One of my personal bugaboos is people who think all animation is for children, and judge adults for watching it. These people make the classic mistake of thinking that any genre is a monolith and that if you sample a bit of it then that’s all you need to know about it. Just like with different groups of human beings, there is no genre of anything, from movies, to music, to art, that is all the same. Just becasue you were exposed to some Rap songs 20 years ago, or watched a couple of Slasher films back in the 80s, does not mean you know all there is to know about Rap music or Horror movies.
Well, some animation is definitely not for kids, and quite frankly, if you sat your five year old, (or even your ten year old) down in front of any of the “cartoons” that I’m about to mention, I would question your parenting skills. These look cute and harmless but they are not Disney and Pixar films. They contain mature adult themes and subject matter that kids simply won’t get, or maybe they will get it on a certain level, but aren’t mature enough to understand it, and in at least a couple of cases some of these are actually traumatizing nightmare fuel!
Chainsaw Man
Chainsaw man is AWESOME!!! This is the wildest, coolest, craziest, most pathos shit I’ve ever seen (and trust me I have seen some crazy shit on a screen)! I have not read the Manga on which this series is based and have no plans to since I don’t have time for that. (I’m already collecting a ton of books I’m supposed to be reading and I’m not reading them.) One of the reasons I don’t watch a whole lot of series anime is because its hard keeping track of all the characters and another reason is that is an investment of time I’m getting too old to indulge. I’m much more apt to fall asleep than finish a series, but I finished this one. It’s easier keeping track of characters in live-action two hour chunks. I have also heard that the Manga has more sexual content, something which is mostly just strongly hinted at in the series.
Chainsaw Man exists in a world where all kinds of human concepts can also exist as physical demons, often based on human fears. The more humans fear the object, or concept, the more likely it is to manifest a demon form. There are plant, marine life, and vegetable demons (and who outchere getting scared of tomatoes? I don’t care for raw tomatoes too much but I don’t think that amounts to an actual fear.), apparently there is a chainsaw demon, an eternity demon (fear of time), and zombie demons, and the Big Bad is the elusive Gun Demon. The size and the power of the demon depends on how scared people are of that particular concept, so you can get cute puppy-sized, chainsaw demons like Pochito, and demons of massive size and power like the Gun Demon (apparently there are enough people who are afraid of tomatoes that that particular demon can reach a massive size, although it seems completely powerless, and enough people are afraid of bats that that demon is pretty damn huge and powerful).
Random human beings can be possessed by these demons or form alliances with demons for power. They usually have to pay the demon in the form of some kind of body part, an eye, an arm, a kidney. Sometimes human can fuse with demon bodies (although that’s more rare) and that’s the case for the lead character, Denji.
Denji is a typical teenage boy, but he formed a friendship with a cute, tiny, chainsaw demon, named Pochito, when he was a little kid. He grew up trying to pay off his late father’s thousands of dollars of debt to the local mob boss by killing small-time, minor demons like the Tomato Monster. He’s so poor from his debts, that he has sold off various body parts to survive, and can only dream about having fruit condiments on his toast. Like a lot of teenage boys he also dreams about having a girlfriend, touching boobs, and just having friends, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Anyway, the mob boss betrays him and kills him, but Pochito saves his life by bonding with his body, giving Denji the ability to form working chainsaws of his arms and face.
In this society, demons can show up anytime, anywhere, so naturally a bureaucracy has sprung up around professional demon hunting. After he is revived, Denji gets recruited by the very sexy and manipulative Makima, the head of the demon hunting Ministry of Public Safety, and Denji starts killing larger, more important, demons, and living some of his best life. He gets to live in a house instead of a shack, and is so happy to be able to put jam, jelly, and marmalade on his toast, that he can’t contain himself. Along the way, he gets partnered with various co-workers, some of whom are demons, or like himself, demon adjacent. The strength of the series though lies in the relationships between the characters.
