Shinobinokage wrote:ok my mom thought of good question: " Are any of thes anime shows going to teach good morals w/out slipping in little lies of their own?)
That is the question... Japan is a shinto and buddhist society. Many of the Buddhist values mirror Christian values, but some are a bit off and some are even diametrically opposed. Any anime made for people older than 7 will likely delve into philosophy, and as a result, ideas that are definately not compatible with Christianity. Many of these end in question marks rather than periods, but that is not always the case. Personally, I think that for children unable to decypher these messages themselves, parents should watch with their kids and discuss these things. Don't let something "sneak in" but instead present it along side the truth, with clear distinctions.
Frankly, the situation in American TV isn't any better. Even in children's shows, philosophies are being presented with exclamation points and I think that these are even more dangerous because the kids are saturated in the ones that are more popular to the American culture (or Canadian or Brittish or Aussie or Kiwi)
As for clean, Grave of the Fireflies has some blood and dead bodies, but it's very clean otherwise. Very slow and sad, but clean... It's also an incredible story that is based on the life of the author though some major facts were changed (for one, the opening didn't happen... He obviously didn't physically die...) perhaps for the sake of symbolism, which it is filled with. I didn't see it pushing any philosophies. It is used by anti-war people a lot, but it doesn't try to push pacifism, but rather shows the realities of what happened, at least concerning those two children. I try to show this movie to everyone I know.
Other than that, most Ghibli films are clean, but they also contain Japanese mythology. Spirits and gods and demons*... If you can view it as what it is, which is pure fantasy (especially considering the creator of most of them, Miyazaki, doesn't believe in those things... He's actually atheistic, but doesn't proactively push that either...) then that should be fine. There are good things carried with the fantasy.
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi aka
Spirited Away has a great message about greed, for instance.
* By the way, don't want to get into it, but the words translated as "Demon" in Japanese don't mean the spiritual beings that we call demons, but actually are extraordinary animals and anthropomorphic things that generally antagonize humans in the mythology... Think of "monster" instead of "demon"