Why Americans Think Cartoons Are for Kids

Ask the average American if animation is a legitimate medium for adult storytelling, and you’ll get a blank stare—or worse, a chuckle. Cartoons, after all, are “just for kids.”

Meanwhile, anime studios crank out blood-soaked cyberpunk dystopias, cerebral psychodramas, and multi-layered fantasy epics that would give a Western TV executive a heart attack. Why the disparity?

Screncap: Production I.G.

The answer goes back farther than most people realize. And it arises from Marshall McLuhan’s most famous aphorism: “The medium is the message.”

McLuhan was no fool. He knew that new media don't just deliver content; they become the content, in turn shaping how we perceive the world. The printing press didn’t just spread ideas; it created a literate, abstract-thinking society. Television didn’t just entertain; it rewired our brains to crave passive, flickering stimuli.

Animation as a medium was funneled into the American consciousness via one pipeline: Walt Disney. His early animated features—Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi—weren’t just successful. They captured America’s imagination. Because they appeared at a time when the nation, battered by depression and headed for war, longed for innocence, wonder, and clear moral storytelling. Disney gave US audiences exactly what they craved.

Define “Faustian bargain.”

What McLuhan teaches us is that these initial cultural impressions stick. They become the default lens through which a society interprets a given medium. In America, animation arrived wearing Mickey Mouse ears. And it’s never taken them off.

This is why American audiences reflexively treat animation as kids’ stuff, even when presented with obvious counterexamples. It’s why The Iron Giant underperformed at the box office. It’s why Batman: The Animated Series had to disguise its frequently deep themes. It’s why The Simpsons had to pass off its social commentary as goofball satire.

America’s cultural operating system was written in the 1930s, and Uncle Walt was the programmer.

Now contrast this state of affairs with Japan.

Japan had no Disney. Their animation industry arose under entirely different circumstances: postwar chaos, cultural upheaval, and industrial reconstruction. Their landmark animated films weren’t about deer and dwarfs. They were about atomic bombs, alienation, and gods gone mad. Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Neon Genesis Evangelion weren’t Saturday morning cartoons. They were attempts at national scale exorcisms.

So when Japanese audiences see animation, they don’t ask, “Is this for kids?” They ask, “What is this trying to say?”

And the gate swings both ways. Consider Star Wars. George Lucas has stated again and again that the saga is for children; a modern fairy tale. Yet legions of fans insist on dissecting it like scripture. They need it to be profound. Because their fathers didn’t read them fairy tales, but they did take them to see The Empire Strikes Back. McLuhan’s insights suggest that Americans treat Flash Gordon serial fare like Star Wars as serious cinema, while devastating anime like Grave of the Fireflies achieves almost no cultural penetration, simply because the former is live-action and the latter is animated.

This is the crux of McLuhan’s insight: Once a medium becomes attached to a certain kind of message, it takes generational trauma to dislodge it. In America, Disney’s early dominance gave animation its message of innocent escapism. Japan didn’t receive that message, so their animators were free to write their own.

Related: Is Star Wars for Kids?

The question arises: Could animation ever be widely accepted as a serious medium for adults in the West?

Maybe—but it would require burning the Disney paradigm to the ground. And the Mouse guards his domain with all the powers of Hell.

Screencap: Disney

So if you’re a creator working in animation today, don’t waste time trying to “legitimize” it in the eyes of the culture. That ship sailed in 1937. Instead, let your artistic statement come through your work. Confront the audience with themes they didn’t think cartoons were allowed to present.

Because the medium may be the message, but using one message to deliver another wrapped within it is an art form even older than animation.

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