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Videogamep wrote:

Topgunguy wrote:

AoT is violent? Please, most of the chows the titans do is offscreen. Sure, some blood squirts out but you never see anything gruesome. It's rated G compared to Samurai X, the Fist of the North Star movie and Violence Jack.

Rurouni Kenshin wasn't overly violent, but anything is G rated compared to Fist of the North Star and Violence Jack.

Gemnist wrote:

Definitely, One Piece is a kids show, as evidenced by that part wherespoiler[ the main character's brother is inpaled through the chest with an arm of molten lava, and has steam coarsing out of him as he dies in a bloody mess for an entire episode. Definitely, Naruto is a kids show, as evidenced when a 14-year-old watches his crush cough out her own lungs after assisted suicide, then proceeds to lose his sanity, drop an f-bomb, and murder over a hundred people in bloody fashion as if the episode came from a David Lynch movie.] Geez Justin, you really ARE sheltered!

Naruto and One Piece are both directed at adolescents and young teens, the violence is just because Japan has different standards from the US. I love One Piece, but it's target audience is about 10-18. Also, you should probably use spoiler tags.

And even Japanese television has become less lenient, to a certain extent. In the 80s and 90s, shows like City Hunter and Hokuto no Ken aired on prime-time television and those were far more violent than One Piece and Naruto, Hokuto no Ken especially.

I should add that it's also the case as far as nudity is concerned. The first Dragon Ball series has a lot of humor based on child nudity (Goku and Bulma), as does the Ranma 1/2 series, and yet both aired in prime-time slots back then.

I don't remember that at all. I remember having talkback threads when those were a thing, and the one guy, whose since flown off into the ether, would constantly point out references without jokes. It became his biggest peeve with the show.

Nyren wrote:

I feel like that wasn't really what the question meant. In the US the vast majority of animated works are broadcast on channels like Cartoon Network and Disney, and the vast majority of them are really stupid kiddy comedies. They're mindless. You used to have shows that crossed the boundary, like Looney Tunes, Thundercats, Teen Titans, Samurai Jack, and hell even Powerpuff Girls and KND has their moments.

Looney Tunes were originally short films made for movie theaters. Up through the 1950s, a theatrical movie would play on a loop, with a newsreel and often one or two short films or cartoons in-between - and people would just buy their ticket and walk into the theater whenever they wanted (even in the middle of the movie) and leave whenever they wanted. That didn't really start to change until Psycho came out, and Hitchcock insisted that everyone who went to see that movie needed to see it from the beginning. Anyway, the Looney Tunes that you and I remember watching on TV was a syndicated package of those old shorts that Warner Bros. put together and sold to the TV networks for rebroadcast. They ended up on the Saturday morning kids' block beginning around the mid-60s, but they were originally made for all ages, both kids and adults.

Quote:

Now the majority of American animation consists of low-budget comedies that get rid of the mature themes in exchange for mindless fun and cartoon violence(beating up inanimate objects or people made of candy.). They don't really teach you anything.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If you want to know when American animation first became seriously stigmatized as a "kids" thing, it was in the 60s and 70s when those cheap/low-budget limited animation TV shows from Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, which were mostly mindless fun and cartoon violence, were dominating the American animation market.

Justin wrote:

But as for us, all we have to do is keep spreading the word, and showing people the good stuff that we think they might like. That's the only way minds change, and that's the only way people take an art form seriously.
[...]
In order for art to be relevant to people, they have to be exposed to it, and it has to move them. That's something we can always help with.

A stirring but measured answer, Justin.
If what you say is the case though, we are still very much in a transitionary phase. I am sure everyone knows somebody in their respective workplaces for whom the mantra that cartoons are for kids has yet to fail them. I fear that general attitudes towards animation, amongst other things, will stabilise in an agreeable fashion only when those currently under 40 enjoy a comfortable majority across social demographics.

