>>97889735adventure time, at least when it had its shit together, had a very consistently inconsistent art style, meaning that the overall philosophy toward the characters wasn't as based on "model" and more on expression. Steven Universe cares way more about the model as a result of its more grounded nature, but the artists don't have the fundamentals to stay consistent. The punchline is that the original AT crew wasn't necessarily any better, but the larger vision of the show made fundamentals not nearly as important.
Adventure Time (like ren & stimpy back in the 90s) was awesome and expanded on what cartoons could be, by basically rolling back to the 30s and taking the road not traveled. the fallout that /co/s always bitching about is that AT's success means a handful of animators and creators are convinced that many of those strictures that ruled animation with an iron fist for the sake of efficiency and budget--resulting in He-Man style bullshit and more recent "clinically on-model" shows like Fairly Oddparents or Aqua Teen or Jimmy Neutron, none of which are bad shows--are archaic and limiting, and that the AT style is better and more rewarding. That's wrong. A good show knows how to strike a balance--AT does that, along with shows like The Amazing World of Gumball.
This exact same issue applies to storytelling, and affects way more modern shows THAT way than animation issues do. And that's sort of weird, because prime AT valued traditional storytelling fundamentals more than pretty much any cartoon ever. Adventure Time's legacy seems to be of a show that was successful because it was cool and crazy and imaginative, when in reality the tight grasp it had on characterization and storytelling was what allowed it to be that way and work.
