The Renaissance Age of Animation



The era of animation lasting from the late-1980's until around 2000, during which the medium saw a significant increase in technical quality and finally returned to a point of artistic respect. To understand why, it is necessary to look at what things looked like immediately prior.

At the beginning of the 80's, Western animation was still firmly planted in the Dark Age and strangled by the Ghetto, plagued by a lack of artistic vision and pathetic budgets. Limited Animation was still the rule on television; Merchandise-Driven shows like He-Man, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, The Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Jem, and ThunderCats (1985) ruled '80s television animation and had parents' groups up in arms about children watching glorified toy commercials, which were extremely strictly split along gender lines at that. It must be noted, however, that these shows were obviously still entertaining to their target demographics, evidenced by the fact that several of them became pop-culture phenomenons that are fondly remembered to this day.

Less enduring but more common in 80's TV cartoons was the tendency to give live-action franchises Animated Adaptations. This included well-received hits like The Real Ghostbusters, but also forgotten and/or derided fare like The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (IN SPACE!), Rambo: The Force of Freedom, Dragon's Lair, and Alf.

The Disney Animated Canon came close to ending for good when The Black Cauldron, intended to be the stunning debut of a new generation of animators, didn't impress just-arrived company executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who recut it without the director's consent, and it proceeded to tank at the box office. Things at Disney were about to change big time, however…

Witnessing the success of first-run syndicated cartoons like He-Man and Care Bears, Disney tried its luck with two original series of its own in 1985: The Wuzzles, which was soon forgotten, and Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which became a major hit whose lavish production values put its contemporaries to shame. Vindicated in their investment, Disney began funding a slew of original series, starting with DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (both spinoffs of their Golden Age shorts) but eventually becoming numerous enough that they got their own dedicated block of television: The Disney Afternoon, a tour-de-force of branding that lasted for over a decade.

Other broadcasting companies took notice, and developed their own original series. In 1987, Ralph Bakshi produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures with John Kricfalusi, a show that helped bring back old-school, insane "cartoony cartoons". Warner Bros. had its own revival after they hired a bunch of Hanna-Barbera expats to bring Looney Tunes-style comedy into the 1990s – the Steven Spielberg-produced Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs were the most successful. Much of the crew from these shows went on to launch the DC Animated Universe with Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. This time, Disney aped them with a cult dark action series of their own, Gargoyles, created by Greg Weisman, although they eventually mishandled it badly. Cable networks such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network began their existence with reruns and repackagings of cartoons from earlier eras, as well as syndicated or foreign fare (as did the USA Network's Cartoon Express block- the whole network was like that back then; this was also the modus operandi of the emerging home video market) but moved on to create their own shows during the '90s. Nickelodeon launched the "Nicktoons" brand in 1991 with Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. Cartoon Network absorbed the remnants of Hanna-Barbera and labelled their post-HB original series "Cartoon Cartoons" – Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory, and Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy were among the first to use the moniker; that name was eventually dropped, however, as 2002's Codename: Kids Next Door was the last show to be a "Cartoon Cartoon". Meanwhile, some of the smaller studios such as Universal and MGM attempted to get back into the animation game. Universal's was relatively successful, though many of their series tended to be short-lived (including Exosquad, and the Earthworm Jim cartoon), and eventually declined to churning out sequels to The Land Before Time before shutting down by the early 2010s. MGM's was even worse, and had shuttered completely by 2000.

On the silver screen, the industry gradually rose to new heights during the course of the 1980's. After the box office failures of animated movies in the 1970s, Disney defector Don Bluth pushed for a return to the rich classical style of the Golden Age, beginning with 1982's The Secret Of NIMH – while it was not a blockbuster, it quickly became a Cult Classic. It attracted the attention of no less than Steven Spielberg, which led to Bluth's directing the successful An American Tail and The Land Before Time for Amblin Entertainment. Bluth would both rise to prominence and fall during this period, but his collaboration with Spielberg proved to be the first real challenge Disney had ever faced in the animated film department, at least since the Fleischers were in business. The failure of Disney's The Black Cauldron in 1985 seemed to spell the end of Disney's animation unit, but fortunately it persevered, mainly due to the modest success of The Great Mouse Detective. After the threat from Bluth and Amblin though, Disney frantically stepped up its game and rallied with Oliver & Company, which was another modest success. Their newly-established, adult-oriented Touchstone Pictures label co-produced – with Amblin Entertainment, as it happened – Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a live-action/animated fantasy that also served as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of Golden Age characters and was the box office sensation of 1988.

