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Old 2013-05-06, 10:38   Link #8
Tempester
Japanese Culture Fan
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Age: 33
You can start off with Little Witch Academia, which has an official subtitled stream on Youtube. It's short, exciting, simple, and very safe.

If you want to go for something longer, try Ashita no Nadja and Heartcatch Precure. The latter has a lot of action and fighting, but no gore or blood splatter.

Looking at other people's recommendations, I actually advise against Hyouka, Clannad, and Kanon. These series may appear safe and appropriate, but they deal with themes that I feel your 4-year-old brother would have trouble connecting to. Examples include:
  • The jealously felt from untalented people who have a passion in a hobby towards people who have natural talent in that same hobby but a lack of interest.
  • A character has their own job advancement cancelled just because their father was involved in a crime. (I had trouble understanding this even as a teenager!)
  • A character has a terminal disease, and they are shown unsheathing a box cutter. The implication is that they plan to kill themself (this doesn't carry through), but a young child will not get this or empathize with the character.

In my opinion, there's something more important to "kid-friendly" entertainment than simply content such as violence and nudity: the subject matter should not be above their heads. Ashita no Nadja and Heartcatch Precure are targeted towards children in Japan, so they are fairly simple, although they don't patronize their audience like a lot of North American cartoons do. And Little Witch Academia is pretty much for anyone.
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