I keep being confounded by the way Japanese media treats age. 6-21 is prime adventuring age, you're practically done at 25 and afterwards you should just shuffle off to a retirement home

I think a lot of it is how Japan has a terrible work-life balance. Once you're in the workforce, you're supposed to be a good salaryman or OL lol.

In Japanese media you're either 12 or 200, no inbetween

The most reasonable explanation I've seen for at least part of that is that you get authors writing stories about adult characters and drawing them that way, except they're targeting the series at a teen demographic so they age them down and depending on setting maybe have them going to school instead of a job or something, leading to a weird compression that's oddly reminiscent of Hollywood casting aging actors in much younger roles. You get 14 year old characters drawn as 18 year olds, 18 year olds drawn as 20 somethings, 20 year olds drawn as 30 somethings, and 30 somethings drawn as ~60 year old Sean Bean playing a 35 year old in Game of Thrones.

The japanese always be doin' this shit

2-3 seasons ago one of my favorite slop animes was about an "old man" who became an adventurer. That old man? 33

I WAS 33

guy looks like a walking Turn A Gundam reference

Guile in the original Street Fighter II, according to early promo materials, was canonically supposed to be like 34 (born 1960), and was in the Vietnam War. I think all that glorious Nippon steel must just warp the flow of time over there or something.

Hey, at least Trails through Daybreak has an older JRPG main character. He's 24.

I do appreciate how the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series actually has older characters.

Yeah as I mentioned in the mega I'm real fuckin' tired of this bizarre mentality that you get out of high school, you get to be young for like 7 to 12 years, then the remaining 50ish years of your lifespan you're "old" and you have to feel bad about it. Like what happened to just being a grown-ass adult?

It ain't just Japan, it's a brainworm across the whole goddamn internet. It's sickening; it makes me sad for the people who genuinely feel this way about their own lives and it aggravates me when they spout this mentality because it feels like it's an assault on my own mindset (and what I thought was the normal, practical and healthy mindset) that aging is part of the experience of being alive, and that there are many benefits to becoming a more mature and enriched person as you encounter more that life has to offer. Personally I have become much more calm, much more capable of focusing, and much more willing to learn things as I have grown.

A) Getting older is the goal, it is (generally) something to be celebrated, not lamented.

B) When you're not even fucking 50 yet, and you're crying about being "old", people in their 60s/70s/80s/etc. will just straight up laugh in your face, because that shit is embarrassing. Cut it the fuck out.