absolutangel64

I don’t understand how some of the cartoons shown on Adult Swim are the same cartoons that are shown to young children in Japan.

In case you don’t know, the cartoons shown on Adult Swim are geared more towards mature audiences. There is more violence, gore, and sexual content. It’s a far cry from Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, and thus is shown at late night when the kids are supposed to be asleep.

But that’s in America. In Japan, most of these cartoons are standard fanfare for young kids. Because they’re animated, contain outlandish and unrealistic situations, and are simple enough for underdeveloped minds to grasp, it is labeled as being suitable for children. Cartoons = kids (usually.)

Consider Full Metal Alchemist. I know that stuff is shown after school for the Japanese kids to watch after they finish their 11 hour days. But here it’s shown at ten at night. I don’t consider it very violent, but there are limbs that become torn off every now and then. And there are also some nasty innuendos, but those are very few and very far between. But it’s still a cartoon—about a boy with mechanical limbs and his brother, whose soul is trapped in a suit of armor. Tell me that entices you to go and copy the violence portrayed in the series.

If Japan shows a cartoon at 7:00 PM for the kids to watch, but the same cartoon is aired late at night in America—what does that mean? Does it mean Japan is less responsible about which messages bombard their youth, or does it mean that America has no faith in a child’s ability to percieve fact from fiction? Right from wrong? Is censorship necessarily beneficial?

I watch a lot of cartoons that would be aired on Adult Swim—that’s the F.O.B in me—and I think it’s a little unfair that certain Japanese cartoons are under such scruntiny just because their content is racier than most Americans are used to. But if you think about American cartoons, they are just as naughty and violent except that we have a tendency to downplay the maturity levels by using animals instead of actual people. Duck Tails, for instance, had these ducks walking around without pants on. That’s pornography! That should be wrong! And then that greedy ass Scrooge McDuck, swimming in his dirty money and spitting it out—you might as well teach a child to lick a subway station urinal.

And Donald Duck keeps getting blown up. And the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers crash their makeshift walnut airplane into the ground. Then all the members of Tiny Toons have been hit over the head with a blunt object at one point. But is that violent? No, because they’re animals that talk and wear clothes.

(Yet none of them wear pants.)

I guess the real problem is that parents of bad children do not want to admit that they’re children are bad—so they blame cartoons and video games and movies. Bad children will continue to be bad on their own accord. Good children will also be good on their own. It is a conscious choice not based on what they see on television, but what they experience in their own living, breathing environment.

So yeah…more Japanese cartoons during the day! Less American crap (like the oh so terrible Carmen Sandiego cartoon) during any hours people are awake!