I would probably mention these first and foremost, excluding ones already mentioned:
Sakura Quest — basically about this woman accidentally getting roped into a small town's tourism micronation gimmick. This one's the GOAT honestly. Super strong recommendation from me.
Barakamon — about a calligrapher who gets exiled to a small island. Really relaxing vibes. One of my favorites.
Cells At Work — it's like Once Upon a Time... Life, except way better. It's also like Osmosis Jones except better, because apparently personifying the cells of the human body is not actually a particularly unique idea. Anyways, point is that 9/10 doctors recommend Cells At Work. It's great.
Lupin III — super long-running series about the grandson of the famous master thief Arsène Lupin. Part II is the most classic and has a great dub. It's episodic and fairly formulaic so you can jump in at any point.
Aggretsuko — Netflix x Sanrio furry office comedy-drama basically, where the main character basically has this death metal persona. It's a lot of fun.
Library War — takes place in an alternate timeline where local governments in Japan have established basically militias tasked with protecting libraries from raids conducted by the central government trying to ban books.
I could go on, but I think that's a good amount of very safe choices, though I don't know how many of these would be considered to be "popular" as such. You can of course also use something like Anilist to find anime with the tag "primarily adult cast" and sort by popularity, but I dunno how reliable that is, like if it includes or excludes things it shouldn't.
Spy x Family is extremely popular and is centered on adults, and all the children that are in the series aren't sexualised in any capacity. Refreshing tbh
Thanks! I don't mind the presence of children characters, but I don't feel comfortable with the sexualization of children, and prefer narratives with adult protagonists.
An important exception to this is like the movie 'the Florida Project' which beautifully used children's perspective to tell the story.
There aren't a lot, and most of them are older. A few that come to mind are Delicious in Dungeon, Ghost in the Shell, Odd Taxi, Baccano!, and Redline. Three more with one child in a cast of adults (and for all of them, they aren't standard cutesy anime children) are Cowboy Bebop, Golden Kamuy, and Vinland Saga.
One Punch Man technically counts except for Child Emperor (who barely shows up) but Tatsumaki is probably over the line for sexualization of a character who looks like a child.
Less popular but still good: Planetes, Tatami Galaxy, Shirobako, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Patlabor, Black Lagoon, Welcome to the NHK.
Less popular and not great: Akudama Drive, Way of the Househusband.
I mean, it feels strange to me to say that there aren't a lot. I would sooner say that there are fewer rather than that there are strictly few. Just looking at the top 100 anime on Anilist, I'd say that there are actually quite a lot that seem to have primarily adult casts, although I suppose appearances and plot descriptions can be deceiving — as can outright searching by the tag "primarily adult cast".
And then even of anime and manga that normally depict teenagers, there are a handful which have movies or spinoffs or whatever that depict the characters as adults. The YuruCamp Movie from 2022 stands out, that was a great movie. And Lucky Star has now an ongoing spinoff manga called Konata 30 which depicts all the characters in their 30s, that started last year.
Are there any popular anime where the characters aren't children?
I would probably mention these first and foremost, excluding ones already mentioned:
I could go on, but I think that's a good amount of very safe choices, though I don't know how many of these would be considered to be "popular" as such. You can of course also use something like Anilist to find anime with the tag "primarily adult cast" and sort by popularity, but I dunno how reliable that is, like if it includes or excludes things it shouldn't.
May favorite anime, Princess Jellyfish, is entirely about adults.
This looks cute! I'm going to check it out.
Spy x Family is extremely popular and is centered on adults, and all the children that are in the series aren't sexualised in any capacity. Refreshing tbh
Thanks! I don't mind the presence of children characters, but I don't feel comfortable with the sexualization of children, and prefer narratives with adult protagonists.
An important exception to this is like the movie 'the Florida Project' which beautifully used children's perspective to tell the story.
There aren't a lot, and most of them are older. A few that come to mind are Delicious in Dungeon, Ghost in the Shell, Odd Taxi, Baccano!, and Redline. Three more with one child in a cast of adults (and for all of them, they aren't standard cutesy anime children) are Cowboy Bebop, Golden Kamuy, and Vinland Saga.
One Punch Man technically counts except for Child Emperor (who barely shows up) but Tatsumaki is probably over the line for sexualization of a character who looks like a child.
Less popular but still good: Planetes, Tatami Galaxy, Shirobako, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Patlabor, Black Lagoon, Welcome to the NHK.
Less popular and not great: Akudama Drive, Way of the Househusband.
I mean, it feels strange to me to say that there aren't a lot. I would sooner say that there are fewer rather than that there are strictly few. Just looking at the top 100 anime on Anilist, I'd say that there are actually quite a lot that seem to have primarily adult casts, although I suppose appearances and plot descriptions can be deceiving — as can outright searching by the tag "primarily adult cast".
And then even of anime and manga that normally depict teenagers, there are a handful which have movies or spinoffs or whatever that depict the characters as adults. The YuruCamp Movie from 2022 stands out, that was a great movie. And Lucky Star has now an ongoing spinoff manga called Konata 30 which depicts all the characters in their 30s, that started last year.