Why do people care so much about demographics?

Because they want to enjoy the fanservice of them guilt free.

Because knowing if you’re selling glitter lip gloss to precure or treats to tanuki kinda matters.

Because... if youre past your college, 25+ years old or whatever... watching middleschoolers flirt awkwardly for 24 ep is highkey weird.

Now, that only applies to romance animes for the most part. Me and my homie were watching azumanga daioh the other night, a show which i dont plan to ever get too old for. If it's fantasy, or sci-fi or whatever the fck genre azumanga daioh is, then go for it. I just think that if you are some dude in your late 20s, it makes sense to want to see a romance anime with working adults, or at least uni students, rather than middleschoolers is very sensible. Its much more relatable, and I sure hope that if youre 30 years old you dont watch highschoolers smooch in your free time.

Also, people that wont watch a show just because its mostly female characters are most likely straight up close minded or probably just sexist.

But yeah as i transition into my college years im praying that college romance anime springs up. I wont block out animes just because they feature young girl characters, but i dont plan on watching middle school romance anime, because thatd be some creep shi.

I mean, that just begs the questions: Who said that? Weird according to who? Why is being weird bad? etc

OK, once again: Why does it make sense?

Dude, you're a forum about the discussion of cartoons.

For a moment I thought this topic would be something like "why do boys get confuse when a Shounen manga with romance is not Shoujo" ) example: ppl thinking Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku is shoujo when it's not. Or thinking that Tomie and Donten ni Warau is shounen or seinen when it's shoujo....

For a moment I thought this topic would be something like "why do boys get confuse when a Shounen manga with romance is not Shoujo" ) example: ppl thinking Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku is shoujo when it's not. Or thinking that Tomie and Donten ni Warau is shounen or seinen when it's shoujo....

@thewiru Fair point. I will elaborate more on what i mean by stuff being "weird". Theres nothing wrong with being weird. In fact, i think that everyone ever is weird, but thats a whole other topic.

What i mean by this is that if you are 30 years old, and you spend your time watching 15 year olds flirt awkwardly, instead of adults flirting, it suggests that you find the former more enticing than the latter! There is a word that i might associate with this, however its probably against mal policies to say it outright id assume

Also, a lot of animes with characters that are not 18+ still have fanservice. I sure damn hope that people well into their adulthood DO NOT want to watch that!

Because... if youre past your college, 25+ years old or whatever... watching middleschoolers flirt awkwardly for 24 ep is highkey weird.

Now, that only applies to romance animes for the most part. Me and my homie were watching azumanga daioh the other night, a show which i dont plan to ever get too old for. If it's fantasy, or sci-fi or whatever the fck genre azumanga daioh is, then go for it. I just think that if you are some dude in your late 20s, it makes sense to want to see a romance anime with working adults, or at least uni students, rather than middleschoolers is very sensible. Its much more relatable, and I sure hope that if youre 30 years old you dont watch highschoolers smooch in your free time.

Also, people that wont watch a show just because its mostly female characters are most likely straight up close minded or probably just sexist.

But yeah as i transition into my college years im praying that college romance anime springs up. I wont block out animes just because they feature young girl characters, but i dont plan on watching middle school romance anime, because thatd be some creep shi.

I'm sorry, are you implying that watching teen rom-coms makes you a pedo?

For a moment I thought this topic would be something like "why do boys get confuse when a Shounen manga with romance is not Shoujo" ) example: ppl thinking Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku is shoujo when it's not. Or thinking that Tomie and Donten ni Warau is shounen or seinen when it's shoujo....

@LuxuriousHeart

>Because they want to enjoy the fanservice of them guilt free.

I'm sorry, are you implying that watching teen rom-coms makes you a pedo?

@krautnelson This is what every normgroid thinks and believes btw

Because... if youre past your college, 25+ years old or whatever... watching middleschoolers flirt awkwardly for 24 ep is highkey weird.

