Adult animated serious shows seems to be in these days.

[thisithis]

With Blue Eye Samurai is sadly no Sci-Fi, but still well-written and beautifully animated. But also with both Netflix and Amazon just dishing out one hit adult animated serious show after another. Arcane, Castlevania, and Invincible added with Blue Eye Samurai all being hits for everyone.

But sadly two casualties being Pantheon on AMC+. Who goes to AMC+ for any animated show? And Scavengers Reign on Max which is falling apart thanks to WB and David Zaslav. Both are great shows, but sadly won't make it.

And the one that saw all this coming Exosquad from 1993 but died in 1994 due to management change and Universal wanting to go a different direction. And now it's on Peacock a streaming network no one cares about that not even the video game awards could save it. And in the Kids section because execs that work at Peacock don't care about watching an old show before rating it. They just need their placeholder. But what do you think?

[sayla0079]

Unfortunately despite its content Exo Squad was always classified as a kid's show hence why it was put in that section.

[clearspira]

How are we defining ''adult'' out of interest?

I would argue that animated shows being ''for kids'' is a 2010s thing. Back in the 90s and early 00s we had the likes of Batman The Animated Series, JLU, Futurama, the birth of South Park, and The Simpsons whilst it was still counter culture. Yeah sure, they weren't full of swearing or sex (minus South Park anyway) but they were often dark and certainly not for little kids. And then there was the anime that we got such as Bleach which was all about death, dying, loss and loneliness.

In fact, that era was all about ''being edgy''. Some of it was a bit cringe looking back, but nevertheless, this was the era that gave us Jackass.

I find these things often come in waves. I wonder if the fact that shows are now being produced by 90s/00s kids as opposed to the dying gasp of the previous generations has something to do with it.

[thisithis]

Unfortunately despite its content Exo Squad was always classified as a kid's show hence why it was put in that section.

Due to mass misinformation from tons of unreliable sources, people still think Playmates made Exosquad and they made Exosquad to kill both Robotech and Battletech. First, this link proves them all wrong. https://uspto.report/Search/Exosquad

Then the others who think Exosquad is just like G.I.Joe. I can't even explain how wrong that is. In the original G.I.Joe cartoon if you get shot in the chest or head you just get back up and go back to fighting. In Exosquad chest or head, you die. I know most producers don't watch some of these shows. Disclaimers on some shows both animated and live-action had to be put on when enough people wrote to the studio.

How are we defining ''adult'' out of interest?

I would argue that animated shows being ''for kids'' is a 2010s thing. Back in the 90s and early 00s we had the likes of Batman The Animated Series, JLU, Futurama, the birth of South Park, and The Simpsons whilst it was still counter culture. Yeah sure, they weren't full of swearing or sex (minus South Park anyway) but they were often dark and certainly not for little kids. And then there was the anime that we got such as Bleach which was all about death, dying, loss and loneliness.

In fact, that era was all about ''being edgy''. Some of it was a bit cringe looking back, but nevertheless, this was the era that gave us Jackass.

I find these things often come in waves. I wonder if the fact that shows are now being produced by 90s/00s kids as opposed to the dying gasp of the previous generations has something to do with it.

First Bleach had a not-so-popular manga/Anime side story called Burn the Witch. It's about the two witches working for the Soul Society in London. Made by the same guy who made Bleach. The Simpsons and Futurama were mostly animated comedies, I'll give Futurama a bit of an extra for being Sci-Fi as well. And even The Simpsons started the ball for mature, anime shows it was mostly Comedy. Even though it started with Hanna-Barbera with the Flintstones in the Jetsons it was Hanna-Barbera's other show Jonny Quest that made the mature serious animated show in the 70's.

The problem was everyone went on the mature comedy shows and it was stuck there for decades. Exosquad tried to. get everyone out of that slump but failed because people just saw it as another boy toys anime show selling toys. Even Disney tried with Gargoyles but failed because Disney had to be Disney. Of course, Disney tried again with Marvel's What IF, but Arcane ruled it. Once Arcane filled up YouTube with Arcane reaction videos, it was pretty much over. Arcane won. HBO also tried with Spwan and Spicy City. Spwan did some bents and Spicy City was dead on arrival. You would have to look up the behind-the-scenes on Spicy City and how everyone behind Spicy City's production wanted Ralph Bakshi's head for no reason. Almost everyone even Disney, Warner Brothers, HBO, and even Cartoon Network hated Ralph Bakshi and wanted that show to fail. But it seems we're slowly going out of that bump. There is always a place for mature animated comedy series, but throughout the 80s and 90s, we seemed to be stuck in only that category, until now.

[phantom000]

It seems like there is a trend of animated shows becoming darker and more mature. It seems to start around 1980 and seems to fade around 2000.

