Progressive animated series...

[Wade Wilson]

I've always wondered about this since I was a kid. You know, Daffy Duck gets blown up and in the next scene he's perfectly fine. I always wondered why he didn't keep that blown up look the entire rest of the cartoon (or at least walk around with a few bandages on for effect).

King of the Hill is sort of good at this (yes, I love KotH; I watch two hours of it every night). I mean, they do have events that occur (such as Cotton Hill's death, or maybe a store going out of business and staying that way) but I always wondered what an animated series would be like if not only storylines evolved but what if the animated characters got older each season?

Has this been done to any notable degree before anywhere? I've never seen anything like it personally and it seems like a pretty obvious concept.

 

[Totenkindly]

Never heard of it... but I figured that people chose animation to relay their story BECAUSE it offered these advantages. (i.e., it's a benefit of the medium, as opposed to live action).

Aging happens in comic books (Strangers in Paradise did it), but it means you have to commit to an ending. An ending means no more money, because the series is ending = not good to get backing.

 

[Son of the Damned]

It depends on what you're into. Western-made animated series usually exist in some strange time loop but age progression is a common theme in Japanese-made series. Its not universal and not always present in a realistic way. but, it does happen. They mostly jump a number of years, for example, one character might age 5+ between seasons.

However, its hardly realistic and Anime is a strange, strange realm. so yeah.

 

[Jeffster]

Probably the closest I can think of is Robotech. But that wasn't exactly an on-going series.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

I've always wondered about this since I was a kid. You know, Daffy Duck gets blown up and in the next scene he's perfectly fine. I always wondered why he didn't keep that blown up look the entire rest of the cartoon (or at least walk around with a few bandages on for effect).

King of the Hill is sort of good at this (yes, I love KotH; I watch two hours of it every night). I mean, they do have events that occur (such as Cotton Hill's death, or maybe a store going out of business and staying that way) but I always wondered what an animated series would be like if not only storylines evolved but what if the animated characters got older each season?

Has this been done to any notable degree before anywhere? I've never seen anything like it personally and it seems like a pretty obvious concept.

Do shows based purely around this premise count, cause if not, then no. Not in western Cartoons. Time does progress, as a character will refer to an event that happened in an earlier episode, but usually it's only happened a couple of months ago or things of the such.

The DCAU was in real time, meaning that by JLU Batman had been active in Gotham for over ten years, but you really couldn't tell that the characters had aged, except for Dick Grayson, by looking at them.