It was followed by The Little Mermaid in 1989, a musical that refreshed the old formulas of yore and was a surprise sensation at the box office – at last, they were well and truly back in the game. While the following year's The Rescuers Down Under was a financial disappointment, Beauty and the Beast raised Disney's bar even higher, a financial and critical success (in fact, the first animated film ever to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination). Their next film, Aladdin, proved a smash with the stellar performance of Robin Williams cementing the Celebrity Voice Actor as the "star" of an animated film.* Finally, The Lion King surpassed all expectations to become a cultural landmark and the peak of Disney's success. In fact, some laypeople refer to this era as the "Disney Renaissance", since they were the most prominent and successful animation studio during the period with the most consistent track record of hits.

By the end of The '90s, rival studios had launched their own feature animation units, most notably DreamWorks. However, most of them found that the public was still largely trapped in the mindset of All Animation Is Disney, so most of these attempts failed miserably or fell victim to Disney's aggressive marketing – such as rereleasing The Lion King late in 1994 so it could crush its rival The Swan Princess. Even Bluth was forced to ape Disney with Anastasia (his only true financial success in the 90's), and his attempt to break out again with Titan A.E. failed and sunk his career. DreamWorks Animation struggled out of the gate with the underperformance of their traditionally-animated films like The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado (though both of those had good critical reception), but they noticed their small computer-animated film Antz did better financially. This suggested to Dreamworks and other studios that there was a way out from under Disney's shadow via new animation techniques. They made a deal with the hailed British Stop Motion company Aardman Animations, who helped show them that success came from developing their own voice and style in a new age.

Adult-aimed animation finally came back to television during this period. The Simpsons became a full-fledged series in 1989 and went on to become probably the most critically acclaimed television cartoon series of all time, and MTV caused a stir with Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-head. MTV, of course, is cable – and from here came the last great progress that cemented the renaissance: the rise of cable television.

All in all, this era did a good job of at least brushing away the worst aspects of the Dark Age. Parental Bonus was back, quality had soared, and profits were high.

Anime also found headway in North America during this period, with Robotech becoming a cult favorite due to its audacious flouting of contemporary North American TV animation conventions to present a sweeping military SF saga that felt very different from homegrown fare like G.I. Joe. A decade later, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball and Pokémon began to make their presence on TV and home video across the world. In cinemas, anime made its own small splash with the harrowing cyberpunk ultraviolence of AKIRA and Ghost in the Shell; this is also the period when the Western world was finally introduced to the genius of Hayao Miyazaki (after an abortive attempt years earlier involving a hacked-up version of Nausicaa that we have been asked to forget ever existed), with his classic films like the intelligently charming Kiki's Delivery Service and the ever-adorable My Neighbor Totoro – Disney would take interest in his films beginning with his grand, profound fantasy drama Princess Mononoke.

Indeed, anime must briefly be mentioned as a growing influence on Western animators themselves – they were absolutely aware of what was happening in Japan well ahead of the general public. Once fare like Akira and Ghost in the Shell began showing up, animators and directors in America began straining at the bit to have their artistic restrictions loosened for fear of a consistent flood of high-quality anime pounding the western studios flat. It was a flood which never quite materialized as they feared, but it still lit fires under a lot of people and led directly to many of the products of The Millennium Age of Animation.

