That would probably need to be explained as a difference in rating systems, since the movie wasn’t made in America. Demon Slayer was a shonen series in the foremost shonen magazine, the target demo is explicitly adolescent boys.
Do you think Sesame Street is intended for 12 year olds? It’s for kids who are like 2 - 5. There are many differences in children as they develop, meaning “children’s media” is a pretty broad umbrella and it would be very unusual to have something that is seriously targeting everyone from 2 - 17. Sesame Street is for children and Hunger Games is for children (Is this strange to you? It was extremely popular in middle and high schools), but that doesn’t mean they’re for the same children.
We have different words to describe things in different ways, e.g. we have “YA” as a somewhat narrower demographic distinction, but there are various reasons to organize things according to different sets of umbrellas, and “children’s media” serves functions like indicating to parents that stuff they can get for their kid is over in these bins, and they should look at the individual age ratings by product if they want more specific information. Children’s media also tends to serve some sort of pedagogical or socializing function that is less-common in adult-oriented media (and this is even true of a lot of shonen, even if a lot of it is gross isekai/harem trash too).
I’m so confused at the tone of indignation you have. I read plenty of shonen work, maybe more than you, and there’s no shame in it. Art is art.
the equivalent of shonen in america isnt childrens movies tho???
Right, it’s children’s comics
it’s more young adult if you had to pick one,
Right, if you mean it in the YA sense, i.e. a demo of children
but shonen is so popular even among adults you get stuff like demon slayer that is much more intended for adults
“Shonen” is literally a demographic designation, the term means “young male” (specifically here young adolescence). If that’s not the target demo, it’s not shonen. It can be action, slice of life, mystery, whatever, what makes it a “shonen” is that it’s primarily intended for young males. It can have deliberate appeal to other audiences – and despite(?) being tremendously sexist, Demon Slayer has a huge female following as well as an adult one – but you are flatly incorrect to say that it is not intended for teenage boys.
(the first fucking chapter has mutilated corpses of children there is no country in the world that is going to put something like that into a “children’s movie”)
You’re making it sound more graphic than it is. There are dead bodies and blood everywhere in one scene, but it’s not like there are entrails or something really graphic, it’s just limp bodies with blood everywhere. Even if it was more graphic, that doesn’t really address the point regardless because you’re projecting cultural assumptions in a silly way, and you can easily find things that are more morbid aimed at still-younger audiences, like some of the work of Roald Dahl
can you please give me an example of something more morebid than finding your entire family slaughtered by a demon in a ronald dahl book?
I said “gruesome” because that’s more pertinent to the age rating than something being conceptually dark. For example, in Dahl’s telling of Cinderella, one of the stepsisters hacks her own foot apart with a knife to get the stub to fit into the glass slipper. “Revolting Rhymes,” where that scene is from, has a lot of other stuff like that.
I generally wouldn’t say that Dahl’s work is all that conceptually dark, it’s mostly in the direction of shock, but for example there’s an aside in “The Witches” about a girl who is trapped in a painting which stays in the possession of her parents, who watch her age within the painting over the course of years (changing position, implying that she is conscious even though she only appears at a given time as a static image) until eventually she stops appearing, implicitly ending up as a corpse that has fallen out of view.
But you can find no shortage of material that is aimed at children that is much conceptually darker as well, most obviously in historical fiction (look at many stories about the Civil War or WWII) and semi-historical fiction like the Book Thief, but I’d even consider Coraline to be much darker at times than that scene in Demon Slayer. Gaiman (who I think is a pretty good author but, besides being personally monstrous, also just fucking sucks sometimes as an author when he’s not writing for children) has a lot of work that’s pretty dark, another example being Graveyard Book, which I’d say skews on the younger side of YA but has more or less the expected level of morbidness, starting with the protagonist’s family being killed not by a demon but a dude with a knife while the protagonist is still a toddler.
