Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

[Chromeo]

I think the problem with periods in animation is that they often try way too hard to make it some beautiful spiritual hippie shit.

sorry to doublepost, but they do that shit irl too! Nowadays they have those period parties and stuff, back in my day they didn't have that yet but I still remember my mom crying, every adult woman having to give me some sentimental talk about being a woman and being connected to the moon and the tides and bla bla bla, someone giving me a red ring, and it's like...goddamn I just want to feel normal again??? Most of the girls I know have similar stories, I think maybe when you have a little girl in your life and she gets her period you just physically can't be normal about it. idk.
Maybe it'd be better if in an animated period episode, that's kind of the vibe too. Like the main character is concerned about a dance or whatever and then she gets her first period a few days before, and everyone makes a big deal out of it and treats her weird and tries to be way too special about it like with the parties and pads and weird songs, and by the third act the main character finally breaks and tells everyone to fuck off. Then there can be that conversation they should've had from the beginning, where both sides come together like "honey we're so sorry we made you uncomfortable, we just remember how hard it was for us when we were girls and everyone avoided talking about it, we wanted to be different for you," "I don't want all this stuff, I just want to be the same [protagonist name] I was before," "You're still you even if your body changes, you don't have to be anyone else and we love you," then the protagonist can finally go back to normal life, go to their dance or whatever, yaaaay happy endiiiiing. Maybe some bitch mean girl who was antagonistic the whole episode spills punch on her dress and it looks like SHE got her period, and we can laugh at her because she's an asshole or whatever.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Mei is still the literal self-insert of the director and it looks like she's chosen IRL to not get married and end the bloodline, so no more red panda mischief. Lol. Lmao even. What was even the point of ending "generational trauma" if you don't go on to have children yourself?

 

[Trilby]

Mei is still the literal self-insert of the director and it looks like she's chosen IRL to not get married and end the bloodline, so no more red panda mischief. Lol. Lmao even. What was even the point of ending "generational trauma" if you don't go on to have children yourself?

You might as well tell kids to "end the sickness" of the gene pool by being celibate.

 

[Basic Blond Boy]

If we are discussing period episodes of cartoons and how they should be handled, I think King of The Hill has everything beat.

Starts with a funny uncomfortable situation for Hank to deal with Khan Jr while her parents are out, turns into a nice story about Bobby and Connie now starting to differ in maturity and how, while things will be different, they should still be friends.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

Mei is still the literal self-insert of the director

who (correctly) said that kids could handle darker stories, BTW:

There used to be lots of really great, dark kids’ movies, like “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and “The Dark Crystal.” I don’t think we should shy away from these dark elements, because they’re a part of this world as much as light elements are, and we want to equip children with the tools that they’ll need in life.

This bitch, with the resources of PIXAR under her belt, then proceeds to direct the safest Tumblr-friendly slop imaginable. She deserves a special "fuck you" just for that.

 

[SoleniyKraut]

as someone who genuinely likes Turning Red (yes yes call me retarded I don't care)

Retard.

 

[invisibult plus+]

Another pilot came out.

 

[A Grey Cat]

they often try way too hard to make it some beautiful spiritual hippie shit. Its never 'oh (x) cant join our swimming adventure today bc she has her period, we will see her next time tho!' its YOU ARE A MYSTICAL CREATURE ENTERING WOMANHOOD

Or as I pointed out. It's written by tannies with severe case of "period envy."

 

[Ultraman Orb Dark]

who (correctly) said that kids could handle darker stories, BTW:

This bitch, with the resources of PIXAR under her belt, then proceeds to direct the safest Tumblr-friendly slop imaginable. She deserves a special "fuck you" just for that.

I'd kill to see her take on The Dark Crystal. She'd probably say the Skeksis have a right to stay separated.

 

[SpiderBitch]

Maybe it'd be better if in an animated period episode, that's kind of the vibe too.

