It's Americans who don't know what Teenagers actually look like.

A lot of Anime does a lot of creepy stuff that is designed to appeal to various levels of Lolicons.  This post is not my attempt to deny that.

What grinds my gears however is this accusation that Anime constantly makes High School and even Collage aged female characters look younger then they should, "infantalizing" them.

The reason a lot of American Anime critics are saying this, is because American television has given American society a distorted idea of what High Schoolers look like by spending decades having the characters on Teen Dramas constantly played by actors in their 20s, frequently late 20s, even well into their 30s sometimes.

I make a habit of noting when an actress on some show I'm watching turns out to have been born the same year I was, 1985.  And there have been actresses born in 1985 playing High Schoolers all through the time I've been watching television.  But only 1 got to do so while we were actually High School aged.  Michelle Trachtenberg actually was supposed to be playing her own age on seasons 5-7 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  But both the script and fans constantly treated her like she was an infant compared to the other characters, because she practically was to the other actors.

The thing is, I have noted this fact, and complained about it, since long before I got particularly into Anime.  If i recall correctly I'd reblogged posts on Tumblr about how damaging it is to American teenagers that the people representing them on TV look so much more mature and developed then them.
phantasticphil-know-whats-real-f---ed-every

"Know what’s real f---ed? Every other age group has the correct aged actors representing them except teenagers. Adults play adults - children play children; but teenagers are played by more adults. Why? Because apparently our body changes from puberty are too ugly for TV. So what happens? We go through those years looking at the perfect “teenagers” and wondering why we don’t look like that."

And that's part of why I started really falling in love with Anime once I started watching more then just the obvious nerdy stuff.  I started watching High School Anime and went "wow, fiction where Teenagers don't look like fully grown adults".

It's easy to forget what real Teenagers look like.  We all were them at one point, but memories are not as reliable as you think, when I remember my teen years, I always recall myself looking how I do now.  So many people wind up just depending on all the TV they watch to get a reference point on how Teenagers should look.

Fortunately my extended family keeps reproducing, so there have always been current teenagers around.  So I can tell you that Anime teenagers look like teenagers.  They still often have the problem of looking too flawless, but compared to western TV, yes they absolutely look their age.  Likewise in what I've seen of Live Action Japanese media, the Teenagers look younger compared to American TV, because they are cast closer to their age.  Even Canada is better on this, some crossover stars graduate from playing High Schoolers on Canadian TV to start High School on American TV.

So when I then saw that it was really common for American Anime critics to complain that Teenagers in Anime look too young.  I was enraged, but for whatever reason held off ranting about it on this blog till today.

Now, the recently started airing Anime A Sister's All You need, is from the looks of the pilot another creepy Imouto Anime, I would not recommend anyone watch it.  But what set me off to finally write this post was one review describing two 18-20 year old female characters as "looking like they're 12".  Here is a Screencap taken from that very review.

(The Context of the Subs is a homophobic comment being made, which makes me cringe.  So again, don't watch it.)

These girls are not short, and they have fully developed breasts. What in the world looks 12 about them?  Is it just the big eyes?  All Anime characters have big eyes because of a design choice Osamu Tezuka stole from Walt Disney, seriously look at the Dwarves in Show White, they have total Moe Eyes.  So thank you Walt for cursing all Anime Girls to be eternally accused of looking like children no matter what.

Also since this criticism is also couched in gendered terms, saying it's mostly women this is done to.  Would any unbiased observer not assume all three of those characters are the same age?  They clearly look the same age, the dude just has a more severe expression, cause he's another Stoic Light Novel protagonist so he's required by law to try and out brood Kirito.

Now some Anime characters are within the story meant to look young for their age.  (Which can happen, I spent most of my 20s being constantly mistaken for a middle schooler.)  Those characters generally look notably shorter then everyone else, and if female are always flat chested.

I could also add that a lot of what's called High School Anime is really Middle School, Yuru Yuri is Middle School, in which context I think some of them look rather old.  So yes, some characters in what you see called High School Anime are pretty close to being 12.

Anime has always, even Miyazaki style Anime, tended to use Height as the default way to communicate age differences.  So kids always look way smaller then their parents, even if the kid in question is 18 and so about as tall as they'll get.  So that also complicates this issue a bit.

So we Americans should fix our own issues about how Teenagers look on television before we complain about Japan's.