There’s his mentor, Aki, who is suffering from the trauma of watching all of his family, friends, and colleagues get killed by the demons they fight, but most especially the Gun Devil which killed his entire family. And then there is the demon possessed Power, (that is her name), who is my automatic favorite. She seems to be everyone’s favorite character since she appears to be pure Id, who never speaks in anything less than a commands or declarations. And then of course, there are the various demons which are horrifying enough as concepts, but in demon form are sort of like looking at biblically accurate angels.
The reason why I say this isn’t a show for kids is because it doesn’t have much resemblance to anything Disney has ever made. There is an incredible amount of violence in this series and occasionally some disturbing sexual elements. There’s not really any sexual activity in the show, but characters talk about it a lot, and sometimes it’s …weird, like when Power allows Denji to feel up her boobs as repayment for saving her cat from a demon. Yeah, I know.
Just keep in mind that this is a very graphic Horror series.
Bird Boy
This is not a movie for small children. I very much doubt its the kind of thing big children should be watching, also probably most adults. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one other than it looks very pretty and is unrelentingly melancholy. It’s not a feel-good type of movie really. It has a really strong focus on ecological issues, so there’s that, but while it was engaging, I cannot say I loved or enjoyed this. I liked looking at it.
The reason I found it so compelling to watch is because it is deeply surreal and you need to be ready for that. More than likely kids could probably watch this and think its cute, but it does have a lot of mature themes and even some gun violence in it. The lead character, named Birdboy, is always getting shot by the police because he is suspected of dealing drugs. After the destruction of an island where he used to live, he creates a safe place for himself with lots of other animals, singing birds, and a large tree. There is also a female involved named Dinky who, along with some animal friends, are trying to escape their dying island but can’t until they steal some more money. While doing that, she falls afoul of some rat-like creatures that require her to be saved by Birdboy. There’s a toy duck boat involved in these shenanigans.
This all sounds really cute but I wouldn’t call this movie fun.
The movie is so surreal I was unsure if some of it was imaginary or real, since a lot of the concepts (just like in Chainsaw Man) take the form of demons, (like a demon of drug addiction that takes the form of a giant spider.) Yes, there are adult themes like theft, and murder, and police brutality in this, but its hard to watch it because there’s cutesy animals in it.
This movie has kids in it but it’s not for kids!
Paprika
One of the reasons I say none of these cartoons are for little kids (mostly anybody under age twelve) is not because of the levels of sexuality or violence, but because many of them, while being very pretty, present concepts and ideas that are beyond the understanding of children. They can watch them but they won’t understand it beyond the action scenes. Paprika is a perfect example of this. There isnt anything overtly sexual or particularly violent about it, but the plot is distinctly philosophical in intent. I had to watch it twice to get an understanding, and although I’ve watched it a few more times since then, I still have the impression that there’s a lot of stuff I’m just missing because I keep getting new insights every time the visuals pull me back in.
Paprika is a surrealist fever dream. It wasn’t until I watched it a third time that I wasn’t so distracted by the imagery that I could understand the plot. Paprika is the name of a dream therapist, and the alter ego of a woman who works for the company that invented the machine (called the DC Mini), which allows her to tap into the dreams of her psychiatric patients. Someone steals the device and begins using it to tap into the dreams of different scientists all over Tokyo, dreams which start to manifest in the real world, and drive people, Paprika, her alter ego, and other scientists, to insanity.
A lot of the movie is about unconscious desires and repressed and unrequited love, as certain characters fall in love or are obsessed with other characters, but feel they can’t express it. It is only through reconciling their real selves with their dream alter egos, that some of the characters are able to save the rest of Tokyo from the power obsessed madman, who thinks he’s protecting the creatures of the dream world from living humans.
See! It took me three watches of this movie just to get that plot, and I’m absolutely certain that, because I’m not from the culture in which this film was made, that I’m still missing a lot of subtext. For a kid, this movie isnt going to be anything but pretty images.
But you know, I could be wrong, and some kids will probably understand it better than me, since some mindsets are a product of adulthood. I’m reminded of when I watched Finding Nemo with my niece, who was about twelve at the time, and she understood details of the movie that totally escaped me, and that I must have been “too adult” to understand, so it’s possible that a kid could watch Paprika and understand it completely.
