Originally Posted by weedle_mchairybug
(Post 9899156)
Technically, you could argue Dragon Ball and especially Dragon Ball Z was kodomo under that premise, especially considering all the moralism Goku preaches a few times (like the time he denounced Frieza for his mass-murdering runs just before fighting him for the first time), even though that is clearly shonen.
Besides, Pokmon literally has Pokmon leagues as part of the plot, even Sun and Moon might have them if When Regions Collide's ending is of any indication (which are massive sports competitions in all but name), and has Ash having to outright train Pokmon for those leagues by fighting them, and he explicitly has an ongoing desire to better himself to eventually become the World's Greatest Pokmon Master. Last I checked, that fits under Shonen far more than Kodomo. In fact, they're even having girls undergoing rather crass sexualization (and that part is DESPITE the fact that said girls are underage due to their explicitly being 10 year olds) which DEFINITELY wouldn't fit under Kodomo due to it being extremely inappropriate the age bracket (May, Dawn, even Serena to a certain extent. And let's face it, slapping big boobs on a ten year old or having a ten year old wear a skirt that's so short that even a tiny breeze is enough to see all the way to Florida, or in Serena's case, crushing on another ten year old in a manner more befitting of a teenager than an actual 10 year old. To put it another way, it's like saying Frollo's Hellfire was even remotely appropriate for a family film.). Heck, in AG, May actually stripped in front of company in one episode (and I don't mean the anime trope of how they throw clothes into the air and they're wearing new completely different outfits underneath. No, no, I mean actual literal striptease stripping, with Max actually PANICKING just before May did it. Granted, we don't see her get naked, but it's clearly implied from Max's reaction. I believe it was in the episode Brave the Wave). Sure, maybe Sun & Moon might qualify as a Kodomo anime thanks to Ash being confined to a school environment (though even THAT has hints of a Shonen element due to CoroCoro's coverage stating that Ash's new goal is to "graduate like never before." And that's of course not getting into the foreshadowed Alola League in the Kanto Reunion arc), but the anime as a whole has been purely shonen up to this point.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but after doing sexual fanservice on several of the female leads starting with AG (in fact, probably the only female lead who WASN'T subject to that was Iris. Yes, even Serena was subjected, especially when her entire character arc dealt with crushing on Ash in a manner more befitting of a teenager than an actual 10 year old), many times being crass about it, they definitely aren't a Kodomo series by any stretch, being "mature" in the worst manner (and it's probably even WORSE in the case of Pokmon since the girls they're sexualizing are explicit ten year olds, which means they're peddling what amounts to kiddie porn). Maybe Sun & Moon itself might be Kodomo, but the anime as a whole definitely isn't, even if it isn't Shonen either (and quite frankly, I find it hard to buy that an anime franchise that literally has Pokmon Leagues, which are the same as, say, Budokai Tenkaichi tournaments to use Dragon Ball examples, not to mention Pokmon Battles as the main part of the plot could not count as Shonen. I mean, what, should we discount Dragon Ball as a shonen anime especially when that came across as childish a few times especially in earlier seasons, even WITH the frank sexualization? And that didn't even start out as a story about Martial Arts, it was originally an adaptation of Journey to the West. The whole Martial Arts focus came AFTER the Pilaf saga.).
Movie 20 and 21? Sure, those are in a completely separate continuity (unless you count that manga where Ash literally relays to his fellow classmates what he did in Kanto that effectively acted as the Manga adaptation). I'm not sure ALL the movies should be listed as a complete separate continuity and considered their own thing. For example, the events of Movie 2 were explicitly referenced in the Whirl Islands arc, and even Movie 9 ended up being referenced in I think the Phione episode. Heck, Movie 1 actually had episodes actively foreshadowing the events of that movie as well (not to mention a TV special in Johto that confirmed that, yep, that movie was indeed canon), and Dawn even had a Lunar Wing in one episode, which she only got in Movie 10 (and it's not some throwaway scene, either: She used it to ward off that Darkrai). Not to mention Ash's aura abilities, which were given focus in DP, were first alluded to in Movie 8. Heck, Drew's hometown was a movie location (the primary location of Movie 7, in fact). In fact, if anything, there's more pointing to the first 19 movies at least actually BEING within the same continuity as the anime as a separate continuity (well, okay, M14 is in the gray area due to it being a two-for-the-price-of-one movie/CYOA movie, but the others definitely would have fit into continuity). In order to be in a separate continuity and considered its own thing, the important rule is to NOT have them be explicitly referenced in ESPECIALLY the source they're supposed to be separate from at all, and especially not in a major manner.
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