Current Events > Franchises where a second generation took the lead and it was generally accepted

(+) Yeah! (+)

It seems like whenever this happens in franchises where a new cast replaces the previous main cast of characters for whatever reason, have it be their descendants or however else it usually gets a negative reception from it's fanbase.

I'm just trying to think of franchises where they've done transitions like this and whether or not they were seen in a positive light by it's fans.

The Last Airbender -> Korra: With Korra taking place 70 years later, naturally the main cast of TLA were either dead, very old and out of commission, or for some reason never really shown or mentioned at all (Sokka/Suki/ect). The fanbase has always been pretty mixed on Korra, some people love it and some people hate it. But even as a fan of Korra I think it's pretty fair to say that most people don't really consider it to be better than TLA at the very least.

Digimon Adventure -> Digimon Adventure 02: This is probably a classic example of one that didn't go over very well. A lot of fans did not like 02 when it was out and Digimon fell off a bit in popularity because of it. Later on you see a lot of nostalgia pandering to S1 and disregarding 02 completely in recent Digimon stuff like in Tri, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 2020 remake of Adventure that's going on right now might completely write out the 02 cast somehow. Later seasons of Digimon have gotten praise though from fans such as Seasons 3 and 5 which both have new casts.

Naruto -> Boruto: This is probably one of the clearest examples of a new generation taking the lead since a lot of the main characters are straight up descendants of the previous main cast. I don't watch Boruto so I can't say much on it's quality but I don't think I know anyone that likes it equally or more than OG Naruto or even Shippuden.

Dragon Ball/Z -> (Buu Saga): This might not make sense at first because it ultimately didn't go in that direction, but I think it was originally supposed to, especially when you consider how it started with Gohan, Goten, and Trunks heavily taking the spotlight in this saga early on. But apparently the audience disliked Gohan taking Goku's spot as the MC so much that Toriyama had to find a way to double back on this and make Goku the lead again, and we all know how that turned out along with everything since then basically becoming the Goku Show (GT/Super).

Kinnikuman -> Ultimate Muscle: Might be an odd one to put here since if you're from the US you might only be familiar with Ultimate Muscle. I actually didn't know at all that that there was an entire franchise that took place before it. I don't actually know good the reception is for Ultimate Muscle compared to Kinnikunman though.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: This might be an example of one that is generally favored in terms of reception. Each part pretty much has a new main cast and the MC is usually a descendant from a previous season. But one thing that kind of makes this harder to compare to other franchises is that since there characters are generally only around for 1 part you don't really get the attachment you would get to the longer running series like TLA/Naruto/ect when there's a new generation so people might be more accepting of it.

Power Rangers/Super Sentai: This probably counts more for early Power Rangers, there were various cast changes from MMPR through Turbo, and then after Space there was basically an entirely new cast every season. Although Power Rangers has diehard fans I think it's pretty fair to say the popularity of it during MMPR is way bigger than it's popularity for any season that came after it, although people usually don't consider MMPR the best season in terms of quality .

Phoenix Wright -> Apollo Justice: I'm a fan of AA but I haven't actually gotten around to the 4th one yet so I can't tell you much about it, but considering that Apollo becomes the MC for that game but Phoenix takes the mantle back as the MC in later games leaves me to believe fans didn't accept it very well?

Mega Man -> Mega Man X- This is kind of tough to say much about this transition because there wasn't much of a story at all in the original Mega Man games, they also kept making Classic Mega Man games even after X came out and still do today so it's not like those OG fans were abandoned either. But as a Mega Man fan I think it's pretty fair to say people do like X and his series a lot, some may even like it more than the Classic series. There's also the Zero series which has mostly a new cast aside from Zero, the ZX series with a pretty much entirely new cast, the Battle Network/Star Force series which is basically in a separate timeline from Classic, and the Legends series which takes place so far ahead in the future that there's no recollection of anything that happened in the Classic/Zero/ZX series. But all of those series do have fans so I'd say this is another one that is generally accepted by it's fanbase.

Comic Books: I don't know a ton about comic books so I'm not going to say a ton here, maybe someone else can go into detail a bit more for me but I know handing off the mantle happens pretty frequently in some series. I know for sure there are some popular examples like in Batman/Spider-Man/Avengers/ect. And an obvious one that is pretty popular lately is Miles Morales as Spider-Man, I definitely remember people being a bit mixed about it when it originally happened in Ultimate Spider-Man but I feel like people generally like Miles nowadays?

Any other examples of this? Rewatching Korra and looking at the reception of it lately kind of made me curious about this concept and wanted to look at examples where this has been pulled off gracefully.

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Kamen Rider is a big one, too.

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Star Wars, despite a loud minority.

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KlRBEH posted...

