Changes in our Society...good or bad? Thoughts for discussion.

[mrs.b]

When I was small, some of my favorite shows earned disapproving looks from parents and other adults due to the violent content. ThunderCats were constantly battling Mumm-Ra. In Transformers, Autobots and Decepticons were in an eternal pitched battle. Voltron's entire purpose was to fight. Even some of the girlie shows my mom insisted I watch involved violence and forms of assault, like Jem. Truly kid-friendly shows such as Fraggle Rock or Smurfs had violence when the Gorgs caught the Fraggles, or Gargamel caught one of those blue little weirdos. Have you seen Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny since growing older? Those are full of obvious violence from start to finish.

The format may be different - anime art instead of more Americanized animation - and they may be less concerned with putting a childish face on the concept, but the animes that are actually geared towards children are no different, in my opinion, than what we grew up watching. As BrandeX said, anime is a broad category - like saying "television shows" - and just because it has a cartoon-like appearance does not mean it was intended for children. My husband loves anime and there are one or two I enjoy, but we have held off on exposing our son to most of them due to the content because he is special needs and does not understand the difference (he sees "cartoon" and thinks it's okay for him). Different cultures have different levels of comfort when it comes to various life themes, and as the world shrinks and cultures cross-pollinate, our jobs as parents include the additional step of checking how these different things fit with our comfort zone and child's upbringing.

As far as the behavior at conventions... My husband has dragged me to a couple cons, and it is one of those things you must enter into with the expectation of what you're going to see. Due to the broad themes seen in anime - from small children's shows up through hard-core pornography - there will be an equally broad range of behaviors witnessed. It is not a place for children, in my opinion. Again, anime is like saying "television shows"; it includes almost every genre. It is more a medium than a category all its own.