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"This is a bootleg copy of Itchy And Scratchy meets Fritz the Cat. Because of its frank depiction of sex and narcotic use, it is not fit for an infantile intellect such as yours."
Comic Book Guy (to Bart and Lisa), The Simpsons

A Mature Animal Story is a work designed for and marketed toward adults and older teens featuring anthropomorphized or Talking Animals as its main cast, and which contains content that is generally considered inappropriate for little kids.

To many, cartoons, comics and other stories featuring animals as major characters are treated as light, whimsical entertainment suitable for small children. While adults may enjoy such works, they are primarily marketed toward young kids, and are careful to avoid material that is either too explicit or too serious and sophisticated for children to understand. While such works still might contain some conflict, or even a Disney Death (maybe even Death by Newbery Medal), it is always at a level considered "Family Friendly" and "Safe for Kids".

Also, until recent advances in CGI, fictional animal characters, especially anthropomorphized ones, in visual mediums were mostly confined to rather silly looking costumes, cartoons and comics. These features were generally associated with less serious children's stories, and therefore weren't going to be all that big on more "mature" topics like violence. Talking Animals in particular are often considered kids' stuff.

However, animal-centered stories weren't always considered primarily for kids. Before, and even during, the Victorian era, animal-centered works were seen as being as marketable to more young adult and adult works as children's works. Ann Sewell's Black Beauty, written during the Victorian era, actually targeted young adults and adults. It is only after the Victorian era that the perception that animal-centered works and works with animals as Protagonists, Deuteragonists, and tritagonists are primarily for kids really came into fruition.

A Mature Animal Story, if it is made after the Victorian era, breaks away from this Newer Than They Think "animal stories are just for kids" perception. The primary audience is adults and/or older teens. Stories still might be comedic, but they will also often have a serious and dark side to them. Many such works are almost entirely drama instead of comedy. They often contain graphic violence, sexuality, and profanity.

Works of the Furry Fandom tend to be this mature kind, and mature animal stories are Popular with Furries, because furries are usually teenagers and adults who take anthropomorphic animals seriously as if they're humans, not fluffy children's characters.

These stories typically involve animal characters ranging from Largely Normal Animal to Beast Man on the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism, but can include non-anthropomorphic animals. They frequently, but not always, take place in a World of Funny Animals.

This is a Sub-Trope to Animation Age Ghetto and What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?. Compare Xenofiction. Also compare Mature Work, Child Protagonists for other mature-aimed works that feature characters generally considered limited to children's fiction.

Please note that if it is marketed as a work for children, it is not this trope, no matter how "mature" its themes may be.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • While not as dark as the other examples in this list, Aggretsuko is still pretty mature and one of Sanrio's only properties specifically aimed at adults, despite being set in a World of Funny Animals that are drawn with Sanrio's typical cute designs. It focuses on Retsuko the adorable red panda's struggles with her dull life at a Soul-Crushing Desk Job working under her Mean Boss, along with other issues like workplace sexism, disagreeable coworkers, complications with romantic relationships, and the challenges of dealing with adulthood. Later seasons include even more dramatic topics, up to Retsuko dealing with a Stalker without a Crush who harasses and attempts to murder her.
  • Beastars explores a complex society of carnivores and herbivores, and the struggles of coexisting with each other mixed in with a murder mystery plot. It also explores the sexuality of teenagers (which, in this setting, can be confused with their awakening predatory instinct), and features extremely brutal and graphic violence.
  • Brand New Animal deals with very obvious themes about racism, xenophobia and government corruption as seen through the eyes of a diverse cast of anthropomorphic animals. Additionally, the predicament of the protagonist, a human who one day went anthro, could be interpreted as a not-so-subtle allegory for discovering one's identity as a transgender person, and coming to terms with it.
  • Cat Shit One involves cute rabbits as killing machines fighting in The Vietnam War against similarly anthropomorphized animals (rabbits are American, cats are Vietnamese, etc.).
  • Cat Soup is an abstract, existential short film based on the extremely dark comics of artist Nekojiru. But hey, all the characters are cats!
  • Chi's Sweet Home is almost a subversion. It's seinen and thus aimed at adult men, but there's nothing "mature" about it. It's just a cute series about a kitten. In fact, it's marketed towards children outside of Japan.
  • Odd Taxi revolves around a missing girl who may or may not be alive, with some conspiracy in the background and characters having deep conversations, and it's all told using anthropomorphic animals until the final episode, where the Furry Lens on the protagonist comes off, revealing that everyone was Human All Along.
  • Oruchuban Ebichu is a comedy about a cute little hamster and her unmarried owner. Almost every joke is about sex.
  • Penguin Memories is a serious drama in which a Vietnam vet deals with his inner demons — and yes, all the characters are penguins.
  • Wolf's Rain is an anime about wolves. It's a violent and depressing seinen anime where in the first episode Kiba tears out a man's throat in front of a child.