Another one I read as a teen that mercifully wasn’t by Gaiman was the Thin Executioner, which has some pretty brutal deaths and fates-worse-than-death, like I think some guys who are literally named Bush and Blair after that Bush and that Blair end up fused into a cliff face while remaining conscious and aware, seemingly just left to suffer forever. More than their deaths though, what I tend to remember is how they killed people, because they had a “magic trick” with some balls that had metal triangles affixed to them. They would toss the ball at their target’s throat, it bounces back, and they reveal that the triangle is gone. The audience is then directed to look at the victim’s throat, which now has a triangular bulge visibly pressing out of it as they choke and sputter before dying.
also curious, would you describe the upcoming chainsaw man movie as a children’s movie…?
Chainsaw Man really pushes the shonen thing because it really does have strong seinen elements (including things much more interesting than just the gore and nudity), but overall I’d say probably yes, it’s targeted mainly at teenage boys. Naturally, it also probably won’t be received that way in America, but that’s how the manga was written and the anime is pretty faithful to it.
To be clear, I do think it’s a) on the oldest end of the demo and b) pretty edgy even for that, but again, see the content that I described before, which is variously for kids from about 8 - 14. I can see my claim about chainsaw man being regarded as a little controversial and honestly I myself don’t really understand how it gets published in Jump when compared to all the other series there, but even if we just assume that I’m wrong, I think you’re taking a very narrow view of what children’s media is. Even so-called YA is still intended to be pretty accessible to tweens and agreeable to their parents, which is a more restrictive in America than in some other places (including Japan). Chainsaw Man is I think a more reasonable depiction of what it looks like to make media aimed firmly at brainrotten teenage boys specifically.
Come to think of it, it was pretty clever to make the Reze arc a movie since that’s the one arc that has a substantial degree of romance, so it could help them get a broader audience.
No, it’s a children’s movie. It’s fine to like it anyway – I’ll watch it at some point most likely – but it’s clearly a children’s movie.
It’s literally R rated, children aren’t allowed in the theater
That would probably need to be explained as a difference in rating systems, since the movie wasn’t made in America. Demon Slayer was a shonen series in the foremost shonen magazine, the target demo is explicitly adolescent boys.
deleted by creator
The equivalent is super hero comics. Target audience: like 10-15 year old boys.
Young adult is a marketing term for 12 year olds, because 12 year olds don’t like being called children even though they are.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I didn’t say that. Sesame Street is for babies. Hunger Games is for children. Those are different things.
It’s not a bit, that is literally the American equivalent of shonen manga. Easy to read action slop for 12 year old boys.
Do you think Sesame Street is intended for 12 year olds? It’s for kids who are like 2 - 5. There are many differences in children as they develop, meaning “children’s media” is a pretty broad umbrella and it would be very unusual to have something that is seriously targeting everyone from 2 - 17. Sesame Street is for children and Hunger Games is for children (Is this strange to you? It was extremely popular in middle and high schools), but that doesn’t mean they’re for the same children.
deleted by creator
We have different words to describe things in different ways, e.g. we have “YA” as a somewhat narrower demographic distinction, but there are various reasons to organize things according to different sets of umbrellas, and “children’s media” serves functions like indicating to parents that stuff they can get for their kid is over in these bins, and they should look at the individual age ratings by product if they want more specific information. Children’s media also tends to serve some sort of pedagogical or socializing function that is less-common in adult-oriented media (and this is even true of a lot of shonen, even if a lot of it is gross isekai/harem trash too).
I’m so confused at the tone of indignation you have. I read plenty of shonen work, maybe more than you, and there’s no shame in it. Art is art.
:israel-cool?
deleted by creator
In their case, they don’t even go to the theater. They just take their kids to the border with Gaza and watch it get bombed.
