Most Disturbing Animated Movie and TV Show

[Drtooth]

I'm glad I remembered this was a thread, because I found this mindblowing. I'll admit, this really isn't a disturbing show so much as a baffling premise. You'll see why.

Now, what if I told you there was an early 80's anime about a little girl who was the unfavorite in her family, but always had a happy, optimistic outlook on life. Her sister is the bright, always acing schoolwork child that the mother loves. Both her sister and mother absolutely hate her and sometimes heap emotional abuse on her (mostly the sister). The father seems blissfully unaware to all this. Sounds very depressing and I bet you can picture how this drama would look.



You'd be dead wrong. What does this depressing series look like?

Yep. It's a freaking comedy. A wacky romp through a dysfunctional as heck family. Everything is played painfully for laughs. To reiterate, this is a cartoonish comedy about the unloved daughter of a family. The only reason why she's the unfavorite is that she does poorly in school. The rest of the family is brilliant (even the "goofy" mother). Now, I only saw one of these (raw) and couldn't find much on it in English to see if anything is lost in translation. But the premise is kind of disturbing for something to be played for laughs. Look at all the other dysfunctional families on television. Homer may strangle the heck out of Bart, but they love each other. Shin-Chan may be a misbehaved little weirdo that trolls his mother, but they stand up for each other. Even the Griffins, depending on who writes the episode. But this!? A mother antagonizing her own child for being not smart and kinda goofy? Even if she does get it in the end? Oh, well, surely this was an epic fail and was never mentioned or seen again for such a dark premise, right? I mean, sure they have some emotionally devistating stuff in Japan, but even they have to have stan...

OH. The comic series the anime was based on was created in 1973 and lasted until just last year. Uh... okay. The Anime did only last a 52 episode season with a 25 minute "movie." But... yeah... a cartoon about a little girl getting emotional abuse from her mother and sister. A BELOVED classic, to boot. For the record, the show is pretty funny and I LOVE that 1980's anime style. Still... I could barely enjoy it.

 

[mimitchi33]

I'm glad I remembered this was a thread, because I found this mindblowing. I'll admit, this really isn't a disturbing show so much as a baffling premise. You'll see why.

Now, what if I told you there was an early 80's anime about a little girl who was the unfavorite in her family, but always had a happy, optimistic outlook on life. Her sister is the bright, always acing schoolwork child that the mother loves. Both her sister and mother absolutely hate her and sometimes heap emotional abuse on her (mostly the sister). The father seems blissfully unaware to all this. Sounds very depressing and I bet you can picture how this drama would look.



You'd be dead wrong. What does this depressing series look like?

Yep. It's a freaking comedy. A wacky romp through a dysfunctional as heck family. Everything is played painfully for laughs. To reiterate, this is a cartoonish comedy about the unloved daughter of a family. The only reason why she's the unfavorite is that she does poorly in school. The rest of the family is brilliant (even the "goofy" mother). Now, I only saw one of these (raw) and couldn't find much on it in English to see if anything is lost in translation. But the premise is kind of disturbing for something to be played for laughs. Look at all the other dysfunctional families on television. Homer may strangle the heck out of Bart, but they love each other. Shin-Chan may be a misbehaved little weirdo that trolls his mother, but they stand up for each other. Even the Griffins, depending on who writes the episode. But this!? A mother antagonizing her own child for being not smart and kinda goofy? Even if she does get it in the end? Oh, well, surely this was an epic fail and was never mentioned or seen again for such a dark premise, right? I mean, sure they have some emotionally devistating stuff in Japan, but even they have to have stan...

OH. The comic series the anime was based on was created in 1973 and lasted until just last year. Uh... okay. The Anime did only last a 52 episode season with a 25 minute "movie." But... yeah... a cartoon about a little girl getting emotional abuse from her mother and sister. A BELOVED classic, to boot. For the record, the show is pretty funny and I LOVE that 1980's anime style. Still... I could barely enjoy it.

