If you are over the age of 30 and like Anime/Manga in any of its derivations, you are AWESOME and I totally want to hang out with you.
As a 21-year-old white male, Iam not the target audience for (but enjoy):
BritWit
Classic American comedy. Three Stooges (but NOT Shemp), Marx Bros, Mark Twain, etc. I don’t like most new comedy, it’s too juvenile for my tastes.
Certain cartoons. I love Chowder, Captain Flapjack, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Fairly Oddparents, and others, plus Saturday morning cartoons.
Ikea (I love studying their room designs. Their sleek, modern look is SO my style!)
Maybe more; it’s hard to say. Being 21, damn near everything is targetted at me anyway.
Umph. Well, my sister called a couple of hours ago, and I told her to hang on, I needed to turn down YouTube. She wanted to know what was on. I told her, it’s songs from a video game, I really doubt that you’d know or care what I’m talking about, and she said that I was right. For the record, it’s various Black Mages songs from the Final Fantasy series. I know that everyone loves One Winged Angel, but my favorite from FFVII is J-E-N-O-V-A.
I was 27 when MMMBop hit it big and I was conspicuously the oldest person at the Hanson concert who didn’t have a child or tween in tow. More than a decade later, I’ve been to over a dozen concerts, met them a couple of times, have nearly every song they’ve ever recorded, carry my keys on a Hanson key chain, continue to be a paying member of the fan club, and even though they’re all married with kids I still get reflexively nervous someone’s going to call me a pedophile for liking them.
Also I’ve always been a sucker for action, sci-fi and comic book movies. I just about hyperventilated when I saw the first Watchmen trailer. I’m fond of saying that the best tonic for a stressful day is a film with aliens and explosions. Preferably exploding aliens.
Nearly all romantic comedies bore to me friggin’ tears. I can watch just about anything, but if it centers around a Kate Hudson/J-Lo/Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts type pining over some cardboard cutout Hollywood manchild I’d rather gouge my eyes out than sit through that garbage. Amelie was tolerable, but that’s about it.
I’m a white male, 41, fairly affluent, and have always lived in suburbia or pretty white-bread neighborhoods.
One of my regular podcasts is Tell Me More from NPR. It’s directed at issues of interest primarily to Black and Latino listeners, but I find it to be one of the more informative programs out there. The host, Michel Martin, seems well-informed and runs reasonably tough interviews without being particularly partisan. They generally cover stories that either don’t get a lot of air time on other programs, or cover the same stories from a different direction. I’m fairly certain I am not the target audience.
I love a lot of the well-written animated kids stuff: currently SpongeBob Squarepants, The Fairly OddParents, Phineas and Ferb, and The Mighty B!. And iCarly- but that’s not animated.
I think all of the live-action Disney stuff* is completely unwatchable. But for some reason, I can’t stop watching. The actors are all very good, and there are bits and pieces I enjoy (such as when they make self-references or references to stars’ or guests’ own prior work on Hannah Montana, some of the spell-name jokes [like the freeze-frame spell invented by a wizard named Jay Giles] and the sarcastic woman who seems to work everywhere in New York on Wizards of Waverly Place, and the interplay between Maddie and London and London’s Paul Lyndesque talking mirror on Suite Life), but as a whole, the shows seem like some sort of Miller-Boyett output of the type you’d see on ABC’s TGIF lineup in the early '90s. But I still watch for some reason- heck, I even sent a “happy sweet 16” fan letter to Selena Gomez. And the songs put out by Disney’s young stars are catchy and well-done (I like what I’ve heard of the Jonas Brothers, but I’m not a fan- all their other singing stars I like, though). I’ve said multiple times that Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil are this generation’s Richard and Robert Sherman, and I still hope that someday someone other than myself knows what the heck I’m talking about.
*With the exception of Sonny with a Chance, which is pretty enjoyable- although later episodes I’ve seen aren’t as whimiscal and humorous as the first two, which were written by series creator and former OddParents head writer Steve Marmel. And the High School Musical movies- sure, they’re generic Disney pap, but they’re good generic Disney pap.
A couple years ago, I stumbled across a bunch of LazyTown videos on Youtube. It’s an Icelandic kids show in English aimed at 4-7 year olds. I don’t know why…it’s really awesome…and I’m 54.
I’m a fan of Disney music as well (and since I’m a dedicated liner note reader, I know what you’re talking about as far as the songwriters) – I bough both versions of the Demi Lovato album, I have many of their compilations (Girlz Rock and Girls Next especially), and, of course, going back a little, all the Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan albums have been great.
I suppose I could be the target audience, but the FFVII soundtrack gets a pretty decent amount of play on my winamp. Not just the orchestral stuff, but all the midi songs as well. There are some great earworms, as well as some surprisingly beautifully composed pieces, and it covers just about every sort of genre as well.
I know the entire Final Fantasy series is known for having great music, but this one really stuck with me.
I used to think I wasn’t the target market of Oz, but then someone at HBO told me it had tons of women and gay guys tuning in for the melodrama, violence and hot guy-on-guy action. (So, if not the intended target with the pilot, then certainly a significant part of the fanbase.)
I’m over 60, and going to my fourth anime convention this coming weekend. (I combine with my other hobby, photography, by taking pictures of the cosplayers). I must be about as far out of the target demographic as is possible for anime and manga.
I’m 27 and watch TCM all the time and listen to old time radio shows. I highly recommend Jack Benny and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show for comedy, and Lights Out and X Minus One for Horror/Sci Fi!
I was going to say this, I really like Blue’s Clues as well, though I haven’t seen it in a few years. They threw in clever stuff here and there for us “adults” to appreciate.
I’m a middleaged female who loves 90s boy bands - especially 5ive & Westlife.
I love American high school movies like Pretty in Pink (right until she chooses the wrong guy!) 10 things I Hate About You & Freaky Friday - even though I’m a middleaged kiwi & wasn’t particularly happy at high school.
I have a bizarre affection for the Power Rangers. Science really doesn’t work that way. Nor combat. And the Kiwi scripts can get…odd. When I was a kid, I probably would have cringed at a lot of it. Well, depending on what age of kid.
But I got hooked with SPD & its giant blue anthropomorphic-dog cop…