The website is not available at the moment.
The website is currently unavailable. ironically enjoy Rick and Morty and you can appreciate the artistry of South Park but the majority of adults in the US don’t take animation seriously and the industry has been slow to catch up
So lately, it feels like a full-on cartoon Armageddon is happening online. With Warner Brothers taking down Looney Tunes, it’s cause for alarm. Despite the pandemic’s animation boom, the broader landscape looks bleaker than ever. Is the industry dropping a giant anvil on animated television? Let’s find out.
The year 2020 saw an animation boom as live action shows stopped in their tracks. Animation was finally King thanks to a boom in green lightings. The groundwork had already been laid for adult animations ascendance. Streaming services had to expand into other niche and adult animation seemed perfect for Millennials.
But what goes up must come down. With Netflix’s recent cancellations of popular animated shows and AMC’s cancellation of Pantheon, it feels like adult animation is dying. Unfortunately, American adults don’t understand animation as a medium, and the industry has been slow to catch up. Sainin is for boys between 15 and 24, shoujo is for girls 10 to 18, and Joe says for adult women. Kodomo muque is for kids, though plenty of people enjoy anime outside their target demos. Not only does anime cross every age demographic, it also crosses every genre, from adventure to action, comedy to slice of life, drama to fantasy, supernatural to magic, mystery to horror, psychological to sci-fi, and romance with subgenres like game, cyberpunk, demons, harem, kids, martial arts, historical, mecha, music, parody, police, military, post-apocalyptic, school, sports, super power, vampire, and tragedy.
Because Millennials are anime’s largest demographic, there’s been a rise in more adult Millennial stories, like the excellent “Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement”. Clearly, creating anime that appeals to a wide and diverse audience has paid off - approximately 75% of everyone in Japan either watches anime regularly or reports having seen anime recently. Japan is proof that it’s possible for animation to exist as a medium that has something to offer everyone.
So, can American animation make a comeback? Creators in the U.S. have taken steps to expand what American animation can be, with mold-breaking shows like “Undone” and “Primal”, and American Originals like “Castlevania” and “Blood of Zeus”. However, so far this year, only 10 new adult shows are set to debut in 2023, in contrast to 23 in 2022 and almost 40 in 2021. The current status of adult animation is a far cry from the lofty heights just two years ago.
We’d love to be proven wrong about this, but what do you think? Can adults take back cartoons, like they tried to take back the capital? Or should we give up and renew our subscriptions to Crunchyroll? Let us know what you think in the comments.