To all who’ve stumbled across this new community, welcome! To kick things off I wanted to elaborate a little on why I think there’s a need for a community specifically for older fans of animation and comics. It’s a long explanation and not required reading to participate here by any means, but for those who might have questions I hope this clears things up a bit.

Here are the four main issues I’ve encountered as an over-30 fan of animation and comics (especially when it comes to searching for new series to read/watch) that prompted the creation of this community:

1) Age-appropriateness (in reverse): Usually when people talk about whether media is “age-appropriate” they’re referring to if it’s something too mature for younger audiences. However this is actually a two-way street: sexual content involving younger characters (especially minors) that feels “fine” to watch as a teenager can feel skeevy and uncomfortable to watch when you’re significantly older than the characters in question. When I first got into anime as a straight teenage girl, I was quickly desensitized to “fan service” (aka sexualization of female characters, many of whom were minors): the panty shots and bouncing DD-boob close-ups present in so many series were neither titillating nor interesting to me, so I tuned them out. Even as I got older the presence of naked/partially dressed female minors didn’t bother me: after all I had seen my own body plenty of times, and the naked bodies of lots of other women young and old in changing rooms, bath houses (I used to live in Japan), etc. However I recognized this blind spot regarding (female) nudity in media after realizing my husband did not feel the same way: there were certain shows that I thought we enjoyed watching together that he would suddenly refuse to continue watching because, to paraphrase: “they keep showing the characters in their underwear; aren’t those girls supposed to be 14!? Of course I’m not going to be comfortable watching that.” Now it’s one thing to feature context-appropriate nudity: I think it’s excessively prudish to take offense at the bathing scene in My Neighbor Totoro for instance (the scene is realistic to Japanese culture, plot-relevant, and not the least bit sexual). But the oh-too-common anime trope of the onsen episode where the girls in the women’s bath are playfully fondling each other and commenting on each others’ chest sizes? That’s just gratuitous (and as a frequent onsen-goer I can confirm: straight-up fantasy).

2) Content of interest: People of different ages will of course be interested in different content. Just like I’d expect most 10-year-olds to be bored by both Teletubbies and by The West Wing (albeit for opposing reasons), I’d similarly expect most adults to be bored by the latest shonen action or high school romance series. Many times I’ve heard on the internet about a series that’s a “10/10 awesome, dark, philosophical masterpiece,” but when I check it out I’m completely underwhelmed by its I’m-14-and-this-is-deep content and wonder why the heck it came so highly rated… until I realize the person raving about it probably was 14 and did find it deep. A few years back I got a lot of crap for saying I liked The Legend of Korra better than Avatar the Last Airbender, until I explained that while yes, ATLA is objectively a better series, as an adult I wasn’t that interested in watching the ATLA cast deal with their pre-teen issues, and found the cast of Korra overall more relatable and the sub-plots more interesting (I still felt like I was watching a kid’s show, but at least it was an older kid’s show). Similarly there are a lot of great manga and graphic novels that completely fly under the radar because they don’t appeal to the average teen/young adult demographic. What 15-year-old wants to read about a 42-year-old office worker who quits his job to take over the family radish farm after his father suddenly passes away? (But I do! Seriously though for a traditionally agrarian society you’d think there would be more agriculture manga out there. Plenty of cooking manga though…)

3) Overexposure to tropes: Many westerners (myself included) got into anime and manga because it was different than what we were used to. Whether it was the art style, the premises or plots, the archetypes or settings, there was appeal in the inherent novelty of the medium. Similarly I’ve heard from folks in East Asia that they enjoy western media for the same reason: it’s different than what they grew up with. While this is perhaps less true nowadays—thanks in part to the exchange of cultures that has created cartoon-like anime, anime-like cartoons, and collaborations like Edgerunners and Scott Pilgrim—the core concept is the same: people find it interesting when a series does something they’ve never seen before. The reverse is perhaps even more true: generally audiences are going to be bored by media that feels overdone, trite, tropey, been-there-seen-that. “Marvel fatigue” and “isekai fatigue” are recent examples of this phenomenon (for me personally, it’s "you’d better swear on the life of your first-born that it’s an A+ genre-inverting masterpiece work before I check out yet another ‘I woke up as a noble from a novel I read with a vaguely 19th-century fantasy Europe setting’ webcomic recommendation). Alas there are only so many stories that can be told, and the older you get and the more media you’re exposed to the harder it becomes to find something that feels truly fresh and exciting. More and more as you age new series come out that in theory should be right up your alley… except you’ve already seen series just like it many times before. “Oh, so it’s basically X-Men,” “oh, so it’s basically Naruto,” “oh, so it’s basically Harry Potter,” “oh, so it’s basically Love Hina.” Maybe this déjà vu sensation isn’t so bad the first few times, but after a certain point the tropes become downright painful. To be clear, this phenomenon of recognizing similarities and repeating patterns in art isn’t always a bad thing: the “hero quest” is a well-trodden format for good reason, the montage is a convenient shorthand for a long period of activity condensed into a few moments, and what good is a parody if you’re not familiar with the material being lampooned? Genre-subversion too relies heavily on familiarity with an overdone concept: it’s the unique twist, the betrayal of expectations that makes the premise novel and interesting. Sometimes this novelty can even overcome the issue raised in point #2 above: “this looks like a series for kids/teens, but it appears that they’re exploring something new and different so I’ll check it out” (example: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse utilized a jaw-dropping art style, while also exploring a Spider-Man—actually numerous Spider-People!—beyond the standard Peter Parker). Unfortunately genre-subversion only really works the first time it’s done; going back to my previous example, “I’m reincarnated in a fantasy romance novel, but as the villain!?!1” has become even more of a trope than being reincarnated as the heroine.

4) Finding common ground across generations: This is a bit of a bonus purpose for creating this community. Maybe you, community visitor, are still young and squarely in the target demographic for most animation and comics, but you want to find series to recommend to older friends/family to either enjoy together or share your love of the medium. However since you’re not old and experienced enough to recognize what’s fresh and what’s overdone, what’s relevant to older audiences and what’s no longer relatable, or even what’s skeevy and age-inappropriate, identifying series that would be good to share is a bit of a crapshoot. I know when I was a teenager and getting into anime and manga I wanted to share my new passion with my family, but the adults almost always seemed bored or put-off by the stuff I showed them. Looking back now I totally get why my mom wasn’t interested in that ten-volume middle-school romance-drama manga I gave her to read, or why my dad didn’t seem impressed by the cool fight scenes in the hottest new shonen (he’d seen every action movie of the 80s, after all!). Hopefully this community can give younger visitors some hints as to what to share and what to avoid when crossing the generational boundary.

Put these four issues together, and I think there’s value in a “for older fans by older fans” animation and comics community on Lemmy. To be clear, this is not intended as an exercise in gatekeeping, hating on younger fans, or disparaging new media as lesser than the classics (let’s be real, a lot of what we grew up with was straight garbage). Rather, it’s about continuing to find entertainment and enjoyment in drawn and animated media at any age, and connecting with peers who are also part of what is essentially a niche subgroup of the larger fandom.

What do you all think: does this resonate with your experiences as an older fan? Are there other reasons that you think there’s value in a 30+ animation/comics community?