WesternAnimation.The Greatest Adventure Stories From The Bible: Artistic License – Biology: Since these videos were made for children, it was assumed that they wouldn't question the animals that were placed in the Garden. However, baraminologists and taxonomists would agree that placing modern species and sub-species in the garden when Genesis clearly states "created kinds" is a bit of a problem. Especially since it increases several thousandfold how many animals Adam would have had to name. It also complicates things for the Noah episode, an issue ignored by that episode as well.
Trivia.The Transformers The Movie: Orson Welles's seeming apathy to the film being a result of apparent dislike of the property being "for kids" has been a popular myth; in reality, Orson Welles was actually interested in being in an animated feature given his preference in approaching different developing mediums, a combination of his ailing health and lack of understanding about the franchise is what ended up creating the common belief that his performance as Unicron was "bored". He does seem to have been rueful about playing Unicron, but it seems to have owed to the fact that he was starring in a heavily Merchandise-Driven property (and even then, his tone had no small amount of Self-Deprecation to it).
WebVideo.The Keef Crew: The Friend Nobody Likes: Smash is this to all the other fighting games in the EVO skits. All the other fighting games keep taking the opportunity to roast him, for not being "A real fighting game" and "for kids"invoked.
Trivia.Ed Edd N Eddy: Danny Antonucci claims that the show was created on a dare from one of his colleagues. He apparently bet Antonucci, who at that point was known for vulgar, off-the-wall TV commercials, station I. D.s and shorts geared towards adults, that he couldn't make a show for children (this being after years of Danny trying and failing to pitch animated shows for adults). It's safe to assume that Danny won.
WebAnimation.Let Me Explain Studios: Saw It in a Movie Once: In "Backyard Stories", Rebecca recalled an incident where one of her friends tried to retrieve a lost ball by climbing a tree and using a branch to swing into the neighbor's garden, à la Tarzan. Unsurprisingly, the branch couldn't hold his weight and he fell on a wet bar, where he was lucky enough to just have his arm broken. Rebecca also uses this trope against him, saying that Wile E. Coyote shorts should've told him that it was a bad idea. Rebecca: Who says cartoons rot your brain?invoked
YMMV.Marvel Universe: Jeph Loeb has gone on record stating that Ultimate Spider-Man is specifically aimed at children, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. has been described as being Lighter and Softer as well.
YMMV.Sailor Moon Ep 46 Usagis Eternal Wish A Brand New Life: Considering the (dead) Inner Guardians end up returning as ghosts to help Usagi anyway in the original version, the change to the Scouts not dying at all and arriving in the nick of time to help Serena fight off Queen Beryl still arguably works the same in the DIC Dub. Though at the same time, Critics of the dub will decry the change for taking away the tear-jerking aspect of the original to make it accessible to children.
UsefulNotes.North America: Western Animation: Western Animation Animated Shock Comedy Animation Age Ghetto Disney Creatures of the Farce Disney Villain Death Disneyesque Grossout Show History of Animation The Golden Age of Animation The Dark Age of Animation The Renaissance Age of Animation The Millennium Age of Animation Inkblot Cartoon Style Pie-Eyed Rubberhose Limbs "Lion King" Lift Mocky Mouse The Scrappy Alas, Poor Scrappy High-Tier Scrappy Replacement Scrappy Rescued from the Scrappy Heap Take That, Scrappy! Souvenir Land Spaghetti Kiss White Gloves
MediaNotes.Academy Award For Best Animated Feature: The most blatant of them all is that the AMPAS created the category in order to prevent animated films from being nominated for Best Picture and making this a Consolation Prize for them, thus keeping the Animation Age Ghetto alive, despite their claims that it can encourage filmmakers to create more animated films. This came to a head in 2009, when WALL•E was snubbed for Best Picture despite being one of the best-acclaimed films of 2008. Nevertheless, the Academy states that animated films can be nominated in both categories, which happened in 2009 and 2010 with Up and Toy Story 3 respectively.
YMMV.Star Wars Rebels: As soon as early trailers for the show were revealed, message boards were flooded with posts about how the show was going to be "kiddy" and Disneyfied in comparison to Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This sentiment hasn't fully worn off, and many ‘’Star Wars’’ fans don’t give the show a shot due to the perception that it’s a show for kids. This perception isn’t entirely unearned, since the violence is much more family-friendly and especially early episodes were formulaic and fueled by wacky hijinks with a Kid Hero. Even someone going in with an open mind could lose interest before the show begins taking some darker turns.
WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids.Animated Films: AKIRA: First released in an English dub in the late 1980s, it managed to break Japan out of the Animation Age Ghetto in American eyes, containing a lot of violence (including a few exploding heads, people being smashed, and blown into gibs), a near rape scene and a few utterly disturbing sequences.
RRatedOpening.Anime And Manga: Tokyo getting destroyed nuclear-style in the opening shot, and then the dogs and the spy getting killed in AKIRA. The spy's death was especially bloody, just to drive home the point that, no, even though it's animated, this is not for kids.
YMMV.Ghost In The Shell 1995: Innocence somehow carries a TV-PG rating despite its violence — which includes peoples' heads getting smacked off — and focusing on the sexual trafficking of minors. Aside from that, however, the series itself is a notable aversion to this; with it being a huge influence on Sci-Fi.
WebVideo.Possum Reviews: Take That, Audience!: He credits his patreon supporters partway through every episode, but in many episodes does so in an unflattering way. Overlapping with Take That, Critics!, an ant character will often spout invalid but widespread criticisms towards Possum, such as invoking the Animation Age Ghetto to deflect The Emoji Movie.
Creator.Chaos D 1: invoked He relates an interesting MMO example in his MMO Grinder: MapleStory enforced by the community itself, not an outside group: He witnessed a group of players harassing one player because he was too old in their eyes to play this rather cutesy game - 16 years.
YMMV.Animal Farm 1954: The animated film contains the same political allegories and violence present in the novel. It was marketed as an adult film when it was first released, and the BBFC classified it as Universal, meaning that they considered it to be appropriate for children.
YMMV.Caravan Palace: What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Yes, the "Lone Digger" video is animated and takes place in a World of Funny Animals. No, you should not show it to your kids; it opens up in a strip club and gets worse from there. This is especially prevalent now that Lone Digger played in Strange World.
CutShort.Western Animation: Infinity Train ended with four seasons out of a planned eight due to higher-ups thinking the show was "too mature" for its target audience. Despite being an anthology with self-contained season-long arcs, the cancellation left the outcomes of two overarching storylines unresolved; those being whether Amelia will ever manage to get off the train and whereabouts and status of Hazel after being quarantined.
Trivia.The Haunted Mansion: What Could Have Been: An animated series created by Shannon Tindle, creator of Kubo and the Two Strings. Sadly, it never got more than a brief teaser. One artist on the project claims it was cancelled after the team was informed that "Theme Park Attractions are too valuable of an IP to be wasted on animation".Other failed animated adaptations included a Halloween Special produced by illustrator Gris Grimly that was planned for the 45th anniversary and a direct to video film planned in the late 90s that was canned in favor of the 2003 live-action film.
DethroningMoment.Teen Titans Go: Redaka: Previously, I wouldn't have called myself the biggest fan of the original Teen Titans nor would I call myself the biggest hater of Teen Titans Go! I didn't like it but I just thought of it as a spin off and nothing more. But when "The Return of Slade" came around, that's when I actively started to loathe this show because of the creators' immature responses to criticism. Also, I find it funny how they have the nerve to actively make fun of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic in "Return of Slade" when that show is not only more popular and successful than theirs but is also enjoyed by a wide demographic, shattering their views that cartoons are only for kids.
YMMV.Waltz With Bashir: The director had a great deal of difficulty getting funding for a serious documentary about a massacre that is also animated.
Awesome.The Mysterious Mr Enter: Mr. Enter addressing – and chewing out – the Animation Age Ghetto in his "Demolition Doofus" review: Mr. Enter: Why am I taking Spongebob Squarepants so seriously? I mean, it's just a kid's show! Maybe for one I'm taking it seriously because it's a fucking kid's show! I wouldn't want them to watch something like this, or "The Splinter", or "A Pal for Gary", or "One Coarse Meal", or any of the sick, twisted plots that come out of this show, would you!?
Film.Unbreakable: In-universe. Elijah refuses to sell a rare piece of comic book art to a father who is only looking for a gift for his four-year-old son, rather than someone who would appreciate the work of art.
