Author's Note: With the exception of some classic sitcoms like I Love Lucy and Get Smart, my favorite shows are ALL kids' cartoons. Not just cartoons but cartoons made for kids or teenagers. As much as I love episodes of shows like NCIS and Law and Order: SVU, I just can't get into them as passionately as animated series that were supposedly designed primarily for kids. Why? They make live-action fantasy series for adults now, and I still can't get into them like I do cartoons, so it's not the genre.
It's the same with movies. While my favorite films of all time are Apollo 13 and It's A Wonderful Life, and the earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe and live-action classics like King Kong and The Ten Commandments will always have my love and respect, I can't deny that the films I enjoy watching the most are animated; I spend six times as much money watching animated films in theaters as I do live-action, and they don't make animated films primarily for adults anymore, so they're all (at least rated as and promoted as) kids' movies.
Online, you can find plenty of fellow adult geeks who love and respect animated films and shows as valid art and see nothing odd about finding animated stories designed for kids superior to live-action stories designed for adults. But nobody at the office or in my family is among them. Silly rabbit, cartoons are for kids. Outside of the Internet and weekend conventions, it's not an acceptable hobby for a mature adult. Besides professional critics, what kind of adult spends their free time watching, analyzing, and writing about cartoons? Accurately or not, I truly feel like my love of cartoons is as unacceptable as Moana's love of the sea is at the beginning of her movie.
Hence how this idea came to me randomly last night as I was making toast and tea.
I've been mesmerized by animators
Long as I can remember
Making me laugh and cry
I've attempted to love live-action
But I come back to animation
No matter how hard I try
All these grown up shows
What do they all lack?
Try to watch them but
I always come back
To the thing I know
That I should outgrow
But I love to see
Fairies, ghosts, heroes, dragons, Disney
They charm me
Trapped in the throes
Of children's shows
High time I grew up and put all that kid stuff behind me
An art so low
At this rate, who knows how low my tastes will go?
I know every adult on this planet
Should kick the cartoon habit
No more magic or fantasy
I know every child on this planet
Who was once a cartoon addict
Must give it up eventually
I pay all my bills
Word hard at my job
Have all my life skills
Exercise a lot
But this passion inside
It just will not die
What is wrong with me?!
See the battles and fights on the screen
So exciting!
And I don't know
Why grown up shows
Never seem as intriguing or fun or
Interesting
As art so low
Why are kids' shows better?
Why does it matter?
Talking mice, Avatars, KND
They enthrall me
And all I know
Is that these shows
Have all the action and humor and beauty and darkness I need
Keep your game of thrones
I'll keep my own!