This era contains a significant shift in technology: the switch from traditional cel & ink & paint animation to computers. Animation studios rode the wave of the digital revolution that brought affordable PCs to the masses in the 1980s. Disney employed CG for major parts of their films starting with The Rescuers Down Under, and by Beauty and the Beast had refined it considerably (the backdrop of the ballroom scene was very much Conspicuous CGI, as are the stampede from The Lion King and the crowd scenes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Over the course of the 90's, digital compositing and coloring slowly replaced ink & paint. Later, computer programs like Flash and Maya made inroads as animation tools. In 1994, the first completely CGI TV series, ReBoot, came out of Canadian studio Mainframe Entertainment and premiered on ABC in the USA. 1995 saw the release of the first all-CGI feature film, which launched Pixar into the spotlight and into a position to drive the future of the animation industry: Toy Story.

This was also the era in which outsourcing truly took off. Doing the entire traditional animation process in America had long since become cost-prohibitive, especially for television, so most Renaissance-Era cartoons outsourced production to overseas studios – first Japan (Toei Animation), then South Korea (AKOM) after Japan became too expensive (and having their industry being resurrected by Neon Genesis Evangelion after years of almost nothing but Merchandise-Driven shows (either in the traditional sense or to sell manga) and western outsourcing; Ghibli being the only studio in Japan to avoid this when TMS took advantage of the later, giving them co-producer control most Japanese studios beg for in their local works). The switch to computers allowed cartoons keep more of their production domestic, but hand-drawn series in particular continued to outsource most of the actual animation to South Korea… and still do to this day

There is no consensus on when this era ended, only that it did. Television cartoons in particular often bridged eras, with Renaissance-era shows airing alongside post-Renaissance ones for many years.

Depending on who you ask, the deterioration of this era began somewhere around the end of the 1990s or the early 2000s. The seeds may have been sown in 1995, when Disney distributed Pixar's Toy Story. That film was a huge hit both critically and commercially… while Disney's traditionally animated entry for the year, Pocahontas, did well financially but disappointed academics and critics. Disney's increasingly formulaic approach to feature storytelling – "I want" songs, wacky sidekicks, pop culture jokes, etc. – in the wake of its early-'90s hits, resulted in films that strove to include more adult themes/stories yet couldn't lift themselves out of the worst aspects of the Ghetto when it came to content. Disneyfication became a dirty word as critics accused them of whitewashing or dumbing down history and classic literature/mythology (the increasing amounts of merchandise tied into these films didn't help matters). That said, while these films were considered inferior to their predecessors, only one, the aforementioned Pocahontas, was a critical failure – at a mediocre 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's the only real critical failure of the Disney Renaissance. Meanwhile, the entries that were relative box office failures – The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules – were modestly well-received by said critics (at a decent 73% and a good 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively), who considered them improvements over the preachy and pretentious Pocahontas — Hunchback has since been Vindicated by History to the point that it's a dark-horse candidate for the masterpiece of the Disney Renaissance. Mulan and Tarzan were even viewed as coming close to the earlier works (at 86% and 88%, respectively).

Rival studios' Disney-esque efforts were usually pale imitations at best – consider Don Bluth's work post-All Dogs Go to Heaven, The Swan Princess, etc. – and often even worse when it came to Disneyfication, culminating in two Italian animated features that turned the Titanic disaster into Happily Ever After musicals. The absolute nadir of the trend, at least as far as wide release animated films go, was Warner Bros.'s Quest for Camelot, which was plagued by Executive Meddling that turned a planned older-oriented film into a G-rated mess – sadly, this film outdid far superior works from WB like the Ghetto-busting The Iron Giant and Cats Don't Dance financially, even as critics savaged it. One could even pin Quest For Camelot as being one of the films that led to the eventual downfall of the Renaissance Age.

In addition, Disney under Eisner started producing direct-to-video sequels, prequels, and interquels to most of their Modern Age films via their television animation units, which sold well but are considered inferior to the quality of the originals. The sales were so good that Golden Age and Dark Age efforts were also given this treatment, to the increasing horror of adult Disney fans. It can be argued that the "cheapquels" led to a fatal dilution of the Disney brand name, causing audiences to take less interest in their newer animated canon efforts. And when rival studios (particularly MGM and Universal Studios) started doing the same thing with films they owned the rights to, video stores were glutted with unwanted, unworthy sequels to everything from The Secret of NIMH to The Swan Princess. Before this era, sequels were rare if not non-existent – The Rescuers Down Under was at the time one of the only exceptions. It's one reason the Renaissance, like every other period in animation history, is a bit of a mixed bag.

