Some Anime is for Children

I want to share one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis.

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

This quote can be relevant to a lot of disputes that happen on the modern Internet.  I of course want to bring this into Anime.

There are a lot of American Anime fans who've greatly tied their love of Anime to appreciating that in Japan there is less of a perception that Animation is inherently for Children.  And that is indeed apart of what I like, many of my favorite Anime are ones you absolutely shouldn't show to small children, and some more you probably shouldn't.

However this results in there being some of us, a minority of the overall total I'm sure, probably no proper respectable AniTuber, but still some who have trouble accepting that some Anime is indeed for kids.  Anime refers to all Animation produced in Japan, and Japan has children who need to be kept entertained on Saturday and Sunday mornings just as much as American kids do.

I have seen both Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z referred to as shows that "stupid western studios tried to turn into kids shows".  In Japan both of those are kids shows, that they did things American (and Canadian) network censors didn't find appropriate for children doesn't change that.  Japan simply has different standards.

I said different standards, not lower.  While there is a certain type of "sexual" content Japan may be less uptight about then America, there are other things that I bet 90s American kids shows could get away with easier, especially pre-Columbine.  Chiefly I think there is a certain type of "realistic" violence you could see on Batman: The Animated Series that probably wouldn't have flown on a Toei produced Shonen.  Battle Shonen may be technically violent, but it's so cartoony and distant from the way people hurt each other in real life that BTAS isn't.

Of course there is the occasional Bat-Nerd in denial that BTAS was a kids show, it aired on Fox Kids, just grow up and accept that you like a kids show.

Today I am concerned that too many Millennials with this attitude are influencing how Shoujo and Shonen Anime get Localized in the opposite direction of what plagued old 4kids and DiC Localizations.  Yashahime should be a fairly kid friendly show, but the Dub has some profanity laced into it that really feels out of place.

And then there is the fact that Toonami has been folded into Adult Swim.  Back in my day those were totally separate Cartoon Network blocks.  Toonami was founded on the very same two above mentioned Anime I've seen people deny the Kids show status of, while Adult Swim was where you went for Lupin III and Cowboy Bebop.  It seems occasionally Toonami accidently got a show that should have been Adult Swim from the start like Tenchi Muyo, but mostly it remained a bloc for Teens at the oldest.

I guess the reason for this is partly that today many Adults are Nostalgic for Toonami.  However this doesn't change that it is inherently wrong to put the localizations of modern Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece and My Hero Academia in a timeslot where their real intended age demographic are told they shouldn't watch them.