    Comic Books 
  • Albedo: Erma Felna EDF kickstarted much of this trope as a deadly serious Military Science Fiction series where the furries usually follow up on the action with serious discussions about the sociopolitical ramifications.
  • Animosity is the story of a world where animals around the world suddenly become sapient and able to talk... and a dog and his girl get caught in the crossfire of a war between humans and animals.
  • Swedish comic strips Arne Anka and Rocky are filled to the brim with funny animals. They're also filled with alcohol consumption, sex and deep, deep cynicism.
  • BB Wolf and the 3 LPs uses the characters of The Three Little Pigs in an allegory about racism in 1920's America. It's quite violent - the wolf protagonist's family is killed when the pigs burn his home, and he graphically tears open two pigs as part of a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Beasts of Burden, which pits adorable pets against all manner of supernatural terror.
  • Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees is a murder mystery where the bear protagonist is herself a murderer.
  • Blacksad is a Film Noir style series of graphic novels about a black cat private detective named John Blacksad and his various cases set in a World of Funny Animals version of 1950's America. It doesn't hold back from showing blood, fatal injuries, wounds, controversial topics (e.g. racism), and sex.
  • The 2019 Italian comic Bianca: Little Lost Lamb is about a young female sheep who witness her flock all get killed and eaten by a pack of wolves. As she grows older, she decides to seek revenge over her entire family getting slaughtered and eaten. The comic contains a lot of graphic violence and depressing subject matter. The graphic novel is explicitly aimed at teens and young adults.
  • Circles is a story about the lives of a group of gay men, going through the standard issues of the time (homophobia, relationship dramas, AIDS, grieving people dead due to all of those incidents, et cetera), with the main characters depicted as rather fuzzy mammals. Notably, however, the characters are actually contextually human beings; we're only seeing them through a Furry Lens, and the illustrated novel that concludes the comic does in fact describe them as such rather than the anthropomorphic animals they are in the visual art.
  • Fritz the Cat and its two Animated Adaptations, Fritz the Cat and The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. Graphic sex, graphic violence, drug use, and satirical social commentary, all set in a World of Funny Animals. Robert Crumb continued making comic strips with antropomorphic animals doing adult stuff ever since, such as Those Cute Little Bearzie Wearzies where a fuzzy bear couple that looks absolutely cute act more like a typical Real Life couple by having foul mouthed arguments and having sex with each other.
  • Grandville: The main character is an anthropomorphic badger who is a police inspector. It's set in a Steampunk fantasy setting, and features plenty of sex, violence, and politics.
  • Howard the Duck: The original comic strip was about a cigar chomping wisecracking duck and not intended for children at all.
  • Benoit Sokal's Inspector Canardo is about a detective duck in a world of talking animals. The protagonist is a drunk, people get killed, prostitutes and rapists are commonplace. Definitely not for children.
  • Maus is a retelling of the author's father's experiences during The Holocaust, including his stay at Auschwitz. Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Americans are dogs, and Poles are pigs.
  • The Mice Templar is filled with lots of cute mice and other small, adorable critters. But the story itself is heavily religious and contains a plethora of Gorn, and is essentially about a young hero trying to stop a tyrant while also trying to figure out who he can trust.
  • Omaha the Cat Dancer: An adult comic strip with anthropomorphic animal characters who engage in sex, but is otherwise not vulgar. It's more about relationships between people and also touches sexual topics, but in a tasteful and thought provoking way.
  • The infamous Air Pirates Funnies was a short-lived underground parody comic which featured Disney characters in adult situations, such as having sex and taking drugs. Disney sued the makers of the comic for copyright infringement, which apparently was exactly what they wanted.
  • Pride of Baghdad has blood and at one point a lioness flashbacks to being gang raped (It's not shown, but still.) Also, they all die at the end.
  • Rover Red Charlie by Garth Ennis depicts The End of the World as We Know It through the eyes of some domesticated dogs who don't quite understand what's happening to "the feeders".
  • The characters in the Sandbox comics by Swedish artist Joakim Pirinen are anthropomorphic teddy bears, while their plots often deal with sex, drugs, violence, and disturbingly psychedelic visions.
  • Sherlock Fox is as kid friendly as you would expect the novel-series it was based on to be. Towards the end of the first volume there is a case of a secret society eating flesh - now remember, the comic is set in a World of Funny Animals, so eating flesh there is pretty much cannibalism and is considered as such in-universe.
  • Tom Poes is about the adventures of a bear and his friend the little white cat. It's a children's comic strip, but has very Antiquated Linguistics and gentle adult satire that will be understood by adults better than children. Creator Marten Toonder used it to openly poke fun at the Nazis when they were at their most powerful (and right on his doorstep). The series is still considered one of the most mature and "literary" European comic strips.
  • While later iterations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were relatively kid-friendly, the original comic was rather gritty and featured plenty of violence and death.
  • During the 1930s and 1940s the Tijuana Bible phenomenon began to blossom. These were pornographic comic strip parodies of famous characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, drawn by anonymous artists. As Art Spiegelman has correctly said: "These were the forefathers of the Underground Comics of the 1960s and 1970s."
  • Marvel Comics' Earth-14094, as featured in Ultimate FF is a version of the Spider-Ham universe where the characters aren't cartoony, and all the Grimdark stuff associated with the Ultimate Marvel universe happened to them. The only survivor of its horrific demise was Miles Morhames, the Ultimate Spider-Ham.
  • Usagi Yojimbo (first appearing in the above-mentioned Albedo) involves adorable anthropomorphic animals, the main character being a rabbit. The setting, however, is Feudal Japan with all of the cultural baggage thereof, including kirisute, the traditional right of the samurai to kill any commoner who offends him. There is exploration of death, relationships (including forbidden relationships, illegitimate offspring, widowhood, etc.), various extremely nasty monsters from folklore, political intrigue, crime and punishment, and a very messed up judicial system. (All that said, it's not necessarily inappropriate for children; the violence is not graphic and there's virtually no bad language or references to sex. It's just thematically more mature than one would get from a Disney story, for instance.)
  • We3, by Grant Morrison, is about three talking animals trying to find their way home; the covers feature "missing pets" notices written in childlike style. Kids'll love it, right? Sure! Except for the scenes featuring the cybernetic animal soldiers literally tearing apart the soldiers sent to kill them, the part where the rabbit explodes while hurling itself at a car, and all sorts of graphic violence in between. Oh, and it's being adapted into a movie directed by the guy who made Kung Fu Panda.
  • Xanadu by Vicky Wyman is a fun and playfully erotic Swashbuckler that is a daring combination of Disney's Robin Hood (1973) and The Princess Bride.