As far as I can tell, this is very similar to the plot of the baymax show period episode. It feels a bit pamphlet-y maybe more than an episode of entertainment, but Baymax IS a healthbot I suppose. Its only real negative is shoving in that 1 pooner in the store scene.



For me the main issue is that it seems like very all or nothing: the only period mentions are immediately in episodes fully dedicated to them or in turning reds case as jokes, whereas casual small mentions where they are just a part of regular daily life would do a lot more to actually NORMALISE them and wouldnt get in the way of better storyline ideas. All of these so far are always about someone getting their special dramatic first period which is why they feel like 'fucking hell, another one??'. Its never just showing someone sitting out PE class alongside the broken leg kid because of it or anything.

Bodily functions have their role in cartoons but whenever the role gets too big its always gonna feel like either a PSA or fetish content.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

As far as I can tell, this is very similar to the plot of the baymax show period episode. It feels a bit pamphlet-y maybe more than an episode of entertainment, but Baymax IS a healthbot I suppose. Its only real negative is shoving in that 1 pooner in the store scene.

This and the new Proud Family was what convinced my parents to cancel Disney+. If it wasn't for the pooner, it could've been waved off as a health PSA given Baymax's functionality and given a pass, but the trans inclusion instead gave it a groomer vibe they caught on to. There's honestly really creepy implications about inserting period hippie shit into children's cartoons in more ways than one, and it should be called out on. It's literally not the TV's job to lecture girls about the menstrual cycle, especially when they're also putting in gay shit alongside it.

 

[Newcomer 42]

id you watch Turning Red? The question made me think you haven't seen it, but now you're saying it's a horrible overall film even without that one scene.

No, I haven't yet, I planned to watch all of Disney's filmography to see how much they have fallen, but I do know about this one. You don't need to watch a movie if you have enough information about it to form an opinion. Or would you say that you must watch Cuties to say it's pedoshit? TR has the MC pretty much whoring herself by showing her panda for money. You could say it was accidental, but in our fallen world, I don't think that was an accident, especially because some leftists openly talk about how we should be more sexually open to children and such. That one detail is enough to damn the movie.
Plus, the protagonist is ugly, the panda form is ugly, and it's the bean-mouth syndrome that many Western works have suffered from for the last decade. Sure, it's not as bad as Lightyear, which was an hour-long ritualistic humiliation of a straight action hero, but TR feels like a therapy session of sorts rather than a movie (many such cases).

 

[Kari Kamiya]

the panda form is ugly

I think it looks fine by itself, it just looks bad because the human characters are all misshapened blobs.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

A long time ago, the family's patriarch went off to war and left the womenfolk vulnerable. The matriarch begged the gods or ancestors or w/e to give her the power to save her daughters, so they granted her the ability to transform into a giant red panda and kill anyone that tried to hurt her community.

So, maybe I'm missing something here but of all the Oriental animals to allow people to transform into in order to fight the Red Panda is at or near the bottom of the list. They aren't threatening or mean.

(which is mostly used as a joke, but does make the "selling access to her panda" thing inappropriate. I don't know if this movie could've avoided that implication though, any kid selling access to something only they have and keeping it a secret from their parents is gonna look bad no matter what. We live in a post-Epstein world at this point, nothing is safe anymore.)

I think it wouldn't have been so objectionable if the movie hadn't drawn such a clear connection between the two. If the period jokes and period discussion hadn't happened in the film then it would have just been a girl with emotion based superpowers that her family tries to get her to suppress but she wants to have fun with her superpowers and learns to control and use them and on the side she does what any kid would do and uses her superpower to make herself popular with her classmates and make some money on the side. That's a perfectly innocent and innocuous movie with a positive message. If you saw a sex/prostitution allegory in her letting her peers peak at her superpower transformation as a sex thing when the movie has made absolutely no references real or implied to sex or genitalia otherwise you'd be rightly scoffed at as a conspiracy nut.

