Chaotic

The show was highly underrated especially when compared to successful TV series like pokemon, yugioh, digimon and basically every other kids show that falls into that fantasy monster category. The intro is one of the best of any animated show and Id recommend listening to it yourself. Keep in mind the shows like pokemon and yugioh were Japanese anime and are not in the same category of animation. And although shows like rugrats and every single animated batman can attract high acclaim for some reason people like to bash this show instead of taking it for what it is. I can agree disliking animation for something such as the batman animated series especially for being such a large well known franchise character and giving high expectations. Having poor animation can be seen as lazy, but Chaotic was a new show idea based on a trading card game and the animation to me at least is not what I consider bad. I can still enjoy watching an episode of the original scooby doo and that animation is arguably worse and more "poorly" done than chaotic. I believe that the show just came out to late for the 90s generation to critic it, the memories or their favourite animated shows being better possibly. However I remember this being in my top 3 animated American shows and I think it holds up.

If you go past the cheesy voice acting, Chaotic is actually not that bad of a TV Show, but my main gripe with it, is how the universe seem to have been dumbed down in order for the show to target kids.

It needed a more dark, gloomy atmosphere, like the Animated Series from the 80s, instead we have the most annoying kids as protagonists traveling around the world of Chaotic battling each other and getting involved into the Chaotic's universe with other major characters... or not so much.

The problem is that the human protagonists, apart from being annoying, are almost always doing something in relation to Chaotic, but the interactions with the beings from Chaotic are very limited, so most of the episodes are just filled with 10 minutes of battling between humans (sometimes the whole episode is like that, rarely it doesn't involve battling), and at best, the rest being "plot development". If there's any plot ; Season 1 has more like stand-alone episodes rather than being plot-focused. Season 2 & 3 however are more plot-focused but not entirely.

Chaotic is the complete opposite to Digimon on that aspect. (by the way watch Digimon in its Japanese -read original- version to see what I'm talking about, not the 4Kids dumbed down version, it's actually not bad at all) The art direction is not bad at all for the creatures, but terribly lame on the humans. Season 1 uses flash animation, it works well on the creatures but it only makes the human protagonists even more ugly. Season 2 & 3 use traditional animation, I like it better than flash, but it's not as fluid.

The music is so-so in my opinion, some themes are damn good, but others are just plain bad, some of the most aggravating ones comes when a "mugic" (some sort of power-up) is activated. Usually the better themes are those that conveys a serious/epic feel, others however just underlines how dumbed down and sometimes even childish the show is.

All in all, the artwork of the card's game may completely mislead you into thinking that this show is actually quite mature, or at least for mid-late teenagers, but this show has been butchered and toned down so much, that it would hardly get a 5/10.

I give it a 4/10, but I'm sure if it had been transcribed in its original state, it would deserve at least a 7/10.

The thing this show gets right is the setting and the stakes. The matches are mostly for fun and personal pride, so the protagonists can loose without the world ending.

Compare this to Yu-Gi-Oh where every match is critical to win, the stakes are a saw blade inching it's way toward the looser's shins, or the freedom of your kidnapped friend, or your soul is on the line.

The battles are more dramatic as well less of a pure numbers game, similar to Pokemon.

All the creatures having their own personal conflicts and stories in Perim with the human characters essentially being bothersome tourists is also amusing to me.

I'm not saying you should go watch it right now but it does a few things better than any other in it's genre.

Chaotic tells the tale of a teenage boy named Tom and his friend Kaz. They both play the Chaotic Trading Card/Online Game. Kaz always tries to tell Tom about a secret code to play for real which Tom refuses to believe. While playing online Tom receives the special password. When he enters the password into his game scanner, he is transported to a place called Chaotic that is able to take him to another world where the characters, locations and items in the card game came to life.

The show was way too good, if it was slightly better a kid wouldn't understand it, it was the best thing a kid could understand, nothing moved my imagination like this cartoon did, maybe my love for games was due to this cartoon who know, all I know is I was feeling euphoric every single second the show was running.

I enjoy the first season of Chaotic even though I can't get the cards where I live, but why did the change the animation for season 2 and 3? I hope they will do a come back show