This Troper's dad pretty much thinks all cartoons are for kids. And, the cartoons that clearly ''are not'' for kids like ''FamilyGuy'' are simply "stupid". I sent my dad the AnimationAgeGhetto article to read. He read it, and his response was, "That was a good ''joke article''!"

Tell him that it wasn't a joke. Tell him that if anything, ''he's'' a joke. And if that doesn't work, kill him for not knowing what animation can do. And if your mom finds out and/or calls the cops, kill her too. Note the links to make it more clear to you.

Oh, I've got another one for you. My dad and his old coworkers were having this breakfast gathering, some of the other parents kids were watching CartoonNetwork. I remarked, "I remember a time when Cartoon Network was fun to watch. It's not anymore." One of the parents looked at me and said, "It's because you've outgrown cartoons, dear." That's not what I meant...

Oh, the irony of that statement!

Is there such thing as "Hand Drawn 2D Animation Age Ghetto?" Cuz if there is, this troper DEFINATELY has experienced it. A lot of the boys in his class are die-hard Star Wars fans, (myself included)and they all follow the CGI Clone Wars series RELIGOUSLY. Except this troper, who plans the death of Dave Filoni, and was disowned when he said he prefers the Genndy Tartakovsky series over the CGI series. (I am a HUGE Tartakovsky fan-boy and HATE CGI...) The reason why they don’t like the old show? "It's too juniorized" Have they not watched the CGI series???

My girlfriend loves DeathNote and found Naomi Misora's]] death the most awesome thing and Light's]] death the saddest thing she's ever seen, but didn't even flinch at the incinerator scene in ToyStory3 and after reading the comments on the ToyStory page didn't get why so many people cried while watching this movie, because they're only toys. Also she laughed at most of said comments and particularly found the "I'm now going home and play with my old toys." a mixture between ridiculous and hilarious.

"I'm now going home and play with my old toys." I'm sorry but that's ActuallyPrettyFunny. And I did cry at the end of ''ToyStory3''.

Everyone at this troper's school seems to think that all anime and manga is either Pokémon or Porn. They are completely oblivious to anything else as far as I can tell.

This Troper and her brother have explained to their mother that no, not all anime and manga is porn, and she has finally started to understand that there is anime and manga for all age groups, from little kids to grownups.

This troper wrote this after seeing {{Watchmen}} right near the children's section of my local library.

This is also how I first read ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth.

A Serious House? IN THE CHILDREN'S SECTION!?!

Played straight and subverted by This Troper's family. My parents think that animation is for kids (of course, the fact my brothers don't watch much but Pokémon doesn't help), and at one point my mom banned me from bringing my DS to some place she had to go because it was "too kiddy" to be playing games in public, despite the fact one brother was reading a Hank the Cowdog book (there goes the "kiddy" argument) and my other brother was texting (which ruined her later argument that it was because it would be rude to be playing my DS). However, my cousins, who grew up on this, are uninterested, watch some animation, and are video game/anime nuts.

Speaking of games, when you see a DS in the college dorms, 9 times out of 10 (or more), it's running ''{{Pokémon}}''.

Which is summed up rather nicely here.

This Troper's Aunt plays this straight. I off-handedly mentioned that I still watch some cartoons to her once. (I really like PhineasAndFerb, DannyPhantom, and WesternAnimation/AdventureTime among others). A few hours later I was talking about how immature my high school is (the jocks and preps do this stupid "YouSuck" chant every time someone drops their tray at lunch for example) and she responds "And watching cartoons isn't immature?" Ironically, the aunt is question is in denial about being an alcoholic and is only getting help because her ex-husband (rightfully) won't let her see her two daughters until she does. It's readily acknowledged by my parents that I'm more mature than she is.

{{@/Jonn}} was once berated by his mother for watching "all those silly cartoons". The series in question was GhostInTheShell: Stand Alone Complex. Despite his explanation of the series, he's fairly certain she still remains skeptical, just less openly.

See if you can scare up some stills or YouTube clips of anime from the mid- to late-1980s. This troper is thinking of a couple of sequences from the ''Macross'' movie, or ''Megazone 23'' (but there are oh ''so'' many others...) in which various RedShirt characters die painfully. Alternately, there's FritzTheCat, or Wicked City. If your mother persists in her belief that cartoons, by definition, are for children, then this troper suspects that your mother has much more serious problems...

You want to irrevocably prove your point? Try ElfenLied. Just the first episode will do--it contains a naked girl using psychic power to literally tear her way through dozens of security guards as she tries to escape a building that's part prison, part science lab. The rest of the series is just as bloody and even darker.

Jonn again. One slow Saturday night at work, I changed the TV to Cartoon Network. {{Naruto}} the Movie 3 was showing, and I watched it for a few minutes before changing the channel. The boss on call said she had been listening, and asked me to change it back. Cue a woman with two kids ''older than I am'' enjoying a Naruto movie immensely. The regular boss came in later and liked it too, declaring that he could understand why it was so popular. Warmed my heart, it did.

So that would be a subversion?

And for the hat trick; My Critical Studies lecturer discussed Roy Lichtenstein. He was irritated that Roy got rich by doing the same thing comic books already did, except bigger and worse, yet his was arbitrarily considered "art".

I once happened across someone complaining that the sequence in ''{{Film/Iron Man}} 2'' when makes a new element with elbow grease and a BOX OF SCRAPS(!) was too much like a comic-book. And yes, they were fully aware that the film was based on a comic book.

While in high school, this troper's mother's fiancé took her love of animated series to be a sign of mental instability, and tried to ban her from watching them. When that didn't take, he attempted to have her ''committed to a mental institution'', going so far to claim that she was a cultist based on this and some other benign eccentricities. One of the many, ''many'' reasons this troper wishes her mother were more of a MamaBear and less of a LoveMartyr.

Good grief, you poor thing. Please tell us she didn't marry him?

She did not, though the reason why had nothing to do with this.

You're kind of freaking me out a little bit.

Oh don't worry, she did not write the name, that deed belongs solely to me, for I am Kira. I AM JUSTICE

Man, that's the kind of man who needs to get laid.

This Troper's parents always protest when cartoons are on when they're home. Fortunately, they started to do this to non-cartoon shows for children and stop when I agree that the show's okay to watch. Now that I move out however...

This troper has given up trying to correct people about anime to the point when people ask about it, she blatantly rants "there are one of two things people assume when they hear about anime; it's either kiddy cartoon shows, or animated porn." People typically become a little jarred by her bluntness.

This troper had one of his housemates telling him that all anime was kiddy. He wordlessly responded by going up to his room to grab his DVD of End of Evangelion, then played the scene in Asuka's hospital room on the TV.

You bastard! That's hilarious

MADE. OF. WIN.

This troper's aunt walked into the house, looked at the TV and asked, "What are you watching CARTOONS for?" My response? "I'm not" (as I was watching the Daily Show at that moment). She pointed to the animated bear holding up the product they were shilling on the screen and said, "What do you call that then?" I responded, "a commercial", and she walked off in a huff.

Proof that RealLife does in fact contain Crowning Moments of Awesome.

This troper loves everything about animation. The process and history, in addition to just the end product. My mother however... at best she writes it off as "cute fluff", though she has said cartoons "insult her intelligence". She can't seem to comprehend that someone could have ''any'' sort of emotional reaction to an animated film that isn't amusement, and she thinks that considering an animated character attractive, even if the character in question is ''designed to be attractive'', is just odd. However, she has seemed to accept that I love animation and that won't change anytime soon, though.

This Troper finds it incredibly amusing when the "insult to my intelligence" argument is used by frequent reality TV watchers.

This troper once possessed this belief about anime, after overexposure to {{Sailor Moon}}. He still watched anime, he just considered it "kiddy". Then his friend introduced him to {{Guyver}}, and he introduced himself to Higurashi.

That must have been quite the shock.

This troper used to watch Digimon, Pokémon, and other obviously kiddy (and now that I'm older, horribly mangled) anime when I was younger. My dad did not mind at all. Cut to present day, and I'm watching shows like FLCL, GhostInTheShell, CowboyBebop, DeathNote, and my dad thinks that they're all the same stupid kids' show. Interestingly, when he actually sat down to watch some episodes of SamuraiChamploo, he liked it, and even asked about some plot points when I was watching it again later. A CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming?

Is it possible to add a justifying edit to a TroperTales example? Let's find out! Ahem. "To be fair," the first season of ''{{Digimon}}'' was probably the first thing that made this troper realize that there can be more to animation than cheap laughs, when he first saw it as a young whippersnapper, culminating in a total obsession with anime that will persist until he dies. His entire family appears to subvert it, to the point that his mother once downloaded a hentai movie (''Kite'', of all things) to see what it's like.

''Kite'' is not hentai. The sex scenes get a pass for being (mostly) truly epic FanDisservice. Come back when you see her watching ''BibleBlack'' or ''NightShiftNurses''.

This troper's father despises cartoons of all sorts (until recently even "adult" ones such as Family Guy, South Park, etc.). I lost count of how many times he walked into the living room when I was younger, noticed the little "Cartoon Network" logo in the corner of the screen, grabbed the remote control and put some sports news channel on. Funnily enough, it was only after this troper ceased watching cartoons en masse that his old man took a liking to the more "mature" humorous, satirical ones that are often around these days.

This Conservative Christian troper's mom will not get off of his back for being an active member of the Save DannyPhantom and KimPossible groups, because he "needs to like things more age appropriate". You have no idea how much I've been tempted to show her South Park and Family Guy, and then see if she persists. Of course she's still in full support of my being a fan of TheMuppets.

I had a rather interesting version. Once I worked with a guy who shared my like for dark, twisted stories, but despite being perfectly fine with (Western) animation he despised anime, considering it stupid and kiddy. My solution? Show him a couple AMV's based around Death Note and Hellsing, as well as the first three minutes of Elfen Lied. Said friend left that experience with a huge grin and a different outlook.

Do you have ''any idea'' how annoying it is to be watching AvatarTheLastAirbender on a friend's laptop at school and have someone come up and go "Why are you watching ''that?'' It's just a lame kid's cartoon, grow up!" Makes me want to punch something. (Oddly enough, the "someone" in question is a fan of SouthPark...)

In all honesty, Avatar is a kid's cartoon in the sense of its intended demographic and SouthPark isn't.

I'd think South Park would be more well known as an adult cartoon. Still, the other students are idiots (which should be expected).

Happened all the time when this troper was reading WATCHMEN in school....

This troper recently bought the entire series of FruitsBasket on DVD for a friend's nineteenth birthday. His father's response? "I'd be pissed if someone got me cartoons for my birthday." Cue ranting about how he's old and doesn't understand anime.

Just this morning, this editor got a nice little reminder of just how pervasive this trope is. Her newspaper this weekend has a nice big splash page that says, in essence, "Are your kids bored? Take them to the Music Conservatory! They're doing a concert of cartoon music!" A little research revealed that the show in question was actually a review of the music of classic LooneyTunes composer Carl Stalling. Just as she was about to knock her head against the wall over ''this'', she then saw this notation on the Conservatory's webpage announcing the event: "children ''under three'' can get in free!" (For the record, this notation was not to be found in the listing for ''any'' other performances, so it wasn't like it was the Conservatory's standard practice.) Thanks for making me give myself a bad headache, Music Conservatory.

But Looney Toons really ''is'' intended for children, so why would you bang your head over this?

Erm...no. Looney ''Tunes'' may have been given a second lease on life by being put on during children's prime viewing hours, but the fact that CartoonNetwork had to pull a good chunk of Bugs Bunny cartoons out of it's all-day, in-order marathon and put them on during Adult Swim should tell you that the things weren't intended for kids.

Having watched Looney Tunes as a kid, I don't recall any adult content. Heck, I'm pretty sure my father watched a tape of Daffy cartoons ''with me'' at least once and never seemed to think it was inappropriate for me. Maybe your standards of kid-friendly are just different from other people's.

Looney Tunes shorts were originally animated for adults and shown in theaters before movies. Several of them are rather racist, given the time period in which they were animated. You probably didn't see those because they never show them. The shorts may have been shown on Cartoon Network later, but they were not intended for children.

This Australian editor remembers going into a video shop and seeing NeonGenesisEvangelion in the ''children's section''.

In this Argentinian troper' Blockbuster, the CowboyBebop movie is in the children's section.

This Canadian editor has also seen ''NinjaScroll'' and ''{{Urotsukidoji}}'' in the children's section...

So has this troper, but in America. They were right between CryingFreeman and ''YuGiOh TheMovie.''

This American troper has seen the same thing happen with ''La Blue Girl''.

This troper worked in a store that has an adults-only section and an all-ages section. Employee Discount was used to extract the live action version of La Blue Girl from the all-ages section, where $BOSS had filed it on the grounds that it was based on a cartoon.

For the inverse, this troper has seen ''Ah! Megami-sama!'' with a big "mature content" sticker on it.

And if that wasn't confusing enough, this troper once saw a mature content sticker on an InvaderZim DVD... ''in the kids' section.''

This troper's local Half-Price Bookstore used to shelve the manga (Which prominently included ''very obvious'' hentai series) right next to the Dr. Seuss and whatnot.

This troper strongly recommends that any other troper finding such inappropriately placed animation take it up to the counter and politely request that they play it on the monitors in the store. Bonus points if you do this after school lets out and there are lots of soccer moms and their precious snowflakes in tow, looking for a movie. As soon as the blood starts flying and the kids start asking "What's that red stuff coming out of bunny?", hold up the case and say that it's available in the children's section.

Not only that, but this troper understands that most video stores lump all Anime in with Children's in general. Or, if they have enough to warrant its own section, right alongside it.

Worse still, this troper in Australia has on three separate occasions found the same, obviously titled anime movie in the children's section. The movie? "The Gigolo".

Amazingly averted at this troper's Blockbuster. Even though it labels things like InvaderZim and other Western cartoons as "Anime", the mature cartoons are on the opposite side of the store as the family-friendly ones, next to the Drama section.

This troper's is similar. However, all the anime is together, meaning that End of Evangelion is directly above Sailor Moon.

This troper once saw ''HaruhiSuzumiya'' in a kids' section at a used book and DVD sale. She had to go and explain to the lady running the thing about Mikuru...

How is ''HaruhiSuzumiya'' inappropriate for children? Mikuru is the only thing remotely sexual in the entire series, and even her torments are strikingly non-graphic.

This Troper rates Haruhi on level with seasons 6-8 era Simpsons in terms of content. The best example is the John Waters Episode.

vs. Asakura, my friend. Though that'd be more FamilyUnfriendlyViolence by your logic.

Don't forget Haruhi's blackmail plan. Did you know the Accelerated Reading list has the novel as a fifth grade reading level? One of the questions is even about how Haruhi gets the computers, so you know someone had to have bothered to read it.

This troper's local video store still has a copy of the Knights of Ramune OAV in the kids' section, despite her delicate application of the words "softcore lesbian porn" to the store's manager.

This applies to WesternAnimation as well, such as ''HeavyMetal''. How a film with a half-naked woman wielding a sword and riding a GiantFlyer on the DVD cover could be labeled as a children's flick is beyond me.

Animated anti-war films such as ''GraveOfTheFireflies'', ''{{Wizards}}'', ''BarefootGen'', and ''TheCockpit'' are almost invariably found in the Children's section of mainstream video stores, despite the fact that they would be NightmareFuel for anyone under ten.

