European Comics and Animation

I was incredibly drawn to the idea of caricature in French animation especially. The Triplets of Belleville being among the most visually stunning movies that I've been exposed to in quite a long time. What French animation seems to do, which I've also seen in the Little Prince, was an absence of fear when designing characters. There was no set design, there are no two characters that look entirely alike. The idea of pushing a character to the extremes of their visual appearances and allowing those ideas and actions to speak for themselves. There was no trepidation in allowing the artists and designers to fully express their stories through all aspects of the animated medium. While the Little Prince is heavy with dialogue The Triplets of Belleville really struck me as a story anyone could grasp easily. Not only due to the caricature but the fact that it was for the most part an entirely silent feature. A person across the world who's never even heard of France could see this and understand it as perfectly as a born and raised Parisian. The way that comics and film can transcend geographic, cultural, and lingual barriers astounds me.
The stories that we tell as humans are universal ones. No matter age, ethnicity, location, or language, our stories are our own and they are human ones, and all people should have access to these ideas and works of art. The concept of a company or group of people having dominion or control over these stories and essentially childhood is detrimental to the growth and production of these mediums, and in my opinion to the development of humans themselves. Everyone has a story, and everyone should have the chance to tell their story in whatever way they believe will best represent themselves and their vision.