On a purely technical level, Katie and Orbie is one of the worst cartoons of all time. To call it limited animation would be too kind. To call this show an "animated" series would be an insult to the very concept of animation. It is, quite literally, a slideshow. I've seen better animation from...
- Filmation
- The Ctrl Alt Del cartoon
- Hammerman
- Video Briquendo and Dingo Pictures
- Paddy the Pelican
- Clutch Cargo (which notably used REAL HUMAN LIPS for any and all speech)
- An average PowerPoint presentation
And to think this came out in the 90s. Smack dab in the middle of the Animation Renaissance. Long after the days of farming out limited animation for pennies on the dollar, after what I thought was the advent of quality control on television.
Yep. You heard me right, television. And on TWO networks here in the U. S. of A. And one of them was the Disney Channel! You'd assume the mere thought of airing this... THING on the channel would make Walt Disney himself rise from the grave and curse the one who entertained such an idea!
Canada gets a bad rep when it comes to animation, and usually I'm pretty lenient on them. But even I have my limits. Say what you will about George of the Jungle, Angela Anaconda, or Johnny Test, but this is INFINITELY worse than anything Teletoon could put out. In fact, given how Teletoon was initially made to push Canadian animation, I wouldn't be surprised if whoever founded the network did so because they caught a rerun of Katie and Orbie on TV and vowed "no more".
I'm sure the writing is harmless, and the general art style is cute, and the Intro... is longer than that of your average anime, but I just can't get past that animation.
How did we as a society let things get this bad?