Hell, ''GraveOfTheFireflies'' is nightmare fuel (or at least a massive Tearjerker) for most people above 10, too. (This troper isn't sure about the others, because he hasn't seen them, but.)

This troper got a good laugh when he saw ''Beavis and Butthead Do America'' '''right beside''' ''Barbie Princess'' and ''Bratz''. Sadly, I've seen stores do that a couple of times now. I can't wait to see ''South Park: The Movie'' sitting next to ''Strawberry Shortcake''.

This troper is wondering whether or not she should tell her local video store that ''WatershipDown'' isn't exactly a "family" film...

When this troper was going to college at UC Davis, there was a (now sadly closed) video store that actually figured out that ''WatershipDown'' wasn't for kids, and put it in the ''drama'' section.

And this Troper took it upon himself to move a local store's sole copy of "Queer Duck" out of the kid's section, over to "Q".

This troper volunteers at an Oxfam shop. He once had to remove ''SouthPark'' videos (clearly labeled as rated 15) from the children's section. Twice.

The stores around This Troper's area are a little better at this - more often than not, the anime [=DVDs=] are nowhere near the kids' films. Admittedly one store puts its anime section next to the porn (which, for some insane reason is right in the middle of the store), but it's a start, dammit!

Fry's, I'm guessing. Mine does it too, which makes browsing extremely awkward, especially with the rather fanservicey covers many anime [=DVDs=] have.

I remember FYE used to do that a lot. Now I see anime right next to the wrestling section.

The FYE This Troper goes to is an interesting case. The anime section is next to the family movies section. Across the aisle from the family section were [=DVDs=] that had pieces of plastic with the Playboy logo in front of said [=DVDs=]. My guess was that TheyJustDidntCare about placement.

This Canadian public librarian can't be the only under-35 member of his profession who cringes at his colleagues wanting to put ''all'' graphic novels and comic books in the "teen" section (including DC Vertigo titles), and all anime next to the Disney films (including Inu Yasha).

This troper and her brother were watching CowboyBebop when her mother entered the room. She asked, "Aren't you two too old for cartoons?" There was no need for an answer because right at that moment, Spike got shot (complete with gratuitous blood) and yelled, "SHIT!" This troper's mother stopped associating all animation with children.

I nominate you for an EpicMomentOfEpicTiming.

My local Blockbuster stocks all the child-inappropriate cartoons in the Anime section but curiously enough have all 3 Bionicle movies and a Hot Wheels movie in there too for some reason.

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS. What do anime, western adult cartoons, and cartoons themed around collectable toys have in common? Gee, Davy, do you think it might be a target demographic?

''{{Simoun}}''. KID'S SECTION. Seriously, people. What part of 'war, religion, transgender' do you not understand?

A rather interesting case, This Troper's mother once bought him a copy of RanmaOneHalf volume 11 when he was 9. I was rather surprised by the sight of a completely nude Shampoo even moreso than the GenderBending. She would go on to buy me a dirty joke book at 12 or so. In her defense, it did have a rather childish cover, and its title was "World's Best Humor." The "not for kids" was in small text on the cover, but the whole family teased her for the next year or so about it.

Similar thing, except the exact opposite happend to me. I checked out Ramna 1/2 Vol. 4 from my local library when I was like 8. Unfortunately my parents later found it and looked through it. They later questioned me about the nudity, and my reply was, "Hey, at least you know I'm not gay." They laughed it off, and didn't really care after that.

Though Ranma is aimed at kids, nudity isn't considered a big thing in Asia (there is a brand of milk in Korea where the containers show a baby suckling on a breast close up) and the actual storyline and content is rather on an innocent level. With Ranma it's only the fan fics that get serious and adult.

Played straight as a board with people against this troper. "You are so childish, stop watching these stupid kids' cartoons", or "silly fatty, cartoons are just for kids". Not nice, guys. I'd love to ask them if they think that NeonGenesisEvangelion, Berserk and ElfenLied are kids' cartoons, after ''forcing them to watch these''.

Silly fangirl, ''{{Gravitation}}'' is for kids! At least according to swaptree.com.

Once when I sat for two little boys they asked their mom if they could watch any of my movies. They dug through the pile and picked out South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut. I immediately took it away from them knowing that it would screw up the older of the two even more than he already was - their mom asked why I took it away. She said, "it's only a cartoon", then I explained how inappropriate it was for her kids and how they would develop bad habits from it.

This troper was yelled at by his mom, sister, and grandmother for watching cartoons when he got older saying that they were "only for children", but I proved to them that not all cartoons were meant for children and how some had inappropriate jokes and violent scenes and they changed their minds.

My dad on the other hand had always been a huge cartoon fan, he will watch stuff like Looney Tunes, The Simpsons, and King of the Hill with me, and he misses some of the older Nicktoons and Cartoon Network shows.

This troper is a self-declared "closet-otaku" - he has absolutely ''no'' connections to anime or manga in real life, despite being rather involved and knowledgeable online. This is mostly due to his mother, who is ''ridiculously'' willfully ignorant and intolerant of anything she does not want to understand (she'll outright and aggressively refuse to learn anything she does not care about, I wish I were making that up). Example: when he was reading novels at baka-tsuki, she was talking and saw the ''mascot alone'' (really, go look at it) and said "go back to reading your ''poke-ee-man'' stuff." Not going to go through that, my life is easier without her knowing.

Kill her. That's all you'll have to do. She's a risk. And get the priest as well.

This troper - an illustrator and aspiring animator who hates, hates, ''hates'' that this Trope exists - sat down to enjoy Disney's ''{{Enchanted}}'' with her mother. Within ''thirty seconds'' of the animated first act, mom asks this: #QUOTE#MOM: "Can't we fast forward?" #QUOTE#ME: (Head asplodes in frustration.)

Similarly, when This troper sat down to watch "A Scanner Darkly" with my mom and a friend, they quickly lost interest upon realizing that the entire movie was animated.

My mom was all excited to watch "Persepolis" -in French even!- and she only knew that it was about the experiences of a young woman in the Middle East. The minute she saw the animation in the [=DVD=] menu, she asked the Question Of Doom: #QUOTE#MOM: "Wait... is this animated?" #QUOTE#ME: (incredulous) "Does it really make a difference?" #QUOTE#(Mom leaves anyway.)

With this troper, his mother refuses to watch any animated show on the pretense that it's not for her, this however makes no sense as when I was younger she watched Digimon Tamers and started like "I don't wanna watch this" and went to "Is that poor girl going to be ok? What happened to her?" During commercials I had to give her a recap of the series to stop her questions. Years later she would deny this and pretend she was humouring me, because interrupting my show every 5 seconds when I'm trying to pay attention to it so she can get a recap is, you know, humouring me. I think it's summed up nicely in the C.S Lewis quote at the top. It's too bad cause I have way better anime now that I think she would like, but she won't give them a chance (in fact, sometimes it seem like she thinks I'm childish for liking them).

This troper had a similar experience with his parents denouncing ''DeathNote''. It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't been watching ''{{Dexter}}'' at around that time.

My mother also won't watch anything animated, unless she is watching with my nieces... And flips out every time she sees the Simpsons on TV, calling it 'disgusting' because she firmly believes that if it's animated, it's for kids, so the more mature aspects are CLEARLY inappropriate in her eyes (it doesn't help that she has trouble understanding parody). I've tried explaining that it's not aimed at young children, but she won't have it... If she ever saw ''South Park'', ''Family Guy'', or a lot of anime, her head might explode from shock.

This troper's mother, depressingly, is the same way. One day she started telling me about how scandalised she was by this cartoon show she saw that was absolutely filthy, full of all kinds of things they just shouldn't have in cartoons. What show was it, you may ask? ''FamilyGuy''? ''SouthPark''? ''DrawnTogether''? Nope. Try ''KingOfTheHill''.

The mothers of both the above tropers are closed and welded shut. There is no way to change their minds. This troper recommends that both the above tropers move out A.S.A.P. It's up to the tropers in question whether they wish to leave a parting gift of, say, the live-action *remake* of "Wicked City", as well as the original, with a quick note to make sure that the mothers understand the production order...

I thought my wife was better than this: She's watched {{Chobits}}, IMyMeStrawberryEggs, and RecordOfLodossWar with me, has more recently seen me watching HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi, watches TheSimpsons, and knows about KingOfTheHill, SouthPark, FamilyGuy, and AmericanDad. But when I bring home the ''Wonder Woman'' [=DVD=], she still said "Why is this rated PG-13? It's a frickin' cartoon!" *FacePalm*

The fact that this page has so many examples makes @/EddieVanHelsing want to punch kittens.

This troper has problems of showing people her flash animations, comics and artwork since people call them "Pokemon Drawings" and "Kiddies Annie-mee Cartoons" and stick with this assumption despite the explanation of the kid protagonist's backstories being incredibly {{squick}}. They just don't believe it!

This troper was looking for a copy of When The Wind Blows - a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs that features a sweet old couple trying to survive the effects of The Bomb (and failing) - and found it in the children's section of a second-hand bookshop. I bought it anyway and met my parents in a local cafe. When I pulled the book out of my shopping bag, my mother took one look at the inside and said "This is a comic! It's for kids!" I replied by showing her the cover, which features a huge picture of a mushroom cloud. She stopped talking then. Three months later, we repeated the same performance with Barefoot Gen.

When Coraline came out, this Troper wanted to bring her parents with her to watch it. However, when she told her dad that it was claymation, he responded with this piece of stupidity: "I have to be an idiot to go watch a cartoon at my age! Cartoons are for kids and brainless adults!" After some yelling, this Troper and her mom left without him. We both enjoyed the movie.

Actually, it's plastic figurines.

Hilariously (and somewhat tragically) reversed at this troper's Blockbuster. How the Grinch stole Christmas is in the anime section in between Lady Death and Kite. Also, yes they do suck at alphabetisation.

This troper's parents were a little slack in the appropriate animation department when she was growing up in the 90s, as they let her watch The Simpsons, King of the hill, lots of the MTV animated shows, and lots of the anime on toonami.

This troper once watched an episode of Family Guy in front of his Grandmother. Her exact words were something like "Ooooh, I don't like that fat man." She then proceeded to collect her BIBLE and ROSARY!

So? It sounds like she was just offended by the material, not the fact that it was animated.

Mostly inverted by this troper, but played straight by her mother especially. She rarely watched cartoons as a kid (occasionally Looney Toons but she bored easily of them), but in high school she was briefly into Rugrats. About the time she stopped watching it she became a Sailor Moon addict, and to this day gets adult guys hooked on Sailor Moon and other similar anime. Her mother has repeatedly disparaged "those kid shows" or "those shows for babies." (her father could care less). Happily calmed to a murmur after one of the most popular clubs at college turned out to be the anime one, and this troper told her parents about leaving club early a couple semesters because one anime was too raunchy/violent (Ikkitousen, primarily).

This Troper fully remembers his childhood in Italy; there, all animation is considered kid-oriented. The thing is, the Italians have a propensity towards importing and dubbing anime. Any anime. And show them side-by-side with kids shows. So for several years, I used to watch {{Fist Of The North Star}}, ''uncut'', ''in the morning'', ''WHEN I WAS EIGHT''.

Actually it IS for kids. Well, older kids that is. And to be honest I would probably be fine with showing it to most kids arround that age. Well the first series at least.

This troper's mom was like this with anime at first, thanks to this troper's childhood SailorMoon obsession. Then she saw ''{{Hellsing}}'', ''MilleniumActress'' and Tezuka/Otomo's ''Metropolis...'' (She still refuses to watch {{magical girl}} series, though.)

This troper's father surprised her one day. He was telling her stories about how kids in his computer class watch anime, and when I told him "that's not all little kid stuff", he looked at this troper almost dumbfounded and said, "Really?"

When this troper was away at college, her aunt talked to her on the phone to tell her that her daughter (ten at the time) had been watching some of my cartoons when they were visiting my parents. This troper's immediate panicked response was "WHICH ONES?!" Also, this troper's dad seemed to think that ''{{Watchmen}}'' was going to be an animated movie after hearing that it was based on a comic book. Before he went to see it with me I had to make sure he understood that it was "not animated, rated R and very violent". He liked it, although he did comment that it should have been toned down to make it acceptable for the kids. Oi.

I think you mean "Oy", possibly spelled "oj". "Oi" is just "hey".

This trope is the reason my brother and I were allowed to watch TheSimpsons as kids.

This troper went to a Blockbuster's with her eight-year-old younger sister and managed to rent 'Ninja Scroll' Volume 1, the one that has explicit rape, violence, nudity, balls (mmmm....), gore, destruction, and {{Family Unfriendly Aesop}}s, without any comment or unusual looks from the cashier. She was thirteen at the time and knew perfectly well what the rating on the back cover meant.

This troper's funniest experience with Real Anime occurred one Saturday morning, when the Sci Fi Channel had their Saturday Anime programming block. I was happily watching one such contribution, and my dad came in and joined me. "What are you watching?" he asked. "Cartoons," I said, with complete honesty. At that moment, VampireHunterD messily bisected a demon, spraying blood and guts everywhere. Dad left.

@/{{Raekuul}} has decided that what his mother does with all the anime he's been watching on his laptop is really just a running gag of All Anime Is Sailor Moon. Unless it's DBZ. Or Macross. Or anything else that was on Toonami. It doesn't help that, of the three that I'm following closely now, one has a main character that looks spot-on Usagi (except for the whole Odango bit), one is done by the art- and music-studio that went on to do Sailor Moon, and the third one was directed by the man who did... okay, do I REALLY need to say it at this point? All I really need to say now is that I'm glad that she didn't look over and see the opening to Nanoha...

This Troper once found AeonFlux in amongst the As in the Anime section, so she moved it to the science fiction section (as it was produced in the U.S. of A., it doesn't really count as Anime). It gets better: The following week, she found it in *the kids section* ; she quickly moved it back to the science fiction section.

AKIRA is cool, yes it is very cool. The premise was what got my mother and father into buying it for the family to watch. This troper was 9 at the time and saw it all. He cried himself to sleep, had nightmares of stuffed attack animals and spilling guts and MyArmAsplode. The next day, the troper wrapped his arm in medical tape and when his mother asked why he was doing so, he replied, "I don't want to explode. I like my arm, and any violent stuff could turn things ugly

This troper has more of a literary age ghetto. My friend's father, who is a die hard Objectivist, was reading from SwordOfTruth to both of the friend's brothers, who are around 11 and 12. When this troper asked why the father was doing that, he answered, "it's just the truth, no harm in that." Infuriating!

Oh, and as an update, I asked a few months later if he read the bits about the Namble in book 2, and he said, "Yes." This political belief traumatises children...

Objectivism also traumatises anyone who knows any history, philosophy, or economics. Why would it spare children?

