>>4187
>I'm talking about how sincere "edginess" is the subject of mockery nowadays
Maybe you right, I think Game of Thrones was the last edgy media that truly took itself seriously. Now all deconstructions have ironic flare to them.
>There's so much fear of sincerity in our culture today
I believe it has to do with the thought police changing its opinions very often and quickly.
>think of what happened to weeaboos. They got made fun of so much for their embarrassing lack of self-awareness that nowadays they affect an air of irony when it comes to their interest in Japanese cartoons and comics. It's not that people in the 2020s are any more self-aware, but they definitely come across to me as being a lot more self-conscious.
Those are fake weebs seeking acceptance from their liberal overlords for liking non-pc media.
>Was the monster armor ever part of any X-Men plots, or was it just a gimmick to sell toys?
From what I've checked, it's a gimmick. I usually hate the non-canon variants for superhero toys even if it's done for toyetic sake, it's just so forced, irrelevant and dumb. This gimmick is pretty nice though X-Men getting extra mutated or in Batman Beyond terms, spliced, range from cool to dumb. I mean if they can get extra mutated and reverse it, then they could probably reverse their original mutation. Tragically, the most canonically toyetic superhero, Plastic Man, barely get any toys which absolutely sucks.
>I've just started watching Spider-Man: The Animated Series
Neat! I need to rewatch it too, I loved that show as a kid! I wonder if I would I still like it or find it dumb as an adult. I did began reading the original comic and quite enjoyed it so I imagine, I would like the show too.
>X-Men
I started rewatching a bit, both the 90's and Evolution cartoons and it really pains to me saying it, but X-Men is quite retarded. It truly feels heretic hating on X-Men which is quintessential 90's media piece, but it's so lame and stupid, I'm not even talking about the drama which is quite cringey like Jean, Wolverine and Cyclops are in their 20's and more and act like dumb teenagers, I'm talking about how X-Men characters that have these OP powers like Storm and such and you don't see corporations and governments trying to abduct and recruit them, no, no, it's just the citizens fearing them and some random idiots forcing them to build something, imagine capturing Storm to build something instead of ,for example, using her power to cause famine in enemy country! Evolution is better than the 90's cartoon in the sense being less stupid with less drama, but at the same time, some of the characters aren't as likeable either and are still very childish though they have an excuse and the plot just isn't as exciting as the 90's one. So, both shows have their own cons. I do think that Kirby's early X-Men is far better, having no OP characters like Storm besides Magneto whose old, evil and tough and Dr. Xavier whose powers aren't known to the public which makes sense why corps and the government wouldn't try getting them on their side. And also, it didn't take itself as seriously with the xenophobia allegory and is wacky in a good way because of it. Maybe the actual Claremont comic is better than the cartoons and actually good, but I doubt it.
>Batman
BTAS is objectively one the greatest cartoons of all time, you would definitely enjoy rewatching it. TNBA is kinda meh, especially in compare to BTAS. BB's season 1 is sheer perfection, but with the addition of Max in season 2 it's pretty much all down the hill at that point, there are still some decent and great episodes, but there's huge drop in quality (except for Shriek episodes, each one is excellent). If you want to, I can tell you which episodes to skip.
I would also highly recommend to watch Superman Animated series, it's the best DCAU series, if you consider the fact, it has only one single bad episode! Justice League has terrific writing too, but the animation is no longer great or even good at that point. As for Justice League Unlimited, avoid at all costs, both the writing and the animation are awful and full of retcons, Batwank, shitting on Superman and raping BB.
Back to topic, in terms of toylines for those TV shows, I'd say BTAS had an amazing toyline, the sculpt was pretty accurate for its time and look very similar to the cartoon. Yes, the forced Batman variants are dumb, but some the vehicles variants were quite fun despite the silliness like the Batsphere. The Batplane is pretty neat too and quite close to the Batwing design for the show, but still suffers from stupidity and inaccuracy in attempt to make it more toyetic, which is understandable, but also quite a shame as the original design is so cool, it seems they were afraid of making non-colorful toys.
Looks like X-men had no official toyline for the cartoon, the toys were quite bad in terms of sculpt, but had slightly better articulation than the kenner ones. The Spiderman ones were huge improvement, although still not quite accurate to the source material. My Brother has Tombstone, which is really cool toy and has nice chrome accessories he comes with. I enjoyed playing with it as a kid, the punching gimmick is fun too.
As for BB, it has the worst toyline out of all the DCAU cartoons and in general one of the worst toylines ever made. Hasbro unfortunately acquired Kenner and so the quality took huge nosedive. Instead of making new sculpts similar to the animated cartoon like Kenner did for BTAS and TNBA, they reused the realistic bodies from the Batman&Robin movie and gave it new heads. The line is so pathetic, the only other characters besides Batman (Terry) are Blight and some Joker gang members, no sign of the Batwing, no other villains or any supporting characters, just endless ugly repaints of that terrible Batman mold and stupid random non-canon trash.