    Comic Strips 
  • Garfield was aimed at adults early on but as it grew more popular it became more kid friendly.
  • My Cage is a formerly syndicated comic strip featuring funny animals in a Work Com situation that refers to adult situations like death, infidelity, suicide, and dissatisfaction with one's work, especially after it was dropped by newspapers and moved onto Patreon and Gocomics.
  • Pearls Before Swine takes place in a Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My! setting (and mostly focuses on the Funny Animal characters), but is primarily aimed at an older audience due to having large amounts of Black Comedy, Symbol Swearing, and references that younger viewers would most likely not understand. Averted for some PBS collections, however, which are specifically branded as kid-friendly and only contain the strips that are suitable for all ages.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • The Cameraman's Revenge, a pioneering effort of Stop Motion animation, is about a mutually adulterous husband and wife. All the characters are insects—portrayed with props made of actual insects.
  • Felidae. To quote the entry: "Despite being an animated film, it is definitely not for kids. The film contains graphic violence, disturbing images, adult language, and cat sex. Yes, cat sex." It's basically a noir drama with cats. It has the language, sex, and violence but instead of humans in fedoras we get cute cats.
  • As noted above, Fritz the Cat is probably the Ur-Example in history of American animation, produced back in 1972. It revolves around the Pornomancer Fritz hanging out with stoners, having sex with everyone and...forget it, there is not much plot, aside from emphasizing the movie's X-rating.
  • Isle of Dogs is a stop-motion film about some dogs helping a boy, but features enough violence to give it a PG-13 rating.
  • The South Korean All-CGI Cartoon Padak is about a bunch of fish living in a restaurant aquarium, just waiting for their fate of being served as food. Padak is a newcomer who tries to rally the fish into escaping. This is Played for Drama and horror, and the film includes some very disturbing images.
  • The Plague Dogs is an animated film based on a book by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down. It's about two dogs that escape from a research lab and attempt to live in the wild. It starts with a dog drowning as part of an experiment involving how long it can tread water. The tale highlights the cruelty of animal research and vivisection. In America, the film was rated PG-13.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Au Hasard Balthazar: Balthazar is a donkey and the protagonist, but the film is a religious allegory, an example of Le Film Artistique and a very pessimistic and dour tale where both the animal and his innocent owner suffer at the hands of everyone around them, culminating in a very sad ending.

