Because cartoons in Japan are a more respected medium than in the U.S., anime is used far more often, and with a far greater variation of stories, themes, and genres. There certainly are adult-oriented western cartoons, but you'll be hard-pressed to find many that aren't straight comedies/parodies.
Japan and the U.S. both have a stigma of cartoons being primarily a medium for children, but this is only overwhelming in the U.S. (and possibly Europe, which I have no experience with); in Japan, it's more of a pragmatic assessment, given that the majority of anime's targetted television viewers are young children. And even with that assessment, it really only applies to TV anime; OVAs and movies are relatively free of the stigma, because their target audience is the one with their own disposable income.
One could speculate that this has something to do with adaptation, as well. Western comics adapted to cartoons are almost exclusively superhero stories...though admittedly, there are many examples that appeal to both child and adult demographics (Batman: The Animated Series, Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, the first X-Men...). Manga, on the other hand, have a far larger and more varied track record. The majority of anime is adapted from comics, and while the majority of TV anime
are adapted primarily from shounen series (again, because the target audience is most often children), there really is no overarching genre conformity when it comes to adaptations. This is especially true when you add in movies and OVAs, which have a comparatively large portion of seinen adaptations.
boholikeu said:
Am I the only one that doesn't get why Anime is considered more mature than Western cartoons? Sure, Anime may be more likely to have mature content (gore, sex), but the stories themselves still seem to be pretty shallow and juvenile. Maybe this is just because I live in Japan and I get to see all the cruddy Anime that never even gets torrented on fansub sites, but it just seems to me like the percent of genuinely thought-provoking Anime is roughly the same as what it is with Western cartoons.
Any thoughts? I'd rather not have this thread turn into an Anime bashing thread, but is anyone else as confused as I am with the supposed "maturity" of Anime?
I'm certainly not confused. My experience with "mature" western cartoons has been Batman, X-Men, and Avatar (I rarely watched Sonic AM and never saw Gargoyles, but I assume they belong in the list, too), where my experience with "mature" Japanese cartoons has included far greater numbers.
Yes, when it comes to anime, the countries outside Japan have been largely inured from Sturgeon's Law through the discretion of importers and fansubbers, but that doesn't really change the fact the a large amount of what
does get through treats their subjects more seriously than most Western counterparts.