This Troper's cousin runs into this tropse so hard it's just absolutely scary. She things that any animation is only valuable as a tool to make her three-year-old and four-year-old happy, and that if they don't like it, it's useless. I discovered this after the following conversation: #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' Finding Nemo was a good movie. #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' I liked Monster's Inc better. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' I really didn't like Monster's Inc. #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' Why? It was emotionally resonant and- #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' Randal scared my kids. #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' Your kids are three and four respectively. It was aimed at a slightly older audience. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' (''indignantly'') Of course it was. It was a cartoon. #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' It was animated. That doesn't make it any less valid. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' Quit arguing. #QUOTE# '''Me:''' Animation can be just as much art as live action. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' Animation is for making my kids happy. Quit being so argumentative. #QUOTE# (Repeat the last few lines for thirty minutes) #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' I wish you'd realize animation can be mature art. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' I want to end this argument. What do you want me to agree to?" #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' That animation can be true, mature art. #QUOTE# '''Cousin: ''' (''sarcastically'') Fine, I agree. #QUOTE# '''Me: ''' That wasn't really agreement. #QUOTE# '''Cousin:''' Go away.

I've never talked to my cousin since.

This troper and his friends are going to have a game. Count how many under 13s are at ''9'' and see how many either A- leave early, traumatized or B- Sit through the entire thing bawling their little eyes out at a snake with half a porcelain doll's head for its own because their parent(s) spent more than 20 dollars on this.

The count currently stands at 15

Doll? I thought it was A little kid's broken skull.

This reminds me of a review of ''9'' on Rotten Tomatoes that I saw whilst finding out a bit more about whether it was worth watching. "It was very light entertainment for me. Not much of the story about about some dolls created by a mad scientist for the future and to think '''this is a kids film? Kinda spooky for them.'''" I raged silently.

My dad's reaction to me bringing up {{Futurama}} publicly. Then SouthPark a few seconds later. It probably doesn't help that I'm also a fan of PhineasAndFerb.

When I brought this up to him later he said he knew what he was talking about and was "just kidding"

This Troper's mother thought anime was for children. Recently, This Troper got an anime channel (Animax). His mother, changing channels, stopped at that channel, showing a random anime, after seeing a cute gothic lolita. Which uttered "Don't worry, everyone will die someday". My mother's jaw dropped while I snickered.

This Troper went to see the ''{{Watchmen}}'' movie with a friend and looked behind him to see an eight-year-old girl at the movie with her dad. I wanted to punch the father for even considering the idea of taking a small child to see that emotionally-scarring gore-fest of a movie. And that was ''before'' I saw the scene where splits the guy's head with a butcher's knife instead of burning him to death off-screen and where of Big Figure's goons gets killed by ''getting his arms sawed off at the elbow'', not to mention the two sex scenes, the aforementioned blue dong (It's a LOT bigger in the movie), absolutely ''everything'' the Comedian ever did, and the exploding people. OH GOD, the exploding people. My friend and I were debating about whether or not to say something to the father before the movie started. In hindsight, we should have.

I tried telling this to a couple with a line of three under-ten kids that came to see Princess Mononoke.

''{{Fullmetal Alchemist}}'' was aired at 10am on Sunday morning where this troper lives. However they also aired other mature animated shows at that time, so it was probably deliberate.

It was aired at 18:30 on Saturdays in Japan, not exactly a kids' toon time (that would be Sunday 07:00 there) but still not a late-night show. It's mostly a cultural thing -- Japanese usually don't shield their kids brom ''anything'' even remotely offensive, thinking that the earlier a kid would meet some evil (especially in a imagined form), the better he would learn to cope.

Stay-at-home moms being much more accepted in Japan, there's also more likely to be a parent around if something troubles a kid—it's easier to cope with, say, Envy's true form if you can go hug or talk to your mom, immediately, than if you have to stew on it for three or four hours.

This troper feels awkward explaining that her favorite shows are all cartoons. Even more awkward when she goes to buy the [=DVDs=]...

This troper had actually suffered a number of traumatic experiences due to this view being held by my parents and pretty much everyone in my country at the time I was a kid. Watching "Gandahar" when you are ''six years old'' stays with you for the whole life, trust me.

Try watching ''Fantastic Planet'' when you're about that age.

Overstock.com sells hentai in among its regular Anime movies, with no differentiation between kid-friendly and mature content listed. This troper and wife made an attempt in 2001 to inform Overstock's staff of this, culminating in a conversation-by-email with the company's then-president, and a promise to make a separate adult section and screen cover art before posting it to the site. To date, that promise goes mostly unfulfilled. ''If'' a specific DVD's cover art is reported by a user, that single image will be placed behind an "adult image available" flag.

This Troper worked at a store, and frequently had to remove the following from the children's section: Animal Farm, Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Scroll, Happy Tree Friends, Akira... and a variety of hentai titles *facepalm*

Lest you think this is dying down, this troper's local paper recently published this gem. Be prepared to want to put your fist through something.

"Become" an art form? This troper seriously suspect racist currents in this, and many of the other examples on this page as well as elsewhere, criticism of anime.

This troper's local Borders used to hgave the manga and comics next to the science-fiction and fantasy novels, but they since moved them. To right next to the children's section. Not necesarrily out of ignorance of the fact that manga and comics aren't necesarily for children, but rather giving far more oppurtunity for parents to cause problems, especially with series like DetroitMetalCity and {{Berserk}}.

Berserk. Near the children's section. Gautama H. Buddha.

This troper was working at a video store for a while and one day a couple with a young boy tried to rent Invincible Iron Man for their son, since it was a cartoon and thus obviously for kids. Even though the first time you see Tony Stark he and his girlfriend of the moment are having sex in a hot tub. It says PG-13 on the sleeve for a reason, folks.

My best friend believed anime was for kiddies, until I forced him to watch DeathNote. He loved it. Then, I asked him if he wants to go see Coraline with me. "It's animated, it's for kids." I force fed him Neil Gaiman and explained that Coraline was Neil Gaiman created, and he said "Ok, next time it's in theaters." a week after it left theaters. Then, I tried convincing him that MarkHamill was a better Joker than HeathLedger, only to have him say "But he was an animated Joker, aren't animations for kids?". I then forced him to see ReturnOfTheJoker, which he absolutely loved, and he hasn't been pulling the whole "animation is for kids" crap for at least a week now.

This lurker was forced to intervene when a woman attempted to buy the Hellsing {{OVA}}s for her preteen daughter. 'It's just vampires, kinda like Twilight, right?' Ahahaha, no. She was then able to tempt the daughter with Azumanga Daioh instead, and all was well in the world.

This Troper's Mother saw him reading/playing the Fate/Stay Night Visual Novel, somewhere in the UBW Route (ingame location: The Emiya Residence, while they where eating). She asked him if he was "sure this still is something for 19-year old boys?". He could barely resist showing her one of the H-Scenes and resorted to saying "I'm right in the demographic".

She didn't seem convinced.

A truly glorious example here. Today I got into a discussion at school with a friend about comic book movies and mentioned the AnimationAgeGhetto off hand. I thenh went on to explain the concept to him. He was really open about it. Right when I was giving him an overview what Akira is about, another student past by and asked: "What movie are you talking about?" He seemed rather interested and has always been really open to new influences so I said: "Akira it's an anime classic from the early 90's." "Oh anime." was his only response, aside from a mocking grin, as if to indicate,that he was "too old" for it. Now the funny part of my story is, that when I came home after that and was about to open this wiki to edit this very page, my twenty-year-old sister walked into my room holding my current book in her hands, asking whether I saw the movie. When i responded yes, she said: "Man that was the scariest movie of my live and it was supposed to be for children!" The book and movie in question? WatershipDown.

My mother is just as bad calling me to her room when she found out that I am watching anime (in her defense she also did not know what the word "nerd" means when I came out of the nerd closet so go figure). She did not seem really convinced when I explained the basic ideas behind CodeGeass and DeathNote to her and decided that she just does not get it. Since then I looked every where to find an anime that had great writing, little violence and an adult theme, so I could present it to her. When I found SummerWars I cheared. Now I only have to find an online version with German dubbing... Yeah, this is gonna take a while.

This Troper spent this past summer (2009) finally watching anime on his own for the first time. From Trigun to the first season of Gundam 00 to the first season of Code Geass, it consumed much of his free time, something that didn't go unnoticed by his mother. Whenever he watched a certain amount of anime in any given day, she would ask him to stop in a manner that strongly suggested she thought it was beneath a 19 year old to spend so much time watching animated shows. To which this troper valiantly responded with protests of "What if I was trying to catch up on Lost or 24? You wouldn't mind that as much!" Then again, she does have a history of bringing home anime movies from the library, most of which I didn't yet feel comfortable watching back when she obtained them (Can't believe I turned down Spirited Away!...and ''still'' haven't gotten around to watching it...).

This troper had bought a Ryuk nendoroid after a trip to the city and visited her grandma's house with her mother. While she was there one of her grandma's friends came over and asked about the toy. After explaining to her the whole plot line of {{Deathnote}}, (with the whole killing people by writing their names down etc), the little old lady asked her 'My grandson, he's 9, do you think he's too old to watch this?' Cue this lurker facepalming and her mother having to explain it's not for kids.

This troper also had always thought (since she was 4) that all anime and comic books were for adults only, and was surprised to find some that are kid-friendly. ('specially comics)

My dad thinks that every anime is Pokemon and every video game is for 35 year old virgins who live with their mother. Any time I play a video game in the living room he keeps saying that I'm on my way to being a pathetic loser (because an 18 year old spending his days in college and any break he gets between classes searching futally for work in a county with few jobs is OBVIOUSLY the same as a 35 year old who spends all his time playing video games in their mother's basement).

This troper once had a conversation about South Park with a former friend of his:

Me: ...and then Cartman said "Kyle you fucking jew"...

Friend: Wait, I thought it was for kids!?

Me: Er... No. Why?

Friend: But isn't it CARTOON!?

Me: Yeah...

Friend: Then it is for children.

*facepalm*

Said friend was a Star Wars fan and also watched the Clone Wars cartoons...

This troper was away with her friends for about a week. During that week, her aunt and seven year old cousin spontaneously visited from out of town and stayed with her family. My aunt told me on the phone that she let my cousin stay in my room and told me to let her know if any of my comics or cartoons were missing, as she took a lot of them down from the shelf for my cousin to read or watch on my TV (''ohshitohshitoshit''). I calmly talked to my, once again, ''seven year old'' cousin, asked her what she read and watched. She mentioned a couple of safe titles like One Piece, Bleach... Berserk... Elfen Lied... well, shit. My cousin turned out to be strangely untraumatised. She has now become an almost bigger anime fan than me and my aunt happily gets her the manga and anime she wants. I did attempt to warn my aunt about the more adult titles, but she still maintains that "they're just cartoons. How bad could they possibly be?" and she refuses to find out for herself. At least my cousin is pretty mature about it all.

This troper's parents have sometimes banned he and his brother from watching shows. They stopped him from watching Cow and Chicken because it had the devil in it (albeit a very idiotic devil that showed almost no signs of being evil) and also the 90's cartoon version of Beetlejuice. My mother also had a conversation with us about anime (I recall her yelling about how Pokemon and Digimon contained shortenings of "monsters" in their names, but nothing else) like Outlaw Star. Strangely, they didn't object to us watching any Gundam shows.

This troper recently babysat a five and six year old. Their mother had told she had already gotten a movie for the kids to watch for the night so there shouldn't be any problems. The movie she rented? Watership Down.

This troper went with a friend to see Eva 1.0 at a theatre cafe on a Monday night. The place was empty aside from the staff when we got there, so we thought it was gonna be just me and him, but then another guy came in, ''with what must've been his 8-year-old kid''. They left after the first angel. We weren't surprised, of course, but it was still kinda funny to see this trope in action.

This troper is used to dealing with it, given his interests in anime -- he's only just barely gotten his brother to not snark about it, and doesn't dare to test it with other members of the family. But it distresses him to see the effects of it in others. His not-quite-girlfriend (as they say on that there Facebook, It's Complicated), whom he would do anything for, asked if he wanted to see a movie with her then kind of cringed and reluctantly admitted it was a Disney movie, like she was saddling him with a huge burden. He wants to find the people who cudgeled her with the AnimationAgeGhetto, especially any previous boyfriends, and smack them all.

Minor example; while most of {{Robotech}} is indeed a cartoon that's alright for children, there was one scene in one episode where an overweight man in his 40s with a Scottish or Irish accent slapps a little girl (roughly 8 or 10) on the ass. Robotech aired in Australia on a show called "Cheez TV"[sic], which is aimed at Primary school (equivalent of American Grade school) children waiting for the bus to go to school. Seemed kind of odd at the time.

This troper was visiting her grandparents sometime in the late '90s and was watching {{South Park}} one night. My grandmother came into the room and sniffed, "Car''toons''? Don't you think you're a little old for that?"

Unusual inversion: When I was a wee tyke, animation was largely verboten for my sister and me. (Disney films and PBS cartoons were always acceptable.) Basically, Mom allowed us to see ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' without viewing it beforehand and was horrified shortly thereafter, assuming that ''all'' cartoons contained inappropriate material--but oddly not doing the same for live-action television. (The slapstick-heavy Looney Tunes shorts I enjoyed couldn't have helped her perception, either.) In fact, she was well aware of her double standard, to the point that she once told me that I was allowed to watch the live-action version of ''The Addams Family'', but that the animated version was off-limits. However, ''{{Animaniacs}}'' was popular among the family, probably because Mom saw Wakko's state capitals song and assumed that the show was an educational program. (Meanwhile, the opening to ''{{Freakazoid}}'' as well as my accidental sighting of an out-of-context clip from the episode "Hero Boy" scared me away from the show for years.)

When this troper was younger, her mother left the tv on Cartoon Network for her, thinking all cartoons are for kids and not really knowing about Adult Swim. Luckily, I only really paid attention to the animes, like FullMetalAlchemist. She has gotten better about this, and enjoys many animated shows, from SpongebobSquarepants to FamilyGuy. Unfortunatly, my dad (who wasn't around when this happened to me) started doing the same thing with my brother. We had a nice little chat about Adult Swim.

As a Troper whose major is Animation, my whole life has been this trope. My family is pretty supportive of it... it's everyone else that immediately assumes I'm going to work for {{Disney}} and make kids' movies. Even better is the people who give me a death glare and basically tell me I should NEVER do anything BUT children's shows, "because the other animation is FILTHY." The best was when the school's token Way-Too-Far-Right conservative managed to relate all of my personality quirks to the fact that I was "trying to pervert children with cartoons". How does general hatred of news programs stem from THAT, I ask you?!

This troper was the recieving end of a rather brutal use of this trope. I was watching some {{Fan Vid}}s for a Disney contest when I came across a ''LionKing'' vid with a song from ''Les Misérables''. In the comments section, one user complained on how the creator of the vid companed the beautiful musical with the "{{Mafia}} of animation", i.e. the generic "Disney is evil" crap. So, being uninformed of the GIFT trope, this troper asked him (well, I'm assuming it's a him) why he watched it in the first place. His response? "One can't look away from a train crash." To make a long story short ("Too late") him and I started arguing, ending with him sending me a private note, which, while ''trying'' to sound caring, basicly said that I was immature for, apparently, watching Western cartoons (he obviously didn't mind {{Anime}}, because ''LionKing'' being a rip-off of ''KimbaTheWhiteLion'' was one of his complaints; he may have a point there, but that doesn't excuse him for being a {{Jerkass}}). Even worse, he decided to insult my parents as well by saying they're abusing me. Why? ''Because they were home-schooling me''. What's ironic about this is that while I try to not be over-protective (saying something isn't racist when it ''is'' racist is just plain stupid, after all), Disney conversaries is one of my Berserk Buttons, so him trying to make me hate Disney completely backfired.

