Why is high fantasy such an underused genre when it comes to modern cartoons?

Why is high fantasy such an underused genre when it comes to modern cartoons?
Seems like high fantasy, or really just fantasy in general, would work great in animated form but you don't really see it used much outside of really shitty shows from the 80's and a handful of movies.

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High concept fiction doesn't work well in TV, sci fi was a hard seller for a long while and still the sci fi we have in TV today is kind of tame.
I will love a high fantasy cartoon in the hands of the right creators but that won't happen soon

>High concept fiction doesn't work well in TV
Why though? Too much reliance on an overarching plot? Too much lore that needs to be addressed?

Depending on how you define high fantasy it's arguably one of the more notable genres in animation, as a lot of Disney films could count as high fantasy: Snow White, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Black Cauldron, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan, Atlantis, Brother Bear, Tangled, Brave, Frozen, and Moana all could be considered high fantasy to some extent.

I'd love to see an animated fantasy-inspired cartoon on SyFy.

Problem is, many kids that grew up in the past 10+ years or are growing up now tend to look more towards science or logic-oriented explanations after the social standardization of internet access they've come to accept has become the norm.

"High concept" in regards to entertainment means the opposite of what you think it does. Star Wars is high concept, LotR is not.

Yes to all of that plus the average TV executive thinks viewers are morons.

So what word could I use to describe "Ideas that require lots of explanation beforehand"?

I think you're confusing "sword and sorcery" with "high fantasy" mate

>Problem is, many kids that grew up in the past 10+ years or are growing up now tend to look more towards science or logic-oriented explanations after the social standardization of internet access they've come to accept has become the norm.

In terms of money, Harry Potter is the third largest media franchise ever.

high fantasy usually implies the use of magic is somewhat common place.

For example, in Brave, while everyone 'believed' magic existed, Merida was among the few to have actually witnessed it and it's effects, nevermind meeting someone who could wield it. (and given it's Scotland and her eccentric nature, it seems like the Witch may have even been fey rather than human, and the idea of mortals wielding magical powers is part of high fantasy)

Aladdin and Hercules would count a bit more, especially if you get into their animated series.

I feel it's also because, in the end, network executives decide what gets on the air or not.

And when you throw things like Fantasy in front of them, they have no idea what to expect. They're primitive minds are confused and they don't know how to market it!

They just barely grasp science fiction, and it's only been the surge of Marvel Movies that allowed super hero stories to start to break (back) into TV.

"Complex" would be the first word to spring to mind, but that doesn't necessarily entail a lot of explanation before hand nor does a lot of backstory imply a complex tale.

Peter Pan and The Black Cauldron absolutely, but those other just seem to have some small fantastical elements in them without being outright high fantasy.

>High fantasy is defined as fantasy set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than "the real", or "primary" world.[citation needed] The secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical element

Developed lore is something that pretty much all TV viewers don't have the time or interest to invest in a single fictional universe.

Fleshing out something with a lot of lore usually takes a combination of books, games, and then TV shows. Just look at GoT. Do you really think any of the viewers of the show have ever picked up A Song of Ice and Fire? Maybe like 10% of them, but the vast majority are just in it for the violence and sex scenes; they couldn't give less of a shit about actual structure within the fictional realm.

That would be high and low magic. The actual definition of high and low fantasy - fictional setting versus real world setting - is more or less useless in defining a genre.

It should also be noted, OP, that with the popularity of some of things people have mentioned, and HBO's Game of Thornes, Fantasy is gaining footholds in mainstream entertainment.

Indeed on the children's end of things, Star vs. The Forces of Evil seems to increasingly shift focus from Earth to the fantasy worlds Marco and Star find themselves in.

There may yet be hope one day for a TES animated series focusing on the adventures of a sly but luckless khajiit.

With a series finale where they inhale a crapload of skooma and achive CHIM.

youtube.com/watch?v=08I4UCKsA8E

>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
>Sleeping Beauty
>Sword in the Stone
>Little Mermaid
>Beauty and the Beast
>Brother Bear
>Tangled
>Frozen
>Moana
>small fantastical elements

The first HP book came out in 1997.
That's 20 years ago (i.e. much more than 10).

It only blew up into what it is after the movies came out. If it remained a book series, J.K. Rowling probably wouldn't have even become a multi-millionaire.

But really how much do you really need to explain right off the bat?
Everyone these days knows what and elf is, you drive to the most backwater hick town you can find and ask basic shit about fantasy and you'll hear "elves, they's dem pointy eared magic fellers from the movies, right?"
If you don't try to make some absolutely alien concept where all the characters are sentient insects suddenly losing their minds and becoming violent husks and the main character is a soulless abomination created for the sole purpose of destroying a god then folk will get the basics of the plot right away, and the more unique and complex stuff can be slowly bled into the show.

