Aging Otaku Parents - What are your kids watching?

[Captainbubby]

I sat down with my four year old daughter and popped in "Urotusukidoji" (Better late than never, right?).

Just kidding.

My daughter LOVES Project A-Ko and has watched all four (Not including the VS "alternate universe). Given that four-year-olds are not known for their attention spans, it is a testament to the film (first one), that she didn't turn her head away for even one second.

Given the creative spectacle on screen and the relatively simple story, I found it to be a great old school Anime for a young girl with a developing imagination.

Personally, I have no issues with my daughter seeing any nudity (tasteful or natural of course; not some hustler spread or something!) nor do I have any great issue with the lesbian subplot (which went completely over her head, naturally).

The violence is more of the Star Wars variety; there's not much there that I wouldn't have seen at a similar age.

Apart from Project A-Ko, she also loves Kiki's Delivery Service, which she has seen multiple times.

Whilst I'm not too keen on her watching it too much due to the (bloodless, yet still rather impactful) violence, she has caught some of the tamer episodes of the original "Space Adventure Cobra" series (a favourite of mine).

[usamimi]

I don't have any kids myself, but most of my friends who have kids right now are getting them into Sailor Moon and Studio Ghibli films, which I think is adorable.

[greg]

My daughter is 5. I own Project A-Ko on LD, so maybe I can put that in sometime and give it a try. My girl really loves Yatterman and Urusei Yatsura. She likes the Precure characters a bit and wears some shirts, but she really hasn't seen much of it. I am trying my best to avoid her watching One Piece because I can't stand that show and its lousy character designs.

She likes Lupin a bit too. Naturally, Ghibli is a hit with her, and we watch Totoro and Ponyo the most often. When she was 3 years old, I was surprised when she took a strong liking to Nausicaa. She even took out all her insect toys to recreate the end of the movie when all the ohmu are surrounding Nausicaa's dead body. That really surprised us!

Currently we are going through Galaxy Angel as a family. We watch about two episodes per evening at dinner. She is the most taken with Vanilla in the show, and is often drawing her own version of Vanilla. (She draws more than she plays with toys, and we have to constantly buy her sketch books because she plows through them all the time.)

Oh yeah, and she also loves Anpanman and Doraemon, just as any other Japanese kid does. Personally, I think Doraemon is great, but I don't care much for Anpanman. Anpanman is geared towards little children. Doraemon targets a much broader spectrum of viewers.

[Captainbubby]

My daughter also loves Anpanman which she discovered whilst watching it with my friend's daughter in Canada. Her mother is Japanese and got her father to bring a whole heap of episodes for her.

My wife is Hong Kongese, so my daughter can listen to Cantonese or English (maybe a bit of Mandarin). Anpanman is HUGE in Hong Kong from a merchandising point of view. The cartoon, however, has not been dubbed into Cantonese, strangely. Doraemon is, of course, but I think me and my wife like it more than she does!

As my daughter is still too young to read subtitles, I am more or less restricted to English or Cantonese dubs at the moment.

I'm sure my daughter would probably like Nausicaa too. She's certainly not afraid of anything, "Dark". She loves "Gremlins" and Ridley Scott's, "Legend" (Which freaks out some adults )

[greg]

Doraemon's name in Cantonese is Bing-Bong, right?

[kndy]

My son watches Pokemon and let him see a few episodes of "Urusei Yatsura".

[Captainbubby]

Doraemon's name in Cantonese is Bing-Bong, right?

Close! It was Ding-Dong! But no one really ever called it "Ding-Dong", so they dropped the name and now it's just good old fashioned Doraemon!

[PinkAppleJam]

Amazing! I have a god-daughter (6yo) and she was introduced to Sailor Moon since she was in the womb, haha (her mom got into it via me when she was heavily pregnant). Her dad found dubbed seasons 1 and 2 for her and she watches it a lot. I gave her the DVD a few years ago and last year she gave it to her mom and dad because "she watched it so much" and "didn't want to wear it out" (!). Precious!

She loves a lot of animation too, is very open about it all. Also, she also loves Monster High (as do I) and Ever After High - whilst not strictly anime of course, it is one of the closest any mainstream western franchise has gone regarding manga styled faces, designs and loli-esque/Harajuku fashion. (Avatar and Totally Spies etc, all count, IMHO. Monster High just does it super-appealingly to me.)

[usamimi]

Amazing! I have a god-daughter (6yo) and she was introduced to Sailor Moon since she was in the womb, haha (her mom got into it via me when she was heavily pregnant). Her dad found dubbed seasons 1 and 2 for her and she watches it a lot. I gave her the DVD a few years ago and last year she gave it to her mom and dad because "she watched it so much" and "didn't want to wear it out" (!). Precious!

She loves a lot of animation too, is very open about it all. Also, she also loves Monster High (as do I) and Ever After High - whilst not strictly anime of course, it is one of the closest any mainstream western franchise has gone regarding manga styled faces, designs and loli-esque/Harajuku fashion. (Avatar and Totally Spies etc, all count, IMHO. Monster High just does it super-appealingly to me.)

She might like the new Littlest Pet Shop cartoon, then. I have a few friends that work on it and they're anime fans, too--the eyes and faces are sort of anime-inspired.

That's so cute she likes Sailor Moon! I'm sad that Akazukin Chacha never got picked up in English domestically--It's a super-cute and really funny magical-girl style show that would be PERFECT for younger kids. I used to watch with my baby sister when she got old enough to read subtitles. Apparently they made an English dub of it, but it was only shown in Asia for some reason. I don't think that version even got a VHS release, sadly...

[yusaku]

I do not have kids myself, but I would guess that sailor moon, pokemon, Dragonball, and any thing Studio Ghibli would be good for kids. Maybe one day I will have kids.