Everyone this troper knows has this attitude about animated works. I've tried to educate them, tell them that a vast amount anime is meant for teens, most of it has mature humor, and that just because kids enjoy some of it that doesn't mean adults can't, and everyone always counters with "It's a cartoon. Therefore, it is for kids, just as 2 plus 2 equals 4." They refuse to listen to logic. I am very, very annoyed by this, I assure you.

This troper has a friend who is a really hardcore FinalFantasy gamer. When KingdomHearts came out, this troper tried to recomend it to him even adding that Final Fantasy characters were in it. His response? "It's a kids game. Those stupid Disney characters are there to dumb it all down!" After years of telling him how dark the series ends up being, he still hasn't been convinced.

This tropers mother complains when ever she sees me reading any sort of manga, because "it's not a real book". At one point she believed that it would even hurt my chances of getting into college (F.Y.I., it didn't) because I wasn't reading enough of the "classics". Never mind that I have been a huge reader all my life, and use manga as a supplement to my regular books, and that she has no problem with me reading American comics like Superman, or Buffy season 8, or that my sister is almost as big into manga as I am, I'm the only one who gets it.

This troper was in fact kind of glad for the AnimationAgeGhetto... as a kid, anyways. InAWorld where people got carded before entering any sort of movie at all, I could pick up any sort of animé without question as long as the cover was bright and chipper. Then again, I was also a fan of the sorts of books that got people screaming WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids.

This troper's family knows that she likes anime, and they simply don't care. My stepfather doesn't care what I do in general as long as I keep my room clean, but my mother always liked the disney cartoons and animation. She does think that it's stupid for me to like Japanese stuff, but it has nothing to do with animation and she was much more bitter when I watched Japanese live action. My classmates, on the other hand, have three groups. One doesn't know anything about anime and thinks it's plain nonesense (no wonder, the anime in Germany is so heavily censored and badly dubbed that anyone would find it idiotic), the other group likes shounen - and specifically naruto - but annoyes me because they watch naruto purely for the violence, and the third group consists of three people incloding me, who like anime that wasn't shown on the German TV. Though one of them is a girl who thinks that shoujo is good and all shounen is violent and freaky, and the other is a boy who only watches seinen like Elfen Lied.

This troper was shocked to find that even some of the cooler people in his school seemed to follow this trope. While talking to one of the few kids in his school who's actually read a book, I suggested that he read Watchmen. I told him that it was one of the best works of literature I'd ever read. When I told him it was a comic book, he said, and I quote, "If the author is so good, why is he doing comics?" It took everything I could muster to stop myself from ragequitting the conversation.

This troper's room-mate thinks that ''anything and everything'' animated must be for children. And very young children at that. Troper was actually talking to her about a movie she planned to see (TheSecretOfKells); room-mate acted very interested in the plot until she found out it was animated, at which point she didn't want to hear any more. She's gotten a little better since troper showed her ''9,'' but still...

This troper's parents fall into this HARD. They refuse to even give anything animated a chance. Quite notably, they've watched almost every episode of post-revival Series/DoctorWho, {{Torchwood}} and TheSarahJaneAdventures (The latter ''explicitly being a '''childrenSeries/'s show'''''), yet they refuse to go near ''either'' of the animated episodes starring David Tennant.

This troper has an incurable addiction to TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation, and always has to explain it to people when they see my collection of ''LooneyTunes'' and ''TomAndJerry'' DVD's. They weren't originally for kids dammit! Once my cousin caught me buying a ''Looney Tunes'' collection and said "Hey, I think they have SpongebobSquarepants and Barney the Dinosaur DVD's in the next aisle." Gaaaahhh...

This troper's beloved smother constantly makes fun of her for watching "these childish shows". She fits this trope to a tee, to the extent of not finding ElfenLied gory because it's anime.

This Troper's mother will not watch any animated films, especially, of particular note, every single {{Pixar}} film to date except the ToyStory films, despite all the praise we give them; that time when she took us to see Cars didn't count, because she slept through it. She does like the ToyStory films, so I'm hoping that when she sees "3" that it will change her view of animated films; November can't come soon enough. She hasn't said that animation is for kids, but I feel that what she DID say is worse. The conversation went something along the lines of her saying that "I don't watch films for the same reasons that you do." I asked her why I watch films, and she said "For entertainment," which implied to me that she doesn't think that animated films have sufficient story, AND that I don't care about story, which is completely wrong. The worst part about this is that I hope to get a job at Pixar someday (their motto? "Story is king." Key point of my wanting to go there), and my mother says that if I worked on a film, she'll go see it, but I really rather have want to see the film because she knows it will be good, not just because of my involvement. To finish up, the most peculiar thing about this whole ordeal is that when she actually sits down to watch animated films, she ''likes them''. I recall one time after I had just finished working on a short film (with LEGO, no less) she yelled up to me to tell me that she loved it. Now I wonder if I should call her out on this, or if brickfilms and feature films are even comparable in that aspect?

This troper's brother (11 now) watches a lot of cartoons, and Mom used to protest that he watched too many childish programs and should go outside. When she discovered that FamilyGuy and SouthPark aren't all that kiddy, she now ''insists'' he stop watching so much television and get some sunshine.

In effect for this troper - after a fashion. Having saved up enough to buy the complete series of Neon Genesis Evangelion, my mum came into the room while it was on the menu. The episode titles on the screan were, "Those women longed for the touch of others' lips, and thus invited their kisses", "Splitting of the Breast" and "Fourth Children". Having dismissed them as kid's stuff with a look of utter contempt when I first bought them (one identical to the look I was given when I bought home the first volume of Hellsing) she then accused me of buying porn. I laughed. She considers everything animated and everything hand-drawn to be trash either suited for ages 4-12 or no-one at all given that all such non-kiddie material is of course porn. Deciding it probably wasn't porn, she set aside ''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'' and ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'' for my kid cousin when he visits - given he is 3, this warranted their quiet removal on my part. Likewise all novels are trash unless they win awards and are read by my dad or are more than 100 years old and were not written by Marx or Mary Shelley or Stoker or Lovecraft or Wells - strange ideas for a woman who barely reads. She is going to watch Evangelion 1.1 now, no two ways about it.

Blow her mind with ''{{FLCL}}''. :-)

My own Blockbuster must be staffed with otaku, because all the anime is either under TV or Drama, unless it's a Disney/Ghibli release like Totoro. Though despite this nicety, it still doesn't stop the facepalming when my kid brother (who I've recently made an anime fan) comes home from the library with ''{{Akira}}''. My father picked it out for him, saying "Here's that animated stuff you like." Cue me explaining to my brother why it wasn't a good idea for him to see that.

I have to say, I suffered from this when I was really little. Thus, watching SouthPark when I was 7, and clicking the {{Hentai}} page of Encyclopedia Dramatica when I was 8... Yeah...

My local Borders was selling what amounted to an Otaku encyclopedia. While the book was especially informative into the Otaku culture and featured many prominent people in manga and anime, it also had a stereotypically over-sexualized mascot in the form of a maid drawn in manga fashion. Also, among the included pictures within the book itself were nude figurines and pictures from anime series. While that wasn't a big deal for This Troper and his friends (all intelligent and aware teenagers, each of us)... get this... we found this book in the childrens' section. Thankfully it was the only copy (or, perhaps... and I shudder at the thought, the LAST COPY).

This troper found a copy in her local Barnes and Noble. Luckily, the staff knew to put it in the Manga section, which for the record is all the way on the other side of the store from the children's section.

This troper has seen ''{{Akira}}'' resting just beside the ''{{Backyardigans}}'' in a store's kid shows section. Also another anime (which unfortunately I don't remember the name) was in the same place, and they didn't even have the excuse of not knowing about its nature because the cover was ''a bloody severed arm''. As in actually ''bloody'', with blood pouring out. I made a mental note that if I ever go to that store again and find it, I'll give a heads up to an employee.

The mother of this tropette will not watch ANY animated TV show. In her mind, all cartoons are bloody and violent. It makes it especially hard for the tropette to watch cartoons without getting put down for watching them.

This Troper's Amazon account seems to think that because she likes {{Futurama}} and FamilyGuy , she must also be interested in {{Barbie}} movies, BobTheBuilder, and SesameStreet.

This Troper has graduated college training to be an animator, and his parents have always supported his endeavors, but until recently (they are in no way artists) they didn't know a lot of titles and were completely unfamiliar with today's tropes. Otherwise, they averted this trope completely. But anyone who tries to get a good job in the field today knows how hard it is! So a funny thing happened when I was visiting my parents one Thanksgiving: my mom suggested I trade my often-used Flash back for pencil on paper, and would probably get more offers. I respond by saying it doesn't matter what tool you use. ...cue my normally calm mother BITING MY HEAD OFF! This is the first time my parents have shown any bias against one kind of cartoon!

This Troper once visited a bookshop and found Watchmen in the children's books section. Words fail me.

Played with to the point of confusion with this Troper. When this Troper was 7 years old she was banned from watching cartoons such as {{Hamtaro}}, {{Recess}}, XMenEvolution and the like because she was "too old". Yet at the same time, TheSimpsons was out of the question because it was too adult (This banning resulted in a lot of classroom bullying by this troper's peers). When she became an anime nerd in her teens she asked her mother for AzumangaDaioh, LoveHina and {{Chobits}} [=DVDs=] for her birthday and got treated to a long rant about how she should grow up because cartoons are for kids. Luckily these days her family are more accepting of her enjoyment of anime.

The other day, I went to my local video store and found that someone had put a ''Legend Of Overfiend" DVD in with the kids' videos. I happen to be on a first name basis with the manager and when I explained to him the error of that, the mortified look on his face was priceless. Needless to say, Overfiend was immediately moved to a more appropriate section of the store.

My brother is a firm believer that this applied to all anime despite watching cartoons not for kids like FamilyGuy.

Any mention of Team Fortress 2 to this troper's friend will result in him dismissing it as 'TheIncredibles', due to the artstyle. He has yet to actually play the game, employing the same excuse when suggested to him.

When this troper was a 5th grader he went to Catholic School. One day, a student teacher brought in a movie that his friend said was "laden with Judaeo Christian symbolism." And, after doing some research on said movie - some anime called EndOfEvangelion - they approved it. Then one of the Sisters walked into the classroom (apparently because she was interested by cartoons that promoted The Lord), ''right as the hospital scene came on.'' HilarityEnsued, and by hilarity I mean a certain student teacher getting fired.

Pfft...I...ah...um...(starts laughing while hitting his desk). That's almost ''too'' hard to believe. This is the funniest thing I've ever read on this site, I-I mean....''wow.''

The other day, I saw BatmanUnderTheRedHood in the "cartoons" DVD section at Target, side by side with animated films that are happy, bright, cheerful, and ''actually appropriate for children'' movies. Being a comics reader, I knew right off something was up. Red Hood? You mean Todd? You mean... the guy who is violently beaten to death and then blown up by a homicidal maniac when he's just a teenager, and then comes back from the dead to murder people? Well, then I actually watched the movie. Guess what the first scene was? Yep, the aforementioned guy violently beaten to death and then blown up by a homicidal maniac when he's just a teenager. Worse yet, Target's not the only offender--I saw the same [=DVDs=] prominently displayed next to BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold and some kid-friendly comics at Borders. (there was also The Killing Joke up there. ''THE KILLING JOKE.'' Either some Borders employee has a ''sick'' sense of humor, or they just don't get it.)

My sister's friend has a really REALLY strange case. She loves cartoons aimed at adults, specifically South Park and The Simpsons. Sounds averted, right? Well, she also likes animation she grew up with, like Tiny Toons and Rocko's Modern Life and Wallace and Gromit, as well as Renissance Disney. She thinks Pixar is HIT AND MISS. She loves The Incredibles, Toy Story and Up, but all the other Pixar movies? PURE CRAP! And all the other cartoons she's never watched or heard of, kids show or otherwise, she hates them as well. She hates Anime, Spongebob, and freaking FINDING NEMO. However, me, my sis, and her friend went to see Despicable Me recently. She was hesitant because it was animated, but she loves Steve Carell so much, she went to see it with us. In the end, she liked the movie. But, she still has a hatred for animation unless it's for adults or she grew up with it. What do you CALL this?

NostalgiaFilter.

My family is a strange case. My dad admits that not all animation is meant for kids, but believes that the medium should be (mostly) reserved for anyone aged 16 down. Even when we were still little kids (we got rid of our TV in 2001, when I was 12 and my sisters were 8 and barely 4), he would walk in and if we were watching, say, ''{{DuckTales}}'', he would take the remote and try to find some live action show or movie for us to watch, with varied success. This is coming from a now-51-year-old who watches SpongeBob, Roger Rabbit, ''{{Winnie the Pooh}}'', ''{{Transformers}}'', and the original G.I. Joe with a passion. Both of my parents don't have anything against anime per say, but for roughly 10 years, my sisters and I were all but banned from watching any anime with the exception of the Super Robot genre ({{Voltron}}, ''{{The Big O}}'', the {{Gundam}} franchise, etc.). They did have good reasons for doing so (mostly involving the porn aspect of some anime), but they usually did this without researching various shows that were family oriented at worst. In addition, my mother believed that comic books were for kids until I showed her the new ''{{Battlestar Galactica}}'' comics and she took a look at some of Alan Moore and Frank Miller's milder work. We all enjoy Pixar films, though. There are some things you just never grow out of.

This troper was searching films on Netflix, and GraveOfTheFireflies was listed as a KID'S ANIME. WTF.

Here's something even worse. {{Watership Down}} was in the FAMILY Animation section.

Not exactly an example, but I just want to say I'm planning on making a documentary about this trope. I'll study how this trope came to be and when. I'm going to ask people from around the world if they think animation is for kids only. And all the people that say it is will be sent to a special screening of clips from very adult cartoons. {{South Park}}, {{Akira}}, and {{Fritz the Cat}} are musts, but I'm open to suggestions for others.

HappyTreeFriends

EndOfEvangelion

GraveOfTheFireflies

FamilyGuy

RenAndStimpyAdultPartyCartoon

ElfenLied and {{Berserk}}

not sure what you'd consider this, but when this troper was TWELVE he got some gift certs for HMV (note for American tropers, HMV is a British retailer akin to a combination of Best Buy and Barnes & Noble), this was the year after this troper gotten into anime thanks to ranma 1/2. so, this troper went to their anime section, looked around for something cheap, and saw one that sounded cool, ninja scroll, one of the employee's came over and said "you sure you want that? it has nudity" this troper hand waved it, saying that i watched ranma 1/2 before so it didnt matter...dvd had a huge 18+ sticker on it. the cashier didnt bat an eyelash and let me buy it, this troper get home and pop it into the dvd player, watched it...until the first rape scene, this troper immediately jumped up, turned off the tv, took the dvd out of the player and hid the movie, this troper only watched the full thing a good 4 years later when this troper found it again. also, 2 days before my 18th birthday, this troper tried buying the hellsing tv series box set from london drugs...the guy was adamant that this troper come back in 2 days to buy it. there's also my family, my mom thinks its all porn because of ranma 1/2.