Now, that only applies to romance animes for the most part. Me and my homie were watching azumanga daioh the other night, a show which i dont plan to ever get too old for. If it's fantasy, or sci-fi or whatever the fck genre azumanga daioh is, then go for it. I just think that if you are some dude in your late 20s, it makes sense to want to see a romance anime with working adults, or at least uni students, rather than middleschoolers is very sensible. Its much more relatable, and I sure hope that if youre 30 years old you dont watch highschoolers smooch in your free time.

Also, people that wont watch a show just because its mostly female characters are most likely straight up close minded or probably just sexist.

But yeah as i transition into my college years im praying that college romance anime springs up. I wont block out animes just because they feature young girl characters, but i dont plan on watching middle school romance anime, because thatd be some creep shi.

@krautnelson thats exactly what he's implying.

The lib-woke puritans are fuckin' relentless with their efforts to stick their morals and ideals up everyones collective ass.

May they succeed, but only with particularly hairy, unwiped, and rancid buttholes equipped with mouse traps, so after insertion they are stuck there forever where they belong, away from societey

@seweholmes lol, world Shoujo is just short version of phrase "the main target audience of this anime is teenagers girls".

It's anime, so at where magazine it manga was published is absolutely irrelevant))

So, Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku is at 100% shoujo))

@thewiru Fair point. I will elaborate more on what i mean by stuff being "weird". Theres nothing wrong with being weird. In fact, i think that everyone ever is weird, but thats a whole other topic.

What i mean by this is that if you are 30 years old, and you spend your time watching 15 year olds flirt awkwardly, instead of adults flirting, it suggests that you find the former more enticing than the latter! There is a word that i might associate with this, however its probably against mal policies to say it outright id assume

Also, a lot of animes with characters that are not 18+ still have fanservice. I sure damn hope that people well into their adulthood DO NOT want to watch that!

@BirdyTheMighty i cant tell which one of us youre labeling that lol. I would think not me, since my take is more conservative than his, however i have recieved quite a bit of negative responses to my comments on this thread so im unsure ngl.

either way, yes i am liberal, and yes i fucking hate the pedo freaks that ruin the anime community

Because I like TnA, violence, and crude humor. All 3 are found in seinen/shounen. I also am not one for pretty boy slop, drama, or yaoi often found in shoujo.
Men and women naturally have different senses of humor as well. Fruits Basket is where I realized demographic info is vital. I disliked that anime a lot. Author sex often says a lot about what to expect in a work. Even if the synopsis of 2 anime remain the same, the core aspects are vitally different.

Kind of like how men and women have a huge political divide.

@krautnelson thats exactly what he's implying.

The lib-woke puritans are fuckin' relentless with their efforts to stick their morals and ideals up everyones collective ass.

May they succeed, but only with particularly hairy, unwiped, and rancid buttholes equipped with mouse traps, so after insertion they are stuck there forever where they belong, away from societey

@BirdyTheMighty i cant tell which one of us youre labeling that lol. I would think not me, since my take is more conservative than his, however i have recieved quite a bit of negative responses to my comments on this thread so im unsure ngl.

either way, yes i am liberal, and yes i fucking hate the pedo freaks that ruin the anime community

@MYZIC tf does that even mean bruh. also you have are over 18 and have little girls panties posted largely on your profile. guess i shoulda known from your pfp. but yeah you are a pedo, thats literally you bruh. youre the reason teen romcom fans have to worry about getting labeled that lol

and no thats a bit of a simplification of what i meant. more specifically, if you are connecting more in a romatic and emotional way to teens flirting that adults, thats kind of a red flag yk. if you fw bocchi the rock, thats chill. if you fw teen fan service, thats not chill. see what im getting at?

ah yes, because conservatives would never do that.

What's funny to me is that people in social media seem to care so much about demographics yet they only watch whatever is popular because it is actually a highly marketed Shonen Jump manga (which means that they just fell to good publicity from a big company) and because of Shueisha's policies no shonen protagonist can be older than 19 years old.

There's actually a huge amount of stories in anime and manga aimed at other demographics, but these people don't care since they just want to bandwagon on the next popular shonen and have reasons to complain about it. To this point I just ignore any talk about demographics because of that.

