, from ancient Egypt to high end musicals. Films I hadn’t seen at the first airing, I since have seen them and can appreciate the parody aspects more. Course the Warner’s themselves also did parodies, slightly less seriously, toward things like Disney epics (think the opening of the Lion King/Tiger Prince sequence) and historical/authority figures.

Though brash, anarchic comedy was the mainstay of the show, it did have its poignant moments; the most memorable for me being when Slappy is taken into care and Skippy was thrown into an orphanage in the “One Flew over the Cuckoo Clock” episode. Their relationship is based on their generation gap, with the cute, naïve Skippy nicely levelling out Slappy’s cynicism; a love of explosives bridging them together, while never feeling forced. Then of course there is Bumbi, a nice little knock and commentary at Disney’s expense as their deer film temporarily traumatizes poor Skippy.

Pinky and the Brain were such a strong duo that Speigberg saw fit to give them their own series, did they deserve it, well yes, they worked extremely well as a segment and proved that they could have whole episodes of Animaniacs to themselves from time to time. It isn’t a great stretch of imagination to see that they would’ve worked purely on their own.

There is very little to fault in Animaniacs, the animation was better than most other series at the time and stands to close inspection today, in fact the animation is better than some shows that call themselves modern. The voice artist all sound like they’re having a great time, as does everyone who made this; it was loved by its crew, that always rubs of on a show. I can forgive the weaker segments because there was always a great piece awaiting round the corner; thankfully they never gave either Boo or Mindy a full session.

This and Tiny Toons are as close to a modern day Looney Tunes as Warner Bros has ever got in recent years, certainly in the last decade (give or take a few years) and that is a real shame. The question is, where has that talent gone, the answer may be the kiddification of animation in general?

Parodic, zany joy! Animaniacs captured the brash goofiness of the original Looney Tunes. They somehow seamlessly combined extremely sophisticated humor and toilet humor. The adventures of the Warner Brothers and their sister (even THAT was a good joke) are fun and zany on their own, plus the show was the birthplace for many quite good mini-shows such as Pinky and the Brain, Slappy Squirrel, etc. (While I won't call Chicken Boo a favorite, I rather enjoyed his parodic appearances, even if they all ended the same way.) The Slappy Squirrel episode about Bumbi's Mom was...just....classic. No other good word for it.

For me, the Animaniacs' biggest attraction became its musical content. The theme song itself was excellent, as were the frequent songs and song parodies. I bought their cassette, but even that couldn't contain all the musical wonderfulness of the show. What about the Hip Hippos' opera? Or Rita and Runt's incredible parody of Les Miserables? The Pinky and the Brain theme? I think that for sheer volume of joyful noise, Animaniacs takes the prize!

I give this one three and a half for the same reason as Tiny Toons. Some of the segments just don't do it for me. I just want to slap the heck out of Chicken Boo and Buttons and Mindy. But when this show works, it reeeeeeally works. The Warner Brothers and Sister are exceedingly hilarious, especially when they torment Scratchensniff. And maybe I was one of the few who wished Minerva Mink got more exposure(oops, I mean more segments). And few can deny the downright gut-busting brand of mean-spiritedness of Slappy Squirrel has its own appeal. And part of me wished I could adopt Rita. Ah. Those were good times. Maybe I liked Tiny Toons a tad better, but both were classics along with Pinky and the Brain, which was superior to both.

God I love this series. I was extatic to learn that it's comming to DVD this summer. The reason we all love this series (and Tiny Toons for that matter) is the same reason we loved Loony Toons from the golden age of animation. It's sad we don't see this kind of show any more.

ANIMANIACS is one of the funniest shows ever produced, it's even funnier than most live-action comedies (FRIENDS for example). It's clever, witty. sarcastic and the tons of ideas the writers have put out never fall flat to amaze me.
The only problem I have with this show is that not all characters are as great as Yakko, Wakko and Dot. I find Buttons and Mindy to be really boring and the Godfeathers are interesting characters often stuck into dull plots. On the other hand, the wise-cracking cat Rita or the various shorts like "Good Idea - Bad Idea" are always there to make me forget the weaker elements of the show.
So far, I have seen appr. 40 episodes of ANIMANIACS which means there are still a lot of zany stories I have to check out. But one thing is clear: I will always list ANIMANIACS as one of my favourite TV shows of all time.

I loved this show! It was one of the best WB shows that came out in 90's. Most of the time it was hilarious and the characters they came up with were great! It was nicely animated as well. Even my dad enjoyed watching this show with me. I can't say much else except that, as another reviewer said, they should release these to DVD!

Animaniacs was the defeintion of a great cartoon TV show during of what I consider a secound golden age of cartoons, the early 90's. This era saw great cartoons like Pinky and the brain, Darkwing Duck, Tiny Toons and so on.

The entire staff of the show was very talented, it felt like watching brand new Looney Tunes,but they were just up with the times. The jokes whould be great for kids and there whould be ones only adults whould get,it was bold and fresh. But sadly I wish this was what the WB was making today, they have excelled in making great action cartoons like Justice League, but there cartoons aiming for humor are simply horrid ( Duck Dodgers and Krypto, any one?).

I wish they whould put this on in DVD. Its worth it.

One of the most refreshing and high quality cartoon series to emerge in decades. In the mid 80's animation on TV was in a pretty sorry state. Hanna Barbera, if not having a stranglehold, had dominated TV cartoons since 1960, with a generally declining quality of output, and their few major rivals were sometimes even worse (that's not to say HB didn't do some good stuff, but it was mostly earlier on). Then add in the 30 minute toy commercials which passed for cartoons in the 80's, and bleh!

Then in the late 80's and early 90's everything changed. After 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', both Disney and Warner returned to making new TV series, both of them spectacular improvements over what had been on offer through the 70's and early to mid 80's. In fact you could probably say that this period - the early 90's - was the real Golden Age of TV animation, since so much of the best stuff before this had been recycled theatrical shorts which were never made for TV in the first place.

Warner/Amblin, in my books, probably did more to bring on this Golden Age than anyone else. Whereas Disney excelled in quality (certainly with 'Tailspin' anyway), Warner also brought a bold new, ironic, self-referential style which arrived with 'Tiny Toon Adventures' but reached it's peak with 'Animaniacs' and its spin-off 'Pinky and the Brain'. Actually, this sassy, ironic, manic style of doing things was a deliberate re-invention of the Golden Age of theatrical shorts (though you could maybe argue that in some ways it owed more to Tex Avery's MGM stuff after he quit Warner.)

The idea of a group of characters who were so crazy that they'd been locked up in the WB water tower since the 1930's (I think it was Tom Ruegger who came up with this idea, looking out his office window) was brilliant. The characters were crazy alright, and what's more they eschewed the moralising which had been a staple of TV cartoons for so long, and returned to the 'for the heck of it' feel of the classic stuff, and basically did whatever the hell they liked. They could, admittedly, be rather annoying, and that's why I'm docking it half a star. I personally didn't enjoy the main characters that much, but fortunately the show was usually made up of at least two or three segments, so you rarely got bombarded with them for the whole episode.

The humour was fast, sophisticated, and a real slap in the face at the time. Along with 'The Simpsons', I'd say it was as important as any TV cartoon I can think of. By 1993 TV animation was wonderfully unrecognisable from what it had been five or six years earlier.

Animaniacs isn't my favourite cartoon series, but it reeks of quality from a mile off. I wish I'd watched more of it at the time (it was on during my studying all day and not watching much TV years).