Played straight and subverted on two seperate occasions, in the same theater, with this troper. When going out to see ''{{Ponyo}}'', the theater had about twenty people in it tops, most likely because the rest of the audience assumed it was a cheesy, kiddy ani-nime cartoon and went to the PG-13 movie that may or may not have been airing next door instead. On the other hand, when we went out to see ''ToyStory 3'', the theater was packed, although this may have also been due to Pixar's long-established appeal to all audiences.

This one's just a rumour, so take it or leave it, but apparently a sixth-grade history teacher in our local school district was about to go on vacation, and heard about an animated film with historical merit. So, she rented a copy of said film and gave it to her substitute, in the hopes that she could just put on the movie and let the kids watch it. Yeah, turns out this film was called WaltzWithBashir...

This Troper's family used to be solidly stuck in the Animation Age Ghetto. I tried showing my parents MillenniumActress, thinking that it might change their minds, but they simply didn't bother actually watching it. On the other hand, I showed my 78-year-old grandmother just one episode of {{Gankutsuou}}, and wound up not getting any sleep that night because she insisted on marathoning it in one sitting. My parents still think I watch kid's cartoons (my father likes political dramas, so I may try showing him {{Flag}}), while my grandmother is hooked on StudioGhibli and SatoshiKon films.

This troper's family used to be all about this trope when she was younger. My dad had netflix and shared with mom's and mine's request of movies. He would suggest anime for me whenever the suggestions show up and thanks to that, this troper watched {{Mahoromatic}} when she was '''9 or 10 years old!''' It weirded out this troper with all the boobies going around (and the Oobie Boobie Poem did not help one bit) which made this troper realize at the time that age not all anime were for kids. My parents still played this trope straight for a long time afterwords until my later years in highschool when they see me and my friends/{{nakama}} (who my parents love and think of them as intelligent and helps that they're older and mature) saw us enjoying {{Avatar the Last Airbender}} and {{xxxHolic}} which this troper was able to get her mom into the anime version.

Although this troper likes live action primetime dramas like {{Lost}} and {{Smallville}}, he considers them to be very overrated. My personal opinion is that BeastWars, ReBoot, AvatarTheLastAirbender, {{Gargoyles}}, TheSpectacularSpiderMan and especially the {{DCAU}} seriously put a lot of these primetime dramas to shame. In fact, when I heard that BatmanTheAnimatedSeries was moved to primetime T.V. and failed, I thought, "And they tell us, we don't know we're born."

This new troper has experienced this when she was 14. She was educated in a special school and wanted to move to mainstream school to gain better oppertunities, however, it came at a price. The teachers and my family had all said I would be consisdered too old for cartoons, which went over my head, even when a sheet on buying magazines and being socially acceptable came through, which I want to tear up now since I still have it. Another time, when I was still visiting the school, I desgned a Minnie Mouse radio in workshop class and the teacher who came with me looked at it and said it was babyish. I became disturbed at this point. When I did attend the school, two months later, I learned how to stand up to her. I was given a book by some teachers to write my worries down in so that when they read it, they can try to solve the problem and the teacher who accompanied me previously visited to see how I was getting on. I showed her the book and one of my entries, "My Life as a Cartoon Lover" to which she repiled the stupidity that haunts me, "Aren't you too old for cartoons?" I angrily replied "No!", feeling hurt and emotional.

In the same year, a documentary "The 100 Greatest Cartoons" on Channel 4 aired and it revived my interest in animation and was the trigger that started my Disney obsession. Although the other accepted me, I was teased. I was told that {{Chicken Little}} was for kids at one point, until I convinced her. One day, I was fed up of this so I started to get more into adult animation, starting with {{Fritz the Cat}} and then {{South Park}}, which triggered my other lifelong obsession besides Disney. When mum found out, she tried to ban it, but it didn't last long, depsite me being sensible enough not to imitate the langauge and seeing it for what it is.

The Animation Age Ghetto hasn't appeared for ages, but I still rememmber that incident, which mum says I should get over. As for my family, they have accpeted my love for cartoons, especially my cartoon hating aunt. My mum loves magical childrens films, my godmother has taken a liking to Studio Ghibli and my uncle is also a cartoon fan.

I recently watched ToyStory3 with my Dad and you know what his exact reaction was? "How can I be moved by a animated film about toys?" So much CompletelyMissingThePoint I can't even begin to explain.

This troper was introduced to ''{{Fantasia}}'''s trippiness and frightening images because a local daycare included the VHS, next to videotapes of ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles''.

My non-troper friend told me his grandma watched ''Toy'' ''Story'' ''3'' and that her reaction was "It was cute." For reference, the ''Toy Story'' series is this friend's favorite cinematic achievement of all time, he ''despises'' the Animation Age Ghetto (I do too), and use of the word "cute" is a BerserkButton of his.

In this troper's mother's perfect world, all animation would be for kids. She "bans" practically any animation that she finds "dirty" (even freaking King of the Hill, despite this troper about to turn 15), and yet allows this troper and his brother (also almost 15, but less mature) to watch NCIS, Bones and the like. This troper and his brother still watch the shows, however. :/

To be more specific, to this troper's mom, does know about adult animation. It's just that to her, animation that's pretty clean is apparently too kiddy for this troper, and that animation that isn't too adult, but would still warrant a PG rating is strictly for adults only (e.g. King of the Hill).

My cousin is ten-years old and plays GodOfWar. I played ConkersBadFurDay when I was twelve, but it didn't mean anything, because I didn't understand any of the jokes and mature stuff and concentrate only in the gameplay, but today I don't know if I'd play that game.

This troper frequently gets odd looks and/or is laughed at for saying their favorite movie of all-time is ''WhoFramedRogerRabbit''. Most people who were born after the movie came out tend to assume that because the main character is a talking cartoon rabbit it's a kiddie film. Yeah, a movie that is essentially about (to quote the movie) "greed, sex and murder". Not exactly a film for I'd show to a four-year old kid...

Also, the same troper has also had difficult experiences with his mother, who tends to support his animation fandom most of the time, about going to see current animated films. She attempted to stop me from seeing ''ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' in theaters (guess what? She didn't succeed) and at the time that movie came out questioned why I go to see so many animated movies. Thankfully that was very short-lived, though I can't help but wonder how she'll feel about the fact I want to see ''WinnieThePooh'' come July.

Played painfully straight during this troper's 9th grade English class. at the beginning of the year, our teacher gave us the opportunity to suggest novels to read together as a class. Being the avid comic-book fan that he is, this troper suggested WATCHMEN. He wrote an 400 word essay on it's symbolism and structure,and how it changed the American comic industry forever. He backed this up by printing out the ENTIRE WATCHMEN WIKIPEDIA PAGE and gave it to his english teacher, and was rejected with the response of "I'm trying to steer this class AWAY from silly comic-books." When we started doing a unit on fairy-tales, she gave us a guide to basic fairy-tale character templets, which this troper fiiled out with STAR WARS examples. (i.e.: Wise old mentor-Yoda and Ben Kenobi)which she tore up and demanded examples from "REAL" literature. Our next assignment was to write a fairy-tale. We could either A)write our own, or B)adapt an already existing fairy-tale to modern times. This troper asked if he could rewrite A New Hope in a midieval-fantasy setting, wich she laughed and sad "No, it's not REAL literature." (yet she was A-Ok with me adapting The Three Little Pigs and making the Big Bad Wolf an IRS agent trying to audit the pigs)....And I'm not even going to bring up the time I tried to write a book report on Crisis On Infinite Earths....

The first time this troper really realized that cartoons don't just cater to kids was when he came across ''{{Akira}}'' on television when I was around 6. I didn't think that my parents would have any trouble with me watching it, because hey, it's a cartoon, and my parents let me watch other cartoons, right? Unfortunately, I had tuned in right at THAT scene, and boy, was I in for a nasty shock. Of course, my parents were and remain fairly savvy about this trope, and upon coming across me watching the movie had me change the channel before the next one came up (it was apparently some similar movie; I don't remember what it was). The only other time I've really encountered this trope was upon hearing a teacher express disdain toward cartoons like ''TheSimpsons'' for being targeted toward more adult audiences. But in her defense, she has a son in high school who has Asperger's and other mental handicaps, which would make him somewhat in need of more monitoring as far as show choices go, so I can sorta understand where she's coming from.

A friend of mine had recently watched BatmanBegins and TheDarkKnight and enjoyed them both immensely. I offered to let him borrow my BatmanTheAnimatedSeries and BatmanBeyond [=DVDs=]. His response was to laugh and ask why he'd want to watch a dumbed-down version of what he's already seen. I explained they were very different and actually very good. "You'll understand why cartoons are so lame when you're my age." he says. I'm exactly 2 months younger than him.

Similarly, this Troper's friend laugh at him when he says he prefers the Mark Hamill animated Joker over The Dark Knight's Heath Legder.

This tropette kind of had an eye-opener once. I wasn't a strong believer in 'if it's a cartoon, it's for the kiddies,' but I didn't think much of one particular cartoon show (most of the humor is slapstick or the "stupid-funny" kind). Then I saw TheMovie on YouTube. It actually turns out this show had some pretty deep aspects to it, and towards the end it became DarkerAndEdgier. It put the whole series in a new light for me. What was the name of the show, you may ask? It was EdEddnEddy!

Played depressingly straight with my mom. She believed for the longest time that all cartoons (including anime) were for little kids, and also believed that AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles due to one or two occasions of seeing some not-so-family-friendly stuff on, say, SailorMoon, for example. She's much better about it now, but she doesn't know about my near-obsession with ''FullmetalAlchemist''. God help me if she ever finds out too, since the amount of blood would be enough to make her head explode from horror. I love my mom very much, but sometimes she just makes me want to spork my own eyes out drive two live wires through the sockets, connect them next to my brain and proceed to sing at the top of my lungs ''IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL''!

Kind of an isolated incident, but this 20-year-old male troper's mother wasn't entirely happy about my seeing ''ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' alone in a cinema (as opposed to, say, taking my younger cousins along, which wasn't an option that week anyway).

I also ran into this recently at my local video shop where I found ''BatmanUnderTheRedHood'' in the Kids' New Release section, (in spite of the obvious M15+ rating), most likely because it was animated. I decided to set them straight, and the following week it had been put where it belonged.

Sitting down to dinner with two friends, one dismissed the anime playing as a "children's show". The other friend and I were more familiar with ''SpeedGrapher'', and the episode in question in which an assassin is messily carved up with plate glass, and the protagonists flee to the sanctuary of a drag cabaret.

My dad tends to think of animation as kid stuff, although I got him into Case Closed for a little while, so he's being kind of hypocritical.

When I was a teen (about 13 years old), a friend of mine showed me some Hentai magazines he had from DragonBall and NeonGenesisEvangelion. I wasn't particularly interested in the material, since I was already watching porn at that age, but what really impressed me is HOW he got them. When he was about 5 years old, her mother gave them to him, after buying them at a book-store. Apparently, she never opened them, and let herself get carried away by manga characters on the cover. (A weird fact is that the goku and Chichi were both naked in said cover. No parts were showing, but still.)

My mother has let me watch anime since I turned 12 and asked if I could. She never seems to give a damn about what I'm watching. She even walked in on me watching {{Kuroshitsuji}} once, pretty much on the part where Sebastian was throwing forks and knives into the Mafia's necks. And shrugged her shoulders. My father doesn't even seem to care in the least. He even said himself, he's alright with me watching violent anime. Maybe those two could learn something if I made them watch {{Elfen Lied}}. And for some reason, though they don't mind violence, my father dissapproves of {{hentai}} like hell. I don't know why

I saw {{Cowboy Bebop}} in the kid's section of my Blockbuster, before it closed down. I tried to inform Blockbuster, but they shrugged it off.

This troper once watched WhoFramedRogerRabbit as a seven year old. His then stepfather walked into the room just as the talking car said "What the ''fuck'' is that?!?" Cue a huge gasp with wide eyes from him and a devilish little smile from this troper. Yes, he knew about this trope, even at that age.

This troper experienced this in Year Six. His class was studying rainforests. The teacher brought in Ferngully. His impression of the movie was that it was a bit cliche, yeah, but the environmental message was great and it was good to see that people still cared about the environment. Most of his class thought it was a stupid, 'gay', childish cartoon that had fairies in it and was therefore girly. Did they not see the GIANT FLAMING, SMOKE-AND-OIL SKELETON?!

This was Edgy's mom until Cowboy Bebop.

I was watching GeneratorRex the other night, only to have my sister and sister's boyfriend come in, sit down, and proceed to talk about how "Japanese anime" (uh, what?) had no plot and is completely idiotic. I told them to listen to the dialogue before judging, but no. Any cartoon that has fighting in it can't be well developed, no sir. To make it worse, they implied that all cartoons are the same and that my sister's MTV reality shows were of better quality. Needless to say, I was ticked.

It was agonizing to see how straight this was played out in this troper's local store (part of a national chain!) in the UK. The had the movie 9 in the FAMILY section. When it is rated 12+ BY LAW and has said rating clearly displayed on the front. Just to prove that it's not just ValuesDissonance, the Harry Potter movies which carried the same rating were in the other, less child-friendly sections, not to mention that the only things in the family section were animated *ahem* *points at trope name*. Still, at least you'd have to be really stupid to pick that one up. I dread to think, though, considering someone was stupid enough to put it there...

Additionally, it's worth noting that this trope is the main reason I panic if I see an animated feature in a selection of DVDs/videos/Blu Rays. *OMGdontletitbeinthekidssectiondontletitbeinthekidssection*

Completely averted with my mom, she doesn't watch anime/read manga but she perfectly understands that some adults enjoy it. Heck, she even berates me for being so shy about admitting that I like anime and manga!

This tropers family averts it, kinda. Her mother thinks that anime isn't for kids, but thought for a while that it's all Sailor Moon-esque shows. (lolwut?) This troper attempted to set her straight by showing her some of the more depressing moments of Clannad. Her impression? "Why are they all dressed like Sailor Moon?" Cue facepalm. This tropers friends, on the other hand, are mostly Narutards (which is funny, because this troper thinks Naruto is pretty much for kids in the 8-13 demographic, and we're all 14/15). I like to show them Higurashi and ElfenLied when they talk about "OMG NARUTO IS TEH VIOLENTZORZ IT'S SO COOL AND IVE NEVAR SEEN ANYTHING DIS VIOLENT". (Needless to say, this troper is trying to find some new friends.)

This (25-year-old) troper actually found Naruto deeper than ElfenLied (or for that matter DeathNote), but he's a philosophy/politics geek and freely admits he's enjoying it from a different angle than most people. This troper just appreciated that Naruto vs. Gaara contrasts communitarian existentialism with individualist existentialism; how Sandaime Hokage vs. Orochimaru explores the community as macrocosm of the family; how both the Pain arc and Sasuke's character arc exemplify, in the face of all "victim" politics, that merely having justified resentments does not equate to carte blanche for retaliation; and how ''all'' the villains are explorations of the fact that human conflict is first and foremost ideological. Plus, I'm sorry, freaking ninjas.

Happily averted by this troper's parents - her mother will willingly watch all and any decent Disney movies, and sat down to watch GraveOfTheFireflies with her for the first time. About a dozen boxes of tissues were empty and strewn about the couch by the end. Her father picked up the first issue of her Naruto manga, and now she has to be very careful to hide them lest she never ever sees them again. But we both agree Sasuke's an ass and reminds us both of my brother, who is now the only one who refuses to acknowledge outright that anime isn't just for kids, even though he'll happily sit down if I'm watching SamuraiChamploo or GhostInTheShell.