Also, in an ironic twist, the success of animation and children's programming on cable helped to mortally wound animation on broadcast TV, killing the weekday animation block outright (except on Public Television) and beginning the slow death of the Saturday Morning Cartoon. The addition of three new cable channels (plus two new broadcast networks) for animated programming†, and the increased competition inherent in such a thing, naturally led to audience fragmentation, which led to declining ratings, which led to declining ad revenue, which led to decreased profits. Animation is an expensive medium – always was and always will be, at least to do it right – so cartoons were either axed by the broadcast networks or jumped to cable (where budgets were already much smaller). The other thing that killed animation on broadcast television was Government – the Moral Guardians who had slammed late-Dark-Age cartoons for being glorified toy commercials never went away. Indeed, they successfully convinced the FCC to impose even more restrictions on advertising content in children's programming, and to strictly enforce the "educational content" requirement on the networks (exemplified by the e/i logo). This basically resulted in The Ghetto becoming legally enforced on cartoons airing on the traditional networks, and the networks backing off as a result.

The Renaissance era can be reasonably be said to have lasted until around 1999, 2000, perhaps even 2001, or all the way up to 2004.

Characters/Series/Films that are associated with this era

 * Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
 * Adventures of the Gummi Bears: The Disney cartoon that finally introduced quality animation to made-for-TV cartoons, playing a big role in getting rid of lingering legacies from The Dark Age of Animation.
 * Akira: the film that made people take anime seriously.
 * Aaahh Real Monsters
 * Alvin and The Chipmunks: Their 1980s incarnation.
 * An American Tail: This movie was a surprise success at the box office, the first non-Disney animated movie to out-perform Disney, and had a lot to do with showing people that cartoons could still be profitable. Also marked Steven Spielberg's entrance into the animation scene.
 * An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and the two direct to video sequels.
 * Anastasia
 * Animaniacs
 * Wakkos Wish - A direct-to-video film based off said series.
 * All Dogs Go to Heaven: Considered by some of Don Bluth's fans to be his Magnum Opus or his last good film.
 * The Angry Beavers
 * Balto
 * Batman the Animated Series
 * Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
 * Batman and Mister Freeze Sub Zero
 * Beavis and Butthead
 * Beethoven: The Animated Series: Yes, this does exist. That is all we're going to say about it.
 * Betty Boop: Received two television specials in the 80's; "The Romance of Betty Boop" (1985), and "Betty Boop's Hollywood Mystery" (1989).
 * Beetlejuice
 * Biker Mice From Mars
 * Bobby's World
 * The Brave Little Toaster
 * The Brothers Flub
 * The Brothers Grunt: Danny Antonucci's pre-Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy work.
 * Captain N
 * Captain Planet and the Planeteers
 * Captain Tsubasa: Along with Dragon Ball, the series that started the Anime Boom of the 90s in Europe.
 * Care Bears
 * Cartoon All Stars to The Rescue
 * Casper the Friendly Ghost: Got both a live action/CGI hybrid movie revival, as well as a brand new animated TV series to boot.
 * CatDog
 * Cats Don't Dance
 * Centurions
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
 * Christmas in Tattertown: A 1988 TV special Ralph Bakshi made for Nickelodeon, made in an attempt to revive the 1920s' rubberhose cartoon style. Nickelodeon intended it to be a series, but Bakshi knew this would never work, so it never went past this pilot.
 * The Comic Strip
 * Cool World
 * Courage the Cowardly Dog
 * Cow and Chicken
 * The Critic
 * Daria
 * Darkwing Duck
 * Defenders of the Earth
 * The Devil And Daniel Mouse: An esoteric 80's made for TV film.
 * Dexters Laboratory
 * Dinosaucers
 * Disney Animated Canon
 * The Fox and the Hound (film)
 * The Black Cauldron
 * The Great Mouse Detective: This film's moderate success was what convinced Disney to keep doing animated films, as the company was in dire straits in the early '80s after a string of box office bombs.
