Fanta Grape said:
Ashannon Blackthorn said:
It's just a medium. Look up Bakshi or half the Studio Ghibi lineup and you can see it's all not just kiddie fluff.
Grave of the Fireflies. Sigh.
No_Remainders said:
I swear a thread identical to this was done quite literally last week.
and yes. But then again, every thread is repeated in the escapist. "Your avatar is now...", "Is it just me or...", "Why do people like...", etc.
Every forum ever repeats threads. The Escapist is hardly any different.
OT: The reason why is namely because of the rise of television animation in the 50s and 60s a time known as the "Dark Age of Animation", due to very strict censors trying to be family friendly, as well as the collapse of theatrical animated shorts (which were made for adults as well as children; while heavily dealing in slapstick, there were often mature themes like alcohol, tobacco and, in some rare cases, suicide). This has resulted in the "Animation Age Ghetto" as TV Tropes likes to call it. To make a long story short, full-quality animation was expensive, but limited, low quality animation was not. This was perfect for TV, as it was even cheaper than live action, and since they figured "kids don't know what quality is", that's where most limited animation productions should aim for. And since then, animation producers basically started aiming for kids, making merchandise driven series that would almost guarantee a profit, especially in toy sales.
This is becoming less prevalent nowadays, especially since television standards have loosened, and producers realized that the parents often stuck watching these cartoons were an audience in and of themselves. Then, they started branching out again, and thus, for the most part, the Ghetto has crumbled, though there are plenty of people who feel that it's still "kiddy" stuff, or that even animation supposedly targeted towards adults is still "immature", due to the more outrageous and downright silly nature of some animated comedies (Family Guy, Metalocalypse, Squidbillies and South Park are some cited examples by others' words, not mine).
This phenomenon is not unlike the way comic books are seen as children's stories by some nowadays; the Golden Age of Comics featured some rather harsh things (Batman's debut issue had him kick a man into a vat of acid, and some comics had him use a gun), but when the Comics Code began to bear down on darker elements, the Silver Age was ushered in, and almost exclusively targeted children. This also occurred in the 50s and 60s, so it's certainly no coincidence. In the 70s, things loosened, and well, that turns into it's own story there.
TL;DR: The 50s and 60s were not kind to animation or comic books, therefore the "kiddy" conception that people have today.
