The Edgification of Everything (Article)

It goes much further back than people thought. A reaction to a fanmade YouTube video.

If you’ve surfed through YouTube long enough, you might run into what I would call “fan-made anime”. I confess that I’ve watched a couple of them and found them pretty cool. For example, there’s a series that portrays Western cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry or Spongebob as Naruto characters. Because why not?

I enjoyed these videos more than I should. But then I ran into one video that I didn’t like; it concerns Home Alone.

That’s right, Home Alone - that movie about a kid left home alone (title drop) on Christmas. And wouldn’t you know it? Two thieves came to rob the house. Deciding to fight back, the kid set up a series of elaborate traps - traps that the two hapless thieves ended up falling for. Hilarity ensues.

It’s a popular Christmas movie. Naturally, there has to be an anime adaptation of it, even if it’s fanmade. And here it is:

The animated short above is about 7 minutes long, so I suggest you watch it for full context. Be warned though, it’s basically rated R (IOW, not family friendly). If you’re squeamish, just skip the video and keep reading. To summarize…

The story starts with the two thieves walking into Kevin’s house. But Kevin is ready for him. Just thirty seconds in, you see one of the thieves falling for one of Kevin’s infamous traps. But very quickly, you’ll learn that this isn’t the Home Alone you remember. The intense music is a dead giveaway, but there’s also the characters’ facial expressions:

That is the face of a man ready to commit child murder.

In addition, the traps were quite brutal - a contrast to the slapstick nature of the movies. Not even a minute in, you see one of the thieves (the one pictured above) stepping on glass and his foot bled as a result.

Okay, so there’s blood. This is definitely a darker and edgier version of Home Alone. As I was watching this, I was unnerved but also intrigued. It’s bloody sure, but it was living up to the spirit of the Home Alone movies as the thieves kept falling for Kevin’s ridiculous traps.

But around the third minute is where the video lost me. Why? Because Kevin and the thieves started fighting. I mean that literally - as in, they’re throwing hands like it’s Dragon Ball Z.

Anime Logic

I can’t stress enough how stupid this is. Putting aside the question of how a kid can fight head to head against a fully grown man let alone two, the third minute is where the video stopped having anything to do with Home Alone beyond the name.

Now to be fair, Kevin absolutely got his butt handed to him in the fight. And the video seemed to be going back to its roots when our hero was saved by a trap that covered the thieves in spiders.

What follows is a chase scene and more fighting. The video reached its crescendo when Kevin, injured and at his limit, was cornered by the two thieves in the basement of his home.

Things seemed bleak until he was bailed out by an old man with a shovel.

Honestly, I don’t know who this guy is. Is he a character from the movies or is he an Original Character? Maybe he’s Santa Claus judging by his beard. It’s been a while since I watched the Home Alone movies so your guess is as good as mine.

So the three duked it out and it ended with the old man killing the two thieves. Yes, you read that right. The two thieves were killed.

…

Afterwards, the old man buried the two thieves at the back, far away from the neighborhood. Presumably so that he wouldn’t be arrested for murder, lol. But before the story ends, it shows that the two thieves may not be dead after all.

So that’s Home Alone: The Anime. I hate it. Yet I’m clearly in the minority:

And it’s not just the like/dislike ratio. As far as I can tell, the comments section is pretty much positive. I did a quick sweep of the combox and I didn’t find a single negative comment. I’m sure they exist, but you’d have to go out of your way to find them.

Now I’ll be fair to the creator, Cartuna. The video was well made. The animation’s great, the fight choreography is good, and the creator did a good job with the inclusion of the traps.

So if you disagree with me and actually love the video, that’s fine. I get it. And I won’t fight you over it.

My problem with the video isn’t with the technical aspect. As far as I can tell, they did a good job with that. My issue is that the video is a part of a troubling trend that I see in popular culture: the edgification of everything.

What do I mean by this? Stop me if you’ve heard this before. What if… a classic and beloved children’s story, but horror?

If you’re on the Internet, I am sure you have heard about these movies. “Winnie the Pooh but bloody”; “Popeye, but raunchy and gory”; Are you not entertained?

If you didn’t know any better, you might think that these are Hollywood’s sad attempts to revive old intellectual properties - you know, mix things up a little. But no, these are public domain movies. As you may know, these movies came out just as their respective IPs were entering the public domain.

These aren’t “woke” Hollywood creatives trying to destroy a beloved icon or greedy executives trying to make a quick buck. I mean, somebody’s trying to make a quick buck here but it’s not corporate behemoths like Disney.

If you look at the Home Alone: The Anime video, you’ll see that it came out on August 18, 2021. It came out two years before the horror Winnie the Pooh movie did. And while Cartuna isn’t some small fry YouTuber who made videos from his bedroom, they’re not big name producers either.

217k followers on Instagram is impressive, but no Disney.

The point of this article isn’t to pick on Cartuna or small creators who make edgy content. Rather, it’s to show that society (especially Western society) is geared towards edginess. It’s in the air we breathe. And as a result, we seem to have an instinctive aversion towards anything wholesome. It’s easy to blame a group of people for a problem. But sometimes, the problem is us.

Before I end this, I want to clarify that edginess in and of itself isn’t necessarily evil. Violence, even graphic violence, has its place in storytelling. Same with “sensitive” material. I know this because I am speaking as a writer who at times had delved into “edgy” territory.

But it’s clear that edginess had gone rampant, swallowing everything wholesome in its path. And this is bad - both for society and for individuals.

Ian T. Wilson

puts it best in On Having Standards, his article about clean fiction:

It is my own opinion that too much fictional smut has much the same effect on one’s soul as the fungal smut; it rots away the grain, leaving only black, sooty dust in its place. My fear is that consuming too much of such explicit material would negatively affect how I think about others and how I treat them. And perhaps this is why the pro-smut crowd gets so up in arms; they know they’re wrong and they don’t want to be corrected.

Mr. Wilson was referring to sexually explicit content when he said “smut”. Yet what he said about sex could have easily applied to extreme violence also. If you don’t believe me, then riddle me this:

Why is it in pornography sex and violence go hand-in-hand?

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