The main thing keeping them from being high fantasy though is that they're all set on Earth (or something damn close to it) where magic isn't a commonplace thing.

>obsession over rather pointless genre titles

What is it you actually want to see? Give a concept and work around it.

The fuck? The movies were massive best sellers, user. They were all over the place in schoolyards well before the movies even came out.
There were 4 books before the first film even came out.
Many claiming the books would be mainstays for a long time.

You really can't start something with a lot of lore solely from a TV show and no other media to explain said lore. You just proved my point by reaffirming that you shouldn't try to explain a lot right off the bat.

When you stick to a simple formula for fantasy or sci-fi on TV, it gets boring and predictable pretty quickly. Usually within 2-3 seasons. Then, the show starts loosing viewers because they got bored of the repetitiveness. Then, whatever network was hosting drops them for fear of profit loss. It happens all the time. The only ones that tend to survive are the ones with moderate pre-established fanbases with pre-established lore (ex. Ash vs. Evil Dead, GoT, Walking Dead, etc) or the ones that newly establish or completely redefine boundaries of a TV show genre (ex. American Horror Story, Simpsons, Twilight Zone, etc).

The book series was popular as hell by the time the first movie was released. I don't know why you're not counting the films - of which there are now two series, the dozen or so video games, the additional books, the theme park, or the stage play.

You get a ton of overlap and nitpicking when you try to distinguish genre using that rule; it's a setting distinction. Even then you still run into the issue of the absurdity of defining genre according to whether or not your non-realist work is using non-fictional environs. You can change genres by changing place names.

I'm not counting the films because that was the point I was trying to make about establishing lore through a single medium in regards to TV shows. Sure, HP would be a good example if there was a TV show set in the HP universe, but there's not. Not yet, at least.

Two anthology series and sitcom didn't redefine the boundaries of a TV show genre.

Either way, the point user was trying to make is that there is no need to infodump on your viewers. The need for backstory is contextual to the events within the story, lore for the sake of lore is trivia. For the most part all you need to do is give your audience an idea of what is driving your characters and/or setting and you'll be fine to get specific later on. If you can't tell a story with first giving your audience detailed lore it usually means that your story should be the lore itself - or you're a shitty storyteller.

As another user pointed out, there were already several HP books published by the time the first movie was released. The book series itself more or less dumps the reader, alongside the main character, into the wizarding world without explanation or context, slowing filling out the history as it progresses.

The best you will probably find is either the various star wars shows or the marvel shows.

Agents of Shield is an example of something that borrows from an established lore, but it isn't required to view the show. Same with all the clone wars and other star wars shows. They are fairly self-contained and explain all the contents within the show itself.

It's like jumping into the second movie in a series. They are, almost always, designed in a way that lets you watch the movie without any prior knowledge. Hell, even HPs books that sort of this way. Each always starts with a basic intro and even who the character is.

Swords and sorcery, elves and dwarves, etc.
You know, standard Tolkiensque fantasy, I'm sorry, I didn't realize high fantasy was such a vague term to some folk.

this entire thread is evidence of how rather trivial it is.

Say what you want about Steven Universe, but it managed to establish it's lore very quickly and easily over just a few short episodes with no outside media.
Over The Garden Wall managed to establish its world over 10 episodes, again, with no outside media
Hell, even the nonsensical Adventure Time eventually managed to build up an entire world with an easy to follow timeline over several seasons without any real supplementary media.

You introduce the basic story fast and in easily understood terms like "a kid and his magic dog go on adventures" and then later throughout the series build up on stuff like "it's set in a post nuclear holocaust world, an inter dimensional death incarnation wants to kill everyone, everything is part of a repeating cycle stemming from four basic elements, etc."

SU is also a good example of building lore in small increments. The show was dropping bits of background info and character history by episode 2.

Weird question along these lines: if one were to do a DnD (or rather Greyhawk) or Elder Scrolls or Tolkien-esque setting, who would be a good lead character to help build a view point into the lore for the audience.

My first thought is that a mage character would be the best since mages would deal most with the aspects of the world and it's lore not intuitively guessed by the audience.

But on the flipside, the mage could easily work as a mentor type who explains these things to another character.

Or I suppose if you really want to mix things up:
>Main character is an amateur mage
>They travel with a super seasoned veteran warrior who has seen about everything and while they can't use magic, they understand the principles and theories pretty well.

Is that Polish Katia?

I wanna fug that kitty