That's always the way. Take an oppressed minority and make them ten times better than the group to make up for past prejudices. And it's almost always a bad idea because audiences just end up resenting that character for being too perfect.
If you look at any given super hero show about a super hero team, there's always a good amount of strong female characters there. X-Men had Storm, Jean Grey, Rouge, Jubilee... all organic characters with organic flaws. Believable ones. Even in other incarnations of the show. Very strong females. Same thing with Teen Titans and Young Justice... any time there's a woman in a super hero team, they're very strongly written characters.
Even both TMNT incarnations with that tough April O'Neil. As a reporter and as a scientist (I kinda like science April better). Though I will say the 80's cartoon had her as a damsel in distress a little often, she's much more of a fighter in the newer series.
I don't think I need to say Sally Acorn or Bunnie Rabbot from SatAm Sonic. Sonic X's Amy, however, falls into a culture thing about Japanese Housewife-ness that i don't want to go into... but Sally was a very strong character, still is to this day in the comics...(SPOILER for comic you probably won't read) until Eggman robotisized her...
But with cartoons specifically for girls, picking out a positive role model is a contest to pick the one with the most personality in a field of bland, one note-ness. It's so hypocritical to have strong women in guy's shows and weak little personality devoid fashionistas and cute things that don't actually do anything.
it kinda irritates me that everyone is all "PONIEEESSSS!!!" and yet people cry and whine about how there aren't any good cartoons, yet Dan Vs compares to a lot of shows from the 90s and manages to be funny without pointless gross out humor. It makes me scratch my head as to why there aren't more fans. But this thread is about ponies and not my bitterness that Dan Vs isn't more popular
Watching 90% of my cartoons on Youtube, nothing gets on my nerves half as much as "Oooh all kartoonz now iz teh stupit." Trust your local failed animator who spent money he'll never be able to pay off in college studying the stuff. What makes a cartoon bad should be universal. Everything I see is matter of taste. I do complain about a lot of things, but I'm very open minded to cartoon series and animations. The only "bad" I see currently are those preschool shows where they sit around answering their own questions. Regular Show and Adventure Time are matter of taste. I'm not liking Fish Hooks at all, though... I guess it's for little kids or something. I will say everyone hated Allen Gregory... that show was just terrible in all counts, and I could give a review, but I don't wanna. But I've seen truly terrible stuff from every decade and heard horror stories of the 70's (sitcom ripoffs, Scooby rip offs and Archie Ripoffs... oh my!) and there isn't any cartoon on today (at least for the 6-11 market) that makes me question humanity. I'm starting to think it's a quantity issue. We're actually getting
less cartoons, so law of averages, we're getting less bad cartoons.
I mean, the 90's gave us great classics that changed the medium forever, and we take it all for granted. Ren and Stimpy, Animaniacs, The Simpsons, Batman TAS... but it also gave us a lot of terrible movie adaptions (Free Willy? You kidding?) and almost so bad they're funny TMNT ripoffs (Stone Protectors anyone?). Not to mention a kiddified cartoon based on a 14+ rated video game (guess which one).