Oh my god, that sounds terrible!
As for me, Mumfie could be this. It's marketed as a preschool show, and looks bright and sunny at the beginning of their first story arc...but that all changes when Mumfie is sucked into a tree. We get some creepy things including a villain who is never seen, a room where happy sounds are trapped in bottles, and then there's this scene, which scared the beejebus out of me when I was three months old:

Yes. The first story arc takes place in a prison, and at one point, Mumfie gets trapped in said prison. We're introduced to this by Bristle walking him to a cell and making the creepy face shown above. It ranks with some scary production logos, ads and other scary things I'd rather not mention in terms of scariness. I still shudder and can't sleep at night when I see the face Bristle makes (and Mumfie's face looks off too!). But still, I love this show for not being afraid to scare toddlers.

 

[Drtooth]

Ehhh.. to be perfectly honest, I'd say even Care bears specials were more disturbing than that. That one where Mr. Professor Cold Freeze (whatever, I HATE the freaking Care Bears) turned kids into those ...eh... Frog thingies for some reason relating to emotions... uh... I dunno. The fact that a creepy old man has child slaves... yeah.... kinda... well, he turned them into frogs and all, but still...ew.

Actually, know what? The freaking Care Bears cartoon is a little unnerving when you rewatch it later. Sure, they have the whole bit of having a Grumpy character to say "it's okay not to feel good," but the episode I curiously watched...Professor Coldheart! I remember his name now! Eh, the episode I watched was dangerously close to essentially saying the Care Bears are a mind altering cult sent to brainwash kids. The fact that the actor playing the orange bear (Funnysunshine Bear?) obviously didn't care about the job (who could blame him?), and therefore came off sounding disturbingly monotone didn't help matters. So, suffice to say the DIC ones are horrible, and at least the Nelvana ones are tolerable thanks to some funny villains. I mean, come on. I hate the heck out of these guys, but even I can appreciate John Stocker's Beastly character. Seriously. John's AWESOME. Met him at a convention last year.

Even though there's a thread for this particular show, I'd say the one show that's delightfully disturbing (but still...very disturbing for this kind of cartoon) is The Amazing World of Gumball. The level of subversiveness is very high. One episode begins with Gumball questioning life and capitalism by saying something to the extent of "So the only reason I have to work is to get money to buy stuff so those people can suffer the same fate?" Episodes this season included :

• Gumball and Darwin finding out that a friend of theirs dies every day and gets reborn through a toaster (he's a slice of toast, you see), only to screw around with it and create clones, including a mentally challenged one (toasted too light), and a hateful, vengeful one that winds up committing suicide (toasted too dark- stealth pun!)...and every toast in between suffers hilarious deaths.
• Sarah G. Latto. A happy go lucky stalker that watches Gumball and Darwin when they sleep. She has a delightful song with horrifying lyrics about how devoted to them she is.
• Wacky Muppet parody type character Rocky getting a soul sucking job to make his seriously ill father proud. And YES, soul sucking is dreadfully literal here.
• An episode where,
  Spoiler

  Anais essentially emotionally manipulates the entire family so she can use the computer first.
  [*]An episode that ends with the principal blowing up the school...
  [*]An entire episode about finding the meaning of life where almost every answer is something dark. One character essentially goes insane from the realization his life is meaningless that he starts chanting his entire daily routine, and in a fit of increasing erratic behavior, walks off into the ocean to die.
  [*]Darwin getting so disturbed by a safety video (which is disturbing in its own right) that he turns Elmore into a horrifying dictatorship to make sure everyone's safe.
  [*]And of course, the episode where Gumball wishes his family away and goes insane wandering the town from the loneliness. This episode was rewritten because even the creator felt this episode was too dark. The description of the episode I just gave is the lighter and softer rewrite!

Spoiler

Adventure Time has some depressing and disturbing concepts. But honestly, Gumball has surpassed them in darkest show on the network. And Adventure Time is about the post-Apocalypse where the wackiest characters in the show all have depressing backstories.

 

[mimitchi33]

Ehhh.. to be perfectly honest, I'd say even Care bears specials were more disturbing than that. That one where Mr. Professor Cold Freeze (whatever, I HATE the freaking Care Bears) turned kids into those ...eh... Frog thingies for some reason relating to emotions... uh... I dunno. The fact that a creepy old man has child slaves... yeah.... kinda... well, he turned them into frogs and all, but still...ew.