During the 1970's you could not have violence in a cartoon show. I'm not sure if this was an actual law or just an understanding among the studios that violence was not acceptable, but if you look at a lot of cartoons from that era they were essentially Scooby-doo knockoffs because that is all anyone could do with cartoons. This changed in 1983 with He-Man as the first cartoon series to show violence, although it was very restrained. She-Ra actually had more violence because the bad guys were usually robots of some form so they could get away with it. G.I. Joe and Transformers took this a little further and then shows like Galaxy Rangers and Centurions pushed it even further. By you have Bravestarr in 1987 you have both heroes and villains that are actually violent (the hero uses his actual fist in several episodes, something neither He-Man nor She-Ra ever did).

By the 1990's you have shows like Batman, X-men, Exo-Squad and even Gargoyles with more violence and darker themes than anything we saw in the 80's. I kinda stopped watching cartoons around 2001, but I remember a lot of cartoons seemed to be returning to the lighter sillier stories. Even a lot of animes being brought over tended to be more silly than violent.

Am I just seeing patterns that aren't there?

[sayla0079]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 90s. Yes, things got darker and edgier as they went on. Not everything but it shows in things like cartoons videogames and various other media.

[thisithis]

During the 1970's you could not have violence in a cartoon show. I'm not sure if this was an actual law or just an understanding among the studios that violence was not acceptable

First of all the Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Johnny Quest were all primetime in the 70s. Johnny Quest was supposed to be Scooby Doo but for adults. Johnny Quest's first EP was The Quest Gang trying to find out who killed Johnny Quest's dad's friend. Some Johnny Quest EPs were murder mysteries.

But if you really want to know it was Thundarr the Barbarian in the 80s that made most Parent groups spitfire, and Ronald Reagan to sign off making Saturday morning cartoons less violent unless it was attached to a toy company. The FCC's standards and practices. We know this because the Canadian animated show Reboot had to deal with standards and practices and Disney here in the US because Reboot was on ABC which is owned by Disney. They're supposedly an EP with a Secret code that spells out f**k standards and practices and Disney. And no it's not that guy doing a joke in binary. That was a different joke they pulled on Disney. Disney didn't know what the joke said and assumed it was about them. What the guy really said was "Take my wife please." In binary.

But The FCC's standards and practices got worse and many said was Hillary Clinton making it worse. But somehow Exosquad passed despite having a ton of main character deaths, as well as having topics like racism, slavery, why slavery doesn't work, horrors of war, and losing loved ones in wars. Matthew Marcus a main character in season one dies yelling "Tell Winnfield to watch! Tell Winnfield that Matthew Marcus knows how to die!" And then he did. The Real reason why the Justice League got more violent was because they were on Cartoon Network and in Primetime. And then you have Toonami which started Adult Swim. And now we have Netflix and Amazon. Or just streaming General. And now you can watch anything and anytime. And that's what happened.

Oh, and Saturday morning cartoons in fact all early morning cartoons shows are pretty much dead due to a heavy amount of regulations. Like I said I'm fine with it because now we have streaming.

[clearspira]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 90s. Yes, things got darker and edgier as they went on. Not everything but it shows in things like cartoons videogames and various other media.

Yep. The 90s and early 00s was about being as dark and as edgy as possible. Any of Linkara's 90s comic book reviews demonstrate that.

The Attitude era of WWF could not have existed until the mid 90s and died in the mid 00s when it went PG. It was blood, drinking, titties and swearing.

In Britain, comedies such as Men Behaving Badly and Little Britain became wildly successful. Shows that would be cancelled within five minutes today. Songs like Vindaloo by Fat Les and Tubthumping hit the charts.

Jackass and other MTV shows like it could only have been born in that era and didn't survive except on the big screen.

It was a wild time that promoted smoking, drinking, drugs, wild sex, masculinity, extreme sports and violence the like of which has not happened since. What really started to put an end to the fun wasn't regulations, it was 9/11. Suddenly the world started to get less fun. The fun of Die Another Day gave way to the Bourne Identity.

[hammerofglass]

... okay, Little Britain I disagree with but I can kind of see how you got there but no idea why you're calling Tubthumping "edgy". Is it just because it's a drinking song?

[Nobody700]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 90s. Yes, things got darker and edgier as they went on. Not everything but it shows in things like cartoons videogames and various other media.

Yep. The 90s and early 00s was about being as dark and as edgy as possible. Any of Linkara's 90s comic book reviews demonstrate that.

The Attitude era of WWF could not have existed until the mid 90s and died in the mid 00s when it went PG. It was blood, drinking, titties and swearing.

In Britain, comedies such as Men Behaving Badly and Little Britain became wildly successful. Shows that would be cancelled within five minutes today. Songs like Vindaloo by Fat Les and Tubthumping hit the charts.

Jackass and other MTV shows like it could only have been born in that era and didn't survive except on the big screen.

It was a wild time that promoted smoking, drinking, drugs, wild sex, masculinity, extreme sports and violence the like of which has not happened since. What really started to put an end to the fun wasn't regulations, it was 9/11. Suddenly the world started to get less fun. The fun of Die Another Day gave way to the Bourne Identity.

Why was this my first thought when you brought up British comedies for kids

https://youtu.be/2fpJXJ6Qa00?si=VtUh6Iae6pfnWUvG