YMMV.Beowulf 2007: A dark, brooding, introspective Deconstruction of the original work with tons of totally uncensored graphic violence and a naked Angelina Jolie. Rated PG-13 in the United States and Britain. Go figure.
Trivia.All Dogs Go To Heaven: Executive Meddling: Resulted in some of the scarier images from the film, such as Charlie's body flying off the pier when he's hit by the carnote One tie-in book for the film recycled concept art for its illustrations. This included one where the silhouette of Charlie's body can be seen flying alongside the car. and a few seconds of the Hell sequence, getting neutered in order to be more appropriate for children. A lot of casual swearing peppered throughout the film was also cut out, an artifact from which can be heard on the soundtrack album, when Charlie angrily mumbles to himself "Damn, that Carface, I'll kill him!" (In the movie, the "damn" is awkwardly cut out).
YMMV.The New Adventures Of Peter Rabbit: So Okay, It's Average: It’s Golden Films, so it’s hardly high art, but it’s a pretty harmless and inoffensive kid’s movie with passable if unremarkable animation by Saturday Morning cartoon standards. It probably helps that Beatrix Potter’s stories were already aimed at children, so even with Golden Films nixing the darker and scarier elements from them, they lend themselves much better to a light-hearted movie than the likes of Pocahontas or The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.
YMMV.Castlevania: Castlevania producer Koji "IGA" Igarashi attempted to sway younger audiences to the series with simplistic anime-style artwork for Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin. IGA went back to Ayami Kojima for the box art of The Dracula X Chronicles, suggesting that the anime approach didn't go too well.
YMMV.Anime Crimes Division: Accidental Aesop: While being a blatant parody of anime and live-action TV tropes, the series shown throughout that while one can be passionate for something they love, taking it too seriously where real people get hurt physically and/or emotionally is where you crossed the line. Secondly, an entertainment medium or genre by itself doesn't automatically guarantee quality and maturity as demonstrated the Ms. Prestige's invocation of the Animation Age Ghetto despite admitting that their live-action dramas are just bad as the anime they constantly look down on.
TearJerker.Television Channels: 2017 is a special case, as it doesn't end with an actor; it ends with TCM's very own host, Robert Osbourne, who died March 6 of that year. They don't even give him a name/occupation caption like all the others... we already know.Happy tears abound for animation fans with the inclusion of legendary voice actress June Foray, especially since animation is a medium where some particularly talented and influential VA's have been glossed over in major In Memoriam reels (or, in Mel Blanc's case, died before such reels became common). She was also given representation in the channel's annual In Memoriam marathon, via an airing of The Phantom Tollbooth.
JustForFun.Trope Overdosed Franchises: Star Wars Expanded Universe: Smothered. The current Expanded Universe that replaced Legends. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Overloaded. A popular CGI series covering the timegap between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and averted the Animation Age Ghetto. Star Wars Rebels: Overdosed.
Awesome.TV Trash: His review of Teen Titans Go! points out the three main fallacies of the show, and he gives several examples that defy these fallacies:1. The show assumes pre-teens are incapable of processing complex drama, which Don Bluth has been producing doing since The '80s. 2. The show also assumes teens shouldn't watch cartoons, which Anime soundly debunks. 3. The show also assumes it's not possible to create shows that both adults and kids can enjoy, which shows like Gravity Falls and Phineas and Ferb both did.
YMMV.Censored Eleven: More than a few people have questioned the legitimacy of the list when there are plenty of live-action films for the era of their creation that feature racist caricatures just as bad, many of which are considered classics (such as Gone with the Wind or The Jazz Singer).
Headscratchers.Animaniacs: But those were intended for adults; they were originally created as a way to draw people into movie theaters. It was only later that kids became a bigger audience for cartoons than adults, and we all know what happened then...
WebVideo.Two The Ranting Gryphon: invokedHis rant on Zootopia was about an experience where he saw the titular movie by himself, only for a woman to treat him with suspicion of being a child molester because he was there alone. 2 spends the rest of the rant arguing against the mentality that animation is only for children. "You can eat all of my personal dick, because I like cartoons!"
YMMV.Pannonia Film Studio: Although some of their works are made primarily for children (e.g. The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears, Pumuckl), others are intended mostly for adult audiences (e.g. „Kérem a következőt!”, Mézga család, Cat City, Hófehér). Nevertheless, the latter are still often aired on television as children's programmes.
