Is animated romance dead?

[kageri]

Originally Posted by pitbulllady

I myself have some serious issues with the notion of child or child-like characters being involved in a real, romantic relationship. Even in an animated series, at some point you just have to go, "now THAT is just TOO unrealistic"! Having a crush is one thing, but being part of a real, I-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-only-you-and-have-your-children relationship is another, totally, when you are talking about characters that are, or should be, in elementary school. Even a bright child character still does not have the level of emotional developement to handle that sort of thing, let alone the hormones for it. The same more or less would apply to non-human characters who have basically the same level of emotional and intellectual developement as a young child. I've been around more kids as part of my career than most people will ever even see in their entire lifetimes(which is probably a good thing for those other people), and I have never known any two children to really be "in love" with each other. Yes, they have crushes, and those typically last no more than a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, but there's no romance involved, unless you can count a boy dropping a dead frog down some girl's back as a sign of "romance", since that's often how young boys display their crush on a particular girl. Like I said, with those who are emotionally undeveloped, they are not capable of anything that most of us would consider romantic love. My own feelings on the matter of child characters having love affairs is that kids already grow up soon enough, so there is no point in forcing a child, even an animated one, into adult behavior and denying them that very brief time of innocence. Let 'em be KIDS!

That's exactly how I feel; on the subject of childrens' capacity to understand romance, I'll be blunt: when I was Mac's age, I thought my stuffed unicorn would come to life. Children just don't have the capacity to comprehend 'true love' or anything of the sort, and the crushes they do get are a whole different ballgame. Actual romance between them is, quite simply, extremely unrealistic, regardless of how emotionally or intellectually developed you may perceive them to be. Many of these characters aren't even anywhere near puberty, so it just doesn't make sense, and I'm not sure I want to be encouraging some of the creepy pedos out there who already go to town with the hints they see in existing cartoons.

Young kids want to grow up because they want to be able to do all the things adults do, and what they know of romance is what they see adults do. It's practice for later in their lives, but it's not true love. Is anyone here even still in touch with someone they had a crush on in the 3rd grade?