I don’t hate teen superheroes. I grew up loving Spider-Man and Teen Titans, but I’m just tired of them. Comic characters never age, and every reboot resets them back to high school. Spider-Man’s been rebooted over a dozen times, yet he’s only been an adult in two animated shows. His best stories are when he’s in college or older, but studios keep him a teen to appeal to kids.
It’s not even just him — Ms. Marvel should be 28 by now, but she’s still 16. There’s no middle ground anymore. You’re either a teenage hero or in your 30s. What happened to heroes in their 20s?
This is even worse with anime! Back in the 90’s anime had men and women doing awesome shit. There was sex and violence. There were characters I could relate to.
Now it’s all teens. Spineless boys who piss themselves at the sight of a female. Everything is PG. No badasses or relatable characters (unless you’re 12 I guess).
I love the medium but I hate that 95% of the time the target audience is children.
Can you suggest some 90s anime with sex and violence?
Cowboy Bebop and the Ghost in the Shell movies are great places to start.
Anyway, it’s not so much a change in what’s being produced as what’s being imported to the US. There was a good mix of shonen and seinen at first, but shonen sells more merch so we get a lot of it now. Just watch stuff tagged as seinen if you want more mature themes or more sex and gore.
Wolverines comics had some awesome brutal fights
Ah yes, the famous anime character, Wolverine
Oh yes, I miss mature characters in modern animes. I’m so tired of stupid Lolis 😭
80’s anime had believable characters that didn’t all look like they were 10-12 years old. Cyber City Oedo, Robot Carnival, Patlabor…great stuff.
Tbh I never got Anime or Mangas at all. So over the top and weird. The opposite of relatable, always