WhatCouldHaveBeen.Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The series came very close to getting an animated series, with designs of the characters and even a concept reel which you can find here. However, when the intended home for the show, Fox Kids, ended in 2002, the producers tried to shop it around to other networks, and none of them were interested in it. They resumed development in 2004, at which point the pitch reel was created; again, nobody wanted it, partially because of the Animation Age Ghetto (being seen as too dark for kids and not "suitable" in primetime) and partially because of financial issues (as Whedon wanted quality animation more on the budget of Batman: The Animated Series). Ultimately, the series was shelved and buried. It did get a nice nod in the season eight comic 12th issue, "After These Messages... We'll Be Right Back", which explores the animated series for a bit.
YMMV.Shin Megami Tensei: What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Tends to be averted for the most part, but Liberator Dx2 on iOS and Android proved a notable exception. Despite characters attempting suicide onscreen in the first few hours of the game, scantily-clad demons, subplots involving the underground criminal syndicates, and Mara, the powers that be at the App Store (who, to be fair, were likely unfamiliar with the franchise's reputation) took one look at the cartoony graphics and figured it was appropriate for everyone 10 and up.
Trivia.Prozzak: What Could Have Been: A Simon & Milo cartoon was planned for Disney Channel in the early 2000s, with Ready Ready Set Go and the band's title song for the channel's Made-for-TV Movie Get a Clue testing the waters with their audience. However, Jason Levine wound up clashing with executives over what they considered "age appropriate" for Disney's core audience and the project fell through, though storyboards for a pilot episode where made.
YMMV.Eight Crazy Nights: Uncertain Audience: The main reason why the film ended up bombing as hard as it did. Besides being a traditionally-animated film released at a time when those kinds of films were going out of favor as viewers at the time considered them too kiddie compared to the CG-animated films from Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, it's a typical PG-13 rated Adam Sandler comedy, making it too crude and inappropriate for younger viewers. Yet, at the same time, the heavy amount of toilet humor made it too juvenile for adults.
YMMV.Devilman: Unsurprising, knowing most video stores. The OVA is well known for its incredible brutality and the dub is full of swearing. The 1972 anime, on the other hand, was aimed at kids, having several changes to its story and generally being Lighter and Softer in comparison with the original manga.
WesternAnimation.Sausage Party: Take That!: The entire film is intended as a giant middle finger not so much to computer animated films of the 21st century, but the mindset that they can only be for children. During Firewater's flashback, a peanut is seen holding a sign reading "The Gods Hate Figs," playing off the infamous Westboro Baptist Church's own "God Hates Fags" picket signs.
YMMV.Clannad: On Amazon Instant Video, the series is listed as "Family." This is a series that has child abuse, neglect, and death by childbirth. Considering that it turns most adults into blubbering wrecks, how do you think kids would react?
Trivia.The Spirit: What Could Have Been: In the mid-80s, Brad Bird, a professed fan of the comic, created a 3-minute pitch for an Animated Adaptation (mainly because he needed something for his demo reel). The pitch made it all the way up to Will Eisner himself, who loved both the animation and the spec script Bird had written, but the major Hollywood studios couldn't picture it as an animated film and the project dwindled.
VideoGame.Sim Earth: Layman's Terms: The Super NES port renames and simplifies many of the species names for the expected younger age of the Nintendo audience; "Eukaryotes" are known as "Amoeba", "Cetaceans" are known as "Whales", et cetera.
YMMV.Kerem A Kovetkezot: Mainly created for adult audiences, the show has episodes about violence, murder, suicide, domestic abuse, divorce, alcoholism, and one episode shows the characters explicitly using drugs (and not of the G-rated variety), all of them Played for Laughs. Also, the show's Spoof Aesops are usually blatantly bad. Nevertheless, because of being animated and having a Funny Animal cast, it is still often aired as a children's programme.
FandomEnragingMisconception.Western Animation: A good way to piss off any fan of animation is to unironically say animation is just for children or to assume a work is intended for children just because it's animated. The 2022 Oscars is a major offender of this.
Headscratchers.Watership Down: Didn't the film adaptation do well? You'd think that someone would say "You know Watership Down did really well, lets make another animated film for adults." Thus ending the Animation Age Ghetto.They followed it up by making The Plague Dogs, which everybody thought was too depressing.