Comic Books: I don't know a ton about comic books so I'm not going to say a ton here, maybe someone else can go into detail a bit more for me but I know handing off the mantle happens pretty frequently in some series. I know for sure there are some popular examples like in Batman/Spider-Man/Avengers/ect. And an obvious one that is pretty popular lately is Miles Morales as Spider-Man, I definitely remember people being a bit mixed about it when it originally happened in Ultimate Spider-Man but I feel like people generally like Miles nowadays?

Silver Age / Bronze Age have basically displaced Golden Age in general.

Virtually nobody cares about the original Green Lantern Alan Scott or the original Flash Jay Garrick. On the Marvel Side, basically no one gives a shit about the original Human Torch who literally has nothing to do at all with the modem Fantastic Four, and while it's more recent, Carol Danvers functionally replaced Mar-Vell some decades ago.

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For Star Trek aren't TNG/DS9 connected at the hip and way more popular than the original series?

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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Kamen Rider is a big one, too.

True, idk how I forgot about Kamen Rider after listing Power Rangers/Sentai lol

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This describes every long running soap opera.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Silver Age / Bronze Age have basically displaced Golden Age in general.

Virtually nobody cares about the original Green Lantern Alan Scott or the original Flash Jay Garrick. On the Marvel Side, basically no one gives a shit about the original Human Torch who literally has nothing to do at all with the modem Fantastic Four, and while it's more recent, Carol Danvers functionally replaced Mar-Vell some decades ago.

Green Lantern is definitely a good example, it seems like the most popular are definitely Hal Jordan or John Stewart. I don't think I've ever actually heard of the first Green Lantern.

radical rhino posted...

This describes every long running soap opera.

Also stuff like Degrassi comes to mind when you put it like this. I wonder if people prefer The Next Generation compared to the older one.

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My Little Pony

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KlRBEH posted...

Green Lantern is definitely a good example, it seems like the most popular are definitely Hal Jordan or John Stewart. I don't think I've ever actually heard of the first Green Lantern.

Green Lantern lore was retconned in the silver Age. Alan Scott's Lantern is a broken / defective something or other that detached itself from the Lantern Corps somehow and he's more closely related to Swamp Thing than other green lanterns now.

He can make permanent constructs.

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Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid
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Degrassi

All I got from reading the OP is

UL
TI
MATE

MUS
CLE
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Geisterdrache posted...

Star Wars, despite a loud minority.

Hahaha

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The Legend of Zelda

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uh...
Jesus

scar the 1 posted...

The Legend of Zelda

I was gonna say Zelda, but most of the stories are hardly related at all aside from the characters being reincarnations or however they put it. It's hard to even put most Zelda games in a timeline from what I've heard.

It probably should count though

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Star Trek.

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Castlevania

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Seemed fine with the Gears fanbase. Replaced by a new generation from 4.

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Apollo really got the shit end of the stick and its unfortunate. I feel like if they did more to differentiate him from Phoenix, it would have turned out better. But by the time they did it was in a game with a load of other problems

i love the supporting cast in the first Apollo justice though

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Middle hope posted...

Castlevania

Can't believe I forgot about Castlevania, that definitely seemed like an obvious one

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Batman Beyond

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Mistborn

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Beast Wars Transformers

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Green Lantern lore was retconned in the silver Age. Alan Scott's Lantern is a broken / defective something or other that detached itself from the Lantern Corps somehow and he's more closely related to Swamp Thing than other green lanterns now.

This isn't quite accurate. Alan Scott's green lantern was originally just a magical artefact and it stayed that way after Hal Jordan was introduced (although Alan Scott wouldn't re-appear until a lot later on). When the Hall Jordan's green lantern was introduced it was advance alien technology with no connection to Alan Scott's lantern.

This has mostly stayed the case since both parties introduction, they work together together a fair but the only real connection is that Jade, Alan Scott's daughter, is a member of the green lantern corps (except when she's not, yay for inconsistent continuality). I say mostly as there was a brief period where Alan Scott's ring was a sort of prototype for the green lantern corps rings but DC undid that pretty quickly, so I wouldn't really count it.

The modern version of DC's Earth 2's Alan Scott draws his power from "the green" which is also the source of Swamp Thing's power, but I don't think that's the case in the main universe.

Adventure 02 had massive writers room issues which didnt help though the new movie has got the 02 kids in it.

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KlRBEH posted...

or for some reason never really shown or mentioned at all (Sokka/Suki/ect).

I just watched the first episode of Korra and I'm pretty sure they briefly mentioned Sokka was dead at this point in time. That's lame if he's never mentioned beyond that and Suki isn't either, though.

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The History Channel show Vikings. It started out with the main character Ragnar who died in season 4 and then his sons became the main characters. I think they're in season 7?