Is there a source for that? I'm pretty sure that are many shounen protagonists older than 19.

@thewiru I'll see if I can get you the source but it was some interview I read long ago that they did to Eiichiro Oda. When talking about how he chose to make a two-year timeskip over a longer gap of time for One Piece, he answered that Luffy would have been 20+ if he had made a longer timeskip, and that Shueisha had just implemented a policy at the time that forbid any of their shonen MC getting past the 15-19 age range during the course of the story.

@thewiru But that's a valid reason. There are definitely some people who don't mind fanservice but draw the line at sexualising underage characters. I don't know why you would dismiss it like that.



This 'peer approval' does not go away once you graduate from school. While its influence might fade with age, it isn't completly gone. How much you are affected by it depends on your maturity and self confidence.



A show featuring characters in a similiar age range/life situation does not require additional work for the audience to relate to them. In a day and age where we are oversaturated with content many people engage with media more casually not everyone is willing to put in a little bit of extra work like reading subtitles or trying to relate to characters of different circumstances.
This way some anime might be quickly dismissed for featuring seemingly unrelateable or unrealistic characters.

@thewiru I'll see if I can get you the source but it was some interview I read long ago that they did to Eiichiro Oda. When talking about how he chose to make a two-year timeskip over a longer gap of time for One Piece, he answered that Luffy would have been 20+ if he had made a longer timeskip, and that Shueisha had just implemented a policy at the time that forbid any of their shonen MC getting past the 15-19 age range during the course of the story.

It’s a tired take masquerading as something profound. Sure, imagination and abstraction are fine, but let’s stop pretending that asking, “Why not college instead of high school?” is some kind of empathy failure.

People aren’t sick of school settings because they can’t “relate to teenage protagonists” or lack imagination. They’re sick of them because we’ve been spoon-fed the same recycled classroom clichés, festival arcs, pool episodes, and accidental panty shots from bratty teenagers for decades. At some point, it stops being nostalgic and just feels like the film "Groundhog Day" with homework.

Same reason people started dunking on 'Ecchi' and fanservice in seasonal anime around the mid 2010s. Not because everyone suddenly turned into moral puritans, but because they realized they were watching the exact same slow, “oops, I tripped and exposed my panties” scene for the hundredth goddamn time. The irony? That kind of shit has been part of this medium longer than most User have been alive. They just didn’t notice until it got stale to them.

And let’s not pretend there’s no elephant in the room. From a Western POV (especially online), Users do start side-eyeing when teenage characters are constantly sexualized in ways clearly aimed at grown-ass men. So when someone says, “Why not just make them college-aged?” it’s usually not a crusade. It’s code for, “Maybe this wouldn’t feel so weird to watch if it was a fictional adult woman in panties instead of some 14-year-old brat”, “Maybe we’d get themes beyond crushes and lunchboxes”, “Maybe, just maybe, I’m tired of watching the same damn anime from 2012 in a new wrapper with different bangs and a new Seiyuu”.

This isn’t about tribalism. It’s not a lack of empathy. It’s burnout. It’s creative fatigue. Even I skip a lot of modern titles that cling to high school like a security blanket, yet I’ll still rewatch shit I own on DVDs of older series with the same setting, mostly because they are tied to my own personal nostalgia and at least they didn’t dominate the whole damn lineup back then.

Yes, a great story can transcend its setting. And yes, enjoying media outside your demo is a good thing. But acting like “I’m tired of this setting” equals “You lack empathy” is peak galaxy-brain nonsense. It feels like a knee-jerk defense of the status quo, as if questioning the sacred high school setting is some form of blasphemy.

And let’s be real, Japan’s population is aging faster than their most overworked VAs. Yet the anime industry still clings to the high school fantasy like it’s the last thing keeping them alive. Curry rice, every day, forever, and you’re expected to smile and say it smells fresh, even when it hits your nose like a steaming dump in a cramped public toilet. lol