YMMV.Star Wars The Clone Wars: And You Thought It Would Fail: The Clone Wars was originally against the odds due to the initial Animation Age Ghetto, the ties to the divisive Prequel Trilogy (which the series is set during), and the inevitable outcome presenting that the protagonists' actions will be for naught. Despite all of those odds, The Clone Wars managed to become very well-acclaimed. The reception towards the series getting revived for a seventh season says it all. The cherry on the cake is that the series has spawned a live-action legacy of its own set in the aftermath of the Original Trilogy, with several of its elements showing up and having much relevance in The Mandalorian and multiple upcoming spinoffs of the latter.
YMMV.The Ed Sullivan Show: Nightmare Fuel: The premiere of the nuclear-disaster animation A Short Vision on May 27, 1956.Animation Age Ghetto: On said premiere, Sullivan told the TV audience that "if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this 'cause it's a fantasy, the whole thing is animated..." To be fair to Sullivan, when he reran the film on June 10, he instead warned the home viewers to take the kids out of the room and just have the older ones watching.
AudienceAlienatingPremise.Film: Osmosis Jones is a live-action/animated hybrid, already setting off the Animation Age Ghetto. Worse, the parts with actors are heavy on gross-out moments, and the cartoon parts full of Parental Bonus and Family-Unfriendly Violence that certainly aimed more at grown-ups. Add the studio underpromoting what was already a hard sell, and it flopped on theaters - though it still originated a spin-off series and later became a Cult Classic.
WebAnimation.Boxtown: Parodied in universe - in the Indiegogo video, Tim Standing, upon learning the show is to be animated, declares animation as being for babies and then tells any children watching to steal their parents’ credit card information and send it to him.
YMMV.Super Smash Bros Ultimate: Steve's home series had the negative reputation of being marketed to kids for several years, after Mojang was acquired by Microsoft, so the possibility of a Minecraft character coming was seen as dull to most hardcore fans that weren't already invested in that series. Once he was revealed to come with an incredibly technical moveset that streamlines the crafting mechanics from his series, fans warmed up to him.
YMMV.Maxand Dave Fleischer: In a peculiar example, Max Fleischer, while never saying animation could only be for kids, was strongly against the idea of animation trying to emulate other mediums like fine art on their own terms, believing that direct cartooning is an art in itself and was only handicapped by trying to stray from it. See the quote page for his thoughts.
YMMV.Tom And Jerry: What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Much like classic Looney Tunes and many other theatrical cartoons of the era, the classic Tom and Jerry shorts were originally made with adult audiences in mind, to be showcased in theatres before the main movie (hence the name "theatrical shorts"). The Moral Guardians who criticize Tom and Jerry for its famously violent Slapstick being unsuitable for children aren't entirely wrong, since the shorts weren't intended to be watched by children. Thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto myth, and the violence in Tom and Jerry being strictly slapstick with no blood or gore, many, many people out there still believe that Tom and Jerry is for kids, so it can still come as quite a shock for Moral Guardians when fans who researched the era tell them, "Tom and Jerry isn't suitable for children, you say? That's because it was originally made for adults".
YMMV.Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: What got the show canceled in its initial run. Moral Guardians didn't like that a cartoon was dealing with family unfriendly subjects, even if it was explicitly not for families. It didn't help that the show was originally designed for, and for the most part aired in, the new 7:30 family slot.
YMMV.Superman The Animated Series: Most of the series was made to the producers' satisfaction, but they were forced to change Supergirl's introductory episode (See What Could Have Been on the trivia page) and obscure Maggie Sawyer's sexuality (See Hide Your Lesbians on the main page) because they were deemed inappropriate for a children's show.
Trivia.Pocahontas: The first pass of the story was going to be closer to the actual events (at least as close as a "fairy tale" version could get), with Pocahontas being twelve years old and speaking Powhatan for most of the film, gradually learning how to speak English. Jeff Katzenberg, desperate to earn the Disney Animated Canon another Academy Award nomination, wanted the story to be sexier, both in tone and appearance, in the hopes of appealing to the Academy Awards' standards of "maturity." It was his decision to age Pocahontas up and make John Smith more attractive.
