Anime does not age well 😬
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Project Ako. They used to play it all the time on the SciFi Channel (along with Akira and Ninja Scroll). But there was something about Project Ako in particular that really drew me in. It was ridiculous, funny, and had girls as the leads instead of boys. As I grew up, whenever someone asked me for recommendations on anime, I would always give Project Ako a mention. "It's so funny!" I would tell people. "You have to watch it!"
I remember at my very corporate job recommending it to a co-worker who was talking about cartoons/anime. "It's a bit older," I remember telling them, "but I used to watch it all the time as a kid. It's so funny!"
Recently, I was watching TV when a commercial came on advertising a "retro anime" channel on Roku. I immediately switched to it and, imagine my luck, they were playing Project Ako! I practically fell off the couch. I turned to my husband: "You gotta watch this! I used to watch this all the time as a kid and it's so funny!"
Fortunately, we caught the movie right at the beginning. The opening shot showed the lead teenage character lying in bed...topless. My husband turned to me: "Um...what is this?" For the next hour we sat in awkward silence as we witnessed underaged nudity, copious upskirt shots, and relentless sex jokes. Don't get me wrong, the movie was still funny, but I did not remember all the inappropriate sex jokes involving teenagers. My husband: "You watched this as a kid?"
Sigh, I did.
It really shows you how innocent we are as children, that I could witness these things and still think it was just a silly movie about girls fighting at school.1
I feel this way about a lot of stuff I return to as an adult. I notice things I didn't or realize topics I hadn't. I always tell people that Hey, Arnold is one of the best cartoons ever made, and if you don't agree, you probably didn't watch it as an adult. I remember hating that show as a kid. I thought it was "slow." I preferred crap like Doug, which I rewatched for the first time a few years ago. That show has not aged well, but fortunately, there was no underage nudity in that one.
Inappropriate humor involving children is, honestly, one of the main reasons I stopped watching anime ages ago. The older I got, it became harder to ignore. I remember ages ago when people were raving about Kill la Kill, but I couldn't get past the first episode. Or how about Sword Art Online? A boy falls in love with his (adopted) younger sister? Oh, and the only strong female character is reduced to a slave imprisoned in a bird cage? I guess you really do have to be a child to not see what's wrong with all this.
During the pandemic, I finally got around to watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, and although I found it okay, I remember thinking that I would have loved it more if I saw it as a kid. Because if I were a child, I would have injected meaning where there was none. I would have confused unresolved ideas and glaring plot holes as "deep complexity." And, most importantly, all the inappropriate humor and messaging (particularly around Asuka's character) would have spiraled right over my head. Ah, innocence truly is bliss.
Although it's possible the version I watched was edited.↩