Response to Ask John Article

The following is a very informative response to the Ask John column of October 24th, dealing with the question of why adolescent characters are so commonly used as protagonists in anime.

You mentioned that shows like Gundam Wing, Eva, and Lain seem to have strangely young characters, even though the person who wrote the letter felt that these shows are meant for an “adult” audience. Well frankly, and I know it may shock some americans to hear this, those mentioned shows were meant for an audience of junior-high and high-school students. They weren’t meant specifically for “adults,” and with shows like GW, adults weren’t even the target age group. GW is a show meant for boys (as opposed to men, that is). I’m not saying adults/females don’t like things like that (we do!) but it wasn’t aimed at us. The reason I think it may shock Americans is because there are things in some of those shows that we in the USA would assume were meant for a much older audience than the Japanese intended it for. Magazines like Sho-Comi (which ran Fushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres, and Kaikan Phrase, 3 sex-and-nudity-filled titles) are intended for girls in junior-high and high-school. Ribbon magazine, which just finished running “Partner” (which was all about cloning and artificial life and disturbing stuff like that, and in which about half the character died) is intended for elementary and JH-age girls. Many American parents wouldn’t let their 12-year-old see a show like “Detective Conan” which is full of murder, suicide, and even the first episode has a (not-very-gory) beheading, but it was a show aimed at kids in Japan. So a reason anime characters are young is because the target audience also tends to be young. This is not always true, but if you look at magazines like Afternoon, which is meant for HS and college-age guys, it runs things like Oh My Goddess and Blade of the Immortal where most of the characters are in their late teens or 20s. The anime and manga industry does target toward its intended viewer/reader age group.

Article provided by Kris Wolf