YMMV.The Legend Of Zelda The Wind Waker: The graphical style in general. While it was controversial at the time due to the Animation Age Ghetto and what people were expecting thanks to the GameCube SpaceWorld demo, most fans have long come around to appreciating the game's excellent and timeless visual style, with many considering Twilight Princess to have gone too far into the other direction into Real Is Brown territory. Since then, Nintendo has been making efforts to try and find a good middle-ground, with Skyward Sword's painterly aesthetic and Breath of the Wild returning to cel-shading but with a slightly more grounded yet stylized anime-esque aesthetic.
DarthWiki.Millville Mornings A Splash Of Color: The video game equivalent is mentioned In-Universe. In Final Emblem, an NPC in a tavern recalls the time his aunt bought Great Heist Santa Clara to her kids, scarring them. Her aunt's justification was that the cover is colorful and drawn, so it must be for kids!
WebVideo.Jehtt: Art Shift: During "The Chaotix become Youtubers" there's a brief moment where the video goes from Sonic X footage to plush dolls when Vector discusses meme formats. Vector: Well, how about a homemade look? Espio: That would definitely get it marked for kids. (the video switches back to the Sonic Xfootage) Vector: (through gritted teeth) invokedAnd the cartoon footage won't?
WMG.Cuphead: If there is one, it will more likely be a family series, since this game has an "E" rating in North America."Family series" my butt. After all, with all the tobacco and alcohol references, gambling references, garbage like that, and the Devil himself, how did this manage to get an E rating??!! Animation Age Ghetto. That and universally none of those things are considered child-inappropriate. Children's animated shows have gotten away with that and much worse, not sure why the surprise. Are we forgetting all the stuff Disney got away with in Pinocchio?
UncertainAudience.Video Games: According to an interview in Nintendo Power Issue 269, this is what Hiroshi Matsuyama believes to be a killing blow against Tail Concerto's sales expectations. On one hand, it's a colorful platformer taking place in a fantasy sky world populated by anthropomorphic cats and dogs piloting all different kinds of mechas, so a lot of the older playerbase couldn't take it seriously. On the other hand, it preaches the dangers of blind faith and misguided racism on top of having a rather complicated control scheme, so a lot of younger players had a hard time getting into the game at all.
WebVideo.Your Movie Sucks Dot Org: invokedHe has a good time pointing out that the creators of The Lion King (2019) kept pushing for the idea that it was not an animated film, even though by any sane definition, it is one. He claims that nearly all the ideas they bring up in favor of it being live-action have been done by other animated films (for instance, Surf's Up used the idea of filming as if a real camera were being used as part of its Mockumentary formula), and that the claims of seamless hyper-realistic CGI don't hold water when there are parts of the film where the CGI doesn't hold up. This is perhaps best showcased by him pointing out that the film submitted a "For Your Consideration" campaign that attempted to get the film a nomination for Best Picture, but not Best Animated Feature.
NeverSayDie.Western Animation: Gravity Falls in general has mostly averted this, but when it doesn't, it actually replaces "kill" with something worse. "I've got some children I need to make into corpses!" and "When I get my hands on you kids, I'm gonna disassemble your molecules!" The Latino Spanish version of Gravity Falls is this trope, thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto in LA. Disney Channel Latin America dubbed the series changing every word for death or die using instead "end".
YMMV.Persepolis: Downplayed. The subject matter and art style relegated the film’s U.S. release to art house cinemas, but it has a respectable reputation as an animated film explicitly not for children; with even some highschools playing the film.
WesternAnimation.X Men Evolution: Pragmatic Adaptation: Nearly every adaptation of Wolverine in a Marvel TV series tends to focus more on building his characterization than on his violent berserker rages, because of Media Watchdogs and their attitude towards violence in children's TV.
YMMV.Earth Bound 1994: A big reason why it was a commercial failure back when it was released in North America for the first time. Its localization was poorly timed as it was released when the bar was set VERY high graphic-wise for video games, especially for RPGs. Its preteen to young adult target audience didn't take a second look at the "chibi" graphics and Toilet Humor from the marketing and assumed it was merely a kids' game. The "cool"-looking boxart tried to change this, but it fell on blind eyes.
Creator.Filmation: Hardchrome: The Last P.I., which would have been Filmation's first adult-oriented animation. The show was to have focused around a half-man, half machine ex-police officer turned private investigator named Hardchrome, who makes his living in the slums of Frisco City. The show was never made beyond some pitch artwork due to the Animation Age Ghetto being in full effect.
