Jetpunk...?

If you can hand-wave away nuclear bombs, you could have a variety of “Porco Roso” gangs flying jets. Gangs could be a variety of crime syndicates, free-lance smugglers, religious fanatics, political fanatics, racist fanatics, private security companies, sherrifs’ posses, etc. fighting turf wars or defending porous borders. Keeping formal gov’ts in the - distant - background allows more flexible plots.
...... more of a 1950s vintage Bill Barnes “Air Trails” pulp fiction. Bonus points if you can show the humorous side of smuggling.
 
Okay, "The Iron Giant" is a great flick, and it's definitely in the right timeline...but it's still aimed at kids.
The two suggestions so far have been sooooo close, but with at least one insurmountable deal-breaker.

I strongly suspect that what I'm looking for really doesn't exist, that if it's going to exist, I'm gonna have to be the one to make it.
I hope someone else has made the same point, but being aimed at kids isnt really something that makes something not serious. A lot of childrens entertainment is handling serious topics so much better than adult entertainment that adult entertainment has branched into its realms. Think Bojack Horseman, which is a weirdly amazing insight into the habits that form a cycle of self destruction and the desperation of trying to find something to fill the void that will never come. Its no suprise that it features characters who are anthropomorphic, ex children entertainers and who have names like "princess buttercup".

To give an idea of child specific entertainment, stuff like Song of the Sea is an incredible love story to Irish mythology, UP conveys true love in 5 minutes in a way so potent that I cant think of an adult film that gets close, or Coraline which is way more terrifying than commercial horror of the last decade and gets extra layers when you have kids of your own (particularly when you see yourself as an overly tired goofball who loves his family and have to watch your audience stand in with button eyes melt), or Over the Garden Wall which is some of the best gothic literature in recent years. Even political issues are often way more deep in childrens media, like how "When the wind blows" makes grandparents so universal that the horror of Nuclear war is relatable to children.
 
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