Last year, Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took home the award for Best Animated Feature at the annual Academy Awards celebration. This is a category that Disney has cornered the competition on, only losing four times in the last 17 years.
This year, multiple studios backed their animated features with as much effort as they backed their Best Picture nominees. Netflix, for example, pushed for nominations for Klaus and I Lost My Body. This pushed Disney’s most obvious contender, Frozen II out of the Oscar race, which means: It’s time to start treating animation as an equal to live-action storytelling. Frozen II While Frozen II was one of my favorite wide-release movies of the year, it is one of the best examples of what’s wrong (and what’s so right) about animation right now. First, the animation. Never before has animated movies looked so good. Sure, traditional animation has always had the potential to be beautiful, take Beauty and the Beast for example, but today’s computer animation is so detailed and realistic that there is no big difference between live action and animation. Second, the story. This is where things get a little trickier. Animation is still viewed as entertainment for children, but it’s time to get past that. In Frozen II, the risks just aren’t there. The story is tame compared to some of the stories we are getting now. Lastly, the themes. While the music in Frozen II is amazing and ultimately could have been part of a more mature, riskier film, it didn’t pan out as I would have hoped because Disney wants to appeal to the widest audience as possible. That said, there are a few important themes in the movie. “Anger is a valid feeling.” “Loving oneself is the most important kind of love.” Even, “growing up doesn’t mean you’ll have all the answers.” While these themes are great for a Disney movie, there are so many animated stories being told in the last few years that treat the audience as equals and do not speak down to them. The Legend of Korra, Clone Wars & Adventure Time One of the earliest animations on this list is Legend of Korra, an animated series follow-up to Avatar: The Last Airbender. This sequel series is so incredibly mature in the way that it sees its heroine facing PTSD from her former battles and features villains that fight for equality, freedom and justice. The villains in “Korra” are real. They aren’t maniacal caricatures, but rather they have valid points of view that are worth exploring. Around the same time Nickelodeon was exploring more mature villains, Cartoon Network saw Star Wars explore the definition of a real “hero.” In Clone Wars we were introduced to a padawan, Ahsoka Tano, who by the end of season five, turned away from the Jedi Order to follow her own destiny. For a long time, the animated series, both this and Star Wars: Rebels weren’t considered as equals to the cinematic features. However, with the upcoming release of Clone Wars season seven, new fans are discovering the series every day and realizing how interconnected it is to the rest of the saga. Then there is Adventure Time the first of what I call “representational animation for all ages.” In this series, Jake the Dog and Finn the Human go on adventures that highlight kindness, equality and other themes that aren’t present in typical kids shows. This is why the series was discovered and beloved by fans of all ages. In this series Finn discovered his found family and suffered from PTSD. The show even saw the villain and the hero becoming “buddies” and two of the female characters entering into a relationship together. Many of the episodes are metaphors for other adult themes too. Steven Universe Another monumental series from Cartoon Network, maybe one of the best series ever, is Steven Universe. Created by Rebecca Sugar, the show sees a half-alien half-human protagonist going on adventures with an all-female alien race called Gems and saving the world from tyrannical forces in the galaxy. Over the course of the show, many of the characters are shown as non-binary, lesbian, and gender fluid. Steven goes against toxic forms of masculinity and fights for love, acceptance and a place for everyone to belong. Steven must face the mistakes of his mother and centuries of alien history and right the wrongs in the galaxy. Currently an epilogue series Steven Universe Future is airing on Cartoon Network and shows that even when the war is over, there is a lot of cleaning up to do and happily ever after is more of an ideal than a reality. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts One of the newest animated shows on Netflix, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, is actually the show that gave me the idea to write this article. Halfway through the first season one of the characters comes out as gay so nonchalantly that I almost believe we have gotten to a point where representation is being fully realized in all mediums. Bojack, She-Ra, Infinity Train and more… Then there are so many other shows that I am just barely starting, seeing come to an end, or am in the middle of digesting right now. Even without mentioning these shows by name, I am so happy to see that animation is becoming a worthy medium for inclusive storytelling rather than just mindless buffoonery. I can’t wait to see how animation evolves in the 2020’s.
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Erick L. Graham Wood
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