Animals in animation

W

Wannabe Chef.

New member
This is not a place to discuss cartoons where stuff involving animals is every where and the goal is to be funny. This is a place to discuss actual stories in animated form involving animals.
Please leave feedback on what you think, as well as stories that you enjoyed about animals and things you didn't think were done well.
Now I for one love animals and stuff involving them. But it's difficult to find stuff with animals. Sure there's cartoons everywhere. But I enjoy variety and more than just humor.
I believe that there's a lot of potential for stories with animals. But the surface of what can be done has hardly been scratched. The best place to start any search for this would be the classic Disney films, many of which involved animals. I love Disney for that!
Especially, Oliver and company. Which I find to be a great story for its characters, emotions, and plot.
But beyond Disney it requires some real searching to find stuff. And that's just movies. What about T.V. shows? I just feel that there's such potential for animals in animation, and I hope for the future that one day animals will become really popular.
 
Animals aren't really popular now? More than half of the current animated projects these days are about or feature animals (TV, movies, etc.).

However, if you mean serious or epic tales starring animal characters that aren't family-friendly or comedies, that's a different matter. Doing those kinds of stories with animal protagonists is a hard sell to many. There's a common misconception (especially in the United States) that cartoons are strictly for kids, cartoons starring animals doubly so. It's hard to convince many average viewers that something along the lines Animal Farm, Watership Down or Legend of the Guardians aren't kiddie fare; many look at the cute little critters and assume these are kids' movies. TV shows like Capitol Critters fell to a similar fate: CC actually tackled some serious issues and at times was quite dramatic, but most prime time viewers ignored the series and wrote it off as a children's show simply because its' protagonists were adorable little mice.

I'm not saying that such a thing can't be done, it most certainly can (as projects like The Secret of NIMH and Kung Fu Panda prove) just that those kinds of projects aren't an easy sell.
 
I think this pretty interesting question, I'm all for the idea of animal characters being used in more serious things than just comedy, but yeah, it would be a pretty hard sale with the American demographic. Japan seems to do it pretty well, Arashi no Yoru Ni comes to mind.
 
I hadn't heard of 'Arashi no Yoru Ni' before, of course I began my search of serious animal animation only a couple years ago. It's more difficult to find the international stuff. So thanks. I actually found and bought a copy about an hour after reading your post. It just arrived recently and I thought it was a great movie.

If anyone else can recommend the type of animation I'm looking for it will be greatly appreciated, especially anything in the international department.

Finally, I don't care if it's a hard sell in america. I'll find a way...
 
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