Animation for Adults?

(Source: www.abc.net.au)

More and more adults are embracing animation, says ABC. Anime fans are wondering, "What took you so long?"

The fact that filmmakers are developing animated movies designed exclusively for adults is old news. Japanese anime has seemingly always been geared towards teens and adults since the late 1960's. A part of that is the fact that Japanese shows like the classic Gatchaman or current heavyweight Crayon Shin-Chan were originally meant for children, but contained elements that made North American censors reach for their red pens. This is why Gatchaman was heavily edited when it became Battle of the Planets in 1978, and Crayon Shin-Chan only airs on the Adult Swim programming block.

But Japanese moviemakers have successfully made anime for adults, such as Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell. The only problem is that very few of them have crossed over to North America.

Anime has been huge among North American college students ever since Akira became a cult classic in 1988. However, to popular thinking, that's pretty much where it stayed. Anyone else, outside of the post-secondary ghetto, who looked at anime focused on the racier bits, and dismissed the entire genre as animated soft-core a la 1981's Heavy Metal.

Movie executives also wouldn't give anime a second look, even after Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003. At that time, Disney CEO Michael Eisner was in the process of moving the Mouse House away from animation, and pink-slipping many of his employees at Walt Disney Feature Animation.

Meanwhile, many North American live-action filmmakers have been co-opting anime techniques in their movies for years, most notably Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) and the Wachowskis (The Matrix).

The biggest argument for (and against) marketing animation to adults is the bottom line. Most movies these days cost nearly a $100 million to produce, plus promotion costs. When risking cash of that magnitude, movie-makers tend to be extremely conservative in their thinking. So it's not surprising that studios will wait for the competition to take a risk, then play "follow the leader." When Disney or DreamWorks made huge bucks with family-oriented animated films such as The Little Mermaid or Shrek, other studios lined up their own features. When Disney's animated flicks started tanking in the 1980's, everyone else jumped off the animated bandwagon.

Not surprisingly, the pioneers in animation-for-adults has been television, since the cost of putting on a TV show is much lower than producing your average feature film. Not only that, the hordes of channels available means that broadcasters can successfully target a smaller audience, which allows edgier programming to be made. The Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block has been very successful in promoting adult-oriented animation. By putting on shows like Robot Chicken or Aqua Teen Hunger Force among Japanese imports like Crayon Shin-Chan, Adult Swim demonstrated that animation could be popular among the all-important 18 - 34 demographic.

"We used to hear that animation for adults wouldn't work," said Mike Lazzo, senior vice president of Adult Swim, "but now all our competitors are doing the same."

The Sci-Fi Channel is currently putting together an anime programming block, and Canada's YTV just got CRTC clearance to create the Anime Channel, an all-anime broadcasting service designed for viewers over the age of 18.

Now the Cartoon Network has managed to cross that success over into film. Despite blistering reviews (Cartoon Brew's Jerry Beck called it "possibly the worst movie I have ever seen."), the feature film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres has become a cult hit, making a whopping $6 million in theatres. Considering the flick cost the filmmakers less than a million to produce, that's a significant profit, and something other studios will keep in mind.

Combine that with the current success of graphic novel adaptations, such as Frank Miller's Sin City and 300 (both of which featured animated sequences), and Hollywood is figuring out that animation may no longer be just for kids. Paramount is currently courting the Dungeons & Dragons crowd with their upcoming animated flick Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (due in September) and the motion-capture flick Beowulf, which hits theatres November 16th. If those movies hit big, look for more animated movies for adult audiences.

Also, the two biggest players in animated movies these days, Disney/Pixar and Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation, are entirely focused on family-oriented animation and see no reason to change that policy. The Mouse House is always nervous about anything that might be interpreted as too racy, since religious and parents' groups are quick to boycott all Disney product if they see something that offends them. Witness how the Mouse House watered down indie powerhouse Miramax after they bought the company in the early 1990's.

DreamWorks Animation has publicly stated that they are all about family-friendly animated films. As Ann Daly, that company's chief operating officer, said: "When we were a private company, we got involved with anime by distributing (Satoshi Kon's 2001 film) Millennium Actress, which did a small amount of business. As a public company, that's not our charter."

Translation: anime doesn't bring enough financial dividends for us to risk our family animated movies over.

If adult-oriented animation is going to make a splash on the silver screen, movie executives will have to see that there's money to be made. Right now, for every Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres that makes a profit, there's A Scanner Darkly that doesn't. If Paramount makes big bucks with Dragonlance and Beowulf, then adults will see more animated movies aimed for them. If they tank, at least anime fans have another Hayao Miyazaki film to look forward to.

image from Beowulf

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