The Animals of Farthing Wood is an early '90s cartoon about a bunch of talking woodland critters who, after their forest is destroyed, make a friendship pact and set out on a grand adventure to find a new home. It took the combined efforts of Britain and France to turn such a harmless-sounding concept into what's possibly the most depressing animated series ever made outside of Japan.
For example, in one episode, the group gains new characters when two members of the party, the field mice, have little mice babies:
"They're all so adorable. I'm not sure which one to consume."
Surely adding kids to the cast will make the show more whimsical and fun, right? Um, no ... because exactly one episode later, this happens:
They couldn't have known they were trespassing on Vlad the Bluejay's territory.
Holy shit -- there's more gore in that scene than in the entire second season of The Walking Dead. Yes, those are the newly born baby mice impaled on a thicket of thorns.
They weren't just killed off subtly off screen: We needed to witness their horrible deaths, for some reason, and then watch their mother crying in sadness and guilt. Why introduce a litter of babies only to have them snatched away an episode later?
"Chill out, lady. They were basically strangers."
And this wasn't a one-time thing -- in another episode, the group is found out while hiding on a farm, and one of them, Mrs. Pheasant, is shot and killed by a human. Oh, but that's not the unusually cruel part yet: After the group has managed to escape, they notice that one of the animals was left behind, and the recently widowed Mr. Pheasant volunteers to go back and get them. If you already know where this is going, you are one sick individual.
"Mummy, I'm a vegetarian now." "Oh, get over yourself, honey."
Yes, he finds his dead wife plucked and cooked and about to be eaten by humans. Mr. Pheasant is so distraught that he is literally blinded by the tears and doesn't see the farmer coming. Long story short, they had a really big dinner that night.
If you look at things from the farmer's perspective, it was an incredibly happy ending.
There are actually three full seasons of this shit, with a running total of 23 on-screen deaths, many of them regular characters.
#5. Wakfu (France) -- The Heroes Become Accidental Cannibals
Wakfu is a French cartoon based on a popular (in France) MMO video game of the same name. It follows a group of heroes who wander across the land having adventures, fighting the forces of evil and occasionally murdering innocent people and eating their remains. By "occasionally," we mean "in one disturbing episode," but that's enough to land them on this list.
The episode starts innocently enough. The heroes are walking through a forest, looking for food, when they come across a little piglet ...
Awwwww.
... which they proceed to murder the shit out of and devour. That's actually not the disturbing part.
There it is on the spit.
Granted, the fact that the animators went out of their way to make the pig look as cute as possible before slaughtering it may be disturbing enough for some kids, but it's not what we're here to talk about. It's about to get much, much worse.
After picking the piglet's bones dry and doing some other things we don't completely understand because a) we've never played the game this is based on and b) it's all in French, the heroes end up making their way into a nearby dungeon. At this point, three of the characters wander into a poorly ventilated chamber filled with green fart-air ... and when they emerge, they look like this:
In France, this is probably a metaphor for sexting or something.
It turns out that the dungeon is inhabited by a giant pig monster who somehow turns people into little piglets with wings. Oh, yes, you see where this is going.
The characters get turned back to normal at the end of the episode, of course, but that leaves a question: What about the piglet they just killed and ate? You know, the one they found near the pig-transforming dungeon, who looked exactly like they did when they were turned into pigs?
This one.
Everything seems to indicate that the pig was another adventurer who just happened to be caught in the same trap, came out as a pig and was looking for help. That's why it was smiling when they found it. And just in case you think we are jumping to some conclusion here that isn't in the show, they actually explain the whole thing again during a little credits sequence. First we see a lone swordsman wandering around, minding his own business.
"Once I sell this magic sword, I'll have enough gold to keep the orphanage afloat!"
As he wanders off screen, he is treated to the same gaseous stink as before ...
... and emerges as the little piglet from the beginning of the episode. Scared and confused, he sees something coming toward him ...
Something with inexplicable vampiric teeth.
... which turns out to be our heroes, locked on to his sweet bacon aroma. They chase the poor little bastard back off screen and off to his horrible, terrible demise.
Level up! You get +4 cannibalism!
This is either a re-creation of what happened earlier in the episode or an extra scene showing what happens once the heroes get a taste for human flesh.
#4. The Moomins (Finland) -- The Moomins Are Visited by Death Incarnate
The only things kids under 5 demand out of their TV screens are pretty colors, catchy tunes and characters with annoyingly high-pitched voices. It's that simple. On all those counts, The Moomins pretty much delivers. The classic Finnish stop-motion show stars a race of wide-eyed mouthless semi-anthropomorphic hippos called Moomins.
A consequence of Finland's rampant genetic experimentation.
The colorful storybook valley the Moomins inhabit is populated by all sorts of friendly animals and cheerful children. Everything is happy and pleasant -- but then out of nowhere comes the Groke, and everything goes to shit.
This is what the Teletubbies needed.
The Groke is an almost indescribably terrifying creature that occasionally invades the show for no apparent reason. You never actually see the Groke move: It slips between the seconds, its gaze fixed on your soul, as it emits a low, horrid breathing sound, like a recording of death itself. The worst part? It kills everything it touches. In one episode, we see a butterfly approaching it ...
You know, Finland's famous cyclops butterfly.
... and instantly dropping dead just for breathing the same air.
Technically, the Groke prevented a hurricane in France. But fuck France.
The same happens to the plants and trees surrounding it. The butterfly comes back to life when the Groke leaves at the end of the episode, but we seriously doubt there was a single kid left watching by that point.
Every other character in the show is terrified of the Groke to the point of hysteria. Another episode shows the Moomins panicking and barricading themselves into their house because they know the Groke is coming that night. Desperate, Moominpappa runs to the attic and grabs a shotgun.
"The gun won't hurt it," said Snufkin. "I know," said Moominpappa, "it's for us."
The next morning, when they head out to investigate the spot in the garden where the Groke was, they find it dead and frozen, as if the warmth of a loving God just blew away like leaves in the wind. Then the narrator says, "Oh, what could they do? The terrible Groke would surely return" -- and then the credits roll. That's how the episode ends, with the lingering thought that it's still out there.
"I don't know who you should pray to, for our God shuns you for being so funny-looking."
It's never explained what the Groke is or where it comes from. It seems specifically designed to teach kids about the randomness and inevitability of death (which is apparently more important in Finland than learning the ABC's and shit like that).
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19768_6-terrifying-childrens-cartoons-from-around-world.html#ixzz2QnuFdS00
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