Talk:Carmageddon!/@comment-26761322-20171113160941/@comment-33635114-20171118125806

Something to remember is in the end, this is a kids' show. Meaning, not that it needs to pander, but that you are trying to establish lifelong fans. And hitting them with a bomb of nihilism like this is going to make a lot of kids decide to give up on fandom because if everything the turtles did was meaningless, why bother? I certainly would have felt that way if I had seen this episode while younger, and I can tell you I know of at least one friend of my son who saw this episode arc and did exactly that. I haven't let my son watch this arc for that very reason, and I've had no problem letting him watch every single every other episode (his favorites were Owari and Requiem, he still talks about how awesome they were regularly). Kids can process sadness and bittersweet endings, it's part of life. They don't need to be shielded from it completely. But then again, there's a reason movie ratings and such exist- I'm not exactly showing my kid the Walking Dead and Breaking Bad either. There are things they may not be psychologically equipped to handle yet. And the idea that their heroes completely failed and everyone they know died, irreversibly, offscreen, and the world ended, is probably a bit too nihilistic for say, your average six to ten year old.

It's easy to sit here as adult fans and argue about it being daring or whatever, but remember that most of us got into it as kids (I sure did, thirty years ago). I hope my son will still be a fan as an adult too. And I wonder how many future adult fans have been turned off forever by Ciro's temper tantrum over not wanting anyone to play with his toys.