Animation isn’t always meant for children. Sometimes, it can get pretty dark, scandalous,
and violent. But which of these works are among the most important to keep from impressionable
eyes? Well, we're here to tell you about the cartoons you should never watch in front of
your kids.
Hey, let's see if you remember this movie. It's roughly 30 years old, and takes place
in a world inhabited by live-action humans and animated cartoon characters. Much of it
takes place in a stylized, somewhat seedy vision of America in the 1940s, a world full
of private detectives, small-time hustlers, and gorgeous dames concealing complex agendas.
Tension seethes between the humans and the cartoons, and a reckoning is imminent. Luckily,
an unlikely partnership between two people from both sides emerges, and the day is saved
for human and cartoon alike.
It's gotta be Who Framed Roger Rabbit, right? Wrong. We're talking about Cool World, which,
despite its many similarities to the 1988 Disney classic, is distinguished by one massive
difference. It is very much not for kids.
Though it too tells the story of a down-on-his-luck dude inhabiting an animated landscape, the
titular Cool World tempts him with all manner of R-rated debauchery, most prominently in
the form of femme fatale Holli Would. She longs to become a live-action "noid," a process
she accomplishes by sleeping with our human protagonist. You might think Jessica Rabbit
was raunchy, but she has nothing on Holli, a character who wants to become human in large
part to experience what human women feel when they "do it with a man." If you're looking
to share a groundbreaking fusion of live-action and animation with your kids, stick to the
denizens of Toontown, even with Jessica Rabbit's sordid games of pattycake.
You can't talk about superheroes without talking about Stan Lee.
"Nuff said."
As marvel's main man, he oversaw the creation of household names like Spider-Man, Black
Panther, and the Hulk. He reshaped the tone of the entire genre, and he lived to see the
transition of his characters from the page to the screen dozens of times over and became
a pop culture icon in his own right. Of course, like any creator, not everything he made reached
such heights of success. Sure, you've heard of the Fantastic Four, but you're probably
less acquainted with later work like Heroman, Romeo and Juliet: The War, or the Guardian
Project, a team of superheroes based on hockey teams. Yet omnipresent or obscure, a Stan
Lee creation can generally be depended upon to entertain fans of all ages. Right?
Well, not when it comes to Stripperella. A Spike TV cartoon that debuted in 2003, the
Pamela Anderson-helmed series is about as far from family friendly as it gets. It stars
Erotica Jones (yes, really), an exotic dancer who moonlights as a superhero. Only 13 episodes
were made before it got canceled, probably because the world wasn't ready for a show
that combined Stan Lee, Fabio, Mark Hamill, and Pamela Anderson.
The years have seen Adult Swim throw all sorts of animated weirdness at the wall, just to
see what sticks. There are outright success stories, with shows like Rick and Morty, The
Venture Brothers, and other series that have made millions, changed the culture, and inspired
imitators. And then there are the series like Moral Orel, a strange and sordid show that's
impossible to imagine airing anywhere but within Adult Swim's sheltering embrace.
A stop-motion series from the mid-2000s, Moral Orel is a parody of the Christian stop-motion
series, Davey and Goliath, and a devastating deconstruction of mid-century Americana. Orel,
our wide-eyed hero, is the sort of kid that just wants to do right by God and grow up
to be like his dad. But three seasons' worth of dysfunction reveal that nothing in the
seemingly pious town of Moralton is at it seems. His father drinks to stifle his disillusionment
with life. His mother cleans obsessively to avoid having to parent. His pastor has lost
all faith in God's love. Though this isn't, at heart, a hopeless story, Orel is even glimpsed
as an adult, having healed from his family's abuse, it's an unsparingly bleak look at the
cost of conformity.
"But how long does it actually take for love to fade?"
"Oh, quicker than you think, kid. Quicker than you think."
In this light, the purpose of the show's kid-friendly aesthetic becomes clear. Every moment of darkness
is also a moment of exquisite tension between form and content. It's juxtaposition at its
most precise...just make sure to keep the box set on the highest shelf.
Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln, and JFK walk into an American high school. But this isn't the
set up to a truly bizarre joke. It's the premise of the cult classic Clone High, co-created
for a single-season run back in 2002 by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the team better
known today for The LEGO Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Set in the fictional
town of Exclamation, Clone High follows the traumas, triumphs, and many very-special-lessons
a group of teens who happen to be the clones of famous historical figures endure. As you
might expect, they're part of a shadowy government experiment, but that matters a whole lot less
than anti-drug assemblies, winter proms, and student elections.
"Ask not what your student body president can do for you, ask what you can do to your
student body president's body."
Clone High's genius lies in its embrace of contrast. The clones, of course, struggle
mightily to live up to their outsize reputations, as aware as the audience is of just how unimpressive
they are when set beside their ancestors. But the central tension comes to fruition
most deliciously in the show's commitment to parodying teen soaps. It's funny to watch
Joan of Arc reborn as a sullen goth girl, but it's priceless to watch her learn not
so serious, very special lessons about staying off drugs and getting enough sleep. Add in
a diner called the Grassy Knoll, an adolescent John F. Kennedy who wants you to know exactly
how rock hard his abs are at all times, and a robotic reincarnation of Mr. Belvedere,
and you get a cartoon as eccentric as it is hilarious.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast is one of those once-in-generation shows that combines nostalgia,
satire, and sheer baffling weirdness. It's a talk show starring one of Hanna-Barbera's
lesser-known heroes in which actual real-life celebrities are interviewed. It's strange,
but Space Ghost only grew more surreal with time, its success acting as a sort of springboard
for some of the most peculiar work Adult Swim has ever aired, even when compared to strange
successors like Tom Goes to the Mayor. That's how groundbreaking, stage-setting, and perfectly
odd Space Ghost was (and honestly, we wouldn't mind if this iconic cartoon got a reboot).