Subverted in this troper, who has recently watched all of Danny Phantom and is now halfway through Ben 10. I'm 20 years old and studying biotechnology at university, for reference.

I'll see your Ben 10 and raise you with Card Captor Sakura. I'm 28 years old and a news writer.

Averted pretty damn hard with this troper's library, which have HayaoMiyazaki films next to the likes of CitizenKane(where it should be). In addition, my parents don't mind us watching cartoons like InvaderZim and AvatarTheLastAirbender, and their stance on anime has changed considerably.(when I developed anger issues from watching {{Pokemon}})

This troper is an anime fan and also enjoys AvatarTheLastAirbender and Invader Zim, to which her Dad thinks is ridiculous and I should "act my age." He belives all Western cartoons is RenAndStimpy style toilet humor, and all Anime is porn. It is very hard to convince him the Avatar is not about a goofy bald kid who farts have magic powers.

Unfortunately played straight with this troper's friend, however, who instantly labeled {{Coraline}}(fucking Coraline people!) as a stupid kiddy flick. It makes me wonder if he's actually seen it, considering that it's pretty damn scary.

Subverted with this troper's mother who has explicitly stated that ''Avatar: The Last Airbender'' was one of her favorite shows. This troper's mother also once said "Anime porn popped up once when I was on the internet. That stuff beat me over the head and dragged me out of the Animation Age Ghetto"

This troper is 32 and her husband is 39. Roughly half of our (sizeable) DVD collection is animated, including several Disney films and a number of the different series we enjoyed in our separate childhoods. ''TheLegendOfZelda'' just arrived from Amazon.com yesterday.

This troper's fiance once interned at the [=MoMA=] for a summer while they were putting on an anime exhibit. He had to politely inform the people in charge that {{Grave of the Fireflies}} was ''not'' acceptable for all ages.

... and our first date? The SpongeBob movie.

This troper has recently finished watching the SailorMoon subs... and now can hand wave away the "Isn't that for little kids?" question by using the ending three episodes.

But it is. Japan just has ''really'' lax standards for censorship.

Subverted by way of insult in this troper's household: his fiancee will cry every time Kenny gets killed, to be told by her 20-something son that "it's just a cartoon". He will say the exact same thing when she cries over a live-action death.

Subverted by this troper's mother who loves all types of animation and openly admits to watching BLEACH with me. Unfortunately played straight by this troper's dad.

Subverted HARD by this troper's father, who at the age of 62, enjoys Danny Phantom and Ben 10 quite a bit. Played straight for the most part by the 57-year-old mother and 33-year-old sister, though.

Partialy subverted with this troper. Me and my dad love Futurama, The Tick, and The Simpsons. My mom doesen't really mind this however

Inverted in this troper's life--at the age of around 4, she tried to argue fiercely with her father when he wouldn't let her watch the "cartoon" he was watching, saying: "It's a cartoon--it ''must'' be for kids!" His response? "Not all cartoons are for kids." Twelve years later, watching ''{{Akira}}'', she realized both that it was the "cartoon" her dad had been watching, and exactly ''why'' he wouldn't let her watch it. While her parents do tease her nowadays about still liking slightly dubious kid's shows, in this family, it falls squarely in RuleOfFunny.

This Troper, at age 18, stumbled across a ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' music video for Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business". He then proceeded to watch about two-thirds of the episodes on YouTube. He subsequently watched the ''KimPossible'' movie on a (19-year-old) friend's computer, at that friend's recommendation. And if I still had high-speed broadband access, I'd be digging up old ''WidgetTheWorldWatcher'' episodes.

Subverted by this troper's father (b. 1952), who ''requested'' the complete series of ReadOrDie the TV for Christmas.

Subverted by this troper's father, in particular, though her mother does enjoy AvatarTheLastAirbender. He used to watch Naruto with her, and will still sit and watch JusticeLeague or various other cartoons or anime with her when he's around.

This troper's friend has an odd case of this. He likes anime fine, but he thinks PerverseSexualLust is for kids. And yes, I know how weird that sounds.

This troper is a huge cartoonatic, he'll watch any old cartoon as long as it's good.

Subversion and played straight. This troper's grandfather asked him once, do you have that movie with that green guy and the donkey? He hasn't given it back as of yet. Also, his mother was flicking through the channels one time and declared that "There's nothing on except reality shows and Note}} stupid Pokemon". She got better, but only slightly.

My immediate family doesn't have this, since we all developed a DragonBallZ addiction at the same time (and never looked back), but our extended family (except possibly for the wacky ultra-liberal great-aunt and her oddball ultra-conservative sister) all have this reaction. Yes, even to stuff like GhostInTheShell and DeathNote.

Subverted and played straight with @/{{this-guy}}'s mom. She doesn't like us watching stuff like ''{{Chowder}}'' or ''TheMarvelousMisadventuresOfFlapjack'' but herself watches ''Ben10AlienForce'' and ''StarWarsTheCloneWars''.

Chowder and Flapjack are so disturbing as to approach NightmareFuelUnleaded, the latter with nitrous and a spoiler.

Semi-subverted with this troper's family. While his parents are by no means avid anime fans, they a) accept that it's not a kiddie genre, and b) were willing to watch several animated movies with him. They really enjoyed ''Princess Mononoke'', although it wasn't enough to turn them into huge anime fans like some other examples on this page.

It's not a genre dammit!!

The above troper (who is not me) never said it was.

In this troper's college class, we watched SouthPark and TheBoondocks to discuss whether or not the "n-word" was appropriate. When one student said "Why do they put stuff like this in cartoons that mainly only kids watch?" this troper's blood began to boil.

One appropriate response would be to point out that 'putting stuff like this in cartoons that mainly only kids watch' is a highly subversive act. The parents of such children, labouring under the delusion of the AnimationAgeGhetto, probably won't be in the room while the kids are watching... and won't be there to 'correct' the 'strange' questions and ideas that the show inspires. What does your classmate suppose will happen in a decade or so when 'those kids' are old enough to vote?

Don't ever try to argue this in a classroom, ever. Cue the weird looks from your teacher and classmates and "Silly Troper! Animations for kids".

This editor's immediate family averts the trope. Both of her parents are aware that she likes anime, which... well, do I need to explain? Her brother's watched a few episodes of ''Star Wars: The Clone Wars'', and he might watch anime if he wanted to. (He hasn't shown much interest though.) Her mother is probably the biggest aversion. One instance that comes to mind: when the editor said that she wanted to create cartoons, she also said that she didn't want to create stuff for kids. Mother's response? "Make it a cartoon for teenagers." (Father's more or less the same.) Recently this editor found out one of the reasons why: mother saw the ''WatershipDown'' film when it was first shown in cinemas (she would've been a young adult at the time). And she loves it.

This Troper experienced the inversion of this trope. I was buying a ''{{Naruto}}'' DVD for myself, but had my 4-year-old daughter in tow at the time. The man behind the counter said "You do know this isn't for kids, right?" While I should've been offended at the accusation that I was buying inappropriate stuff for a child, I was at least happy that he knew about what he was selling.

This troper's parents are thankfully pretty middle of the road about the whole thing. They'll watch any good Disney movie, or animated movie in general, and my mother has, thanks to this troper's fondness for anime, gotten to know the dramatic side of animation pretty well. Dad is still far more likely to watch ESPN than anything else, but he did get into a conversation with this troper about the finer points of Avatar.

This Troper's parents are the same as the above. My mother likes some animes, namely Chobits, and my father is only likely to watch Pixar films. He does tend to rant about how modern cartoons and anime aren't as good as say, Loony Toons, because many aren't hand drawn. He only seems to do it when anime is mentioned so he could be doing it just to annoy me.

Da_Nuke's mom has always had a rather indifferent stance towards anime, but she did believed it was for kids. That was, until he played ''HellGirl'' in front of his mom and all his aunts. ''They liked it''. And just to top it off, that was shortly after seeing my sister watch ''ElfenLied''.

Utterly, utterly subverted by this troper and her family. Her 62-year-old father loves Wallace and Gromit, and the whole house basically stops to watch it and Shaun the Sheep, which is on at about 3pm. He's also professed his liking for CatDog, Tom and Jerry, Speedy Gonzales and others. This troper loves going to movies like Bolt, Finding Nemo, and Wall-e. She watches lots of cartoons that are for a much younger age group, and her mother is more likely to join her than to tell her to stop. And her mother usually accompanies her to movies; this troper went to see Monsters vs. Aliens this morning, and her mother came too. She enjoyed it just as much, if not more than this troper did.

This troper's favorite method of curing people of the belief that anime is only for children is to make them watch a scene form ''BlackLagoon''. Preferably from the Hansel and Gretel arc. And if that doesn't work, there's always ''ElfenLied''...

It seems like that's become a tactic when discussing the AAG: when in doubt, use ''Elfen Lied''. It's like Godwin's Law for anime!

Brilliant, replace the AnimationAgeGhetto with AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles, and probably piss them off by showing them something nasty when they're not expecting it. It's more like invoking Godwin's Law ''while discussing Zionism'', thus making yourself look like an anti-Semite.

A better example would be showing them 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica inside and out, whilst urging them to suppport {{Anonymous}}.

Not sure if this counts, but I think it somewhat counts as a subversion. As a kid, I mindlessly watched anything animated as a kid wihtout even understanding it and most of the time not even being able to hear the lines (it was actually quite a surreal experience) but I was actually able to see what animation was acceptable for kids and what animation not being acceptable for kids that I was able to handle from a mile away. Too bad, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't actually able to ''enjoy'' watching DetectiveConan and FLCL.

Sorry, ''DetectiveConan'' IS a kids' show.

Inverted for this troper. While we kids blindly assumed that anything (particularly TheSimpsons) was kid-friendly, our parents knew otherwise. They forbade us from watching that show, a provision that we obeyed (and occasionally broke) until well into adolescence.

This troper's mother found herself watching some animation with me and tends to be skeptical until I get her through. However, the last animated film she saw, ''KungFuPanda'', required enticing her with the fact that her favourite actor, DustinHoffman, is in it. So, I showed her the nighttime stairs argument scene to bait her and she agreed to see the whole film. Sure enough, when the sequence of Shifu and Tai Lung's fight got going, she was repeatedly, with some worry, asking me, "Where's Po?" and I had to reassure her with "Po is coming." By the end, she noted that she thought it was an excellent film. Father however cannot be persuaded to watch anything animated, even ''{{Fantasia}}'' even though he loves classical music.

Later, I treated them to see ''HowToTrainYourDragon'' and they both thought it was terrific, or at least better than the edgy alternative theatre play I treated them as well that same evening.

Funny thing happened to DireSloth back when he still worked for a certain shipping company. One of the managers had the clever idea of starting a DVD borrowing pool. One of my coworkers added the complete AvatarTheLastAirbender Season 1 collection, and having never seen the series before I stated my intention of borrowing it, only for her to declare that a delivery driver had already checked it out. A huge, middle aged driver who looks like a stereotypical Hell's Angel. He was nice enough to let me borrow it first, and we even had a little chat about the state of animation in the U.S. For the record, I added my copy of the first GhostInTheShell movie, but no one ever borrowed it...

Recently averted by the Coles Book Store I shop at--there were, for years, no comics or anything like that. Now, with the release of {{Watchmen}} the movie they have a decent collection of graphic novels, and more can be bought online, at the Chapters Indigo site, even the more obscure titles.

Subversions for this troper. Dad loves Pixar, he'll happily shell out for the cinema if there is a new Disney or Pixar film. He also joined me and my sister for out premier viewing of Macross Plus by hovering in the doorway but leaving whenever we noticed him. Mum used to be a typical "all cartoons are for children" until I finished school and while unemployed watched a lot of Ghost in the Shell: SAC. By the second series she knew the plot and loved the Tachikoma.

Subverted in this troper's life. Especially for Pixar. He recently watched ''Cars'' with his 52-year-old uncle and 74-year-old Grandma. In High School, he's watched ''Wall-E'', ''Monsters, Inc.'', and ''Finding Nemo''. And roughly half the student body are fans of Anime, even though I'm not.

Strongly inverted by my father. He loves all sorts of cartoons made for children, but has no interest in more adult cartoons.

Grand subversions for this Troper. He is 19-going-on 20 and still enjoys most of the classic/renaissance Disney movies, as well as virtually all of Pixar's masterpieces. So does my Grandmother and Grandfather, and virtually all the rest of my family, and never, ever, ONCE, have I ever heard the words "Cartoons are for kids" spoken within the family. Actually, my Grandmother enjoyed all of the old Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network shows back in the 90s, and regularly recommends new animations. Furthermore, TheRescuers and sequel are my eternal favorites, and I don't think I'll ever find a movie I like more.

Subverted by this troper's GRANDMOTHER. She likes typical reality shows, and in the mix...TheGrimAdventuresofBillyandMandy. Yes. That Billy and Mandy. Also, SpongebobSquarepants is one of her favorites

This troper brought over 20 animated movies to college with her. A little worried that people might make fun of her, instead she had random people she'd never met before asking to borrow {{The Prince of Egypt}} and {{Aladdin}} and such. And upon returning them, the people would usually say something along the lines of 'Wow, I never realized how GOOD that movie is!'

This troper averts this, naturally, as well as several people she knows. Her dad is usually the one who introduces her to more obscure animated fare. Her sister is constantly borrowing her ''PrincessMononoke'' DVD. The troper and her best friend recently bonded after discovering each other's love for ''MyNeighborTotoro''. Her mom, admittedly, doesn't watch many cartoons on her own, but is usually the one to arrange family outings to catch the latest Disney or Pixar film. To be honest, the only family member who used to really fall under this trope was her grandmother, who didn't like going to see animated movies. And even she changed her mind when the rest of us invited her to see ''{{Up}}''. Hell, during that screening, the adults in the theater seemed to enjoy the movie more than the kids!

A bit of a subversion, being New Media and coming from a troper that (thought she) was aware of all the non-kiddie aspects of cartoons. After the relative non-offensiveness ''Charlie the Unicorn'' and its popularity with this troper's eight-year-old sister, this troper let her watch one of the guy's other works while she was out of the room. Namely this one. When she came back in, this troper asked the girl how she liked it and was met with "Yeah, it was silly. But did he actually kill that guy or what?" After a moment of blood running cold, this troper blabbered on about movie sets and hallucinations and luckily the child in question is beautifully non-traumatized. This troper is just grateful she didn't choose this one.

This Troper's mother was, for a few years, convinced that the ''American dub'' of YuGiOh was too violent. She was also perfectly fine with my... toned-down description of DeathNote ('A high-school prodigy picks up a notebook and finds a Grim Reaper attached to it, and after learning that the notebook can control other people's actions decides to start punishing criminals.'), but swats volume 1 out of my hand when I mention the title. "Why do they put comics like that here anyway?" She has since learned that the media doesn't know many bounds.

This troper is an Indonesian, well...usually coming late if it comes to Ani(particularly emphasis on -ME not Mation)and stuff, when you happily CRIED! a great shounen anime (sometimes, really, Seinen)was dubbed, expecting to stopped mid season, because these sexual and violence reason, SHIT! for example...

Neon Geneseis Evangelion, RIGHT!