YMMV.Pokemon Genesect And The Legend Awakened: The Pokémon animé's adherence to this trope is believed to be one reason why a new Mewtwo was created in the first place. Compare to Takeshi Shudō explaining that he made the original Mewtwo's movie to appeal to both children and their parents (at least in Japanese) - considering this, it makes perfect sense that the older fans would prefer the original Mewtwo. Reiko Takashima: Of course, I also wanted to really give this my all because Mewtwo is such a huge figure in the Pokémon world. I think a lot of children are excited to see this movie and so I felt pressured to not let them down.
Manga.Doraemon: In "Defender of Justice: Masked Me!", Noby is a fan of the superhero Masked Me, and Doraemon thinks that he's too old to watch kids' shows. invoked
WesternAnimation.Antz: Bowdlerize: Whenever it is shown on TV, all the swear words are edited out. And there's quite a lot of petty swearing in the movie, so some of the dialogue is almost completely out of context. This is all to keep it in the Animation Age Ghetto. General Mandible: We will finish this tunnel, on schedule. Come ——* hell or high water. Later: Mandible: ——* Damn! ...good! ——* Damn good! The cover of the movie used to feature the World Trade Center quite prominently, until 2001. The television ad had Z saying "drinking from the caboose of another creature," not "anus." Also on the ad, Z says "Who the heck is that?" rather than "Who the hell is that?"
YMMV.Fuse: Fell into a variant of this — EA's focus group testing had kids wanting it to be more realistic, while older gamers didn't apparently like how cartoony it was — both were of the Rated M for Money crowd, wanting "maturity" over anything else.
YMMV.Star Trek Lower Decks: What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Ah, another show that falls victim to the Animation Age Ghetto, possibly helped along by it piggy backing off of a franchise that was generally family-friendly. Oddly enough, all swearing is bleeped out despite the other CBS All Access Trek shows having no issue with it.
Website.Not Always Related: invokedThis OP's brother seems to be a firm believer in it, ridiculing the submitter's girlfriend for liking Frozen (2013) and buying an Elsa doll and outright saying that "cartoons are for kids" and "grownups don't care about it". He ends up being disproven by his daughter, who points out the various cartoon and/or comic book characters their various family members like.
YMMV.Gustavus: Since it's animated and zany, the shorts have been widely shown to children. A lot of them are inoffensive, but the series is categorized as adult animation for good reason: alcohol, smoking, nudity, sexual innuendo, and subjects and gags best understood by jaded grownups feature frequently.
Trivia.Power Stone: Banned in China: The Power Stone anime was cut from television by the Brazilian government in the middle of its broadcast in 2001, claiming "inappropriate violent cartoon for the time to broadcast it".
WarpThatAesop.Anime And Manga: Liking children's cartoons at an adult age is a prime symptom of being a Psychopathic Manchild.
WesternAnimation.Titan AE: invokedAbove all, the film suffers from deep uncertainty about its audience. Was it supposed to be a cartoon film for children, or was it aimed at an older science-fiction audience? Unsurprisingly its marketing was equally uncertain.
YMMV.Ghost Stories: Ignored completely in the ADV dub. Ironically, the original Japanese version itself was for kids.
YMMV.Aggretsuko: Despite being aimed to the teen & adult demographic, this is also a show based on merchandising from the same company as Hello Kitty. One Malaysian promo poster features the character as part of the Sanrio Times Exhibition held in December 2018.
Trivia.Transformers Film Series: Derrick J. Wyatt, who worked on Transformers: Animated, didn't care much for the way Lockdown, who he helped create, was adapted in Age of Extinction. He was even less happy about the design of Hot Rod in The Last Knight, responding to a tweet of the design that proudly boasted it was "no cartoon" with a blunt "Fuck you" and deriding him as a "name slap" in replies.
AlternativeJokeInterpretation.Western Animation: In "Baby, You Knock Me Out" Peter is drunkenly watching anime and wonders why everyone in the show is either a ten year old girl or a monster. It's a Shallow Parody no matter how you slice it, but is it an All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles joke or is it an "All Anime is Pokemon" joke?
CriticalDissonance.Film: A minor case with Sausage Party. From critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it got an 83% "Certified Fresh" rating. From audiences, it got a much less impressive 52%, a 6.1 on IMDb, and usually a 3-star rating on many retailers like Amazon, namely from those who believe animation is only for children.
