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Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow
I was actually very happy to see Fosters making references to their old episodes. Because one it showed that the episodes DID exist and not just completely ignore the events of the past seasons, which I find to be stupid. Kids show or not, you cannot avoid establishing certain jokes or relationships then ignore them.
Fosters has done it more often now. Look at Orland Bloo, Bloo's movie being mentioned, threatening to "rip off artist" kick the guy at the swap meat, and like Pitbull said Uncle pockets stuff. I agree on characters being in elementary school or something like that not really needing to be involved in romance, I accept that.
But I personally don't think kids are that ignorant or misunderstanding of crushes or romance. Kids take on alot more material then they used to do, and kids shows like Teen Titans or The Batman have romance, violence, and darker stuff in it and still manage to show continuity and relationships.
I keep going back to Teen Titans because that to me is one of the better examples of a romantic relationship existing not only in a kids show, but existing within younger characters lives AND keeping up with continuity. The last season of Titans is proof that the show certainly keeps its continuity going.
Starfire and Robin's relationship was progressed through out the series, through episodes, hints, and little things that all culiminated to their relationship's official "love" status by the Tokyo movie. It doesn't bother me that Robin and Starfire are in love and are at such a young age.
Doesn't matter to me, animation has a habit of erasing ages when you look at some of these characters and even though they may appear to be one age, they certainly look like another. Plus, for someone who's seen so much animation, to call young kids being in love as unrealistic is laughable.
Aliens fall in love (DBZ), walking talking animals fall in love (Cat's don't dance), robots fall in love (Robots), lions fall in love (Lion King), and I've seen kids fall in love (Were back: a dinosaurs story, and Nadia: secret of blue water). To me, this is hardly what i call unrealistic or too unlikely to swallow.
Fosters is a prime example of how there are certainly weirder and less plausible things that can happen then having two younger characters fall in love.
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When I say "young children" I'm referring to characters who are not yet of the age of puberty. The reason that the show "Teen Titans" is called "TEEN Titans" is because its characters are in their teens, so a romantic relationship between, say, Robin and Starfire is quite a different ballgame from a romantic relationship between say, Mac and Goo. Even still, I don't know of any two people who are still together after dating in high school. I had to actually struggle for awhile to remember the last name of the guy *I* dated for nearly two years and went to the prom with! The fact that Mac, Goo, and the others are animated does not, for me, anyway, change the fact that they are still little kids. Even an animated series has to have some degree of plausibility, somewhere, otherwise there is nothing that people can relate to, and unless viewers relate in some way to the characters they see and the situations that those characters get into, they won't want to continue watching. While it's true that talking cars, lions, dinosaurs, and the like are implausible to say the least, they are the result of an age-old and common literary tool: anthropomorphism, giving human characteristics to things that aren't human in the least, or even alive in reality. That is done so that we humans can relate to the characters more. If a lion character, like Simba in
The Lion King, for instance, did nothing but lie around under Acacia trees all day and fight with other male lions all night and chase hyenas off their kills, that character wouldn't be all that appealing to human viewers. We are supposed to forget that we're watching lions, or dinosaurs, or robots, or whatever, when they act like us. We cannot forget, though, that a human child is a human child; we know from experience how children act and what they feel because we've Been There, Done That, so suspension of disbelief becomes more difficult. Therefore, I can buy into two dinosaurs falling in love, or a lion, a meerkat and a warthog sitting around telling fart jokes, better than I can buy into a couple of 8-10 year-old children falling deeply in love with each other.
This does NOT mean that I'm opposed to the notion of romance in animation, by any means. It also doesn't mean that I think children watching the show would be put off by romance. Children are certainly aware of it, even if they aren't CAPABLE of it, and while some might be bored, I don't think that most would unless the romance took over from everything else and became the central focus of the whole series. I would just find it too difficult myself to believe two children who can't even be called "adolescents" yet can or should fall in love, beyond a simple crush, even on a show like Foster's, where we're already being asked to believe that Imaginary Friends become real, living, flesh-and-blood beings the instant they are created. There is nothing in our world that really compares to that, not even the invisable imaginary friends that kids make up that only they can "see", really, so there isn't any experience that we the viewers can really draw upon for comparison, but we've all either been kids, or still ARE kids, so that makes us more aware of what children are capable of. If you're going to have romance in an animated series, let it be between either two adult characters, or at least two characters that have passed puberty, because then it has some believability and something in real life to compare to.
pitbulllady