I think as adults we downplay how difficult first experiences can be, and so I don't think we get that the stories of loss and struggle in kids movies are speaking to them about real problems they either already have or will soon. Miyazaki has for some people become an alternative to Disney, but his work is full of Dumbo and Bambi moments. The difference is that in his work, the girl (and it is almost always a girl protagonist) is often substantially responsible for saving themselves, by reasonable means. They are not rescued by a boy or by deux ex machina.
Even in My Neighbor Totoro, which is almost but not quite an exception to this rule, the youngest (who is a main character, but not the main character) is saved by a magic bus. However, the main character initiates this rescue by digging deep and calling on resources she might not have thought to exploit. She asks for help from the most powerful person she knows and she gets it. She has to ask, and the terms of the rescue are very defined. Nobody white-knights her, nobody swoops in and reads her mind.
But the main struggle in that story is not a lost child. It is Death. And this resolves itself rather than being resolved by the characters, not through a miracle, but by discovering that the children don't know the situation and have invented a story that is much scarier than reality. In the end most of their fears are unfounded, and while life won't be everything they hoped, it's going to be much better than their internal catastrophizing.
I can imagine the train station in Mirai no Mirai would scare a kid.
Juan Ward
Probably a lot, and it likely still happens with things like made in abyss airing in theaters and whatnot.
Asher Cruz
bump
Adam Martinez
ever heard of the british animation "Watership Down"?
Elijah Cooper
bumping a good thread in hopes someones able to respond in kind
Ian Collins
I think this is a good example of what I was talking about. Kun is for the first time not the center of attention, and essentially he needs to learn what it means to be a giving member of a family. Kun, through his adventures/visions, begins to see his family members as other human beings, who have have lived or who will live. Crucially, this is tied to the photo album where he sees his parents and grandfather when they were younger, which makes this advice actionable for children. The train station scene is where he finally accepts his responsibility as a brother.
James King
LMAO fag
Jeremiah Torres
Probably less than the number who got a fetish out of it.
Nathaniel Gutierrez
I watched totoro recently and that shot you posted really stood out to me. For the first time I actually thought "oh fuck is the mother actually dead?", just because of the imagery in that shot. Of course that's not the case, but in that moment I was experiencing the same feelings as the girl and it was all done through some good visual storytelling so props to miyazaki for that
Brayden Stewart
bumping
Gabriel Ramirez
>Alien 9
what happens thats horrific?
Nathan Gomez
your favorite anime when you were 6 was barefoot gen?
the horror of realizing that scene actually happened to people was the first thing to lightly traumatize me in media. I think I was about 10 or 11.
damn, from the description you give and the 45 seconds of the death video i watched, i really need to watch this. I LOVE horrifying shit like this, I dunno how I've missed this forever
Chase Butler
It's a show full of metaphors for growing up, puberty, rape and loss of innocence, there's a lot of weird sexual undertones in everything but it's presented more in an uneasy, uncomfortable way rather than a fanservicey or "sexual" way.
