Four Things No One Tells You About Being An Animation Fan
I’m not entirely sure when I first developed an interest in animated movies and TV shows. Not just in the sense that I enjoyed watching cartoons, but in the sense that I became fascinated by the behind-the-scenes aspects. Regardless, its an interest that’s become quite a big part of my life. Unfortunately, as you can probably guess from the title of this article, there’s a lot about the animation fandom that isn't quite so enjoyable. Does this mean I regret having it as a hobby? No. I love animation, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I do feel like there’s a lot of things about it that most other people who love it don’t get. Some of these are, admittedly, subjective, and driven by my taste in animation. For example. . .
- You get used to being disappointed
Sad as it is to say, if you made a Venn diagram of the cartoons I like and the ones that the big studios are actually supporting, it would pretty much be two separate circles. Whenever I see a new animated movie or TV show announced that looks interesting, I tend to take it with a heavy grain of salt because I’ve just gotten conditioned to accept the idea that the artistically daring, formula-breaking, and innovative works I love so much are more likely to be cancelled or bomb at the box office. That’s what happened with Infinity Train, one of my favorite animated TV shows. It’s an amazing show, but it was abruptly cancelled in 2022 and removed from HBO Max, leaving no way to legally watch it.
And when something interesting or unusual is successful, I end up having to lower my expectations that it will actually result in any meaningful change for the animation industry as a whole. It almost feels like there’s some fundamental law of the universe keeping people from taking (for example) non-comedic adult animation seriously.
2. The closest things the cartoon community has to leaders are awful people.
Like a lot of adults my age, my introduction to animated movies as something mature and worthy of analysis came from watching online video reviews of them, from various web shows and YouTube channels. One thing that I’ve noticed with a lot of these people, though, is that the majority of them are, for lack of a better word, not especially pleasant. In the so-called “cartoon reviewer community”, you seem to get a lot of people whose reviews are simply spiteful, angry rants. It would be one thing if this were just a stage persona, if they didn’t actually feel that angry and vicious about shows that are, ultimately, harmless. But from watching a number of them, such as RebelTaxi and The Mysterious Mr. Enter, I’m not so sure.
I feel like these reviewers, and the opinions they display, have not done good things for the animation community. On the one hand, they make the subject even harder to take seriously than it already is. On the other hand, some of them have done things that are not merely tone-deaf but outright harmful, such as encouraging their followers to harass the writers of animated works they dislike on Twitter.
3. There’s no close-knit fandom for the medium as a whole
So far, I’ve mostly been talking about animation as a whole, regardless of its origin. This particular issue has more to do specifically with American animation, especially as compared to Japanese anime. Anime fans, even outside Japan, have it pretty good. There are literally hundreds of clubs, conventions, forums, chatrooms, and other venues for them to share their interests, and in many cases these attract fans of all different kinds of anime — everything from Pokémon to Berserk. Nothing equivalent exists for American animation. You won’t find many fans of Frozen chatting it up with fans of Primal, and American animation certainly isn’t viewed as a monolithic entity the way anime is outside of Japan. What you do get are very closed-off, devout fandoms for specific shows and movies.
In some ways this is a problem, because this lack of common ground means the American animation fandom is spread out and disorganized, and ultimately not able to be conspicuous enough to be a major demographic that studios can market to.
4. Most of the fans don’t understand what maturity is
I spend quite a bit of time on that spare-time-sucking parasite, TVTropes. And one thing I’ve noticed is that, if there’s a kids’ show with a substantial adult fandom (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, for example, or Adventure Time), sooner or later you’re going to get a whole legion of people editing that show’s page to emphasize how “dark” and “serious” it is. I remember when the season finale of Amphibia aired on Disney Channel, the forums were suddenly crawling with people who declared the scene where one of the protagonists is stabbed with a glowing sword (with no visible blood, it must be said) to be “the darkest scene in any Disney show”. Having watched the episode myself, I can say that’s not the case. It’s pretty intense, yes, but nothing that wouldn’t be out of place in a show for older kids. The reason this sort of thing happens is because I feel like a lot of these people have a very shallow — and ironically very childish — understanding of what maturity is, and they latch onto any hint of “darkness” or “edginess” to support their own claims that their favorite kids’ shows are actually mature. But those sort of things aren’t what make a work mature. Elemental, the Pixar movie, was mature because it contained a frank discussion of what being privileged and having systemic oppression means. It was a perfectly suitable movie for children, but it covered these themes without talking down to its audience. That’s real maturity, not the “look-at-how-dark-and-edgy-I-am” kind of maturity that these people seem obsessed with.
As you can tell from these, I can’t in good consciousness consider myself a member of the “cartoon community”, as these disreputable fans have come to be known on the internet. I love animation, and would love for it to get the respect it deserves as an artistic medium, but they aren’t doing it many favors.
