Some months ago The New York Times published an article that I found quite intriguing and surprisingly applicable to anime fandom despite being seemingly unrelated to it. It’s called “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture” and it involves a film critic for The Times discussing how American society has changed over the decades in terms of what it means to be an adult; he cites popular TV shows, movies, and books that reflect how the old view of adulthood – being part of an authority-following, gender role-centered society – has been losing popularity in favor of a freer and more rebellious idea of adulthood, most notably one that embraces childhood and supposedly childish things rather than cast them off…that sounds like anime fandom to me!…