Also the walking dead to a degree. It's been replacing characters through out and I believe Carol and Daryl are the only characters from season 1 left and originally they weren't main characters until latter seasons.

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Bishop9800 posted...

Beast Wars Transformers

That's a good one, but ironically it takes place in the past and the cast of characters are ancestors of the previous cast.

spikethedevil posted...

Adventure 02 had massive writers room issues which didnt help though the new movie has got the 02 kids in it.

Yeah I haven't watched Tri but I heard they treated the 02 cast pretty badly in it.

It's really a shame because I actually really liked 02, especially Veemon. And although most fans don't like 02 I definitely think that most agree that the movies that came from it were excellent. Especially the one with Kerpymon.

Master_Bass posted...

I just watched the first episode of Korra and I'm pretty sure they briefly mentioned Sokka was dead at this point in time. That's lame if he's never mentioned beyond that and Suki isn't either, though.

Ah ok I guess I forgot about that then

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KlRBEH posted...

That's a good one, but ironically it takes place in the past and the cast of characters are ancestors of the previous cast.

Yeah I haven't watched Tri but I heard they treated the 02 cast pretty badly in it.

It's really a shame because I actually really liked 02, especially Veemon. And although most fans don't like 02 I definitely think that most agree that the movies that came from it were excellent. Especially the one with Kerpymon.

Ah ok I guess I forgot about that then

One of the reasons people don't like 02 is because of how badly the 01 cast get treated in it lol.

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spikethedevil posted...

One of the reasons people don't like 02 is because of how badly the 01 cast get treated in it lol.

02 had a lot of problems but that is definitely one of the reasons

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Yeah that and the aforementioned writers room problems.

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spikethedevil posted...

Yeah that and the aforementioned writers room problems.

Well yeah I get that but it goes beyond writers room problems, 02 has a lot of basic problems as well in things like the actual Digi Destined, their Digimon, the antagonists, and ect. It was doomed from the start honestly.

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Hank Williams jr

Love Live
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KlRBEH posted...

Well yeah I get that but it goes beyond writers room problems, 02 has a lot of basic problems as well in things like the actual Digi Destined, their Digimon, the antagonists, and ect. It was doomed from the start honestly.

Digimon Emperor was awesome and the antagonists thing was due to the writers room problems.

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Donkey Kong

Nintendo has retroactively said that Cranky Kong is not the original Donkey Kong, but that was Rare's intent back in the day.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

uh...
Jesus

So...old testament vs new testament

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Wraith Squadron > Rogue Squadron

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Star Trek is the big one. With the exception of Wrath of Khan, basically everyone would rank TNG and/or DS9 above TOS.

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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Kamen Rider is a big one, too.

Kamen Rider passed the torch in its very first series when Kamen Rider's actor was in a stunt accident, prompting a new character to become Kamen Rider Nigo (2). Eventually the original actor came back and was dubbed Kamen Rider Ichigo (1).

Most of the Showa Era Riders have their own series to themselves, but they occupy the same "universe" with frequent Rider team-ups and recurring characters like Tachibana, who acted as a mentor to most of the Showa boys.

After a television hiatus during the transition from Showa to Heisei, Kuuga established itself as a separate universe. Agito came after and branded itself as a sequel, but there were barely any references to Kuuga really. Afterwards, from that point on, each Rider season has been totally standalone excepting crossover material in the movies, the often nonsensical cameos at the tail ends of newer series meant to hype up the next guy, and the anniversary shows (which firmly established each Rider show as its own version of Earth). There was also kind of an attempt to establish a new recurring villain organization across Double->OOO->Fourze, but not much was done with it and I don't think they've returned since.

Ultraman is also generational, and to my knowledge no Ultraman is standalone on account of Ultra being an alien race, but there are multiple timelines for certain sets of Ultramen, with occasional crossover.

I don't know anything about Garo but I think it's a toss up of standalone and sequential? I know all the anime series were separate from each other.


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K181 posted...

Wrath of Khan

Give Harve Bennett an inadequate budget, and he'll give you back something amazing.
Dude was thrifty as fuck, especially in the later seasons of Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar man.

For the Green Lantern thing, Kyle Rayner was pretty well liked after he was introduced as Hal Jordan's replacement, though many people still preferred Jordan. I suppose people got the best of both worlds when Jordan was reintroduced and Kyle Rayner stuck around.

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Stargate Atlantis went pretty well as a spinoff of SG1

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FortuneCookie posted...

Donkey Kong

Nintendo has retroactively said that Cranky Kong is not the original Donkey Kong, but that was Rare's intent back in the day.

Lol this is a good one.

I didn't know that Nintendo debunked it though

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