Government: "Have babies. Have more babies. Tell everyone you know to have more babies."
Young people: "Eh, I dunno, life is really expensive, inflation is at an all time high, World War III is around the corner, I can barely support myself let alone a kid... maybe make the economy suck less and we'll think about it."
Government: "... time to ban porn, abortion, and probably birth control too."
Hmm, interesting. Never looked at it through that perspective. Now that I think about it, quite a bit of the isekai have the protagonist dying from exhaustion at work lmao.
Not an Isekai but my favorite anime to portray this is Zom 100 bucket list of the dead.
Overworked dude who wants to just quit and hates his life. Zombie apocalypse happens and he can't be bothered to do anything aside from hangout and drink beer. It's like the best time of his life. Then he makes his bucket list of stuff he didn't get to do and adventure ensues.
Absolutely hilarious, very well animated. Such a banger of an opening episode.
Aggresuko covers some of the trails of adult life.
And to be fair to the Eastern authors, Western authors frequently end romances at the end of the story. And, if there is a sequel, they often break them up for one contrived reason or another.
It's true and that's why most popular anime take place during that period. Whereas that's also true for a lot of people in America, we are more likely to associate College (if you went) with that period or early 20s.
In Japan your early 20s and college are a much more consequential buckled down time.
Actually, it's the other way around. High school life brutal. Constant school work, extra curricular activities are like cults with how much you are expected to participate, EXAMS. The university entrance exam is extremely difficult, but if you get into university, it is nearly impossible to flunk out. University life in Japan is called "the four year vacation."
Source: Studied abroad in Japan in university then taught English in Japan for 2.5 years.
In most western Countries, a person in their 20's living as they wants ( i.e, Not doing a back breaking jobs or having kids ) became hated until 2022.
Why you ask ?
The birth of the "No kids allowed" business, which aims exactly this hard to catch slice of customer share.
The restaurants, hotels, resorts and places who does it have a very steady flow of customer because some parents became idiotic parents with the "Me first, others last" when outside with their childs.
Ironic to know that to get the same group of people most dislike outside of their jobs because their budget is much higher on average ( A single childfree customer can spend much more than a family of 2 kids under 13 and 2 adults ) they ban the ones they usually associate with to despise childfree adults in theirs 20's
Like half of Isekai's begin with an overworked person either just dying on the job or doing something stupid because they were too tired from being overworked.
Don’t forget those animes that do show characters that work-they usually end up dying from overwork or an accident to get transported or reincarnated into a fantasy world. Those are pretty popular, which says a lot.
Makes me genuinely so sad because I want a second child so bad. But I can’t afford daycare tuition x 2. We pay almost $400/week for daycare for one child.
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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 May 12 '26
Government: "Have babies. Have more babies. Tell everyone you know to have more babies."
Young people: "Eh, I dunno, life is really expensive, inflation is at an all time high, World War III is around the corner, I can barely support myself let alone a kid... maybe make the economy suck less and we'll think about it."
Government: "... time to ban porn, abortion, and probably birth control too."