My daughter has picked up an interest in Demon Slayer, however having watched a little I think it’s too violent/mature.
I’d love to foster her interest in these things, by trying out an alternative anime that hits similar notes while being more age apropriate.
Any recommendations?
As someone who has watched anime for decades, I personally do not recommend letting anyone under high school age (and even then…) watch any anime that you have not fully watched and vetted yourself. Anime is notorious for pulling a fast one on the audience and doing a sudden genre/maturity shift (from Narutaru which looks like a cute Digimon-type monster battle show but involves a lot of murder and rape, to School Days which looks like a standard high-school romantic drama but ends with the protagonist’s head in a duffle bag). These “gotcha!” moments are part of what makes anime unique and fun, however it also makes vetting anime really difficult for guardians. And that’s just in terms of violence; anime often feature (what I consider) really unhealthy portrayals of romantic relationships, female sexualization, and sexual harassment in general (the latter of which often is played off as a harmless joke). Even “kids” anime like Naruto, DBZ, etc can be surprisingly mature. You have to pay very close attention to the show’s rating, but even that is highly subjective and can change from season to season or even episode to episode, and often doesn’t include factors like “does this series promote toxic relationships?” that are important but often overlooked when vetting media for such a developmentally-vulnerable age.
There definitely are anime out there that are appropriate for younger audiences, but your daughter might find them boring and dated by comparison (anime fandom nowadays is all about watching the latest hot series, not digging years or decades into back catalogues for shows that have completed and thus easy to confirm are age-appropriate to the end). Generally, slice-of-life CAN be wholesome (eg Non Non Biyori or The Flying Witch) but your daughter may find them boring. There are also more appropriate action series out there, but you gotta find the stuff that’s aimed for really young kids like Digimon. Magical girl anime is also an option (some ancient examples: Sailor Moon, Saint Tail, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne), but that’s a popular “gotcha” genre so you have to be VERY careful.
In summary, having a kid who’s interested in anime means either having to very carefully vet each title yourself and praying your kid doesn’t gain an independent streak and start exploring titles herself, or giving up and hoping she doesn’t stumble across the animated equivalent to 80s/90s kids stumbling across beheading videos and scat porn in the early days of the Internet. Good luck?
Even kids stuff can be a bit risque due to different cultures. Digimon has a scene where the kids are picked up by a random college kid, Yu-Gi-Oh has a scene where Tea is implied to be about to be sexually assaulted and the OG dragon ball is half about a girl who wants to get laid and an old pervert who also wants to get laid.
Do you know what about it interests her? Is it the action or the pretty art? Both those could pull different threads
Sailor Moon is another great example: despite being a kids show it underwent a LOT of censorship changes when it was aired in the US (although much of it was LGBTQ erasure). American media has a lot of issues, but I’d consider US-made cartoons significantly less likely to contain problematic content (especially anything from the last decade, as US studios have become more focused on avoiding that sort of thing because of public outcry, whereas I don’t get the impression the Japanese public cares as much).
FTFY. Also kind of obvious that content created in a country is more likely to follow the sensibilities of said country.
You’re absolutely correct; for the sake of the discussion I was assuming US/Western cultural standards given the Lemmy platform and English-language discussion. And I didn’t mean to shame Japanese standards necessarily; I think issues like violence in the media are less of a concern in a country with low levels of violent crime for instance. However especially as a former resident of the country, I’ve been disappointed with Japan’s general lack of progress on many social issues (such as gender norms and LGBTQ acceptance) even as many of their Western contemporaries have made great strides. I do think this is reflected in their media, anime obviously included. This isn’t to say there haven’t been changes to anime, but many of them appear only to placate highly specific demands of the overseas market, such as the disappearance of “female-presenting nipples” even in otherwise highly sexualized series.
Whelp, I guess I can mark School Days off my watch list…
Nice boat.