In my country, the mainstream consider all cartoons as for kids and/or not for adults. It's because all cartoons aired on terrestrial TV stations (the easiest and the most accessible way to watch cartoons, aside from cheap pirated VCD's and DVD's) are aimed for kids and/or teens. Some people even believe cartoons can make one dumb/stupid, maybe because many of these cartoons are childish and maybe outright stupid.
Cartoons with dirty jokes, lewdness and/or gore-like violence are prohibited to air. But violent anime like Naruto, Dragonball Z, YuYu Yakusho were allowed to air in broad daylight during weekdays and tirelessly re-run countless times even with zero censorship. No guns or cigarette or shuriken or killing censorship. But the translation of curses in the local dub is toned down, softened or even omitted. I'm shocked that Slam Dunk is full of curses in the original dub.
Shounen anime are pretty mainstream due to national TV exposure. But knowing and watching them does not necessary turn them into an anime fan. They like Kuroko's Basketball or they like One Piece or Doraemon or Spongebob or Powerpuff Girls. That's all. Obsession is rare if there's any. But otakus exist but they're rare.

It's one of those things where if you go back some way you find that animation wasn't 'for the kids', old Warner Brothers "Merrie Melodies" which featured parodies of top film stars of the period, Tom & Jerry's "Mouse in Manhattan" which totally parodies George Gershwin's music.
Speaking of which, remember that Tom and Jerry episode where Tom gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes off to kill himself? That actually happened.

But over the years it got toned down with cheap animation and stuffing the schedules and "OH! Won't SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN" puritanism.

prime_pm wrote:

For kids.

I'm really hoping this wasn't airing during her pregnancy arc.

You can bet this was. Nope, it is not a fake, sadly.

mangamuscle wrote:

The average comic book reader in the USA is in the  35-44 age range. We have live action adaptions of said comics which are obviously targeted towards adults (albeit teenagers might also enjoy them). Yet when disney or warner make an animated adaption (even if its made by a japanese studio for japanese audiences), those are obviously targeted toward kid (no fanservice, innuendo, violence or adult/RL themes). wtf!?

I do have to point out that the animated superhero movies for Warner tend to be in the PG-13 area, and the upcoming animated version of The Killing Joke will be rated R. Now, if we're talking about what it on TV, that tends to be something else. I think Warner has essentially divided its superhero cartoons according to format. TV shows, which appear on Cartoon Network, which is normally considered kids' network gets more kid-oriented content. Movies, which necessitate a purchase of some kind, get targeted towards an older audience.

It seems that Warner's experiment with the "DC Nation" block turned them away from more serious takes on their superheroes on Cartoon Network. The only show to survive has been Teen Titans Go, which is arguably more like one of their other cartoons with a super hero coat of paint.

Justin wrote:

Boy, this is an old canard that just refuses to fly away, isn't it?
In the second category, you have the stuff that's REALLY aimed at kids. There's stuff for boys and stuff for girls. There's Doraemon and One Piece and Naruto, there's also Aikatsu! and Pokémon and Yōkai Watch. While a handful of otaku watch these shows, they're broadcast basically to sell merchandise to kids.

Ahem, YES, it does refuse to die. (glares meaningfully at uber-fans Mad

)
Apart from the otaku fan-service shown at midnight, most mainstream anime expected to toy-market their own weight are "kids' shows" with loyal after school followings--And one of the reasons Japan comes down so hard on anime-watching otaku being such "immature" people "retreating" from the world because they're "afraid of adulthood", unquote, unquote, is because mainstream anime is pretty much seen the way we see daytime Cartoon Network:
And anyone over here who rhapsodizes upon the serious storytelling genius of Steven Universe, Powerpuff Girls or MLP, is treated as pretty much the same childhood-retentive cult oddball, only without the added Japanese sense of obligation toward "growing up"--In anime shows, if a character like Nodame is revealed to be an anime watcher, the show in question will usually be some soppy parody of Doraemon, or other middle-school pitched magical-girl parody for those sick of Pretty Cure.

In the 00's, when our Cartoon Network was trying to bully Scooby-Doo and the Superfriends off their network, and make us watch Dexter's Lab instead, they coined the infamous "Some people still want to watch the same shows they saw as kids...Scary, huh?" We never forgave them for that, but in Japan, that would pretty well sum up the mainstream view in a nutshell.

