Forum - View topicAnime with mature main characters (around or over the age of 40)
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1803 Location: South America |
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While there is a huge variety of genres of anime, it's true that most of the time the main characters are teenagers or, at most young adults. Rarely we see protagonist characters well over the age of 30.
There are of course many shows featuring characters that are chronologically or mentally older than young adults, but typically these characters have been reincarnated into a young or inmortal body (like those isekai like Tanya, or Jobless Reincarnation, or Slime, or "I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level" where the main character is over 300 but she supposedly looks 17). What I am talking about are anime where the main characters are actually around or over 40 and those are quite rare: There are famous exceptions like Porco Rosso, Monster, Hyouge Mono. But those are quite rare among the many anime I watched. In adult manga older characters are more common, but those are not often adapted into anime. |
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gsilver
Posts: 657 |
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Hiroshi Odokawa, the lead of one of my favorite anime in recent years, Odd Taxi, is 41.
...I'm having difficulty finding more examples. Duke Togo from Golgo 13 seems fairly mature, even if his age is officially unknown. |
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Andy26
 Posts: 68 Location: Flippin Arkansas |
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The Great Passage is a good one that follows a man from early in his career through adulthood in his quest to create a new dictionary.
Not your typical anime in comparison to the more popular ones but it was a very enjoyable series. I suppose there wouldn't be many Anime featuring older characters because when we get old like I am then we stop doing cool stuff, at least stuff that's cool to anyone else - I still have fun! |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3988 Location: New York state. |
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Only main character coming to mind over 40 besides Orokawa is the titular character of Inuyashiki, Hiroshi Inuyashiki, being 58. Can think of some characters in their 30s being in the lead role. But gets far more challenging with anyone crossing into the 40s and beyond in terms of physical age.
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1803 Location: South America |
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In After the Rain from 2018 one of the main characters is a divorced father, Masami Kondou. Another rare example.
From the stuff I watched, taking a sample of 40 shows from 2018 I watched (2018 is the year I have the most watched anime in my list, I watched nearly 70 anime shows, a bit less than half of the series Japan produced that year) the distribution of main characters by age is: 6% - non-human (AI, demon, etc) 1% - children 12 or younger 63% - teenager 13-18 years old 29% - young adult 19-39 years old 1.25% - mature adult 40 years old and over (that is, Masami Kondou from After the Rain, the only mature main character out of 40 shows) Taking a show with 2 main characters, I gave half of the percentage weight of the show's main characters to the age of each. So Masami Kondou had 1.25% of the "main character weight." Since I don't watch anime aimed at small kids, its rare for me to see an anime with main character 12 or younger (typically in those cases are moe characters like Nanoha or doctor Hakase from Nishijou, although these kinds of characters are not really common, most moe characters are cute but typically teenagers like Yui from K-On! is 15-17). |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6602 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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One that comes to my mind is Millennium Actress. While there are plenty of flashbacks, the story is told from the point of view of a middle-aged documentary maker and lifelong fanboy filming a feature about a retired actress close to death.
The main character, Eighth Generation Yakumo Yurakutei, from the Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju franchise is, for much of the series, an elderly performer. |
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Cam0
 Posts: 4937 |
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Sasaki and Peeps has a middle aged main character. It's in some part isekai, but the main character isn't reincarnated or anything and in fact travels back and forth between our world and the fantasy world. A quick google says that Sasaki, the main character, is 39. Sasaki has a very "humble, experienced Japanese salaryman" attitude to everything he does. Unfortunately though Sasaki and Peeps is wholly unworthy of anyone's time and only the most fervent fans of light novel adaptions could enjoy it.
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Errinundra
Moderator
Posts: 6602 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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I went through My Anime and found some others.
The protagonist of Pluto, Gesicht, is a spoiler[robot] but he appears and acts as a middle-aged man. Goto, who shares top billing with Izumi and Shinohara in the Patlabor franchise (and in some instances is more important), fits the bill. Two of the three protagonists of Tokyo Godfathers are middle-aged (or older perhaps). Zipang definitely fits the bill. For similar reasons Decision also fits. Both depict military commanders, so they are necessarily older. (I've provided a link to the latter as people mightn't have heard of it.) And how old is Lupin III? Or Jigen? Or Zenigata? |
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GNPixie
Posts: 327 |
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Zone of the Enders Dolores, i has James who's not only an older protagnist (he's 49 according to the Wiki), he's got two kids. A huge part of the show is him reconnecting with his kids since they're all estranged.
You don't have to watch 2167: Idolo but I would reccomend it before anyway since it shows what happens with James's wife in retrospect but spoiler[Radium] also becomes relevant later on in Dolores, i. Plus if you get interested in the video game side of things, spoiler[Idolo helps recontextulize Viola in the first game too.] |
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gsilver
Posts: 657 |
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Another one is Atashin'chi
The mom character gets top billing in ll the advertisements and probably more screen time than the other characters, and she's 45. |
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RupanSansei
 Posts: 168 |
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The Laughing Salesman. Only the remake is legally watchable but it has a hilarious history considering it was created by one of the co-creators of Doraemon but unlike Doraemon which is for kids The Laughing Salesman is quite the opposite.
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