 * Oliver and Company
 * The Little Mermaid: The movie that brought Disney into its renaissance era, after repeated defeats at the box office by Don Bluth's movies.
 * The Rescuers Down Under
 * Beauty and the Beast: The first animated feature to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination, a distinction that would not be repeated until 2010's nomination for Up.
 * Aladdin
 * The Lion King
 * Pocahontas
 * The Hunchback of Notre Dame
 * Hercules
 * Mulan
 * Tarzan
 * Fantasia 2000
 * Doug, the very first Nicktoon, and the first TV show for Jumbo Pictures. Aired on both Nickelodeon and ABC (after getting bought by Disney)
 * Dragon Ball: Made and dubbed during this period (and quite possibly the trope codifier for starting the North American Anime craze of the mid-late 90s). One of the hundreds of Anime spawned during this period and one of the several dozen that caught on in America. You can confidently say that this series is one of the main reasons Anime became popular during the 90s outside of Japan.
 * Duckman
 * DuckTales
 * Duck Tales the Movie Treasure of The Lost Lamp
 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy
 * Eek the Cat
 * Eight Crazy Nights
 * Exo Squad
 * Family Guy: Got its start at the end of this era.
 * Felix the Cat: Specifically, the character got two revivals, one good, the other very contested. The first one was Felix the Cat: The Movie, which was based on Felix's flanderized portrayal from The Dark Age of Animation. The second one was the surprisingly good The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, which basically brought Felix back to his roots and the series even threw in a bit of Max Fleischer surreality into the mix.
 * Fern Gully
 * Felidae
 * The Flight of Dragons
 * Freakazoid
 * Freddie as F.R.O.7: Made by the British during this era, it's one of the strangest animated films you will EVER see.
 * Galaxy High
 * Garfield and Friends
 * Gargoyles
 * G.I. Joe
 * Goof Troop
 * A Goofy Movie: Technically not part of the Disney Animated Canon but very well-liked nonetheless.
 * Gravedale High: A long-lost 1990's Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
 * Gremlins 2: Features an opening cartoon segment starring Bugs and Daffy.
 * Hayao Miyazaki films, such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
 * Heckle and Jeckle: In The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle.
 * He Man and The Masters of The Universe
 * Hey Arnold!
 * Histeria!
 * Inhumanoids
 * Inspector Gadget
 * The Iron Giant
 * Johnny Bravo
 * Jonny Quest the Real Adventures
 * Ka Blam
 * The Land Before Time: The second Bluth movie to make box office records. Also has an infamous case of Sequelitis.
 * The Last Unicorn
 * Life With Louie
 * Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
 * Looney Tunes in the Seventies and Onward: Post-Termite Terrace theatrical shorts from The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties and in The New Tens.
 * Mickey Mouse Works
 * Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
 * Mike Lu and Og
 * Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: The anime that effectively pulled the Gundam franchise out from its glut since the late 80s; and the first to gain series wide exposure in America.
 * Ms Doubtfire: Has a cartoon segment contributed by Chuck Jones.
 * Muppet Babies
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion: The famous Mecha series that deconstructs the entire genre. Also one of the Anime that caused the Craze of the late 90s.
 * The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil
 * The Nightmare Before Christmas
 * Oh Yeah Cartoons
 * Once Upon a Forest
 * The Pagemaster
 * The Pebble and the Penguin: Directed by the one and only world famous Don Bluth Alan Smithee.
 * Pepper Ann
 * Peter Pan and The Pirates
 * Pinky and The Brain
 * Pinky Elmyra and The Brain
 * The Powerpuff Girls
 * Pokémon: Effectively gave Anime a fighting chance in America. And the only one that's still going strong.
 * The Prince of Egypt
 * A Pup Named Scooby Doo
 * Quest for Camelot
 * Raw Toonage: A short-lived Animated Anthology series from Disney that spawned two spinoffs.
 * Rayman: The Animated Series: An extremely short lived All CGI Cartoon series, very, VERY loosely based off of the limbless wonder.
 * The Real Ghostbusters
 * ReBoot: The first fully CGI TV series