Right, it’s children’s comics
Right, if you mean it in the YA sense, i.e. a demo of children
“Shonen” is literally a demographic designation, the term means “young male” (specifically here young adolescence). If that’s not the target demo, it’s not shonen. It can be action, slice of life, mystery, whatever, what makes it a “shonen” is that it’s primarily intended for young males. It can have deliberate appeal to other audiences – and despite(?) being tremendously sexist, Demon Slayer has a huge female following as well as an adult one – but you are flatly incorrect to say that it is not intended for teenage boys.
You’re making it sound more graphic than it is. There are dead bodies and blood everywhere in one scene, but it’s not like there are entrails or something really graphic, it’s just limp bodies with blood everywhere. Even if it was more graphic, that doesn’t really address the point regardless because you’re projecting cultural assumptions in a silly way, and you can easily find things that are more morbid aimed at still-younger audiences, like some of the work of Roald Dahl
deleted by creator
I said “gruesome” because that’s more pertinent to the age rating than something being conceptually dark. For example, in Dahl’s telling of Cinderella, one of the stepsisters hacks her own foot apart with a knife to get the stub to fit into the glass slipper. “Revolting Rhymes,” where that scene is from, has a lot of other stuff like that.
I generally wouldn’t say that Dahl’s work is all that conceptually dark, it’s mostly in the direction of shock, but for example there’s an aside in “The Witches” about a girl who is trapped in a painting which stays in the possession of her parents, who watch her age within the painting over the course of years (changing position, implying that she is conscious even though she only appears at a given time as a static image) until eventually she stops appearing, implicitly ending up as a corpse that has fallen out of view.
But you can find no shortage of material that is aimed at children that is much conceptually darker as well, most obviously in historical fiction (look at many stories about the Civil War or WWII) and semi-historical fiction like the Book Thief, but I’d even consider Coraline to be much darker at times than that scene in Demon Slayer. Gaiman (who I think is a pretty good author but, besides being personally monstrous, also just fucking sucks sometimes as an author when he’s not writing for children) has a lot of work that’s pretty dark, another example being Graveyard Book, which I’d say skews on the younger side of YA but has more or less the expected level of morbidness, starting with the protagonist’s family being killed not by a demon but a dude with a knife while the protagonist is still a toddler.
Another one I read as a teen that mercifully wasn’t by Gaiman was the Thin Executioner, which has some pretty brutal deaths and fates-worse-than-death, like I think some guys who are literally named Bush and Blair after that Bush and that Blair end up fused into a cliff face while remaining conscious and aware, seemingly just left to suffer forever. More than their deaths though, what I tend to remember is how they killed people, because they had a “magic trick” with some balls that had metal triangles affixed to them. They would toss the ball at their target’s throat, it bounces back, and they reveal that the triangle is gone. The audience is then directed to look at the victim’s throat, which now has a triangular bulge visibly pressing out of it as they choke and sputter before dying.
Chainsaw Man really pushes the shonen thing because it really does have strong seinen elements (including things much more interesting than just the gore and nudity), but overall I’d say probably yes, it’s targeted mainly at teenage boys. Naturally, it also probably won’t be received that way in America, but that’s how the manga was written and the anime is pretty faithful to it.
deleted by creator
To be clear, I do think it’s a) on the oldest end of the demo and b) pretty edgy even for that, but again, see the content that I described before, which is variously for kids from about 8 - 14. I can see my claim about chainsaw man being regarded as a little controversial and honestly I myself don’t really understand how it gets published in Jump when compared to all the other series there, but even if we just assume that I’m wrong, I think you’re taking a very narrow view of what children’s media is. Even so-called YA is still intended to be pretty accessible to tweens and agreeable to their parents, which is a more restrictive in America than in some other places (including Japan). Chainsaw Man is I think a more reasonable depiction of what it looks like to make media aimed firmly at brainrotten teenage boys specifically.
Come to think of it, it was pretty clever to make the Reze arc a movie since that’s the one arc that has a substantial degree of romance, so it could help them get a broader audience.