    Literature 
  • The Ur-Example of this trope may be the Reynard the Fox stories from the 13th century. It's a medieval poem about a Karmic Trickster fox character who brutally murders, rapes, steals from other animals and has to be brought to court. The story has a lot of adult content, with even a Catholic priest who is apparently married and has his penis bitten off by one of the animals.
  • Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty as a lengthy social commentary on animal welfare, politics, religion, and social justice, including living conditions for the working-class poor. While there's probably not anything that's inappropriate for younger readers (aside from a couple rather gruesome depictions of dead and suffering horses), much of it would probably go straight over their heads. Versions of the book are frequently marketed to children, but these have typically been heavily edited or rewritten entirely.
  • Animal Farm is more or less a breakdown of Josef Stalin's part in the Russian Revolution, portrayed via animals throwing a farmer out of a farm and then running it themselves. The pigs are the communists, they raise dogs as their police, and the sheep pledge their full support to everything said to them without thinking about any of it. All sorts of Fridge Horror ensues, such as the horse being sold to a glue farm while the pigs periodically read letters they claim the horse wrote to them from his retirement pasture. Fortunately, nobody really thinks of it as a book for children, although it is often taught at middle school level (13/14-year-olds can usually grasp what's going on, and if you teach it alongside the actual history of the Russian Revolution and Stalin's regime, it makes for a good introduction to the concepts of allegory and satire).
  • The Duncton Wood books are not intended for kids. They concern many mature themes, with lots of graphic depictions of death, sex, rape and violence. The later books even have a villain who is a necrophiliac!
  • The third book in The Wicked Years series, A Lion Among Men, is about the Cowardly Lion. In true Wicked fashion it's a Darker and Edgier, very adult retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams, as noted above under film.
  • Felidae by Akif Pirinçci, the basis for the animated feature also mentioned above under film, and the eight subsequent books in the series.
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The author, Richard Bach, always had trouble with publishers and librarians on what genre they should label the novel. They couldn't label it children literature due to the contents being too adult (without being violent or sexual), but also they felt reluctant to label it adult due to the characters all being talking seagulls.
  • Tailchaser's Song is about a young feral cat named Fritti Tailchaser as he goes on an adventure trying to solve the mystery of why cats in his clan are suddenly disappearing. It sounds like a kid's book (and is inspired by Watership Down), but it's a lengthy fantasy novel with deep lore and Conlang. It isn't aimed at children.
  • The Spellsinger novels. Tom-Jon's first thought on meeting a talking otter is that he's stoned, and over the course of the first novel he's regularly taken aback that Mudge's world contains much the same horrible stuff as the one he left, which isn't how he expects a World of Funny Animals to be.
  • Doglands is a xenofiction book aimed at teens. It's about a lurcher dog as he tries to find his absentee father and save his racing Grayhound mother. The book features quite a sum of sexual humour compared to other similar books aimed at Middle Grade audiences. There's also a significant amount of violence, like some disturbing animal abuse. Then there's the dogs' attack at the end, which includes shooting, the Gambler being eaten alive, and Dedbone falling in a pit and being impaled on sharp bones. The book lets you know this from the start - two cute, talking puppies are shot to death within the first 45 pages.
  • W. Bruce Cameron:
    • A Dog's Purpose is about a dog with Past-Life Memories as it goes through several reincarnations. It's predominantly clean but does contain some sex references, some violence, and dark themes. Its sequel A Dog's Journey ramps everything up with eating disorders and suicidal characters being present. Both books have Lighter and Softer kid's spinoffs focusing on protagonist's puppyhoods.
    • A Dog's Way Home is about a dog named Bella as she journeys back home. It has some adult-aimed elements to it. She's a seizure dog to a former Junkie Parent, on her journey she is taken in by a homeless, mentally ill drug addict who dies of an overdose, and a character attempts suicide in the final chapters.
  • The Art of Racing in the Rain is from a dog's POV but it includes dark topics, such as a False Rape Accusation. It has toned down versions for younger audiences.
  • Stray is about a stray cat called Pufftail who tells his grandson about his life. It features some cursing, sexual references, and violence towards animals.
  • Tasakeru is a series about cute, fluffy talking animals like squirrels and rabbits... which involves bloody warfare, racism (speciesism?), religious intolerance, Mind Rape, and not a little innuendo.
  • Pondovadia is a series with cute pastel animals as the protagonists, but features topics such as discrimination, classism, illegitimacy, arranged marriage, and homicide.
  • David Hopkins' Sci-Fi Horror story Thebe and the Angry Red Eye isn't as extreme as his webcomic Jack, but it's definitely not for kids. The protagonist, a Cat Folk astronaut named Thomas, is the Sole Survivor of a space disaster, and the story deals with his loneliness, isolation and Sanity Slippage. Also, his shipmates' Gorny deaths are described in detail.

