A few years later the Disney version came out, and the production value was incredible while the story and all meaning was just lost.
And the messages Disney sends to young girls, in particular, are horrible.
1) Old Disney - The best thing that can happen to girls is finding prince charming.
2) New Disney - Girls are just regular protagonists, sometimes purposefully going against the tropes.
3) Anime - Incredibly variety, top 5% is amazing re: girls or boys as protagonists, but a lot of it written for teenage boys and has women as side characters for sex appeal.
(edit: based on another of your comments you seem to be fully aware that there is great non-sexist non-objectifying anime out there, so your "almost any" comment is confusing. I don't know much about anime, but I've been watching some of the highest-recommended and rated films and they've all been great about this in my opinion.)
While there are certainly mature, grown-up anime with characters that make sense (try Your Name for something newer than Ghibli) a great big chunk of anime are just childish.
In my opinion anime tends to be less childish, and better done than american animation. The sexualization is a bit concerning, but I think that's just different cultural values.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/16/disney-princess...
It seems to me that if a hyper-sexualized/glamorous Princess Collection will make 2% more profit for Disney then that's what's going to happen regardless of how many young girls feel inadequate about their looks and end up with eating disorders.
And yeah, sure, they'll kowtow for a while when there's a backlash, and maybe you'll get a plot like in Frozen about sisters who are supportive of each other. But that lags the culture by like 10-15 years and only happens when there's profit in bucking the damsel-in-distress princess tropes that Disney itself is mostly responsible for.
Maybe once they could be ahead of the game instead of patting themselves on the back for finally reversing long-standing trends of their own creation. Wouldn't it be nice to have a back catalog you could be proud of, rather than have to apologize for?
The story has some pretty strong religious themes, where her love for the prince is coupled with a longing for an eternal soul (which mer-people does not have). If she can make the prince love her, she will receive an eternal soul. In the end this does not happen and she kills herself, but the angels nevertheless grant her an eternal soul due to her selfless love.
The story is incredibly sad, and I find it strange when people blame Disney for bowdlerizing it. A faithful retelling would have been unwatchable and probably incomprehensible for a modern American audience.
What did you think of the Danny Kaye movie about Hans Christian Andersen?
I have not seen the movie.
But first she has to spend 300 years in 'purgatory'. Also don't forget the closing paragraph where we learn that every time a child misbehaves the angels add 1 day to her stay in purgatory and every day the child is a 'good' child and obeys her parents a day is removed. So unless you want the Little Mermaid to never get into heaven you better be a well behaved and happy child.
Is this really true? It sounds to me a bit like the reasoning that has caused Hollywood movies to very obviously try to pander to the lowest common denominator (i.e. movies as entertainment as opposed to artistic creation, explosions and car chases rather than storytelling etc).
I think of this as a self-fullfilling prophecy: if movies are advertised as crude entertainment, most people will go watch them expecting crude entertainment and will be disappointed if they get anything else. Which forces the studios to keep pushing out crude entertainment.
Apologies if I misunderstand your comment.
(note: I'm European.)
The problem with the Little Mermaid is that she is suffering all the way through and kills herself in the end, and then the story ends with the moral that every kid who misbehaves will prolong the suffering of this mermaids soul. I don't think even Lars von Trier could make that into a successful movie.