One of the pre­dom­i­nant trends in mod­ern anime/JRPGs is that the author­i­ties tend to be either use­less or evil. In the best case, they might lend sup­port to our main char­ac­ters after said cast clear up the State’s mis­un­der­stand­ings and back­ward beliefs. In the worse case, they’re irre­triev­ably cor­rupt and must be top­pled as part of the jour­ney. Either way, the fate of the world always falls onto the shoul­ders of some group of inde­pen­dent young­sters and rebel­lious teens. Law­ful author­i­ties, fed by bil­lions of tax dol­lars paid per year, ends up being just another obsta­cle before the spot­light of hero­ism and vigilantism.

Just how much of this is caused by “tar­get demo­graph­ics”? Read the rest of this entry »