The issue is that you have to take the movie in as a whole and the menstruation angle definitely hurts it in this regard since it robs the movie of the sort of childhood innocence that it would need to survive and turns the character from a plucky pre-teen/teen trying to come to terms with her own family legacy while also wanting to rebel against her overbearing mother in order to go to a boyband concert into a character who's an immature hornball who's dangerously close to (potentially) making some very terrible mistakes at an incredibly vulnerable and formative time in her life.

Like damn I know some spheres shame it too much but you dont have to overcorrect this much either by overly celebrating something that sucks and adds 0 potential benefits to your life till youre an adult who wants to have kids

It's also not unique to girls either. Puberty is treated as a joke when it comes to boys and there's a lot of rhetoric surrounding it to make boys feel ashamed and dirty by their own bodies during the process. Girls do get it worse I think but puberty isn't fun for anyone and I think that Chromeo's mention of the Teen Titans episode with Starfire transforming is the most on point way to tackle a puberty metaphor in a healthy and positive way.

Mei's mom (Ming) forbade Mei from going to a boyband concert, which is what Mei was raising money for by selling panda merchandise and where she ran off to from her ceremony. Ming loses her mind, she goes full kaiju-panda and attacks the concert, and that's where the big showdown happens. She's completely blinded by rage and she scolds Mei for disobeying her and for not being a "good little Mei-Mei," and Mei basically snaps like "I'm not your little Mei-Mei anymore, I'm thirteen! I like boys and music and GYRATING, deal with it!!"
Then the family's like "we can do the ritual on Ming if we get her in a circle," they draw this giant circle and tell Mei to lure her into it, so Mei provokes Ming by arguing with her. Ming is like "BOYBANDS ARE SO VULGAR" and Mei's like "YOU WANT VULGAR, THIS IS VULGAR," and she starts dancing around to piss off her mom, including the so-called "twerking."
The thing that bugs me is calling it "twerking," because I feel like it was barely twerking. It was more like hopping around with her ass in the air, like an angry cat or something. Something else is that it doesn't pretend there's no baggage around the act of shaking your ass as a dance move, like, the whole point of that moment is Mei is doing something her mom would find distasteful/inappropriate to piss her off because A) now we can finally have this fight we've been narrowly avoiding the whole movie, and B) we need to get Ming into this giant chalk circle on the ground and the only way to do that is make her mad.
What actually knocks Ming out is Mei leaping high into the air and ramming herself into Ming's forehead, sending her falling back onto the metal scaffolding around the stage. The KO wasn't intended, which is why all the other Lee women had to unleash their pandas, so they would have the strength to drag Ming's giant kaiju ass into the circle all the way to let the ritual work.

Which is yet another thing that, in a slightly different version of the film, would have worked brilliantly. The issue is that once again that the writers have poisoned the red panda power by doing a direct and blatant comparison to periods.

 

[SpiderBitch]

This and the new Proud Family was what convinced my parents to cancel Disney+. If it wasn't for the pooner, it could've been waved off as a health PSA given Baymax's functionality and given a pass, but the trans inclusion instead gave it a groomer vibe they caught on to. There's honestly really creepy implications about inserting period hippie shit into children's cartoons in more ways than one, and it should be called out on. It's literally not the TV's job to lecture girls about the menstrual cycle, especially when they're also putting in gay shit alongside it.

I also checked out the moongirl period episode (on google, im not watching that shit) and WTF, why is there a MENSTRUAL CUP in there???



Pads are one thing, tampons you already have to be careful about bc you dont wanna imply a child is shoving something up their cooter even if its offscreen. But a menstrual cup is not for beginners at all. Not only are they LARGE before folding (as you can see) and are tricky to insert and get out, its even advised that virgins use them with lube if needed. But you ALSO have to keep that thing sanitary by not just cleaning it troughout the day after emptying it (fun thing to do in your middle school bathroom sink) but regularly BOILING it for a few minutes, which is a pretty unnecessary burden to put on a 12 yo for no major benefit.

