From anxiety to well-being: openings and endings of children's films from Japan and South Korea

In a common narrative trajectory, the protagonists of children’s films transition from a state of anxiety at the beginning to an often fragile possibility of well-being at the close. Using script theory, Lee and Stephens propose an anxiety script which manifesting as anger, fear, despair, sadness, confusion, and feelings of helplessness and hurt is employed as a catalyst for character behavior because it is an overarching and familiar experience from which young audiences can infer a more specific emotion or state. At a film’s close, well-being is apt to be framed by a eudemonic script grounded in first-order values such as positive relations, desire, contentment, growth, confidence, self-realization, and relatedness. The trajectory is explored in four films, two each from Japan and South Korea.