MarshalBanana wrote:

It is worth mentioning that before Flintstones and Yogi Bear, American animation was mostly made for adults.

Actually, Flintstones and Yogi Bear were made for adults too, or at least shown in prime-time slots in 1960.
And Flintstones in particular (at least, the classic first three seasons, before Bill & Joe got too ambitious for commercializing after Baby Pebbles was born, and the whole industry turned Saturday-morning) has a very sophisticated sense of humor from the Early Hanna-Barbera day: Ex-Chuck Jones writers Michael Maltese and Warren Foster, along with Dan Gordon of the Fleischer Supermans and screwy wartime Popeyes, wrote most of the early Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound shorts, and Maltese and Foster were very influenced by the crazy, snarky, surreal-sarcastic mix of humor on Jack Benny's radio/TV show. With H-B, it's what I like to call the "Third-and-a-half-wall" style--Not actual fourth-wall like Rocky & Bullwinkle, but still a very conscious nudging of the audience by slipping in a suddenly crazy-overdone line, oddball delivery or unexpectedly snarky comeback or self-deconstruction, for the writers to deliberately catch us off guard and let us know they're smarter than the cartoon might look.
With the Flintstones, you have the wiseguy H-B Style mixed with classic Ralph-&-Ed plots borrowed from their Honeymooners-homage roots, cartoon slapstick, and voice talent like Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet and Frank Nelson bringing their crazy old-radio timing and signature shticks from the Jack Benny days.
Imagine the satirical, sarcastic going-to-extremes gags of the Simpsons, only without Matt Groening's egotistic free-floating contempt-bile toward everything, replaced with just the innocent catch-off-guard timing of the early Yogi, Huck and Quick-Draw McGraw shorts...The closest anime equivalent I can find is the later, hipper days of Urusei Yatsura, when Oshii's comic-jazz rhythm would let pop-gags would suddenly assault us out of nowhere, and characters cleverly break character for pop parody just to momentarily catch us off guard with something crazy, but we still had comfort-food affection for the running sitcom characters anyway.

(Yeah, THIS was the argument I always had to put up back in the 80's, when early Robotech and Star Blazers activists always had to tell us that early anime was "better than that 'picnic-basket' stuff from our parents' days".)

prime_pm wrote:

I'm really hoping this wasn't airing during her pregnancy arc.

No, by the time Wilma was pregnant, they were pitching for Welch's Grape Juice/Jelly and One-a-Day Vitamins (you may remember a rather familiar tie-in with the latter).
And this being the early days of sponsored shows, they worked those product plugs into the script too, just like the later plugs for Skippy Peanut Butter.
(What, you didn't know the Flints advertised something besides Winston? PLEASE kill this snotty pop-decade-deconstructive urban legend.)

As a bitter old fuddy-duddy who has watched anime for far too long, there is nothing I enjoy more than informing newer fans that no, your anime is not "mature" and made for adults. They are made for young teenagers (which you, the new anime fan, probably are), and most people see that as "for kids". And even more importantly, just because your fansubs like using colorful language does not mean you are watching a show made for adults.

The other day I had the nerve to compare abusive tsundere to "typical cartoon slapstick antics" and I don't think the flames have died down yet. Laughing

Brent Allison wrote:

So which studio cuts production first?

Yeah, that's the obvious problem. The current level of production doesn't seem sustainable, and yet obviously no studio wants to produce less product. It's a dilemma.

Last edited by Topgunguy on Mon Jun 06, 2016 2:56 pm; edited 2 times in total

Videogamep wrote:

Topgunguy wrote:

AoT is violent? Please, most of the chows the titans do is offscreen. Sure, some blood squirts out but you never see anything gruesome. It's rated G compared to Samurai X, the Fist of the North Star movie and Violence Jack.

Rurouni Kenshin wasn't overly violent, but anything is G rated compared to Fist of the North Star and Violence Jack.

I was talking about Trust and Betrayal, not the Rurouni Kenshin TV series. When people talk about how violent shonen battles are I just roll my eyes. If the violence happens offscreen, even if it's heavily-implied, it doesn't count as far as I'm concerned. Megazone 23 is violent, Fullmetal Alchemist, even though infrequent, had guts to actually animate some intense images such as spoiler[Envy stabbing Ed through the chest].