When the Wind Blows
I have never watched Grave of the Fireflies, the horribly depressing Ghibli film about two orphans trying to survive WW2 Japan, but if you liked (that’s a strong word) that movie than When the Wind Blows is just as emotionally devastating, and exists in a kind of dialogue with it. I knew a little bit about what was going to happen before watching it. I walked into it expecting it to be difficult to watch and I still was not ready. There have been quite a number of Disney cartoons that have brought me to tears over the past thirty years but I think this movie was the only one I’ve ever seen that moved me “beyond” tears. This was horrifying. It was a movie I had to sit with and contemplate for several days. It was a haunting experience and I’ve watched it exactly two times in my life.
Anyone who grew up during the Nuclear Determent Decade of the 80s will understand why I was so affected by this movie. We grew up under the constant heavy tension of nuclear annihilation happening any day, and I was a teenager at the time, in the very middle of my first existential crisis. When the Wind Blows is another one of the British movies about a nuclear strike hitting its country and sits in dialogue with the 1984 Threads, also a pretty harrowing experience.
The movie is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Raymond Briggs, which I read sometime in 92, or 93. and follows an elderly couple who are attempting to survive a nuclear strike on Britain with little to no understanding of what just occurred or how to protect themselves. The two of them are a typical English couple from the 80s, and are so hapless and ignorant about what has just happened to them that they just wander around in their irradiated home, contemplating when the proper authorities will arrive, getting sicker and sicker, and totally not understanding why they’re sick. And since we, the viewers, know more about what has just happened than they do, we are horribly aware of the fate they were not even remotely prepared for. It’s a film that’s difficult to watch because you like them so much, they are so cute and bumbling, the animation style is completely disarming, the events are so awful, and the two remain hopeful to the end.
No. Like Grave of the Fireflies, this is not a movie for children at all. You could watch it with teenagers, as long as there is a trigger warning of some kind before they watch it, and you would definitely need to have some type of discussion afterward.
Gyo: Fish Attack
There is a contingent of people who cannot seem to let go of the idea that just because something is animated, it must be for children. Movies like these defy all those qualifications. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack is a movie that is, most emphatically, not for children. I cannot stress that enough. I mean, you can let your kids watch it, (I’m not gonna tell you what to do) and they will certainly get it, because unlike Paprika, this movie is pretty easy to understand, more or less, but the movie is also very graphic, with a lot of body horror images, a plane crash, chase scenes, and at least one sex scene. A giant semi-mechanical shark chases people through the streets, a girl gets eaten by metal roaches, and people get turned into naked mechas powered by clouds of sentient gas, which all sounds as if it might be funny.
It’s not.
All of this imagery isnt just for titillation though. There is a deep ecological message underneath all of this along with messages about friendship and caring for others, and betrayal issues, and a smart teenager will probably get all of that, but most kids under fifteen or sixteen will probably just be traumatized. I was a reasonably bright fifteen year old, and I would’ve been bothered by this movie. Hell, I’m bothered by it as a grown woman!
This movie is the definition of nightmare fuel.
Unicorn Wars
One of the reasons that people might be confused about letting their kids watch movies like this (and Bird Boy) is because they look so cute and colorful. I haven’t had the chance to watch this movie yet, but as you can tell from the clip above, (and the synopsis I read), nothing about this movie is for children. Not the themes, not the imagery, and not the plot either. Unlike Gyo Fish Attack, which isn’t even trying to appeal to kids, this movie is like a grown-up that’s cosplaying as a kid. This is an adult war movie using teddy bears and unicorns.
This movie is like a cross between Full Metal Jacket and Watership Down, with Teddy Bears in a kind of boot camp, warring against their enemies, the Unicorns, in order to fulfill some kind of ancient prophecy. This and Bird Boy are movies where you watch some really cute little characters doing some fairly horrific shit to other cute little creatures and each other, so don’t say I didn’t warn you, when you watch this. If you find the sight of cutesy little creatures committing acts of extreme gore and violence against each other disturbing, then your kids should never be subjected to this either.
By the same director who brought you Birdboy, which should tell you all you need to know, really!
Geeking Out about It 