Over the years the stigma against cartoons aimed at mainstream Western adults has lessened
However in the West adult centric cartoons are all comedy based, nothing serious at all?
Why do adults in Western countries not enjoy animation that tells a serious story?
Is this bait?
When your animation has primarily been aimed at children for several decades, it forms a cultural stigma that's pretty hard to break.
Adult humor cartoons get by mostly because making people laugh has always been something cartoons in the west were good for.
Adult action cartoons do exist, but the storytelling medium of animation in the west is still stuck in old mentalities of catering to children. Probably when this generation gets older, it'll become a bit more accepted as a catch all medium (at least more than it is now), but until then, it is what it is.
I've actually been thinking bout this too, user.
Compared to Japan's animation output, shows in the West seem to have less variety in terms of genre. The only successful American animated drama I can think of is Bojack, and that's still a comedy-drama.
France's "Lastman" felt so fresh to me because it tells engaging story in an animated, Western context. Could it ever happen in the States? I imagine that the expensiveness of animation is a huge obstacle and it's cheaper to make primetime comedies.
what do you mean by "serious"?
does it have to be realistic?
dramatic?
what makes a work serious according to you, and why would a serious movie be overall better than a not serious one?
The 90ies had high quality cartoons all across the networks.
As a result a generation grew up in the 90ies that instead of "outgrowing" cartoons and cross over to sitcoms, actually stuck with cartoons.
Now they are young adults and there is clearly a demand.
Live action shows in America cost more than animated ones.
Samurai Jack Season 5 might be the start of a new chapter in animation
OP basically meant that western cartoons are primariy aimed at children while Anime is broad and covers most ages
Dramas in general are fairly boring and so grounded you may as well use live action. Animation is for effects you couldn't otherwise provide.
God I hope so
and why would that be a better use of animation?
there are tons of serious movies and stories out there, making them animations will not make them better
I see it a lot around...like they want to legitimase animation as an adult taste and adults cannot enjoy "foolish" stories, they have to be serious and the characters should behave like real people and all that shit.
Live action requires filming locations, sets, props, costumes and effects, all of which are much easier and cheaper to accomplish in animation, especially if it's historical and/or takes place in a foreign country. Animation also lacks the artifice of actors and allows characters to exist as themselves, and allows for techniques that wouldn't be possible or sensible in live action.
And anyway, animation has no purpose to it. It doesn't have to be limited to things that can't be done in live eaction.
Something to balance out the current "Animation" that kids watch.
Comedy works well with tragedy, Up and down etc.
I think you're missing the point
Animation is an art form. Yet it's limited to children in the west
I wanted an Ignition series movie (Or cartoon).....
Is that too much to ask for?
Because nothing is better in this world than a good story. A cartoon, a book, a movie, any story that can make a man feel human through genuine emotions, positive or negative, is a genuine story.
Have you ever put down a book and thought "God damn, that shit was good" or walked out of a movie theater and thought "my god that was great" or watched the series finale to a show and just cried yourself to sleep that night because it was that good?
>inb4 Sup Forums don't got fuckin' emotions
Adults in the West, people in capitalist, democratic societies, don't get to live much of a story. We don't get to take grand adventures whenever we want, and no one ever does anything they do in the more fictitious works. We're all just going about our day to day grind, working from 8 'til 4, and never truly experiencing the sheer force of love that we see in these tv shows and movies. To see these stories and to project ourselves into them is a magical experience that most take for granted.
Adults in the West DO enjoy a good story, we love genuine shit like that. Well, most do anyway. The problem comes when you have a place like America where everything we see is either comedic in nature or inferior to our way of living. Satire becomes the only thing we see so shows like South Park or Family Guy, the shows that like to make fun of everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) start to fare better because they are more closely related to that mindset.
It's not a question of whether or not the west likes genuine stories and why, because we do, it's why we love comedies more.
I'm not entirely sure myself, but I suppose public/general perception of the medium still has a huge factor. The only adult western animation that's been successful is comedy stuff; ergo, all adult animation = comedy. Bakshi, though I think find him immensely untalented and kind of a hack, at least *tried* to do something different, but it still didn't have any mainstream appeal or significance.
Here in the west, if you want to make an animated project aimed for adults, you'll need it to be able to do something that live action *can't* in the context of the show. The Simpsons, Futurama, et. all can deliver jokes and stories you can't really do in live action. You could probably do a live action King of the Hill given how it was mostly grounded, but it being animated still allowed for leeway and more freedom...and also gave it more lasting power.
If you want a drama animated series, you need for it to be able to deliver a story in a way simply getting some actors and a soap opera set *can't.*
It should be clarified that European animation is more serious than American animation, so it's usually best to talk about American rather than Western animation.
When you're doing a drama though, you want people to relate, and that's much easier to do with actual actors as opposed to trying to juxtapose a storyboard, animation team, and voice talent.
Costs don't really matter as much as final profits, so even if animation is cheaper, if it doesn't bring in the money, it's all moot.
People do relate to animated drama, and it does bring in the money. In Japan.
Much of what's become popular in film (fantasy, cape flicks, etc) could be done far more fantastically with a medium not restricted by location filming, high budget cgi and, you know, human anatomical limitations
Lord of the Rings/Hobbit could have been better animated, well as long as they go the Redline route and handraw it with no CGI faggotry.
They tried and it was a huge failure
The Japanese still prefer live action dramas to anime drama.
If a manga that gets adapted on screen is a drama, the live action adaptation will be more popular and the one everyone focuses on about there, and not the anime version.
That may generally be true, but anime dramas have been popular too. And something doesn't have to be the most popular thing around... with live action people never stop to think that not all of it is popular, they just assume everyone is into it and everyone is watching even if it's only like 2% of the population. Anime on the other hand is expected to be overwhelmingly popular.
SOOOOPEERMAAAAN
The most popular movie in Japan last year was Your Name, an animated drama
Are you implying it would have been more successful if it were live-action?
Unless there's now a huge wave of animated drama shows and movies following up which all also become just as critically acclaimed and have a similar success range, it will for now remain the exception that proves the rule.
Source?
this
agree
Older Euro here who no longer watches TV or any cartoon series.
I'd say older adults watch far less animation than children because
of time pressure and that they get the same, if not more, story drama
from the written form. Radio plays are also preferable as they
don't interrupt most chores.
As for serious animations I remember these:
- Aeon Flux
- The Maxx
- If Indian is Western then several works based on sagas like the Mahabharat
- Plague Dogs
- Watership Down
- When the Wind Blows
- Monkey Dust
- although somewhat humorous, Coonskin and Heavy Traffic should qualify
- various one-off French animations
You fucks remember that Samurai Jack ran for 4 years prior to this without revolutionizing the genre right?
Pretty much what this guy said. We've been stuck in the bullshit mentality that cartoons are for children, unless it's humor shit. Then it's okay for adults.
The core problem being the culture of the west views cartoons as less a medium, and more a genre.
Post failed western efforts to make dramatic animation
But now is marketing itself as more adult, just by the fact that it is on Adult Swim.
I don't know why Rock and Rule failed so badly. It wasn't 'amazing' by any means, the story was dumb as hell and the end felt rushed.
But fuck, did it bring good music to the table from big names. The animation wasn't mindblowing, but so much technical skill put into it. And Akira had yet to come out so there wasn't really a top notch animated movie standard yet.