Nowadays the only things that receive such treatment are mostly non-human characters, so when people get hardons for some monster/demon/creature thing getting hurt in One Punch Man, I look to Black Lagoon: Roberta's Bloodtrail for the actual gore. A girl was chainsawing a guy for crying out loud.

I don't actively search for strong violence, I just don't label things as what they aren't.

Greed1914 wrote:

do have to point out that the animated superhero movies for Warner tend to be in the PG-13 area, and the upcoming animated version of The Killing Joke will be rated R. Now, if we're talking about what it on TV, that tends to be something else. I think Warner has essentially divided its superhero cartoons according to format. TV shows, which appear on Cartoon Network, which is normally considered kids' network gets more kid-oriented content. Movies, which necessitate a purchase of some kind, get targeted towards an older audience.

I wish this was a trend, but then we have in said "retail category" duds like Justice League vs. Teen Titans (where they think making it "anime like" is adding a Sailor Moon Transformation sequence" *facepalm*

The bottom line is that ok, we got sporadically some genuine animation that can be on the same level as anime (Avatar anyone?), but then we compare that to the 30+ serie (10+ 24 minutes episodes EACH) we get eacxh season of the year and even if half of those are not good, there is still a HUGE gap, heck, I can't name one non japanese series that ever has had the six episode OVA treatment that was so popular in the 90s in Japan (and I at least superheroes are popular enough ATM to deserve such treatment).

Merxamers wrote:

Brent Allison wrote:

So which studio cuts production first?

Yeah, that's the obvious problem. The current level of production doesn't seem sustainable, and yet obviously no studio wants to produce less product. It's a dilemma.

The problem are not in the studio. In almost every anime production the studio is a small part of the Production Committee. as long as there are products to promote (BD, manga, LN, figurines, etc) and people (otaku) that buy them the numbers of anime for season will stay at this high.

Basically it can be said the survival of the studios are in the hands of the hundreds of thousands otaku in Japan. And with less people marring and staying single i think the number of otaku will be stable for a while if not increasing. So for some time anime will stay this high.
How much time? Who knows?

And man, how i miss Looney Tunes. I can't stand watch most if the western animation nowadays.Its suppose to be funny but i can't find it funny.

Dop.L wrote:

It's one of those things where if you go back some way you find that animation wasn't 'for the kids', old Warner Brothers "Merrie Melodies" which featured parodies of top film stars of the period, Tom & Jerry's "Mouse in Manhattan" which totally parodies George Gershwin's music.
Speaking of which, remember that Tom and Jerry episode where Tom gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes off to kill himself? That actually happened.

Unlike the freakish, insular, often fumigated in-house frat-clubs that make up cable animation today, old vintage cartoons literally saw their feedback from an audience directly, by selling themselves to be shown in theaters along with the Selected Shorts and newsreels.
Warner would show a Bugs Bunny cartoon before Bette Davis or James Cagney, MGM would show Tom & Jerry before Ronald Colman or Gene Kelly, United Artists played a Pink Panther before 60's James Bond, and Walt Disney sold Mickey Mouse with RKO's Orson Welles. They had to be sold to a mainstream adult audience, since after the 30's, most adults would take a good laugh before the feature, but wouldn't sit still for cute mice.
(Something Warner refined having to make the Private Snafu shorts' humor more savvy and burlesque-ish for servicemen, which is about as un-kiddy an audience as you can get--Warner animators always tell the story of how 30's Chuck Jones was still doing cloying heart-tugging "cute" MGM/Silly Symphony toons for prestige value, and it wasn't until their wartime output that he finally got the other animators' message of "Be funny!")

The fact that Hanna & Barbera took their Tom & Jerry studio (along with many of the MGM characters) to television, and gave work to old Warner and Fleischer animators at the same time studios were closing their Shorts departments, has animation experts saying that the "kiddy" Yogi Bear cartoons may have literally saved cartoons from going out of existence.

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