Movies/TV/Books/Games with my kid

Obviously you’re joking, but even without kids, I couldn’t stand more than an episode or so of that show. Nick Kroll isn’t that funny IMO, at best he’s carried by good writing and co-stars. John Mulaney… enough said.

One weird fact of growing up now-- my kid has never been to a mall, and has possibly never been in a clothing store.

I try to take her out whenever I go shopping, so she experiences a bit of the world, but I never go shopping.

Gurren bothers me for a few reasons:

One scene when the woman I mentioned (voluptuous, and a sniper) has her breasts jiggling after a shot

Several scenes of that person being fawned over as I mentioned.

One “bath-house” episode which is suggestive and honestly I recommend just skipping, you won’t lose any appreciable amount of plot. The rest of the show if that was eliminated would be 10/10 for me. It really spans a good range of absolute badassery but also gut-punches that aren’t too much for a child. Even in the bath-house episode, it’s set up as a honey-pot, but the imagery is there and I don’t care for it.

I’ll spoil for you: it deals with death of who you thought the main character was, coming out of what is basically a slavery situation, to political intrigue, to literally hurling galaxies at an enemy. Heavy Power Rangers/Transformers vibe. I don’t want to spoil any more, it see-saws between silly and holy-effing-shit. Goes from intensity 2/10 to 15/10 with breaks.

She-Ra has been one of her (and my wife’s) favorites since she was 3 or so, and they’ve watched it at least 5 times together. I like it too.

I honestly don’t care much about life-lessons. It feels to me like people either grow-up empathic, or not, regardless of what they saw on TV. And besides, there’s just so many lessons, every TV show wants to teach you something. Likewise, modern shows are so Woke that every hero is a lgtbq mixed race warrior princess-scientist. So much so that I’m just not worried about my kid missing it.

(Although it would be cool if my kid didn’t want so bad to be a Cinderella*)

That said, Woke modern cartoons are also really fun-king good. In terms of story, characters, music, animation… They really engage our child and us, on many levels, at the same time.

Along these lines I suggest:
Kipo: Age of the Wonderbeasts. (Age 7+, Netflix)
Post-Apocalyptic world full of weird giant mutants. Note: has some actually scary villains. SUPER FUN-- like just hilarious/awesome chase/fight scenes. Super-duper woke. But also thematically interesting? Instead of being about annoying post-apocalyptic reality TV drama (looking at you walking dead), the main drive/conflict is the value of friendship and community in a world where everyone is so ruthless, and paranoid, and out to kill you.

Dragon Prince (Age 7+, Netflix)
Fantasy, like a D&D adventure. Not nearly as radical as Kipo, though still a background of wokeness. Great jokes, great animations, and good plots/character development. And some interesting changes on the genre. Like the ‘villain’ is more thoughtful pragmatist then dumb evil wizard. And most of the character choices are about loyalty vs honesty vs bad-means-to-good-ends vs good-means, with a few surprising results by the end.

*My kid herself was just wondering this. “I have always loved to draw girls in dresses. Ever since I can remember. But why did I first start loving it so much?”

Did you mean The Dragon Prince? I fully agree, think you’re mixing it up with a video game. I’d put it at maybe 7/10.

I fully agree on Kipo, that’s like an 8/10 recommendation for me.

@SredniVashtar I don’t know how I missed Avatar: The Last Airbender (animated), also a 10/10 show.

The movie, -1/10.

Legend of Korra, the sequel, perhaps 7/10.

@SredniVashtar I would even put Avatar: TLA over Fullmetal Alchemist, I’m giving it 11/10 with the exception of 1 episode in the entire run, which is simply bad amongst great ones.

Side note: There are two FMA shows. Choose Brotherhood and don’t bother with the other. They’re close enough but the original ends up comparable to Game of Thrones S7/8, not the worst thing ever but just disappointing. They fully re-booted it with Brotherhood to make it much better.

Yep, we’ve also watched all Avatar a couple times. I don’t look like it quite as much as it’s mostly standard cartoon plots/characters/fights but still clearly sooooo much better than what I grew up with as a kid in the 80s/90s

We’ve also watched some old “good” cartoons, Batman, Gargoyles, X-Men, and they mostly hold up. :slight_smile:

If you are fans of Disney, the Villainous games are quite fun and scale well from 3-6 players. Two players is a bit dull and above 6 they can get somewhat long but we once played with 8. They also have Marvel and Star Wars versions but I haven’t played those and not sure if you can mix and match the Disney verse so to speak but each has similar game mechanics.

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Uh, sounds very anime. Little kids in Giant Robots + teen girls in underwear + deep literary and philosophical ideas + horror + politics + fart jokes???

“Why not all at the same time?!” Says Japan.

Along those lines, my favorite animes were Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and FLCL…

Anyway, yeah, I’ll probably never watch anything sexual with my kid, because gross! And to some degree I avoid shows where girls are prized for their looks, because she notices it very much, and is in fact vain herself, and people in real life both kids and adults mostly think of her as “cute”.

I second Villainous if your child likes rules-based games - that is, things where reading and putting together various rules are strung together in changing ways. It’s like Magic the Gathering Light in some ways.

@SredniVashtar Absolutely valid points which is why I brought that up for Gurren. Fullmetal Alchemist is not nearly so bad in that regard. The worst “sexuality” I recall in that was a character looking attractive in a tube top - an extremely independent female who bonks the male protagonist on the head with a wrench several times for being an idiot. (I think the male might play the “you’re just a girl” card a few times but I don’t remember any lechery.)

There is also a temporary villain named Lust (all deadly sins are represented) who is voluptuous, but I don’t recall anything actually bad about her presentation. I may not recall, but I’m positive there is no nudity in the entire series, and if I had to name 10 themes of the show, sexuality would not be involved.

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