YMMV.Pretty Cure: Girl-Show Ghetto: While many seasons tend to avoid both this trope and Animation Age Ghetto thanks to the intense action scenes and stories, some seasons, particularly the lighthearted and less action-oriented ones, have a chance of being dismissed by some viewers as just another magical girl series for little kids regardless of their quality
SurprisinglySimilarCharacters.Troper Entries N To R: Don't let Animation Age Ghetto fool you; this "graphic novel" deals with mature themes, as is typical of its creator. You can see it in the backstory of its morally ambiguous protagonist: he does not know the identity of his father due to the large number of men his mother sleeps with, and his mother is negligent and sometimes downright abusive. He walks in on his mother having sex with one of her many sexual partners and is punished severely for it, mentally scarring him and causing him to abhor love and sex. At one point in the story, he is put in an institution where he is given the Rorschach test. He is also wanted by the police for some part of the narrative. We're talking about Rorschach, right? Perhaps, but it could also be Shogo.
YMMV.Honest Trailers: In the Ahsoka trailer, the narrator firmly goes into this by mocking fans who still like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels for not having developed more mature interests since they were children. The trailer for The Mandalorian Season 3 also mocks Dave Filoni for bringing in characters and concepts from the animated series he helmed for the same reasons.
Headscratchers.Kim Possible: And Thou Shalt Not Kill is just a teen thing? Um, look at Batman, who is most definitely NOT anywhere near the "teenage Competence Zone." He has a code against killing and he fights some of the most murder-happy villains out there. You say Animation Age Ghetto, I say superhero morals.
YMMV.Paradise Kiss: What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: This and Fushigi Yuugi were given an "Appropriate for all ages" rating by Animax Asia thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto. Yes, because the gritty world of modelling and a high school girl being courted by an adult man is totally family friendly material.
YMMV.Little Witch Academia 2017: The dub actually retains Amanda's swearing, yet Netflix keeps the show's rating as Y7, which sadly also means some Animation Age Ghetto is also afoot, which is strange as Netflix tends to avoid this.
YMMV.Drawn Together: They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The idea of a Big Brother-style reality show that features family-unfriendly parodies of popular cartoon characters from across various media opens up a lot of potential to both de- and reconstruct not only of those characters' common tropes, but those of reality television. Unfortunately, the stigma that animation is either for children or childish by design reared its ugly head, so rather than familiar types of characters playing off one another for comedy, we instead got your typical, Family Guy-esque Animated Shock Comedy that tries way too hard to be deliberately offensive.
Trivia.The Princess And The Frog: Acclaimed Flop: Not nearly as badly as many other examples, but despite its beautiful animation and well-received story and characters, the film only had middling success at the box office. This was partly due to poor marketing (Ed Catmull, Disney's president, admitted that putting "Princess" in the title made it seem as though the movie was only for young girls), poor release timing (the film debuted just five days before the release of the box-office shattering Avatar), and the fact it was a 2D animated film (which were seen as kiddie trash compared to the "edgier" animated films made by Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, at least in the States).
VindicatedByHistory.Western Animation: Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was, when it first aired, extremely controversial (So controversial it was canceled) because it wasn't like Hanna-Barbera's usual stuff, where the Animation Age Ghetto was the rule.. Despite achieving some popularity (enough to get guest stars, a common thing in The '70s, as well as three seasons) it's now seen as a little more fondly thanks to its influence on shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, F is for Family, etc. Some even view it as better than stuff airing 50 years later thanks to having a nice art-style, sharp humor, and properly dealing with adult subjects.
YMMV.Bluey: "Movies", while intended to be about conquering fears, also showcases why it can be important to take things intended for a younger audience seriously (such as animated films). Bandit writes off Chunky Chimp as "Just monkeys singing songs", but Bluey is deeply affected by the movie's main message of being yourself and pretty much absorbs the lesson right then and there.
YMMV.Song Of The Sea: Award Snub: The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015, but lost to Big Hero 6. This instance of Disney/Pixar winning generated particular antipathy as it was the first year Oscar Ballots were made public. Several voter ballots revealed they never watched some of the nominated films (one referred to Song of the Sea and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya as "two obscure freakin' Chinese fuckin' things that nobody ever freakin' saw") or didn't take the category seriously.
