Cartoons You Should Never Watch In Front Of Your Kids

Today's children have an absolute wealth of animated stories to choose from. Fantasy adventures like She-Ra and Steven Universe combine tender coming-of-age stories with thrilling heroics. High-energy comedies like Teen Titans Go! carry on the proud tradition of Warner Brothers wackiness. And then there's a whole host of Studio Ghibli movies. Modern animation proves that "kids stuff" can be just as good as anything else, and that there is, in fact, no reason why it shouldn't be.

But animation is a vast and varied landscape. Though it has, particularly in the West, been associated with children, there's always been a thriving world of animation aimed at adults. Some of it is shockingly dark, some of it explicitly sexual, and quite a lot of it is groundbreakingly good. But it all has one important thing in common: It's absolutely not for kids. Which of these works are among the most important to keep from impressionable eyes? We're here to tell you ... and to remind you to make sure your parental controls are up-to-date before you check them out.

You can't talk about superheroes with talking about Stan Lee. Marvel's main man, he oversaw the creation of household names like Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the Hulk. He reshaped the tone of the entire genre, and he lived to see the transition of his characters from the page to the screen dozens of times over. Of course, like any creator, not everything he made reached such heights of success. Sure, you've heard of the Fantastic Four, but you're probably less acquainted with Heroman. Yet omnipresent or obscure, a Stan Lee creation can generally be depended upon to entertain fans of all ages. Right?

Enter Stripperella. A Spike TV cartoon that debuted in 2003, the Pamela Anderson-helmed series is about as far from family friendly as any supherhero can get. Its titular heroine is one Erotica Jones (yes, really), an exotic dancer who moonlights as a superhero. Her foes include Dr. Caesarean, Pushy Galore, and Queen Clitoris. Her home base is called TenderLoins, and her brother is Chipperella, also a stripper-turned-superhero. Only 13 episodes were made, making the series more of a novelty than anything else. Still, as long as it's kept far away from any young Lee fans in your life, it's worth a peek. After all, what other creation brought together the likes of Stan Lee, Fabio, Mark Hamill, and Pamela Anderson?

Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln, and JFK walk into an American high school. But this isn't the set up to a truly bizarre joke. It's the premise of cult classic Clone High. Set in the fictional town of Exclamation, Clone High follows the traumas, triumphs, and many very-special-lessons a group of teens who happen to be clones of famous historical figures endure. As you might expect, they're part of a shadowy government experiment, but that matters a whole lot less than anti-drug assemblies, winter proms, and student elections.

Clone High's genius lies in its embrace of contrast. The clones, of course, struggle mightily to live up to their outsize reputations, as aware as the audience is of just how unimpressive they are when set beside their ancestors. But the central tension comes to fruition most deliciously in the show's commitment to parodying teen soaps. It's funny to watch Joan of Arc reborn as a sullen goth girl, but it's priceless to watch her learn a holiday lesson from a dear little ragamuffin who "may or may not be" Mandy Moore, preceded by a facsimile of the 1973 "A CBS Special Presentation" intro. Add in a diner called the Grassy Knoll, an adolescent JFK who wants you to know exactly how rock hard his abs are at all times, and a robotic reincarnation of Mr. Belvedere, and you get a cartoon as eccentric as it is hilarious.

Adult animation suffers no lack of family-based sitcoms. Yet even within that crowded field, The Oblongs stands out as particularly bizarre — and particularly funny.The eponymous Oblongs hail from "the Valley," a place so polluted by the lavish living of the adjacent "Hills" that every member of the family is deformed. The show is, as you might've guessed, a razor-sharp critique of class disparity, but the show's heart is as much a part of the series as its satirical edge. 

Protagonist Milo's family are absolute losers in the game of life, doomed by circumstances so beyond their control as to be almost mythic, but their love for each other endures against all odds. Sure, sister Susie has a mysterious growth, but she's still her daddy's favorite little tattletale. Yeah, Pickles, the matriarch, could stand to put down the martini glass once in a while, but she gave up her life of Hills privilege out of love for her limbless husband and has never once looked back. Though its gross-out humor might make it seem most in line with Family Guy, at heart, The Oblongs was an antecedent to Bob's Burgers, as it's the story of a family getting by, one polluted day at a time.

Generally speaking, the West has always seen cartoons as kid's stuff. Adult animation has certainly made gains — The Simpsons isn't exactly obscure — but even then, those gains have been largely within the sitcom genre. Movies have fared, if anything, worse. Every few years sees a raunchy comedy like Sausage Party emerge, but there's been little else for anyone interested in animation meant for those over 12. In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking even that micro-trend to be a recent one, likely extending no further back than a decade or two.

Yet that assumption is wrong by nearly 50 years, as 1972's Fritz the Cat isn't just an animated movie for adults. It was originally X-rated — the first animated film in the United States to be so. Adapted from the legendarily taboo work of cartoonist R. Crumb, Fritz the Cat follows the titular wannabe-poet on a journey through the free love era's deepest pits of hedonism. Though director Ralph Bakshi has correctly identified that Fritz the Cat is less shocking by today's standards, it's still pretty risque stuff. This is, after all, a movie in which an anthropomorphic cat engages in group sex, gets high, hides from the cops, and ends up on a motorcycle with a neo-Nazi rabbit. In isolation, however, the characters often look like the soft, cuddly sort of mascots one might find on school supplies. In his big red sweater, Fritz in particular is eye-catchingly cute ... and just as horrifically inappropriate for the crowd most anthropomorphic animal cartoons are for.

Genndy Tartakovsky's neon-limned tale of a time-displaced samurai was one of the coolest things a kid in 2001 could watch. And indeed, it could be watched by kids. While robots bleeding oil and ravers with pacifiers hinted at violent films and drug-soaked parties, respectively, Jack only ever alluded to these inspirations, borrowing their outlaw cool without portraying the actual law-breaking at hand. What resulted was a landmark achievement so beloved that it was given a chance to end its story properly, 13 years after it went off the air.

Thus was born Samurai Jack's fifth season, which aired in 2017. Jack's audience had grown up in the intervening years, and the show honored that by making a conclusive season for the adults they were, instead of the children they'd been. This isn't to say Samurai Jack shifted tone entirely. One can imagine a well-adjusted 12-year-old who loves the first four seasons being judged mature enough to view it by his parents. But still, the Jack revival's TV-14 rating is earned. Blood flows thickly, assassins are impaled upon spears, and there are brief implications of sexuality. As it stands now, young fans of Samurai Jack can enjoy the first four seasons to their heart's content, but they should have an adult judge whether or not they're ready for the final installment. After all, it's worth the wait, whether that's 13 years or only one or two, advised by a savvy parent.