 * Recess: One of the three flagship programs of Disney's One Saturday Morning, and the most successful and popular one.
 * The Ren and Stimpy Show
 * Revolutionary Girl Utena
 * Road Rovers
 * The Road to El Dorado
 * Robotech: Yes, it was a Cut and Paste Translation of three unrelated Anime series, but it was on the forefront of introducing American audiences to Japanese animation, breaking several of the conventions of US animated television shows, as well as ironically building the popularity of importing unedited Japanese productions.
 * Rock a Doodle: Seen by most fans as the movie where Don Bluth jumped the shark.
 * Rocket Power
 * Rocko's Modern Life
 * Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles
 * Rover Dangerfield
 * Rugrats
 * The Rugrats Movie
 * Rurouni Kenshin: The series that made samurai stories popular among anime fans from this generation.
 * Sabrina the Animated Series
 * Sailor Moon: One of the three major series that started the Anime Craze of the 90s (along with Dragon Ball and Evangelion).
 * Saint Seiya: One of the series that also started the Anime Craze of the 90s, but in Latin America and, to a (sightly) lesser degree, Europe.
 * Scooby Doo in Arabian Nights
 * The Secret of NIMH: Came out somewhat before what many agree to be the start of the renaissance, but definitely played a role in shaping it in the long run.
 * The Simpsons
 * The Smurfs
 * Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Noteworthy for being one of those rarities of rarities: a GOOD video game series!
 * Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie: Also noteworthy for being one of those rarities of rarities: a GOOD video game movie.
 * Sonic Underground
 * South Park: Much like Family Guy, it got its start toward the end of this era too.
 * Space Goofs
 * Space Jam
 * Lola Bunny made her debut in this film as a Looney Tunes Canon Immigrant.
 * Spiral Zone
 * SpongeBob SquarePants: The show also has that Family Guy vibe.
 * Stay Tuned: A live action feature, notable for an animated segment contributed by Chuck Jones.
 * Superman the Animated Series
 * Swat Kats
 * The Swan Princess: Notable in how frequently it attempts to defy the Disney formula, while having the characters still end up Genre Blind for other reasons, and ultimately succumbing to the Disney formula. Also the most successful animation motion picture to come from Nest (meaning: neither Disney nor Dreamworks nor Don Bluth.)
 * Tale Spin
 * Thumbelina: As The Nostalgia Chick said, it holds many similarities to the Disney formula of the time and doesn't work out so well.
 * Thundercats
 * Tiny Toon Adventures
 * Tiny Toon Adventures How I Spent My Vacation
 * Tom and Jerry The Movie
 * Tom and Jerry Kids
 * Toonami: Cartoon Network's original "action" after-school block, launched in '97 near the end of the age. While showcasing such hits as ReBoot, it's also known for one of the earliest and most successful blocks to showcase Anime, bringing us classics such as Sailor Moon, Mobile Suit Gundam, Dragon Ball Z, Outlaw Star, and many more, and is probably directly responsible for the rise in Anime in Western audiences.
 * Toy Story: The first fully CGI animated film. Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not the success of this movie helped bring about the end of the renaissance era.
 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 series)
 * The Thief and the Cobbler: Although it was finished and released in the '90s, it did start production in the Sixties.
 * Transformers:
 * The Transformers: Introduced in the Dark Age, but ran through this era.
 * Beast Wars
 * A Troll in Central Park
 * Twice Upon a Time
 * Two Stupid Dogs
 * Unico And The Island Of Magic
 * Visionaries
 * Volere Volare: A french Roger Rabbit Effect romantic comedy.
 * Voltron: One of the earliest anime to be released in America during this age.
 * Wallace and Gromit
 * The Wacky World of Tex Avery
 * Who Framed Roger Rabbit
 * The Wild Thornberrys
 * Wing Commander Academy
 * Woody Woodpecker got his comeback during this time thanks to the TV series The New Woody Woodpecker Show.
 * The World of David the Gnome
 * The Wuzzles
 * X-Men
 * Yo Yogi
 * You're Under Arrest: While not as known, it was one of the Anime released during the craze in America. And also one of the few that had a release by a relatively major comic book company.