One Piece, nice fistfighting, THIS IS A SHOUNEN OFF COURSE!

Kiba the Animation, too much people died on early episode

Eureka Seven, after someone blow up eating bomb......

All Because they judged on the cover

This troper's dad is logically varied on this. He immediately turns and leaves the room when The Mr. Men Show is on, which ''is'' meant for younger kids. However, this troper once convinced her dad to sit through an entire episode of 6teen, and he enjoys watching "mature" cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy(two shows that, frankly, this troper can't stand, as she does not like the themes presented in these shows no matter what medium they may be in). This troper's ''mother'', on the other hand, has been a fan of Scooby-Doo since childhood and has willingly taken her to animated films many times.

Subverted with This Troper's family. His sister was a former anime fan who enjoys Western animation, from {{Wall-E}} to G1 Transformers and the 60s Spider-Man. My father still enjoys wtaching {{Looney Tunes}}, is a massive {{Family Guy}} and {{South Park}} fan, even getting me to watch South Park The Movie, "warning me not to laugh too hard". He also used to watch {{Gargoyles}} and loves {{Pinky and the Brain}}, and calls {{Star Wars The Clone Wars}} "Hit and Miss". My motehr often takes me and my sister to whatever movie we happen to wnat to see, and enjoyed {{Coraline}} and ruefully remarked leaving the theatre she was the only parent in the audeince with childern above the age of 12. Everyone in this household is also a professed {{Reboot}} fan, and we've all mentioned at least once that animation can be used to tell any kind of story, and you can do things with animation you can't do with live action.

This Troper has witnessed an aversion. His local art museum was showing Rebuild of Eva 1.0 and not a single child was there.

@/DoomTay: A while ago, I talked about this trope, and she agreed that it's...inaccurate to say that all animation is just for children. Then we saw a trailer for Syfy's OuterSpaceAstronauts, and she acted like cheap animation = man humor.

Co-worker aversion: my partner has a niece and nephew, 9 and 12, who wanted manga of Naruto and Bleach. She is familier enough with them to have made her own decision as to whether or not they would be appropriate for their age level.

This troper is lucky that her mom and friends avert this trope. My mom actually watched DeathNote with me and she really enjoyed it. She has the same mindset as me on the fact that animation can be as dramatic as a live-action series and that it can be for older audiences. Especially for the fact that she saw Fritz the Cat at a drive-in theater when she was in collage. My friends are really open about cartoons and a few are anime fans. We always talk about Nickelodeon cartoons, especially Spongebob, and I've talked about ThePowerpuffGirls and EdEddNEddy with them too. I even got my guy friend to watch the Meet The Beat-Alls episode of ThePowerpuffGirls, since he was a huge fan of TheBeatles, and he really enjoyed it, calling it his second favorite episode of any cartoon, behind the pizza delivery episode of Spongebob.

Inversion; This Troper's Dad, once, after years, gave in to his temptation to buy a Phantom comic. Aparantly he hadn't baught a Phantom comic in years out of fear of people saying that comics were "kids' stuff". This happened right in front of This troper, who ''himself'' has a huge collection comics that are definitely '''not''' for kids. And Dad '''''knew''''' that!

Subverted through some effort with this troper's father: he already liked a few cartoons and CGI movies such as SouthPark and {{Shrek}}, to begin with. Recently I managed to convince him to watch CowboyBebop, and he found it pretty good. Currently, I'm urging him to watch BlackLagoon, SamuraiChamploo and StandAloneComplex. Also, my mother's just indifferent on the matter.

Yet another subversion: @/{{ParadoxicalFrog}} and her parents have been watching anime together ever since she got into Naruto. Her dad saw the original {{Ghost In The Shell}} when it came out, and also loves some wierder Western Animation shows like {{Courage The Cowardly Dog}}. They all regularly watch Adult Swim (and formerly Toonami) on Saturdays as well as anything she gets on DVD. Needless to say, she is very grateful to have them after having read some of the above examples.

This troper and his mother recently watched Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame together. She was completely shocked at the.....kid-unfriendly content....

Thankfully averted in my family. My youngest (19 year old) sister does tend to walk out of the room when she sees that I'm watching something animated, but that's actually because she doesn't want to risk seeing something that might freak her out. My Dad is a huge fan of {{South Park}} and {{Family Guy}}, and rates {{Film/Nine}} as one of his top 10 favourite films. My Mum averts this trope as well, as demonstrated when we were in Borders once. We noticed some copies of WatershipDown that were in the children's section, and after a moment of looking shocked, she took it upon herself to move them to a more suitable shelf.

Played with by my mother, who enjoys watching cartoons, but only the ones for kids, because she can't stand the content of the ones aimed for older audiences.

A few years ago, this Troper was hanging out with a fan of animated films and anime. This friend was ranting about the Amination Ghetto, stating undeniably that animated things aren't just for children. Being the sort of person that believes that perception is reality, I used many examples on the TV Tropes page of mature-oriented animation being less successful and popular than child-oriented animation. If you're curious, congitive dissonance developing in the head of a 24year old female sounds like a combo of a kitty and a whale.

Subverted by my (I hate using This Troper) Dad. Said Dad loves all kinds of animation: Anime (especially Cowboy Bebop), claymation, CG movies, and even shows like Foster's home for imaginary friends.

Partially averted by my family; my parents mostly understand the difference between "stuff for kids" and "family films." Needless to say, we're all huge fans of {{Pixar}}. My mom is also savvy enough to realize that stuff like ''TheSimpsons'' and ''FamilyGuy'' are not for kids. Actually inverted by me when I was younger; I refused to watch anything ''but'' cartoons, assuming that live-action TV and movies were "boring adult stuff." Unfortunately, most of my family still suffers from PublicMediumIgnorance with regard to anime and manga. Not that I ''want'' my mom to read ''{{Negima}}!''; I'd probably be banned from Japanese media forever if that happened.

After reading a lot of these stories, I have to say I'm very fortunate: my mother is as geeky as me (probably even more, since she is in all the sci-fi stuff, while I don't) and she enjoys watching cartoons, from Disney Classics (our favorite animated film is Fantasia), Pixar films, "mainstream" animated comedies (The Simpson, Futurama), cult series (Mission Hill, Daria), animesque cartoons (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and all the way to very adult-oriented movies like Persepolis; In a similar vein, but in a minor scale, my father likes old Classic Disney toons, specially those involving "Goofy" (his favorite cartoon character EVER); the fact that he is actually a really good drawer and ilustrator surely helps...

Averted HARD by the people in This troper's household. We always have some time spent watching some cartoons. Our mother even watched the last few episodes of {{Avatar the Last Airbender}}, and my father went and watched some episodes of {{Cowboy Bebop}} with me.

Also averted with my family. My dad introduced me to HayaoMiyazaki works, my mom likes stop-motion animation, my stepdad's a {{Pixar}} nut, my stepsiblings (the youngest is 15) accompany us to films like CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs, and everybody loves TheSimpsons.

You are awsome.

Subverted with my father and his family, played straight with my mother. My dad and I used to watch ScoobyDoo and ThePowerpuffGirls together when he was still alive, and during the Holidays, his family liked to watch MrMagoosChristmasCarol together (they even sang the 'We're Despicable' song when it came on). I actually recall being very young maybe 3 or 4, over at my Grandmother's house with the whole family...watching SouthPark. Specfically, 'Cartman's Mom is Still A Dirty Slut', I know that now because the one part of the episode that I remembered even before I started watching the show regularly was when they're all at the hospital helping to preform a surgery and Stan ''vomits into the paitient's cut open chest''. It's amazing I wasn't tramuatized by that...or maybe I was... Anyway, my mother on the other hand will NEVER watch anything animated, writing it all off as 'kids' stuff' she also thinks anime is only for boys (I'm a girl), but that's a different story. A few months ago, I bought a DeathNote calendar and when my mom saw it, she said something to the effect of '[INSERT REAL NAME HERE], when are you going to grow out of this kid stuff?' Death Note. ''Kid'' stuff. If she didn't have an insanely short attention span for movies (that don't involve Woody Allen or Barbara Streisand anyway) and TV, I'd show her a few episodes of that, as well as {{Hellsing}}, and maybe even THAT scene from CodeGeass and see if it's still all 'kid stuff'.

Averted by this troper's mother, and subverted by my father. Mom and I watch all kinds of anime together, and since I came of age, she's let me read her more mature collection of stuff (though I never totally understood how {{Gravitation}} was withheld for so long). Dad on the other hand tried to stop me reading YuGiOh! when I was 12, saying it was an embarrassment to have a kid who wouldn't grow up (even though Mom was also reading it). He'll ask if we can watch something else unless {{Ghost in the Shell}} is on. He actually wondered what sort of {{Pokemon}} Note}} Ryuk was, then berated me for still watching something I should have outgrown. I'm trying to get him to watch {{Baccano}} since he said he liked the music.

This (Christian) troper's family is really strange about this. My parent's didn't understand why I liked anime so much until I showed them some of Last Exile. They didn't want to finish it, but they said that it seemed interesting. My brothers, on the other hand, they immediately assume that anything I like is bad and implausable (I get them to watch TreasurePlanet and that's the thanks I get?) and, while they admit that it isn't all for kids, they don't see what is so great about animation. ''Live action is so much harder than animation!'' While that is true in some aspects, it is way off in others.

This Troper zig-zagged this trope for a while. I knew full well about things like ''DeathNote'', ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', and ''SerialExperimentsLain''. I was just reluctant to get back into animation because of the relatively kiddy dubs of anime like Anime/{{Pokemon}} from when I was a kid. One of my friends agreed to watch ''{{Firefly}}'' IFF I watched ''AxisPowersHetalia'', which I (I know a decent amount of European history for someone with a pathological hatred of the social sciences) found mildly entertaining. A few HumongousMecha shows later, I changed my fandom from "Western Sci-Fi" to "International Sci-Fi And Mecha". As for the Age Ghetto? ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' totally destroyed any misconceptions I had on that front.

Seems to be averted with Troper's family, my brother made me watch ''Legend ofTheFourKings'' and ''Guyver'' when I was very young not because he thought they were kids fare but because he wanted to, my mother (who normally falls asleep during any film) will not move from the spot with any Miyazaki film, and recently when discussing ''Pokemon'' she commented that "Team Rocket were the best". Accidentally played straight myself when watching the butterfly room sequence in ''Paprika'', and not thinking anything would happen because,well, it's an anime. Cue FridgeHorror during the credits when I remembered who the director was...

My parents are well aware that the anime I'm into lately aren't for little kids, but when it comes to Western Animation that isn't Disney or has heavy Chinese culture tie-ins (this troper is Chinese), they'd go and grumble that their daughter still watches this stuff when nothing else is on. Recently however, my mom ended up seeing a couple of episodes of TotalDramaIsland and...

This Troper used to watch Pokemon as a kid, meaning she grew up thinking that all anime was fighting and action, and seeing as how she'd grown out of liking that genre, she was unwilling to watch any more anime. Looking up some music on Youtube, the only video she could find was an AMV. She reluctantly tried it out and ended up watching the whole series that it was for, and loving it. A couple of [=AMVs=] later, she is now a complete anime addict and knows that not all anime is for kids/action stuff.

Alot of you guys have been complaining that anime is treated as ''"kids' stuff"'', but you'll stop when you hear my story. Everywhere I go, there's been a double standard concerning the AnimationAgeGhetto. American animation is paraded as being silly and childish, yet I keep seeing people babble on and on about how "serious" anime is. It sickens me that because of this more and more people are watching anime instead of American cartoons. And it's only getting worse. It's bad for an American cartoon, like {{Gargoyles}} or BatmanTheAnimatedSeries to have violence, yet I noticed that censors did very little about the violence on the animes I watched as a wee lad. Complain about 4kids all you want, you know they do next to nothing about the violence in animes. At most they digitally remove the blood. But that doesn't make it any less violent. Interestingly enough, my parents did make it clear to me that not all cartoons are for kids, but since I could handle a lot more than other kids my age, they let me watch TheSimpsons.

Thank you.

As much as I agree with the point (really world, just because it's a different Superman doesn't mean he doesn't lobotomise Doomsday) ,« you know they do next to nothing about the violence in animes. At most they digitally remove the blood.» Really? Have you seen the {{Bowdlerize}} page?

Yes, I have. What they do amounts to putting lipstick on a pig.

This Troper watched ''TheSimpsons'' frequently when she is 7-8 years old. She totally stopped thinking that animated cartoons are for children when she watched just one episode of ''HappyTreeFriends'', which happened around 4 years later.

I originally had the opinion that anime was similar to western cartoons, in that it could deal with mature issues but would do so behind the PG rating. It probably didn't help that the first anime series I watched was ''LesMiserables: Shoujo Cosette''. I then watched ''Gankutsuou'', an adaptation of ''TheCountOfMonteCristo'', and quickly realised that not all anime was suitable for kids to watch. However my Dad is really prejudiced against cartoons (he refused to take us to the cinema to see ''{{Up}}'', never mind the glowing reviews, and pronounced ''{{Wall-E}}'' as a boring kids' film). Of course, for many of the films that the rest of my family have watched and then bought [=DVDs=] of, he will never admit that he secretly thinks they are decent films.

Averted for this Troper. As a child, he found a copy of RanmaOneHalf and thinking it was just some cartoon, asked his parents to rent it for him. Thankfully, they actually cared about what he was exposed to (or at least wanted to know what it was he was handing them) and checked the back. They ask him if he had read the part that mentioned it was a sex comedy, and he, terrified, truthfully answered he hadn't (not knowing what a sex comedy actually was, but knowing that sex was something kids weren't supposed to know anything about yet).

Oh, and there was also the time, This Troper's mother didn't want him to watch his cousin's Salior Moon movie (that is, the actual first movie) because she didn't think it was appropriate for him. Her criteria? ''Their legs were too long.'' In retrospect, she probably meant that their skirts were too short. Surprisingly, she didn't say anything about the part where the main character was naked except for the semitransparent ribbons coming out of her chest.

And then there was the fact that she let him watch BeavisAndButthead with no objections. On a regular basis. Despite this, these days This Troper is a (mostly) well adjusted 20+ year old majoring in astronomy.

This troper works a public library. Our branch subverts this trope with its knowledge of materials (Watchman is placed in an "Adult" Graphic Novel section), but not with its employees (Some believed all the manga, 35-40 different series, should be banned, because it is not for children.).

Subverted. This troper's mom is absolutely in LOVE with Teen Titans and Avatar the Last Airbender, probably moreso than this troper. Zig-zagged with this troper's dad.

Aversion for this troper. Since he asks for anime dvds all the time for birthdayss and such, both his parents and their new spouses, and his grandmother know that animation can be for mature audiences as well. They all tend to watch Simpsons and Family Guy, and while they don't really like anime, they will not beg me to turn it off if I'm watching it with them in the room and will give in once in a while and try it.

Gloriously averted by this troper's parents, both of whom are in their mid-sixties. They enjoy {{Pixar}} and HayaoMiyazaki films, and BatmanTheAnimatedSeries. I recently bought the full-series box set of SupermanTheAnimatedSeries, so getting them into that is my next mission...

This tropers mum is (thankfully) a huge cartoon fan. This troper managed to convert her dad after making him watch RenAndStimpy and InvaderZim. We get some funny looks in the street when people spot a young goth woman and a bulky man in his forties talking about if we hate Dib or support him. Totally worth the looks.

