Kunzait_83 wrote:[spoiler]As a 32 year old myself, a few points.
First, I hate to break this to precita but you are indeed already legally an adult once you've hit your early 20s (by most countries' laws anyway). By 21 you're allowed to drink, gamble, drive, vote, and work a full time job - preferably spaced apart rather than all at once.
And Dragon Ball meanwhile is (in many cases rather obviously) a show that's aimed predominantly at middle school children in Japan. So if you're only
just now having some kind of "Oh my god, am I'm too old for this shit?!" personal crisis at 30, you're probably more than a decade late on that. Adolescence has been over for you since roughly the mid-2000s or so, never mind childhood well before that.
I'm not trying to be nasty or asshole-ish there: I just bristle a bit when people look at their 20s, even in small/subtle ways, like its some kind of an extension of their childhood or teenage years when it should be anything but. It should be a time for serious growth as a human being (regarding aspects of your life that you have actual control over at least: that's not
at all a knock on people who are genuinely stuck financially/economically in ways beyond their control, especially in these current times), and I've frustratingly known far, far, FAR too many people the past decade who don't at all see it that way.
Secondly, and of course most importantly, you ARE also taking care of your important adult responsibilities right? Money, food, roof over your head, etc? If so, then yeah, no problems there either.
Thirdly however, and more to the point: watching & liking
A kids' show (or movie or book or whatever) as an adult is perfectly fine. I'll go the extra mile and even say that watching/reading & liking a FEW kids' shows/movies/books here and there as an adult is perfectly fine.
The way I see it though (and this is where I part ways pretty damned heavily and significantly with a tragically gigantic amount of present day geek culture and places like this community here) is that problems only start to arise if you're watching & liking almost damn near EXCLUSIVELY kids' media and little to nothing else besides. But I'd even go so far as to argue that that's a problem no matter what age you are, kid or adult.
No one, not even actual little kids, should be restricted to a media intake of almost exclusively children's programming & material. That way lies madness. Intellectually & creatively speaking that's roughly equivalent to trying to live on a diet of absolutely nothing but M&Ms, McDonald's, Doritos, and Yoo-Hoo. And make no mistake, with FLEETINGLY rare exceptions, children's media as a whole is in 99% of most cases the media/art equivalent of junk food (your Douglas Adams-types being particularly rare unicorn exceptions).
Not that adult media doesn't have more than its fair share of crappy junk food as well mind you, but its nowhere near as endemic as it is to the foundational nature of children's media, which by its very definition HAS to avoid exploring numerous topics, ideas, and concepts too closely and practice a certain degree of creative conservatism and rigid filtering (and I'm not at all just talking about surface-level stuff like swearing and violence either): something which becomes completely and especially needless by the time you're even a young teenager, much less a full blown adult.
This has for some years now become incredibly unpopular and unfashionable to point out, but its more than long overdue now I'd say: while its certainly true that you should never consider yourself too old for
occasionally indulging in (
some) child-like pursuits even as an adult, an unhealthily large number of people in the current cultural climate often tend to go WAY too far in the wrongheaded extreme of showing how “truly mature and un-selfconscious about their adulthood” they are by way of proudly and excessively wallowing in almost nothing but exclusively children's fluff as an adult.
A significant degree of people now seem to have taken a certain C.S. Lewis quote about “putting away childish things, including the desire to appear very grown up” WAY too excessively far and are using an otherwise perfectly valid and lovely sentiment (which largely amounts to “don't lose some of that youthful exuberance as you get older and don't use adulthood as a reason for getting too big of a self-important stick up your ass”) as a justification for running with it over a cliff of self-insulating infantilism, dashing headlong well over the line between “young at heart” and “manchild”.
Not letting adulthood stamp out any sense of good humored silliness in you seems to be increasingly mistaken right now for being one and the same thing as throwing away any and all semblance of intellectual curiosity for exploring more mature and deeper ideas and concepts in art/fiction. And I would argue that remaining a fan of children's material as an adult in and of itself is totally fine, but
can indeed get to become a problem should you find yourself taking it to THAT far of an extreme where children's media is almost literally ALL that you're a fan of for vast stretches of your life. As a depressingly large number of people nowadays often tend to.
Even much of the absolute, mountain-peak smartest kids' material absolutely
cannot act as a substitute of
any sort for the degree of genuine depth and enrichment you'll find in older-skewed works. A healthy, growing mind (child or adult) absolutely NEEDS exposure to and reflection upon ideas and concepts that are well far apart from and beyond the children's realm. Cutting yourself off from that entirely (or close to entirely), at any age, will do nothing but harm for yourself in the long run.
A kids' show/book/movie every once in a while as an adult is one thing. But too much of that sort of thing at the expense of other, vastly more denser and enriching material will almost assuredly stunt your mental growth.
So long as you're keeping the time you spend with stuff like Dragon Ball in relative moderation and are balancing your viewing & reading habits out with a wide variety of other, vastly less junky stuff, then throwing the odd, occasional children's thing into an otherwise varied mix of media consumption is completely harmless and nothing to be at all embarrassed about.
Certainly not in this day and age especially, where a significant chunk of the online culture has for quite some years now sadly seemed to be hitting 25/30-ish years old without barely ever having moved a great deal too far outside the safety of the same comfort zone of movies and TV shows from when they were 7 years old (or stuff on a very closely similar spectrum). That's not a good thing. At all.
So long as you're not taking it anywhere near that far though, there's obviously no harm or shame to be had in indulging the odd child's work as an adult. Just be sure that your book/DVD shelf isn't overwhelmingly flooded predominantly with stuff from and relating to various cartoon/kids' TV blocks and suchlike. If (
if) something like that is indeed the case for you, then I'd certainly more than recommend taking it easy for awhile on the cartoons and getting as far outside of that comfort zone as possible via exploring much, much more of what else is out there that's not so strictly cordoned off for small children. You'll be beyond amazed at a lot of what you'll find. And none of it is anything to be the least bit scared of or intimidated by.
Stay as young at heart as you like and keep an open mind to look for cool things in unconventional places like sometimes maybe the kids' section: just be self-aware and conscious enough to not take it so ridiculously far that you end up hermetically sealing yourself inside of an insulating kid-friendly bubble and ignoring/missing out on all kinds of other amazing works that are both awesome in themselves as well as beyond indispensable nourishment to an ever-expanding adult mind.[/spoiler]
