I like it. Almost all jrpgs and anime these days are targeted at children or adults who like anime for children. I miss when there was more content made to appeal to adults.
The funny thing is, I don't think even this is a right way of looking at it. I think variety in the characters you view makes them more interesting; adult characters can definitely come across as heroic even to kids. It's not necessarily excluding them as an audience.
This! I mean, if we take a well-known and loved example, Goku is 18 by the time the first Dragon Ball series ends up, while being around 23 at the start of Dragon Ball Z. Also, I don't think it's bad to have a teenager as the main character once in a while, but we have to admit that it happens a little too often and in dubious way in japanese media in general. That's because this whole thing sadly has a market, and it's ever-expanding too, as @Wugger@lemmy.world said.
I just don't like children. The world would be better without them
Disgusting things, children. Glad I never was one!
I just don't like children. The world would be better without them
I enjoyed The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, in large part because most of the party members are adults. Exceptions are the two protagonists, a princess (whose station more or less demands she act above her age), and a pre-teen girl whose main character trait is being an engineering assistant to an inventor in a factory town.
Meanwhile, the fun bits of the adult party members included seeing them get drunk at inopportune times, attempt to impart their adult wisdom on the two leads, hit on random strangers or each other, and occasionally be even more childish than the kids they're accompanying. It felt like a good group.
I played some of the games that came afterward, starting with the Crossbell games and continuing with Trails of Cold Steel, and a significant reason I stopped was that the WHOLE cast was school-age kids, to the point that it really started feeling like modern anime, and not in a good way.
The high school shift is certainly jarring coming from a team of professionals in the Crossbell games, though at least it does shift to a mixed focus in Cold Steel 3 and 4, and then back to professionals in Reverie.
Thank you! Indeed, Trails in the Sky has been on my backlog for a while and for good reason, from what I hear. I remember looking at screenshots for the subsequent series like Trails of Cold Steel and generally it was a turnoff starting from the art/design direction.
In this regard, I think that Persona 5's success in recent years is both a blessing and a curse: blessing, because it showed how JRPGs don't have to be action oriented to be beautiful; curse because Atlus surely realized, already back with Persona 4, that the high school setting somehow seemed successful, thus somehow suggesting to the industry that it is a good model to follow.
Oh, I just looked at a wiki for the upcoming game (already out in JP) Trails Through Daybreak and it seems like the cast is at least balanced between teenagers and adults! I'm more than okay with this if written nicely and without creepy/disturbing tropes.
I haven’t followed that one so much; seeing a blue-haired male lead using a sword, and no sign they were moving away from dedicated “relationship events”, overall didn’t seem like the direction I wanted. I’m not quite sure the age of characters was my only issue with the series.
This is a great compilation!
I would add an asterisk to FF12...the game starts off with a lead male child protagonist who wants to impress or rescue or whatever a female child playable character.
After the first chapter or so of the game, those two characters are completely irrelevant to the plot of the game, which is actually about the cast of adults.
Yes, the children are still there. Yes you have to control the boy as your overworld avatar.
There are some other children with more plot relevance, some of whom join the team.
I think the youngest plot-relevant child on the team is 19, but overall it's not a "children save the world" plot.
Parasite Eve and Persona 2: EP were always a bit striking to me in this regard especially because they are in modern-day settings. Also, they both don't have a young child joining the party at any point, which is a thing in a lot of the games in this list.
Looking through the JRPGs I own, most of them with adult cast are western made. Depending on how far you go with j-influenced some might fit on your list. Zeboyd games is a western studio making JRPG like games with their own twist on them. Cosmic Star Heroine have a completely adult cast. Been years since I played through the Cthulhu games, but I remember the cast being mostly adults in them.
CrossCode from Radical Fish Games stretches what I consider a JRPG to be, but it still comes up in my library when searching for the tag. I think most of the cast were young adults rather than children.
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark by 6 Eyes Studio is pretty much a Final Fantasy Tactics.
Thank you! Pretty much everything suggested, I've added; I knew about CrossCode, yet completely forgot about it.
Great list thanks for compiling!
Dragon's Dogma
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