"Nobody cares, Moby. Nobody cares. No one."
It's also one of the shows on this list most easily mistaken by a kid for something aimed
at them. Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast doesn't pelt the viewer with violence or intimate
situations the way other adult-oriented animated shows do. Instead, it dwells with surreal
calm in a valley of absurd. Early seasons see Space Ghost not quite understanding of
who his guests are or how the world works, even assuming everyone is a superhero and
asking them about their powers. Later seasons get even weirder, as we see him hawk a shampoo
that makes you smarter, get afflicted by a curse that drives him to cannibalism, and
become saddled with terrible licensing deals. The show is a creative force of nature, responsible
in large part for what would go on to become an entire generation of adult animation. Little
ones will likely just be creeped out by its flights of dark fancy or given an entirely
incorrect idea of Space Ghost's popularity as a conventional superhero.
Generally speaking, the West has always seen cartoons as kid's stuff. Adult animation has
certainly made gains, The Simpsons isn't exactly obscure, but even then, those gains have mostly
been limited to TV sitcoms, not movies. Thanks to Disney dominance, one could be forgiven
for thinking even the few animated films directed at adults that we've gotten are part of a
very recent trend that probably goes back no further back than a decade or two.
That assumption is off by about fifty years, thanks to 1972's Fritz the Cat. This isn't
just an animated movie that happens to be intended for adults. It was originally X-rated,
the first animated film in the United States to be so, and for a whole lot of very good
reasons. Adapted from the legendarily taboo work of cartoonist R. Crumb, Fritz the Cat
follows the feline wannabe-poet on a journey through the free love era's deepest pits of
hedonism. Though director Ralph Bakshi has correctly identified that Fritz the Cat is
a little less shocking by today's standards, it's still the kind of stuff that you don't
want to see a whole lot of in mainstream movies, animated or otherwise. This is, after all,
a movie in which an cartoon cat engages in group intercourse, gets high, hides from the
cops, and ends up on a motorcycle with a neo-Nazi rabbit. In isolation, however, the characters
often look like the soft, cuddly sort of mascots one might find on school supplies. In his
big red sweater, Fritz in particular is eye-catchingly cute...and just as wildly, horrifically inappropriate
for the crowd most cartoons about fuzzy animals are meant for.
Aeon Flux contains multitudes. Gnostic philosophy, late-'90s clubwear, and techno-utopianism
are all a big part of the slickly animated series. It's a show with a vision of the future
that's as stylish as it is horrifying. The titular Aeon is an assassin, locked in eternal
war between the anarchic country of Monica and the ruthlessly ordered nation of Bregna.
There's nowhere else to live upon the blighted earth of the far future, making Aeon's mission
as crucial as it is pointless. Her world is one of extremes, emphasized by the show's
boundary-pushing aesthetics. Aeon herself is so ludicrously sexualized that she goes
entirely round the bend and ends up grotesque.
That purposefully off-putting style has its roots in animation of a very different sort,
the kind for kids far too young for Aeon Flux. Creator Peter Chung got his start working
on Rugrats, the standard-bearer of the lumpy 1990s Nickelodeon look. Indeed, Aeon looks
startlingly natural when placed beside Tommy Pickles and cartoons like The Wild Thornberrys
that carried on its aesthetic legacy. From an animation nerd point of view, this is a
fascinating bit of connected tissue between some very unlikely works of art. But for anyone
in charge of making sure kids don't get a spy thriller laced with bondage imagery with
the playpen-bound adventures of a band of early-'90s toddlers, it's to be noted with
care.
Genndy Tartakovsky's neon tale of a time displaced samurai was one of the coolest things a kid
in 2001 could watch, and yes, it could be watched by kids. While robots bleeding oil
and ravers with pacifiers hinted at violent films and drug-soaked parties, respectively,
Samurai Jack only ever alluded to these inspirations, borrowing their outlaw cool without portraying
the actual law-breaking at hand. What resulted was a landmark achievement so beloved that
it was given a chance to end its story properly, 13 years after it went off the air.
Thus was born Samurai Jack's fifth season, which aired in 2017. Jack's audience had grown
up in the intervening years, and the show honored that by making a conclusive season
for the adults they were, instead of the children they'd been. This isn't to say Samurai Jack
changed its tone entirely. It's pretty easy to imagine a well-adjusted 12-year-old who
loves the first four seasons being judged mature enough to view it by his parents. But
still, the Jack revival's TV-14 rating is earned. Blood flows thickly, assassins are
impaled upon spears, and there are brief implications of sexuality. As it stands now, young fans
of Samurai Jack can enjoy the first four seasons to their heart's content, but an adult is
probably going to need to make the judgment call of whether or not they're ready for the
final installment.
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