Truly "Adult" Animation

Blows over dust. We've have some scattered developments in the world of (young) adult animation that might peek interest:

• According to Variety, a horror animated YA anthology called A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts.

According to Animation Magazine, Film Lab: New Voices, an South Australia feature studio, has put into production the animated adult comedy Lesbian Space Princess.

Oh god Pachylad, I am so glad you mentioned that. I love how even a big shot businessman can have a silly side.

Could you imagine a world where things like Spawn, Spicy City, and Exo Squad were the definitive adult animation?

Maybe then we wouldn't have gotten the overabundance of shows trying to copy South Park for the last 20 years.

Edited by Avenger09 on Jun 13th 2023 at 7:53:11 PM

With all the flap over Nimona getting shelved, I'm surprised I haven't heard more about how it's getting released now.

I wonder if we should consider Onyx Equinox adult animation or not. It certainly has enough blood and gore and rather dark themes for it.

Seeing as it listed as one then yes we can.

Max Reveals Preview of Its Original Adult Animation Slate at Annecy International Animation Film Festival

In addition to highlighting current offerings (Only You: An Animated Shorts Collection and Fired on Mars), they announced renewals, upcoming series, and projects in development.

Returning Shows

• Ten Year Old Tom (Season 2 premieres June 29)
• Harley Quinn (Season 4 premieres this Summer)
• Clone High (Season 2 premieres 2024)
• Velma (Season 2 premieres 2024)

Upcoming Series

• Young Love (Fall 2023)
• Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake (2024)
• Scavengers Reign (2024)

In Development

• Anything Factory
• Creature Commandos
• Keeping Up with the Joneses
• Kite Man: Hell Yeah! (formerly Noonan's)
• Uptown Bodega

Edited by RacattackForce on Jun 16th 2023 at 11:28:27 AM

Nice to see that the Fiona and Cake series is still happening. I was sure it would have been on the chopping block with all the stuff Zaslav was cutting.

This also feels like this is rubbing salt in the wound after all of the animation that was previously cut.

Anything on the Metalocalypse movie yet?

We got clips. And it should be coming any day now.

Anyway! Anyone remember Killer Bean Forever?

Now it's a game! After two years of development!

First and third-person open-world roguelike shooter! Friends can be enemies! Enemies can be friends! Vehicles! Slo-mo! Dual pistol wielding! Zombies (Zom-Beans?)

All of this coming to Steam! And all major consoles later on!

(Watch it be reviewed better than your average shooty game from Rockstar, Activision, and Ubisoft!)

Nimona is not really adult animation though, the violence is toned down compared to the comic to make it more family-friendly.

Nimona isn't technically an adult film, true, but I'd still argue it's relevant here for a very important reason.

See, you get a lot of animated TV shows and movies that are technically aimed at children or families, but end up attracting a disproportionately large Periphery Demographic of adults, and Nimona is definitely one of these. This has become especially true in the past decade or so, though it dates much further back. With theatrical films, the demographics of the viewers don't really matter to the studio, since they're getting the money from the ticket sales either way. TV shows, however, are different. A TV show's performance is measure not just in terms of the raw numbers of people watching, but in terms of how it performs with its target demographic. That means a show can attract a lot of viewers, but if they aren't the desired group it's still considered a failure. You know, kind of like that one Family Guy episode where Peter opens a restaurant and it's a hit, but he's angry that it only ever seems to attract handicapped people.

And this has been the downfall a lot of animated shows that, on paper, performed well, but in practice attracted an audience of more adults and teens than children. Examples include Young Justice, Sym-Bionic Titan, Infinity Train, and The Owl House (though the last one also had other factors in play). This line of reasoning was quite possibly behind the decline of non-comedic, story-driven cartoons as a whole in the late 2010s; such shows performed better outside the target demographic of channels like Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon Network, so they decided to stop making them.

The fact that Unicorn: Warriors Eternal and My Adventures With Superman— two shows that, I'd argue, wouldn't have been out of place on daytime Cartoon Network ten or fifteen years ago— are now airing on Adult Swim is especially intriguing in this context. On Adult Swim, these shows can be targeted at the largest segment of viewers that actually watches them, instead of having to fight for the attention of children. This could be the beginning of an interesting experiment, and I'm interested to see if it pans out.

Edited by Booplesnoot on Aug 27th 2023 at 9:42:43 AM

I could've sworn I brought this subject up somewhere, but because we live in a timeline where you can stream it on Disney+ of all places, how would you guys fix Eight Crazy Nights?

I know, it's not really great or good, but I can't help but feel there's enough potential to give it a do-over from, say, Sony Pictures Animation.

Spitballing thoughts:

• I think we might be past the point of having Adam Sandler as a go-to for "Jewish smart aleck with a dark backstory". Maybe Ben Schwartz?
• Make it more of a dramedy. Like, after having moments of foreshadowing like Davey getting anxious after seeing a car skidding on the road, when we really learn about his parents' death, BAM! Suddenly the humor is only rarely there.
• No exposition. Like, I know you got a set amount of time to give your audience a reason why they should care about guys like Davey and Whitey, but you need to do more than just say "this guy did this and that!" Show "this and that"! Show Davey's antics and Whitey's actions. Don't cram it down to just one flashback.
• How about actually exploring the different aspects of Christmas and Hanukkah? Like, maybe have a subplot where Davey helps Benjamin read the Torah for his Bar Mitzvah? (Maybe someone with a better understanding of Hebrew culture can fine-tune this part.)
• No product placements. I guess Adam Sandler really likes shilling to stores, but it just feels off to have store mascots be the ones to give Davey the powwow to show him the error of his ways. This might sound insane AF, but if we needed to have some divine force telling our protagonist how he's screwing the pooch, I feel like taking a page from The Prince of Egypt and have Davey be talked to by God himself who starts speaking divinely like in TPOE...but when Davey keeps giving him lip, God snaps like "I get that it wasn't okay for them to just blab about that night, but you know what's also not okay? Telling an old man that no one will remember him when his time comes! He's sticking his neck out to fish you out of the dark place and you go and say something that awful? Exactly who benefits from that?"
• Actually give Davey some resolution? It just kinda ends with Whitey having his happiest seizure and no word about Davey's whole jail thing.

But how would you guys fix it?