I've posted about this before but it continues to fascinate me. I'm also not talking about the more obviously fucked up topic of the sexualising of teenage girls in Japanese media, but what constitutes an "older" person over there.
I'm currently watching the Netflix adaptation of One Piece, and saw some Japanese discussion about the show's portrayal of Shanks and the actor playing him, who looks like this on the show:
There were comments saying that he "looks too much like a man past his prime" but also comments like "I like seeing attractive older men in media" and I'm just confused since he looks like a perfectly normal handsome actor man. They talked about him like Western social media talked about a 65-year-old Jeff Goldblum
I guess you turn into an ossan immediately after your 25th birthday
You could even say Japanese people are being more egalitarian- while Hollywood has a long tradition of more uhh... seasoned male actors being celebrated as sex symbols and silver foxes, the same treatment is very much not extended to female actors. (Also just look at the relative age between someone like Tom Cruise and the actors playing his love interests across his career)
I also wasn't trying to say WEST GOOD JAPAN BAD, despite how my post may have come across- it's just interesting to see different cultural standards in practice.
Like watching playthroughs of the Red Dead Redemption games and comparing how Japanese and Western commenters view the main characters.
Westerners think Arthur Morgan and John Marston are just BADASS COWBOYS or HOT DADDIES or whatever whereas Japanese people often qualify their statements more, saying they're pretty cool... for older guys
Pretty wild considering most of the spaghetti westerns are based on Japanese rōnins.