Before we go any further: no, I’m not talking about pornography.  Thank you very much.  What I mean with this title is “animation not for kids”.  And that does not imply that there ought to be blood by the gallons, appalling violence, and a certain amount of considerably scantly dressed, good-looking women with rather flexible bodies and morals.  As crazy as it might sound, I’m actually thinking about the content.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is a good amount of rather decent animation out there, where the mere content can be summed up in two sentences.  Maybe one.  But there are also lots of works with more complex stories and themes, and as Japanese animation has already been showing for many, many years, there is no other limit to the degree of “depth” one can put into a plot for an animation production. Sure, rather than “the sky” being the limit, it will always be “the audience”, but bear with me for a moment here.

If we look at some Japanese productions, we’ll very soon find ourselves in the reign of “violent, sexy pics”.  True enough.  But let’s just look past that for a moment.  Take Neon Genesis Evangelion.  And now please leave away the violence and the gratuitous expositions of female anatomy, just for the sake of argument.  I believe we can all agree (to a certain extent, of course) that the plot of the story reaches certain depths that are not even common for Japanese animation.  Personally, my favorite moment is in the last episode, where pondering about the concept of “freedom”, the main protagonist is put into a completely empty space, and the “creator” (aptly voiced by his father) tells him “here you go, you’re free, nothing restrains you”.  At that point the protagonist complains that like that, there is nothing he can really do, at which an imaginary pencil (with sound-effect!) draws a line under his feet, and the creator announces “I made the earth for you.  Now you can walk around, but you lost some of your freedom, because you have to stand on it.”

Never mind the deep philosophical discussions I could get into from such concepts, it remains quite clear to me, that these are complex, intricate themes certainly not fit for a young audience.  Not because they are appalling, shocking or plain rude, but rather because they deal with complex and often very abstract things, which to a ten year old would be just plain boring.

The above example thus shows — in my opinion — a brilliant application of the medium of animation to a challenging subject and theme.  Basically, the way the matter was approached completely justified and endorsed the chosen medium, by having a hand-drawn character stand on a (quite literally) hand-drawn line.

So the question is, why don’t we see this more often?  Admittedly, the themes don’t always need to be so deep and existential as the one in the above example. Generally speaking, though, I believe there are many interesting stories which treat themes much more appropriate for a “grown-up” audience,  that could successfully be told through animation.  So why don’t such projects show up more often?

I blame stereotypes.  ”Animation is for kids”.  That’s what many are convinced of, so if anything is made with animation “it’s for kids” and thus the kids are dragged to see it and if it does not fit the audience, it’s always the maker’s fault.  Inversely, if it really, really is meant for “adults”, that very often narrows the audience to teenagers closing in to “adulthood” and craving for little more than violence and sex.  Don’t ask me why.

But if “the audience” could be convinced that there can also be animation for “average” grownups, without “shocking” content but rather with “interesting” or even “challenging” content … who knows, maybe the limit could really become “the sky”.