In the animation industry, a feature-length film with a science fiction storyline has traditionally been the province of the Eastern studios. Western studios tend to associate animated films with a children's market, and focus on fantasy as the main storytelling genre, using fantasy-related storylines. This trend at Disney began with their very first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), not originally envisioned as a film for children but classified as such in later years due to its subject matter and medium.

In our North American society, fantasy (whatever the medium) tends to be marginalised and dismissed as escapism, or nostalgia for childhood fairy tales. By contrast, science fiction, while still marginalised, is perceived as a more adult genre, somewhat validated by the use of science as the key point around which the plot is constructed.

This perception of the two genres is supported within the North American animation industry: the majority of full length animated features are based in fairy tale and overwhelmingly oriented towards children. These films may be retellings of well-known fairy tales, adaptations of children's' books, or involve elements that our society associates with childish imagination, such as talking animals.

By contrast, over the past twenty years the Western film industry has seen an influx of animé from the East, aware of, and willing to cater to, an adolescent and adult audience. These serial stories or animated feature films also display a markedly different mode of storytelling: including science fiction. Plots revolve around mythology, giant robots, technology, and different planets. When released to a North American market, viewers assume that due to the medium of animation, these serials and films must be for children. The truth, however, is that animé as a category acknowledges an adult audience, and is accepted as a more adult art form than mainstream North American animation. Much of animé uses science fiction elements, even within a fantasy setting, and the best-known cult films and series tend to be adult stories (i.e., Bubblegum Crisis, Macross, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion).

Far from being mainstream in North America, animé remains the province of devoted animation fans and critics. However, a certain characteristic of animé appears to have finally surfaced in the largest animation presence in North America. Disney has finally adopted science fiction as the genre through which to tell both of its feature animated films of 2002: Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch.

Lilo & Stitch represents a completely unique Disney product. Never before has Disney used science fiction as a genre to launch a major animated feature film for children. Even more uniquely, the choice to aim a science fiction film at a young audience creates a startling new challenge to the North American belief that cartoons are for kids and that science fiction is a more adult storytelling method than fantasy. (The Review Board, evidently aware of this, slapped a "Parental Guidance suggested - Some Action May Not Be Suitable For Children - For Mild Sci-Fi Action" on the film.)

Disney's decision to accept and employ this mode of storytelling -- and succeeding wildly at it -- represents a significant acceptance as a valid storytelling genre within the North American animation industry. In addition to this statement of acceptance, by choosing to endorse a science fiction story Disney has transcended the fairy-tale/fantasy box within which it has comfortably operated for over sixty years. Expanding beyond those known environs has been rewarding for the studio, the audience, and the animation industry. In essence, Lilo & Stitch uses a form of storytelling associated with adults and, instead of lowering science fiction to the level of children, raises the Western animated film beyond something dismissed as for the young only.

Does this partially explain its success? Like other genres, science fiction explores the Other (or the Alien, if you will, in the instance of science fiction) in relation to the Known. The concept of Alien immediately conjures up visions of other planets and other species, with clashes between them and our own culture. Lilo and Stitch creators Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders go one step further by setting the story in Hawaii, an equally alien place for most of North America. It is certainly unlike any other setting Disney has chosen to use over the past eighty years of feature films. Sanders and DeBlois craftily set Stitch, an alien, into an environment unfamiliar to the majority of the audience beyond the stereotypical vacation destination.

The idea of science fiction is so fresh and new for Disney that it resonates on several levels. While science fiction may be seen as the province of the adult and fantasy the realm of the child, the choice to use the more adult genre to tell a story for children raises the standard of animated storytelling for North America. With Lilo & Stitch Disney explores a mode outside its tried and true successes, inspired perhaps by the ever-increasing presence of animation being produced in Eastern studios for adolescent and adult audiences with science fiction themes.

If it was a chance, it was well worth that risk. In Lilo & Stitch Disney explores new ground with resounding success valuable for the entire North American animation industry.