Ask John: Why is Animation Associated with Children’s Entertainment?

Question:
Why does society consider animation childish? At the end of the day, objectively speaking, animation, Japanese or otherwise, is nothing more than another medium for artistic expression. Any idea can be conveyed or expressed, adult or childish, through animation. Akira, Graveyard of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm testify to that as they are enjoyed by adults as well as children. So why is animation only considered for children?

Answer:
Old habits die hard. Ultimately, the near universal presumption that animation is a medium for children’s entertainment is an association rooted in coincidence and circumstance more than any logical reason. From the beginning of humankind until the late 1800s, two-dimensional sequential art was not necessarily relegated strictly to children’s entertainment. The earliest conventional comics were political satire cartoons intended for adults. Newspapers around the world still publish political cartoons on a daily basis. When cinematic film was invented in the late 1800s, it was immediately utilized as a medium for adult entertainment because it was able to capture moving images of real life and real people. However, seemingly by coincidence, many of the earliest hand-drawn animated films were created for children, for example, Seitaro Kitayama’s 1918 animated film Urashima Taro, based on the traditional Japanese folktale. Animator Kenzo Masaoka consciously tried to utilize hand-drawn animation as a storytelling medium rather than specifically a children’s entertainment, but many of his animated films are child-like, featuring cute talking animals, cute insects, and winged fairies, further contributing to the impression that animation as most suitable for children.

Paramount Pictures introduced Felix the cat to viewers in 1919. Felix instantly became associated with children’s entertainment. Walt & Roy Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923 to create animated children’s entertainment. Disney’s popular and successful early films were exported worldwide and forced Japanese animators to also produce children’s animated films in order to compete. American animator Max Fleischer animated Betty Boop in 1930 and launched the Popeye the Sailor animated shorts in 1932. The Japanese Navy commissioned the Geijutsu Eigasha studio in 1943 to produce the war propaganda film Momotaro’s Sea Eagles, a nationalistic film based on another traditional Japanese children’s fairy tale. The modern anime era began in 1958 when Toei Animation released its first color anime feature film, Hakujaden. That Disney influenced film included cute dancing animal sidekicks and was based on a classic Chinese fairy tail. Although adult-oriented anime did appear in the early 20th century, for example, Kenzo Masaoka’s 1933 film about marital infidelity Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, a large percentage of early animated films in both Japan and America just happened to be either targeted at children or were based on traditional folk tales most associated as children’s stories.

The modern animation era that began in the early 1960s did have adult-oriented anime like 1963’s Sennin Buraku and 1964’s 0-sen Hayato, but the majority of the era’s animation, and its most prominent titles, including Tetsuwan Atom in Japan, and The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo in America were perceived as children’s entertainment. High profile Disney animated pictures including Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book further cemented such an instinctive affiliation between animated film and children’s entertainment that by the 1970s, when animated films like Fritz the Cat (1972) and Kanashimi no Belladonna (1973) tried to tell adult stories with animation, the films were considered counter-culture and provocative. Because the majority of the world’s animated films from the 1920s through 1960s had been either children’s films or films with childlike characteristics, by the 1970s animation worldwide was inextricably associated with children’s entertainment.

Human nature instinctively associates realism with adult rationalism and simplified, stylized artistic illustration with a childlike impressionism that’s unable to distinguish subtle nuance and value. Although people rationally realize that animation is an artistic and literary medium just as capable of expressing any narrative that can be told through any other medium, our unavoidable natural instinct is to recognize that illustration is farther removed from reality than photography is. So animation is inherently less “real” than photography, and therefore less rational, intelligent, and serious. By extension, what isn’t rational, intelligent and serious is irrational and childish. Thus even strictly adult-oriented 2D animation like Perfect Blue, Patlabor, or Urotsukidoji still instinctively feels more childlike than anything shot in live-action film. Animation fans and film scholars make a conscious effort to reject instinctive associations and traditional indoctrination in order to accept the idea that animation is an equal but different medium for cinematic storytelling compared to live-action film. But average people worldwide who don’t make a conscious effort to reject instinct and experience naturally and instinctively associate animation with childhood fantasy and a non-adult sense of irrationality and unreality.