In what is probably a smart attempt to avoid this trope altogether, This Troper's local Blockbuster store has done away with their Kids & Family section completely, and put all films, regardless of whether it is animated, live-action, child-oriented or adult-themed, within their respective genres, rather than split them by demographic and accidentally end up with something like Elfen Lied next to Sesame Street.

Above troper (@/CCharmanderK) again: just ran into a more straightforward example of this trope today at school. I was searching some images on Google Images of some anime that I like (the one I was searching at the time was ''{{Clannad}}''). Right then, one of my classmates comes up and says, straight-out, "why are you searching ''cartoons?!''". Understandably, this peeved me, so I shouted at him to shut up. But then he corrected himself, saying that wasn't what he intended to say. So I guess this is something of an InvertedTrope.

Subverted with this troper's boss, who saw a Avatar: The Last Airbender picture on his computer once, and not only recognized the characters, but said that he loved the show because it was one he could actually enjoy watching with his daughters. This was a man in his 40's who had no problem admitting he thoroughly enjoyed a animated show.

Subverted for this troper in a rather strange way in that my mum never really assumed that 'all anime is for kids', and after half-watching a couple of episodes of Evangelion and Death Note she now enjoys them as much as I do! In fact half of our family is eagerly awaiting the English dub of Rebuild of Eva 2.0 and the new Haruhi Suzumiya episodes.

My father, mother, and siblings, like me, have gone to the theatre their whole lives to see animated films. And while I am the only member to be visually artistic, it was only until the most recent years that they ever had an ''idea'' of what 2D and 3D means! Goodness gracious!

As a lifelong animation fan and an aspiring artist, I hate this trope with all my heart. Luckily, my mother and 2 older sisters subvert this trope; while they aren't cartoon nuts like I am, they'll never pass up watching any Disney film, {{Shrek}}, SouthPark, SpongeBob, FamilyGuy and others with me and having a blast. Sadly played straight with my father and extended family, who aren't really that supportive, mock me and think AllAnimationIsDisney.

This troper's grandmother picked up his {{Warhammer40000}} codex and after he explained it to her, seemed to enjoy reading about genocide on a galactic scale. Epic subversion in his opinion.

Played with in the case of this troper's mom. I have no idea what her ideas of animation used to be, but this HAS to be subverted for her not on account of always walking in at the weirdest/scariest parts of {{Fullmetal Alchemist}} when I'm watching it. (think the human transmutation scene) Painfully played straight with two of this troper's friends who believe there is NO possibility of serious animation for older audiences in America because thats 'not how we were brought up'. Cue much head desking from this troper and her other anime nerd friend.

This troper's father somewhat subverts this (He owns titan AE, and has just ordered wall-E), so I've been planning to introduce him to some stuff I've been following as of lately (starting with death note). However... The guy at my college that got me into anime and manga in the first place (starting with gantz, which is as violent as it gets and wholly awesome), is somewhat of an inversion of this trope... After suggesting some stuff from 2000AD to him (starting with kingdom, ABC warriors and the first story arc of post-reboot rogue trooper), he wasn't at all interested, believing comics to be somehow 'below him'.

This Troper's family subverts this pretty much. His mother's favourite cartoon is InvaderZim with her favourite character being GIR. She even has a tote bag with GIR and pigs all over it. She uses it ALL the time (read: EVERYDAY). His sister introduced him to manga when he was about 10ish. The first series he read being {{Sorcerer Hunters}}. If anyone has read it here, they'd no it's probably not for that age group hehe... His father likes the odd cartoon and doesn't hate on animation at all. Considering this Troper is now an anime psycho and still watches SpongeBob, AngryBeavers and InvaderZim with his mother, this Troper believes he has been blessed.

This troper's little brother loves cartoons like ''{{Phineas and Ferb}}'' and ''{{Spongebob}}'' and is fine with watching ''{{Pixar}}'' and ''{{Dreamworks}}'' movies, refuses to watch any ''{{Disney}}'' movies because he thinks all of them are romantic princess musicals for little girls. Even movies like ''{{The Lion King}}'' were refused because he heard that the main character falls in love during the middle. This Troper recently saw ''{{Tangled}}'' though and bugged him about seeing it WITHOUT telling him any of the plot or that it was a musical. Thanks to the trailers, it was easy. He saw it with his mother and ended up liking it, despite the fact that it was nothing like he thought it would be. Actually, right when he got home he went on {{Youtube}} and watched a bunch of Disney movies in no order.

This troper's mother never fell into the AnimationAgeGhetto. She simply fell into the Age Ghetto. It started with her banning me and my siblings from watching TheSimpsons, because it wasn't age-appropriate. Fair enough.

Then, she banned us from PowerRangers, because we were attempting to imitate them (and practicing on our little sister).

Then, she banned us from {{Pokemon}}, because of all the fighting in it. It didn't help that every other word we said was "Pokemon." Once I realized how obsessed I'd become, I let it slide.

Then, she banned us from PowerpuffGirls, because of an episode where one of the girls stole something. I didn't really care, because I didn't really like the show anyway.

Then, she banned us from {{Arthur}}, because of an episode where DW was especially bratty.

Then, it was StaticShock, because of an episode that involved a kid bringing a gun to school. We tried to explain it was a VerySpecialEpisode, but it did not appear to compute.

Then, she banned from the ''entirety of CartoonNetwork'' (except for TomAndJerry) after witnessing the girls of TotallySpies fight over a boy.

And finally, she banned us from ''{{Heroes}}'', because it was too dark and because of a "bed scene" that involved a husband and wife ''sitting on their bed and talking.'' (Had she seen one of the actual bed scenes, she probably would have flipped out.)

It seems that, in all of this, her prevailing logic was, "If your 7-year-old cousin shouldn't watch it, than you shouldn't either," and she applied this to pretty much everything. By the time we learned her reasoning, we were all teenagers. In the end, we just stopped listening to her InsaneTrollLogic and watched stuff when she wasn't around.

Not the same thing, but the DS. Some people seems to assume it's something for 4-5 olds, and all the childish licensed shovelware doesn't help.

Played straight and later subverted, in an odd example. On vacation, I got a joke book for my 11th birthday, containing dirty and more "adult" jokes. The cover picture would also give a bit of a hint towards the contents, so I though it was weird they found it appropiate... but on the same vacation, I turned on the TV when me and my brother was bored, and saw TheSimpsons was on. Mom quickly turned the TV off, saying it was an "adult cartoon" and that we should not see it(while discussing with my dad, who had the opinion that it wasn't that bad, and that we would be able to handle it. And just some years later, TheSimpsons were suddenly okay again when we started watching it.)

Subverted by this troper's accepting, openminded family. She and her brother grew up on comics, which, in hindsight, were more mature reads than your usual so-called kiddish material. (Reading Kingdom Come at age 7 or 8, people!) Awesomely, she discovered anime - Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Prince of Tennis, Team MAR, Hikaru no Go, and so on - in 2nd grade with her then Kindergarten brother, later finding manga. Their father has now jumped the manga/anime bandwagon as well - has just read Death Note on this troper's recommendation, and may even start on Full Metal Alchemist.

This troper's father regards ANYTHING that's animated as something that "only kids under 10 watch." For some reason, he has a special hatred of anime, which seems to be along the lines of "It's all about fighting and it's from Japan. Everything from Japan sucks." Yes, this includes stuff like DeathNote. which has little to no fighting in it (haven't finished it yet.)

Oddly, an online friend of this troper subverted this once. He said animation could be for adults, but puppetry was strictly for kids.

This troper accidentally compared NeonGenesisEvangelion to {{Sentai}} in this manner on an online forum. Otherwise, I know better, having seen both anime intended for kids and anime that isn't.

This Troper has an odd thing going on with her family. She got her nephew somewhat hooked on Note}} Death Note before he moved to Mississippi, but her mother REFUSES to watch anything animated. If it has animation in it, it is crap and the channel must be changed. I have yet to keep her around the TV long enough to see anything decent. Her father keep wondering why the hell a 15 year old girl still watches cartoons, but at the same time regards anything remotely "Gothic" *read: POTENTIALLY CORRUPTING* as a Satanic being that must be destroyed. This was his reaction to Note}} Death Note and Guy}} Family Guy. I'm not even gonna SHOW him my other anime preferences, there's a chance he could think High School Host Club}} Ouran is turning me gay. But then again, he also thinks all animation is for toddlers (don't ask me how this man thinks, I'm merely quoting what I've seen) and I'm REEEEEAAAAL tempted to play Octane Nightmare Fuel}} Episode 19 of Alchemist}} Fullmetal Alchemist on my Macbook during the road trip to his house next week...

Thankfully averted with my parents. Whenever an anime I rented from Netflix comes in from the mail, he'll usually end up watching it whether I'm there or not. (but granted, that may be partially because he's trying to work on his Japanese) But he acknowledges films like GraveOfTheFireflies and PrincessMononoke as adult movies with mature themes. My mother is also aware that shows like TheBoondocks and SouthPark exist and do have adult content.

It says a lot when my school has an anime club... and it's full of JerseyShore loving dipshits who literally will only watch Pokemon and refuse anything else.

This Troper's parents thankfully avert this, being considerable geeks themselves who used to watch TinyToonAdventures and PeeWeesPlayhouse before they went to work every morning. Though her father will consistently try to deny it, much to her mother's teasing on the rare occasion that any of the shows in question are on TV.

Averted with this troper. MaryAndMax was the first movie he saw that showed him that animated films could be made for adults and made well. And yet, it only got a PG rating as opposed to an M (mature) rating.

Subverted to some degree in this household, this troper loves anime and other cartoons (elfen lied,miyazaki films, princess tutu, sailor moon, tokyo mew mew, teen titans, tom and jerry, looney toons etc...), though i DO have standards, my mom doesn't have that high of an opinion of TV as an entertainment form in general (she prefers reading books or listening to the radio, or good music, and thinks too much TV rots your intellect), but can appreciate good animated movies (actually she likes to paint as a hobby so she actually can appreciate good animated films from an artistic standpoint, particularly noting how beautifully animated Miyazaki's films are), my brother on the other hand, although not explicitly against animation (he likes south part, futurama, simpsons, sponge bob and a few other cartoons, he's more narrow minded on certain genres)

Slightly subverted at my old high school, but not by much. Everybody at school loves SpongeBobSquarePants (at least once a day, someone's Facebook status will be a SpongeBob quote), FamilyGuy and TheSimpsons and TomAndJerry have their fans as well. Even {{Pokemon}} gets a ton of love around here. Just about everyone will go see the newest {{Pixar}} movie, even if they don't want to admit it. And the Disney Renaissance films get a lot of love when they are brought up in conversation. Everything else is all bets off. Most of the animation I like this classic-era, especially LooneyTunes (for whatever reason liking SpaceJam is perfectly OK, but liking the cartoons it's based on is odd). I prefer RenAndStimpy and RockosModernLife to that obnoxious yellow sponge any day. There's a lot I like that a lot of people in my old school ignored, only problem? They all assumed it was kid's stuff. But again, liking all the aforementioned animation is awesome. I'll never understand it.

Happily subverted with one of my lit professors who, after our study of ''TheRoad'', took seriously my recommendation to check out ''GraveOfTheFireflies''. Also, my parents go to {{Pixar}} movies for themselves, given that their children are grown and gone.

Played straight, though, when I had to recommend to a friend ''against'' getting ''NowAndThenHereAndThere'' for his 10-year-old nephew.

This troper overheard her mom having on conversation with their friends about their favorite TV shows. They said they liked ''DesperateHousewives'', ''AccessHollywood'', and the like. My mom's favorite? ''{{Recess}}''.

Mild subversion at this troper's local library. All of the manga titles are lumped together, but they are in the young adult section, clear on the other side of the library from the children's section. There's obviously nothing like LaBlueGirl (that would be what you would call Epic Fail), but it does have a number of series with varying degrees of violence.

This troper is almost 15 while writing this and must admit that she still finds herself inherently drawn to animated movies. A few of her favorites are ChickenRun, FlushedAway, KungFuPanda, DespicableMe, {{Film/How To Train Your Dragon}}, {{Tangled}}, ToyStory 2 and {{Coraline}}. She and her family members are all {{Wallace And Gromit}} fans, she likes watching TomAndJerry and ThePinkPanther cartoons and for several years she frequently acted out MonstersInc with her younger brother. And she DOESN'T plan on changing her tastes anytime soon.

Totally averted with my family. I'm 18 and want to work at Pixar, my sister's 16 and watches even more anime than I do, my mom went to an art school where FritzTheCat and YellowSubmarine were popular midnight movies and likes many cartoons of various maturity levels from SpongeBobSquarePants to GhostInTheShell, and my dad lists Fantasia and SpiritedAway among his favorite movies. My grandpa's a Golden Age comic book geek from who thinks KingOfTheHill is the funniest thing in the world, followed the Month of Miyazaki religiously on TCM, and was interested in seeing even ChickenLittle for the 3D technology (oddly, he passed off JusticeLeagueUnlimited as a shallow imitation of the classic comics, but I guess I can forgive him since the episode he saw was in the midst of the Cadmus arc around when it got really hard to follow for new viewers). My grandma does NOT like animation, but not due to the Age Ghetto: she's going deaf and doesn't like watching movies where she can't read the character's lips, and she also hates TheSimpsons because the family fights a lot (which makes me wonder why she married my really argumentative grandpa in the first place). My other grandparents are dead, but I have memories of them that also involved animation: Grandma Kay crying at the end of Charlotte'sWeb, and going with Grandpa Lou to see Up in the theater.

Somewhat averted/subverted by my mother. I'm a very big Otaku, and she excepts that (a little reluctantly). My mom knows not all anime is for kids (infact she thinks its all giant boobs, gay guys, and killing),but ''thinks'' it should be. In her opinion, if it's animated, it shouldn't have any curse words, sexual refrences, homosexuals, or death/violence. Lately she seems to be coming around with my inroduction of ''NabariNoOu'' and ''VampirKnight''.

PlayedWith in my family; this is kinda complicated and a little long. I'm personally a huge VideoGame fan with some love here and there for Anime and Western cartoons and my family respects that. However, I constantly complain about how my little brother watches nothing but cartoons. While I do enjoy a few of the things he watches and admit that that's all I did at his age, I'm annoyed by almost the exact opposite reason of this trope. To me, kid's cartoons and shows are actually becoming LESS kid friendly. I'm also not a fan of how he's on his DS most of the time but that's just me being a {{hypocrite}}. My dad's sort of an awesome ManChild who likes sports and cartoons/Anime/Video Games, just not the same genre of video games as me. My mom hates just about all of the above, ESPECIALLY Video Games. My Grandmother who lives with us agrees. That said, we all love Animated movies, 3D or 2D, as well as Comicbook Superhero movies and always go to see them at theaters. Not only that, but last summer's "family bonding" consisted of marathoning AvatarTheLastAirbender together (sans grandmother). Finally, a variation of this trope is played straight when I gush out about how awesome Video Game music is everyone rolls their eyes and tell me to "Go listen to real music." Going out of the family here, one of my fellow employees caught me listening to the live version of Awakening the Chaos and asked "Oh Gosh. What is that, Pokemon?" Me being a Pokemon fanatic did not help at all but I was still pretty pissed.