Actually, know what? The freaking Care Bears cartoon is a little unnerving when you rewatch it later. Sure, they have the whole bit of having a Grumpy character to say "it's okay not to feel good," but the episode I curiously watched...Professor Coldheart! I remember his name now! Eh, the episode I watched was dangerously close to essentially saying the Care Bears are a mind altering cult sent to brainwash kids. The fact that the actor playing the orange bear (Funnysunshine Bear?) obviously didn't care about the job (who could blame him?), and therefore came off sounding disturbingly monotone didn't help matters. So, suffice to say the DIC ones are horrible, and at least the Nelvana ones are tolerable thanks to some funny villains. I mean, come on. I hate the heck out of these guys, but even I can appreciate John Stocker's Beastly character. Seriously. John's AWESOME. Met him at a convention last year.

You know what's funny about that? I actually loved the older Care Bears and My Little Pony as a kid, and wasn't traumatized by them. Shrieky was one of my favorite characters!

 

[Drtooth]

How the heck come there are spoilers in my post? Gumball fan that's not caught up or something?

 

[D'Snowth]

TED 2 - nothing more needs to be said.

The very disturbing trailer really weirds me out.

 

[Drtooth]

Everything essentially seems like something that would be in that movie. Essentially a better staged and somehow slightly funnier version of what happens on Family Guy.

The key to being really disturbing is that it's unexpected or at least unexpectedly in the source material for an unexpected target demographic. Bloody carnage in a Family Guy episode is to be expected to the point where it past desensitizing years ago. But bloody carnage in a kid's movie (that freaking thing with the rabbits for example) is unexpected and... well... it's for kids! Adults are used to Kenny and Carl dying in every episode, you can't even threaten to kill a character in a kid's show. And when you do, there's that obnoxious work around.

 

[Luke kun]

You know what's funny about that? I actually loved the older Care Bears and My Little Pony as a kid, and wasn't traumatized by them. Shrieky was one of my favorite characters!

Me too! She kinda looks like Sailor Moon, her voice actress played Usagi/Serena!

 

[mr3urious]

Like I said before in the "Last movie you watched" thread, it would have to be Chirin no Suzu, or as it's called in English, Ringing Bell. This 1978 anime movie is about a cute and innocent lamb named Chirin (after the ringing sound from the plot-relevant bell around his neck) having fun frolicking in the meadow and getting into mischief as his loving mother warns him of the dangers outside the fence surrounding their flock. Sounds overtly saccharine enough, right? That is, until

Spoiler

his mother is killed by a wolf while they sleep in about as graphic as a Japanese kids' film can allow, causing the little lamb to swear revenge but also wish to be as tough as the wolf, and it all goes downhill from here. Eventually Chirin learns that life is total crap and becomes a nihilistic ram beast with ragged gray fleece and deformed horns thanks to his screwed up relationship with the wolf, and attacks his flock to prove how tough he is to the wolf. And even though Chirin saw the error of his ways and killed the one who raised him in later lambhood, his flock still refuses to accept him, leaving him to live the rest of his life, and eventually die, alone. The end. :'(

The animation and music in Ringing Bell are beautiful, the former especially when compared to most other stuff produced during America's dark age of animation. While it got dubbed in English (which is admittedly one of the better English dubs of an anime during this time), I recommend watching it in Japanese (of course) if only because it's a bit quieter in terms of dialogue and the voice direction is better. Either way, I totally don't recommend it to really little kids unless you want to traumatize them for life. I'd sooner show them Bambi over this.

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[Flaky Pudding]

Happy Tree Friends:That show looks like it's for little kids but is filled with blood and gore. It is disgusting, .

Dang, I was SO dumb back then! I had barely even watched Happy Tree Friends aside from 1 or 2 episodes, all I did was think
"Eeww, blood and gore, I'm going to puke!" and didn't even give the show enough of a chance. Now that I've watched it and I love it SO much (like I'm practically married to the show). I didn't realize that there was actual, plot, character development, and funny non-violent gags under all the blood and gore (like when Nutty married a gumball machine). When I read this comment, I felt like facepalming on the keyboard until I gave myself a nose bleed. I have since learned to actually watch more than 2 episodes of something for myself before I talk bad about it.