    Music 
  • The Animated Music Video for Metallica's "Here Comes Revenge" is the dark tale of a Serial Killer who is haunted by his victims. Both predator and prey are Beast Men.
  • The music video for Coldplay's "Trouble in Town" uses this kind of story to comment on racism and economic inequality. The world of the video is ruled by a vicious, deceitful pig dictator, only challenged by other pigs who don't really want to change anything. Foxes are an oppressed minority mistreated by brutal police officers.
  • The music video for Caravan Palace's "Lone Digger" involves a gang-related brawl at a strip club, starring a quartet of black cats and involving various other animal groups, such as cobras and dobermans. It starts because someone shoved a zebra waitress, and ends with the antelope dancing girl nonchalantly walking away after being soaked head-to-toe in blood.
  • Pink Floyd's Animals is an Animal Farm-inspired concept album about the ills of capitalism, in which society is divided between opportunistic dog businessmen, oppressive and invincible pig politicians, and a doomed flock of sheep who stand in for the general public. The sheep eventually rise up, but oust the dogs instead of the pigs, resulting in a Full-Circle Revolution. The album marked a shift to a more aggressive sound and lyrics, and all the narrator can do is try and survive.
  • The animated music video of Jonathan Young's "Storm the Castle" involves a Slave Revolt of animal people against their human oppressors, after a (literal) young buck political activist has his house burned down.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • Armello is an Adventure Board Game starring anthropomorphic animals and focusing on a Song of Ice and Fire-esque fantasy power struggle, with all the cruelty and bloodshed that entails.
  • Chicken Police: Paint It Red is a gritty film noir adventure game where two embittered ex-partners reunite to investigate a series of threads made against a femme fatale nightclub singer. Also, every character in the game is an animal's head on a human body.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day stars a drunken squirrel and features Toilet Humour, sexual innuendo, swearing, and an M rating...all capped off by a Downer Ending. It originally was a normal, cute Funny Animal platformer which got heavily reworked late in development, which is why there's a Game Boy Conker game which is aimed at children, and why a younger Conker pops up in Diddy Kong Racing.
  • Cult of the Lamb is set in a universe of adorable anthropomorphic animals, but the story is focused on a lamb who decides to start a cult and gets possessed by an unknown demonic entity. The game also involves you killing other rival cults to appease your own cult and spread awareness of an unknown god.
  • Dog's Life is a T-rated game where you are a dog trying to save his love interest from being cat food. It has that rating more for its humor and mild cursing than anything (and received lower rating outside of the US).
  • Dusty Revenge and its follow-up prequel, Dusty Raging Fist. The titular character, Dusty, is a rabbit outlaw and mercenary who spends the whole game kicking ass and taking names, with some pretty graphic and creative deaths given to animal-based enemies.
  • Feral Fury is a gritty, blood-soaked twin-stick shooter/Rogue Like starring a Panda Space Marine.
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel and its sequel are tactical RPGs starring roughly a baker's dozen of Funny Animal children… who are forced to fight a dangerous war in a setting blatantly inspired by Nazi-occupied France. Themes such as racial hatred, suicide, indoctrination into extreme mindsets, human experimentation, the loss of innocence, kindness in dark times, the horrors of war and the pursuit of vengeance are sprinkled throughout. For added fun, any one of the children can be individually sacrificed to save the rest as a gameplay mechanic during boss fights. This is in stark contrast to prior Little Tail Bronx installments, which were family-friendly and lighthearted despite having their own dark moments.
  • Hollow Knight is an epic tale of a fallen kingdom ravaged by a Mystical Plague brought on by a scorned god's jealousy, and the endeavours of the void-touched ghost of the king's mute, genderless child to try to restore said kingdom to its former glory. As the game progresses, we learn of the dark and depraved things that went on in an endeavour to stop the aforesaid plague, including soul-based magic harvested from torture victims, and throwing thousands of newborns into The Abyss to make them undead supersoldiers who are also perfectly emotionless. The characters are mostly bugs, with a few other tiny critters, such as slugs, spiders, fluke worms, etc.
  • Night in the Woods features a cast full of anthropomorphic animals. It also features alcohol, swearing, serious themes about mental health and growing up in a Dying Town, a mysterious kidnapping or two, murder, and vandalism.
  • Sine Mora is one of the darkest Shoot 'em Ups ever made, and all the characters are animals.
  • Tooth and Tail is an RTS featuring four factions of Funny Animals with World War I tech fighting to secure food supplies — each other!