Absolutely the last period product I would give to a middle schooler...

 

[Chromeo]

TR feels like a therapy session of sorts rather than a movie

I'm not gonna say you need to watch a movie to have any opinion at all, but you can't say a movie feels like something if you haven't actually watched it. You didn't even feel it, you watched reviews of it and got mad about it on kiwifarms, that's not the same thing.

 

[Ultraman Orb Dark]

As far as I can tell, this is very similar to the plot of the baymax show period episode. It feels a bit pamphlet-y maybe more than an episode of entertainment, but Baymax IS a healthbot I suppose. Its only real negative is shoving in that 1 pooner in the store scene.

Ver archivo adjunto 9174364Ver archivo adjunto 9174365

Wouldn't Baymax have a ton of data on periods since he's programmed for healthcare? Why would he need to ask for pad recommendations?

For me the main issue is that it seems like very all or nothing: the only period mentions are immediately in episodes fully dedicated to them or in turning reds case as jokes, whereas casual small mentions would do a lot more to actually NORMALISE them and wouldnt get in the way of better storyline ideas.

I guess part of the problem is that it's hard to depict them in kids media since it involves the bathroom and blood.

So, maybe I'm missing something here but of all the Oriental animals to allow people to transform into in order to fight the Red Panda is at or near the bottom of the list. They aren't threatening or mean.

Yeah, you could have chosen a tiger, an ox, or half the Zodiac animals, but nope, red panda.

 

[A Grey Cat]

I also checked out the moongirl period episode (on google, im not watching that shit) and WTF, why is there a MENSTRUAL CUP in there???

Ver archivo adjunto 9174528

Pads are one thing, tampons you already have to be careful about bc you dont wanna imply a child is shoving something up their cooter even if its offscreen. But a menstrual cup is not for beginners at all. Not only are they LARGE before folding (as you can see) and are tricky to insert and get out, its even advised that virgins use them with lube if needed. But you ALSO have to keep that thing sanitary by not just cleaning it troughout the day after emptying it (fun thing to do in your middle school bathroom sink) but regularly BOILING it for a few minutes, which is a pretty unnecessary burden to put on a 12 yo for no major benefit.

Absolutely the last period product I would give to a middle schooler...

Like when it was her mother's pack fine, that's the pack of an adult used to that kinda thing, but her own? Molly Mcgee made the same mistake. In the episode a period piece that annoying little streamer Andrea davenport flat out asked of molly had tampons for a girl who just got her first one. like wth I'm an xy chromosome carrier who's had only brothers my whole life and even I KNOW, you do not immediately jump on the tampon bandwagon for a first period. And just because of the implications you mentioned but because first timers are susceptible to toxic shock there were lawsuits against tampons because of a lot of cases of that years ago. You'd think the self proclaimed "feminists" writing this garbage would know that.


Ps. May I ask why evey time turning red is brought up in this thread it turns into a discussion on menstruation in western animation?

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Yeah, you could have chosen a tiger, an ox, or half the Zodiac animals, but nope, red panda.

Which, for the record, I'm fine with since it's a cute animal and when it comes to magic powers it's magic, it doesn't need to make perfect sense. But it's kinda jarring to pick a red animal in conjunction with blatant and plainly stated menstruation theme since it takes what would have otherwise been a lighthearted movie about a young girl with an insane and unreasonable mother trying to control her newly discovered magic powers and turns it into a weird film that draws a lot of attention to the main character's vagina.

It could have been a way better film with minimal changes to make its metaphor more of an allegory, and that's really the part that burns me about it.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Ps. May I ask why evey time turning red is brought up in this thread it turns into a discussion on menstruation in western animation?

Because that's the only thing even remotely notable about an otherwise forgettable movie and served as a sort of high water mark for that particular conversation along with the larger conversation of writers being terrible at metaphor and allegory in general.