jenlog:

i think one reason (of many) that anime appealed to me in my early teens was that it felt like it was being marketed to me. not sure to what degree this is true, but a lot of western animation gave me the vibe that it was being marketed to my parents as something that would be “appropriate” for me to watch

Yeah it’s not like fucking shonen isn’t packed with like, Prosocial Messages and Themes About Growing Up either, it’s just "viewer stand-in has an epic adventure where he’s terribly important to everything and gets some chicks" was far more satisfying than “viewer stand-in navigates some social situation like he’s Supposed To and somehow everything breaks in his favor for that to work out, tune in next week for a completely different version of the same thing”