    Visual Novels 
  • A Masquerade In The Woods is a story about a person suffering Domestic Abuse awakening in a raccoon body in a world of anthropomorphic animals. Right off the bat he is tortured by a serial killer and has to join a vigilante group in order to combat rampant police corruption. It heavily deals with trauma and systemic failure and deconstructs how someone would react if they found themselves in an anthropomorphic animal body.
  • Angels with Scaly Wings is a story where you are teleported to a world of sapient dragons to discuss a trade deal with them. But a string of murders puts the deal (among other things) at risk. The story deals with many kinds of issues such as parental abuse, alcoholism, terminal illness, depression and even suicide.
  • Echo Project:
    • Adastra (2018) has a cast of characters who are made up of anthro animals (with the exception of the main character Marco), and the story they are in has swearing, NSFW images, political conflict and corruption (ranging from sabotage to regicide committed by one of the characters before the beginning of the plot), a heavy sense of friction in the story's tone and a handful of scenes that involve brutal violence (with detailed descriptions).
      • Khemia, the sequel story, also qualifies for this trope. In the first released build alone, all the examples above (from the profanity to the brutal violence) surface at some point.
    • Echo is about a group of six anthro animal friends meeting up in their titular hometown for a reunion, where things soon take a turn for the dangerous when buried memories and paranormal events start to gruesomely unravel around them. Topics such as bullying, abuse and mental illness are often brought up in explicit detail and many moments in the story (ranging from evil entities to brutal character deaths) would easily fit in an R-rated horror film.
    Disclaimer on the visual novel's official itch.io page: Echo can be an emotionally intense experience and may not be for everyone. Please put your mental well-being first and take this into consideration before downloading!
    • Glory Hounds is a superhero story with mature themes whose main character is a dalmatian. Still, compared to its brethren it is more campy.
  • Extracurricular Activities is a slice of life visual novel where the main human character can date any anthro member of his tennis team. Besides the NSFW scenes that play out during the routes, each one has several dark and intense moments (ranging from personal family relationship troubles to dealing with an abusive ex-spouse who comes back into one of the datable character's life to even a murder attempt of another datable character that almost succeeds).
  • Lands of Fire is based on Aboriginal Australian Myths and features many of the monsters, violence, and pre-colonial sexual mores associated with these oral traditions. The cast are also ridiculously cute anthropomorphic animals.
  • Super Nova 2022 is a superhero story with anthropomorphic animal characters. It portrays itself relatively seriously, dealing with Thou Shalt Not Kill and the legacy that comes with a title.

