Adult-starring cartoons?

He does, however, feel that the best way to solve the world's problems is to dress up as a bat, give himself a cool-sounding name and punch other people with funky costumes and cool-sounding names. That's a pretty dang adolescent worldview.
 
This is something I was told by a children's lit teacher years ago, and it stuck with me. Kids like to see other kids, talking animals, goofy adults, and Superheores. And of course, the cross breading of 2 or 3 of those together. They like it in their books (like Arthur) their movies, and their cartoon.
 
Everyone has a flaw, but flaws don't equal immaturity. Perfection doesn't equal maturity for that matter either.

Aside from the Adam West version, he doesn't have much fun doing it. He does it to protect people. The fact that he puts the well being of the city above his own desires (such as having a steady girlfriend) strikes me as mature.
 
...he dresses up as a bat and beats up clowns. That's not a personality flaw, that's just being silly. Are you really telling me that the superhero genre isn't born out of adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies?
 
What defines an adult? I do think most superhero and vigilante types are perfectionists, busybodies, idealists, sublimators, etc. These things don't go side by side with your average adult life. However, your average adult life is not terribly interesting programming.

Salaryman Kintaro's a good example of this. Office workers don't normally live exciting lives. But when the hero's a former Yanki (biker gang) leader trying to prove to his toddler son that pencil-pushing is just as badass... Well, you throw in Yakuza, business cabals, and tons of potential love interests... It's incredibly cheesy and Mary Sue-ish but the ending carries some weight to it because it does shows consequences to Kintaro's renegade salaryman style.
 
Except that adult centered kid shows have been successful before. Plus as I've stated, it would certainly help to lower the redundancy surrounding most of the animated shows. The only reason the majority of the focus on a kid/center around school is simply a case of networks being afraid of leaving the comfort zone as well as lacking ambition (ambition meaning of course the choice to achieve success through challenge and hardwork as opposed shortcuts).


Fair enough, but you fail to acknowledge my other comment.

The fact that Batman chooses protecting the city over living the comforting life of a billionaire does warrent maturity on his part. Heck, he still chooses to play an active part of his business when he could just hire others to run it for him.



Classic misconception. A show doesn't have to be pitch black depressing to be adult. If anything optimisim is an act of maturity in and of itself as opposed to complaining about the suckiness of life.
 
Apparently this situation made FOX very nervous about broadcasting it. They were afraid that since it wouldn't appeal to the same demographics as The Simpsons, they'd lose their shirt.

Of course, the show has been resurrected, which says a lot about the audience for shows featuring adults.
 
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