Real Life People Directly Involved With This Era

 * Don Bluth
 * Cree Summer: Actress/voice actress who got her start in the beginning of this era with her role as Penny in Inspector Gadget. She's still a popular Voice Actor today. She also played Freddy in A Different World, which aired around this time.
 * Matt Groening
 * John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show
 * Hayao Miyazaki
 * Isao Takahata
 * Yoshifumi Kondo
 * Hideaki Anno
 * Steven Spielberg
 * Genndy Tartakovsky
 * Ted Turner: His company bought the rights to MGM's pre-1986 library and Hanna-Barbera's entire library, which of course included vast amounts of old cartoons. This would prompt the launch of Cartoon Network.
 * Tom Ruegger
 * Tress MacNeille, a very prolific voice actress from this time to today.
 * Rob Paulsen
 * Mike Judge
 * Skip Jones, animator on many of the films of this era including several of Bluth's films.
 * Joe Murray, creator of Rocko's Modern Life, and later Camp Lazlo.
 * Arlene Klasky and Garbor Csupo of Klasky-Csupo.
 * David Kirschner, who was largely responsible for An American Tail and more obscure animated movies during The Nineties such as Once Upon a Forest, The Pagemaster and Cats Don't Dance.
 * Seth MacFarlane, who got his start writing, storyboarding, and voice acting in this era; and whose World Premiere Toon eventually evolved into Family Guy (which of course premiered at the end of the Renaissance).
 * Craig Bartlett, an animator for Pee-wee's Playhouse, writer for Rugrats, and creator of Hey Arnold!. Also Matt Groening's brother-in-law, interestingly enough.
 * Jim Jinkins, creator of Doug and PB and J Otter, the latter of which aired at the end of the Renaissance.
 * Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere, who wrote for Rugrats (and the former co-created it) and Hey Arnold!, and the creators of Recess
 * Fred Seibert, the producer behind World Premiere Toons and Oh Yeah Cartoons, making him indirectly responsible for their various spin-offs.
 * Yutaka Fujioka: Founder of T Ms and starter of this age of animation.
 * Toshihiko Masuda: Chief T Ms Directer of the Disney and Warner Bros shows that TMS worked on.
 * Nobuo Tomizawa
 * Kenji Hachizaki
 * Kazuhide Tomonaga
 * Hiroyuki Aoyama: Before doing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars for Madhouse, he was one of the people involved in this era of animation.
 * Yuichiro Yano
 * Saburo Hashimoto
 * Keiko Oyamada
 * Sawako Miyamoto: More for her work at Walt Disney Animation Japan then T Ms's Telecom unit (as she was a directer there, as she did mosty did key animation at Telecom), not related with Shigeru Miyamoto.
 * Takashi Kawaguchi
 * Teiichi Takiguchi
 * Hisao Yokobori
 * Hiroaki Noguchi
 * Yukio Okazaki
 * Shojiro Nishimi: Before doing Tekkon Kinkreet for Studio 4°C, he was one of the people involved in this era.
 * Osamu Dezaki
 * Nelson Shin: Producer of The Transformers cartoon; director for Transformers: The Movie and founder of South Korean studio AKOM, who worked on several of the shows present in this age.
 * Kath Soucie
 * Pamela Segal-Aldon
 * April Winchell
 * Tara Strong

Real life people who are directly influenced by this era

 * Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi. Animation historians, writers on 'Art Of' and other animation novelty books, and bloggers of the industry-popular Cartoon Brew.
 * Doug Walker, aka The Nostalgia Critic. Much of what he reviews exposes the somewhat worse aspects of some of the animation to come out of this era, and frequently includes gags referencing such cartoons.