    Webcomics 
  • Drop-Out is about a sugar-glider/tarsier hybrid and a hydroid on a road trip... so they can commit suicide via jumping into the Grand Canyon. The story also discusses a lot about the two's dark pasts and mental issues.
  • Drugs And Kisses features the misadventures of several pot-smoking, vodka-swigging anthropomorphic animals.
  • Endtown is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where much of the human population has turned in anthropomorphic animals. Plotlines deal with deadly Fantastic Racism, among other things.
  • Exterminatus Now features a comedic World of Funny Animals based on Sonic the Hedgehog... mixed with Warhammer 40,000, with all the blood, gore, death, and Eldritch Abominations that implies. Thus, it largely deals in adult-oriented Black Comedy, with plenty of profanity and some sexual situations to go with it.
  • Forest Hill is a Slice of Life webcomic with anthropomorphic animals dealing with all aspects of life including the grittiest ones, especially child sexual abuse.
  • Jack is a Furry Webcomic about a rabbit who is also The Grim Reaper. Most of the stories take place in the afterlife or involve death in some form. This comic can get very NSFW at times.
  • Lackadaisy is a webcomic about a bootlegging gang in Prohibition-era St. Louis, with plenty of gunfights, killings, and several sociopathic characters. There is painstaking attention to period-appropriate detail, with one exception: all the characters are anthropomorphic cats.
  • NonPack is a violent, cynical tale of Gangbangers struggling for power in a fictionalized version of Puerto Rico. It's also set in a World of Funny Animals, and the Villain Protagonists are a gang of anthro dogs.
  • Ruby Quest and its Spiritual Successor Nan Quest both use minimalist drawings featuring characters with animal aesthetics to narrate stories about grotesque Body Horror, Cosmic Horror and Survival Horror set in Eldritch Locations. Unsettling stuff. Once the blood starts spewing, the stories' target audience becomes a bit clearer.
  • Sabrina Online might not be much more explicit than many 1990s sitcoms, but its depiction of sex, language, and discussion of abuse definitely makes it not kids stuff; let alone the title character's job as the digital media producer of an adult film studio.
  • Sandra and Woo is about a preteen girl and her talking pet raccoon. It also features strong language, jokes about erections/fetishes in general, and arcs about mature topics like drug use.
  • Sparklecare: Despite being a comic about colorful Funny Animals and Cartoon Creatures, the comic takes pride in being as gory and disturbing as possible.

    Web Originals 

    Western Animation 
  • Bojack Horseman is set in a Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My! world where every so often puns are made at the expense of species, has large absurdism themes and can be extremely silly. It's also a no-holds-barred deconstructive take on the dark side of celebrity and fame, the question of happiness as a destination or a path, how the world can be large and meaningless especially compared to how small scope we are, depression, drug addiction, the true meaning of life, how shallow and self-destructive existentialism can be on the face of practicality and even does the unthinkable: it directly addresses Carnivore Confusion in a world where anthropomorphism is a thing. Needless to say, the result is not too dissimilar to how animals are processed and consumed for humans to eat.
  • Duckman: An underground comic strip adapted to a TV adult animated series starring mostly anthropomorphic characters and topics such as politics, sex, drugs, societal issues...
  • Father of the Pride was a short-lived CGI cartoon featuring cute animals living in Siegfried & Roy's private zoo. It features plenty of adult humor.
  • Hit-Monkey is a Tarantino-esque action-dramedy series about a Japanese snow-monkey who, after losing his tribe in a violent attack on an American hitman they were caring for, teams up with the hitman’s ghost to carve a bloody swath through the Tokyo underworld on a revenge quest while dealing with his own grief.
  • While Tuca & Bertie, which has the same art design as the above BoJack, is far Denser and Wackier than most of the examples on this page, but it's still an adult animated series that's not afraid to touch on serious topics such as trauma, abuse, and sexism in the workplace.
  • The short film When the Day Breaks is about an anthropomorphic pig lady having an existential crisis after seeing her rooster neighbor killed by a reckless driver.

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