Manga NOT featuring high-school or younger protagonists

Probably heard of most of these but don't know if they've been mentioned yet, Lone Wolf and Cub, Battle Angel Alita, Terra formars, Eden: It's an endless world, Blame!,Daily life with a monster girl, Until Death do Us Part, Aiki, Liar Game, Suicide Island, Dead Sorcerer's City, Addicted to Curry, Bartender.

There's also one whose name escapes me, it has more of a dual protagonist role where one main character is an old yakuza gang member and the other is his middle school or high school adopted telekinetic daughter.

Also, I am a Hero.

edited 14th Jul '14 12:13:22 AM by Jeorg

Sorry if I add some that are already added.

• Chrono Crusade has a wide range of characters of various ages, Rosette and Azmaria are teens(Rosette is 16 and Az is 12, and doesn't act her age) though, Satella is 18-19, and Chrono looks 12 most of the time but acts like he's in his 20s which his true form looks like. But they travel around and are never at a school and go through lots of Character Development, volume 6(of 8) features mostly adults and Rosette shows up only a few times. It's my favourite so of course I recommend it, sorry (-_- '). But adults are far from useless in it. It has an anime adaptation, but I wouldn't recommend it at all.

• Dekoboko Girlish(Girly Tomboy is what I think it's supposed to mean) is about two college girls, a bifauxnen and one who's Older Than They Look, but it's pretty funny.

• W Juliet II is the sequel of W Juliet which can be pretty fun. It's about Ito and Makoto in their 20s.
• Kyou mo Ashita mo from same mangaka is about a adult man mangaka who draws shoujo manga. It has a few youths though.

• Please Save My Earth is a weird case, it's about some teens who dream about their past lives as (adult) astronauts from another planet. It gets pretty dark and the School Life part ends pretty quickly and is mostly about their grim pasts, stopping one of them who has gotten insane, and loads of Character Development.

• Confession by Kawaguchi Kaiji is about two grown men who gets locked into a cabin on the mountain during a blizzard and starts telling their secrets when they believe they'll die there.

• Knife is about a man who takes the job as assassin to pay for his sister's cancer treatment a private hospital.

• ''Luck Stealer' is a pretty sweet one, his daughter shows up sometimes, but softens the othervise dark story. And she's often asleep when he comes home from a assassination.

• There's also one called Inu Baka(Dog Idiot) if you love dogs, I have only read one volume from it though :/, and in that one I wan't sure what was going on at all.

• Tamashii no Futago(Twin Souls) is pretty great if you jump over the suicky parts, it's a gothic one after all. There's 4 main characters, 2 ghost children (which is pretty dark on it's own, one wears an eyepatch and the other has broken glasses on...), 1 adult woman studying children's psychology even though she hasn't managed to move on from her own as feeling inferior to her twin sister her whole life, and a German former child psychologist. It travels around with the kids who meet all sorts of people, but also focuses on the adults who tries to move on from their thorny pasts without luck. So even though it has youth is it more for the story telling rather than having it for attracting them.

That's all the ones I can remember for now :/

edited 2nd Nov '15 5:44:18 PM by killikim

Not sure if it counts (because we all know ''most'' hentai's relationship with plot), but there's plenty of hentai out there with completely adult protagonists (Taboo Charming Mother), adults in relationships with (older, no pedophile-ish 12 & 14-year-olds) teenagers (Sensei wo Mite Kudasai), and so on.

That being said, though, I always thought it was pretty silly how most manga nowadays exclusively feature high school students. I mean, do most Japanese people consider high school to be the best part of the average person's life, or something? Doesn't make that much sense otherwise.

edited 23rd Nov '15 1:16:18 AM by YasminPerry

I think the reason this happens in Japan, and in US cartoons, is that it's the one stage in life that absolutely everyone has in common. After that, directions diverge immensely, and mass identification is lost.

I really wish somebody would make a Work Com a la The Office (the UK version, not the vastly inferior US version) in manga and/or anime format. That would be pretty awesome!

I doubt it would.

Servant X Service.

From what I have been told, high school is basically seen as the last point in life where you're supposed to have much freedom. From there you are "supposed to" become a corporate drone and work horrendous hours killing yourself for the sake of a company, so old people aren't interesting anymore.

To be honest if you want older protagonists with the more adult viewpoint that entails you're better off looking for seinen and josei manga, it's always been that way.

Yeah, but those tend to be bleak.

adult life's kinda bleak :p though not usually to the extent a lot of the grittier seinen manga go for.

Most of the fluffier stuff I've seen is seinen or josei

Natsu no Zenjitsu is pretty good. S'about an art college student and his relationship with an older lady.

i was actually just thinking about that. the ending got me straight in the feels ):

memories of emanon is also pretty good.

edited 23rd Nov '15 6:34:02 AM by wehrmacht

Ever since you changed your avatar i read all of your posts in Raymond Holt's voice.

It's pleasant.

Anyway, 5 pages and no mention of Oh My Goddess? Only Skuld appears younger than college-aged and she's a goddess.

Osomatsu-san

Genshiken takes place at a college club if you're into that kinda show.

Saitama from One-Punch Man is in his mid-twenties and Genos is 19, which while still technically a minor under Japanese law, puts him past high school age.

Here are some series that I don't think have been mentioned earlier.

Ooku: The Inner Chambers is pretty much entirely about adults since it mostly takes place in the Shogun's harem.

The Victorian Romance Emma leads are around 20 or so, though Emma might be a bit younger, and they're definitely not high schoolers. If you liked A Bride's Story (aka Otoyomegatari), this series is worth checking out.

Silent Möbius is about cops fighting demons with magic and technology and I think even the youngest member of the team is 18.

Area 88 is about a Foreign Legion air force unit somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa and everyone there's an adult. Bit old and possibly harder to find now, though.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a bit vague about the main character Alpha's age, but she's a robot and not a schoolgirl. It's a very relaxing post-apocalyptic series.

edited 1st Dec '15 2:59:28 PM by Winter

Well there's always Black Lagoon and Berserk. And if you ever decide to look for an anime that doesn't involve the type of stories your sick of, Cowboy Bebop is a good choice too.

From my point of view, the lack of Work Com in manga/ anime medium is affected by two things:

• Even in West, Work Com is also rather new/ not really developed well until 2000's or so.
• Formal working condition in Japan can be stereotyped with two words: Boring and Stifling.