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I played Link's Awakening with my wife and daughter. My wife was taken back at the ending (surprised, not disliking). I think she basically just assumed the whole time that it wouldn't end with everyone on Koholint basically dying, or vanishing from existence.
This got me thinking about how I played this, or watched my brother play it, when I was the same age as my daughter. None of the media she consumes challenges her with difficult endings. Everything HAS to return to the status quo at the end, because we can't risk anyone being unhappy. In Frozen, Anna is unfrozen. In Moana, even Maui gets his fucking hook back after it breaks. Fake out deaths and fake out status quo changes happen left and right, but it is really rare to see something that actually sticks.
I love downer endings, and I think it made me who I am. It makes me sad and disappointed and a little disgusted to see basically all of the media of my kids' day be bland and not challenging them to really feel something other than a vague blandly happy dance party ending. Dance party endings aren't new, but have been made ubiquitous in the past 20 years. Same with fake out deaths, and I blame Marvel for that. I guess I personally chalk this all up to the general trend towards never making anyone uncomfortable, which is tied in with the corporatization of media and corporate-memphization of media.
I'd recommend more anime, then. #NotJoking
Back when the internet was making anime more accessible and known, one of the things I recall about the discourse of Japanese vs American cartoons was the quote-unquote 'maturity potential' of the media. A lot of Japanese anime is as sacharine as anything American, but there's also a lot more willingness to engage in darker themes and imperfect happy endings.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann infamously killed it's not-really-decoy protagonist a quarter of the way in, and ends with the savior of everything living alone as a widower with none of the glory of a hero. The Gundam series somewhat more famously was able to sneak a war drama into a toy advertisement because the executives didn't care, and 'Kill 'em all Tomino' went on to earn his moniker. The original Digimon ended with the children protagonists having to separate from their platonic life monsters after an almost seven-stages-of-grief. Full Metal Alchemist has an optimistic ending, but only after some real costs.
These aren't even the sort of genres or tragedies intended to make you miserable. The above are fairly optimistic, even triumphant, finales.
Oh, i definitely plan to show her lots of anime. But the ones I know are mostly for teenagers. FMA, Cowboy Bebop, The Big O, Trigun, Evangelion. Probably Avatar The Last Airbender is something I can show her when she's just a little older.
Ah, younger child?
In that case, I would actually recommend Digimon, series 1 and 3 in particular. If she can accept the dated animation style and the call-out-your-attacks monster battle format, there's a surprisingly deep childhood development story (or several) in there, with aspects for both boys and girls. Even if monster media are typically boy-coded, in contrast to pokemon the digimon companions are all fully-thinking characters in their own right who serve as foils for their child, both as a mix of easy best friend but also someone who gives them the push they need outside of their comfort zone. One of the conceits of the franchise is basically that maturity begets power. So the general format of an episode is that the focus human child is grappling with some flaw/fear/insecurity, overcomes it with the help of their companion, and emerges a marginally better child... but with much growing to go, and sometimes entire character arcs struggling with an issue, because these are 50-60 episode series.
The first Digimon series, Digimon Adventure, is basically a sort of Narnia-isekai where a bunch of kids at a summer camp find themselves in a mysterious new world with no adults to rely on. So they have to band together, figure out how to survive while trying to find a way back home, overcome interpersonal tensions to become friends who recognize eachother's strengths, and overcome their own weaknesses to become fully actualized. Along the way they stumble into / realize they are part of a much larger meta-plot, which forces them to face different sorts of malevolent forces that would harm / manipulate / exploit them, even as they make their own mistakes, forcing even greater maturity.
The third Digimon series, Digimon Tamers, is urban fantasy secret pet genre, but also an early 2000s AI allegory story. The kids are in 'real' Japan where digimon are 'just' children's media, but then the 'main' viewpoint character finds his partner, who was just born and has the mentality of a child, and has to keep it a secret from his family while starting to counter the digimon starting to emerge into the real world. A smaller core cast lets there be a bit more focus onto them, with greater themes of growing into maturity and responsibility but also forgiveness and redemption. Compared to the previous two, it delves more into the 'alien mindset' of not just monsters-from-another-world, but AI in particular who have various degrees of caring about humans across the spectrum.
Am I claiming it's a marvel of writing you'll love? Probably not. But it might be something you could tolerably appreciate while a child looks at the pretty colors or flashy monsters, and they might get a good moral or two out of it.
Adventure is also helped by having a really nice score.
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