Tropes Associated With This Era

 * All Animation Is Disney: This trope runs rampant on Don Bluth's work, and it doesn't stop there.
 * All CGI Cartoon: Started in this decade with both, Pixar's films, and TV series Beast Wars, ReBoot and South Park (all three airing within the same time period on television to boot).
 * Animated Adaptation: Though this does go back to the previous era, it began to happen more frequently in this era, with unlikely movies such as Beetlejuice, Ace Ventura, and Ghostbusters receiving their own animated adaptations.
 * Animated adaptations of video games were also big at the time, with mixed results.
 * Animation Age Ghetto: A sad relic of the previous era. Animation did begin to overcome this somewhat, with the success of more adult cartoons such as The Simpsons.
 * Animation Bump: IN ♠ SPADES.
 * Arch-Competitor: Don Bluth to Disney from about the release of An American Tail untill All Dogs Go To Heaven was beaten by The Little Mermaid at the box office (after which Bluth stopped posing a real threat to Disney, arguably due to the departure of Steven Spielberg).
 * Award Bait Song: A staple of animated films of this era.
 * Conspicuous CG: In some of the 2-D movies from the late '80s and early '90s, it just looked weird when they tried to integrate computer animation because CG technology wasn't advanced enough yet. See the beginning of Thumbelina.
 * Direct to Video
 * Disneyfication
 * Disney Acid Sequence
 * "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Was still used A LOT during the '80s, though it stopped being taken seriously and played straight at some point during the '90s.
 * Follow the Leader: The mentality of many of Disney's competitors during this era. Most of them failed miserably, though.
 * George Lucas Throwback: Rampant. The Little Mermaid was designed to be just like the old Disney animated musicals, Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs were inspired by the Warner Bros. cartoons in the Golden Age, Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken frequently threw back to 70s/80s anime and superhero shows (and at some points drifted into Affectionate Parody territory), John Kricfalusi threw back to Tex Avery, and so on.
 * Ink Suit Actor: Happened quite a lot in Disney's movies during this period, such as the Genie in Aladdin basically just being Robin Williams, only blue and a Reality Warper.
 * Licensed Game: This trend would explode with the NES, and it continues to this day. Nearly any cartoon that has ever become famous has received a video game adaptation.
 * Limited Animation: Not quite as present as in the dark age, but shades still existed throughout this era.
 * Live Action Adaptation: Just as movies were being adapted into animated series, the inverse was also happening more frequently.
 * Off-Model: Despite somewhat better animation, this still ran rampant throughout. The fact that literally everyone in North America and Japan were outsourcing did not help matters either.
 * Parental Bonus
 * Prime Time Cartoon
 * Recycled: the Series
 * Revival
 * Saturday Morning Cartoon: Though by no means did they end during the Renaissance (there are still a few around today), this was the last animation era in which Saturday Morning Cartoons on network TV were still big contenders.
 * Serkis Folk: Disney's first all CG character was the carpet from Aladdin. From there Serkis Folk would become increasingly more common, as traditional animation declined.
 * Shout-Out: There were many shout outs to classic cartoons. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was basically one long Shout-Out.
 * Spinoff Babies
 * The Movie: Many cartoon characters both old and new, such as Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Felix the Cat, Looney Tunes, Goofy, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Transformers, The Flintstones. and others, got their own movies during this period, some of which vary in quality, but tended to usually be quite bad.
 * Thick Line Animation: Popularized by the success of Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, this style caught on towards what many may consider the end of the renaissance. Nowadays nearly every western television cartoon that comes out has this style, if it isn't trying to look anime.
 * Toilet Humor: Became increasingly more common place in the 1990s, especially with Gross Out Shows like The Ren and Stimpy Show.
 * Too Good to Last: Even more so than the Golden Age.
 * Can also apply to Warner Bros. and DreamWorks 2-D animated films.
 * We're Still Relevant, Dammit!: The animation industry as a whole during this period. And boy did they prove it.