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[Neonivek]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In all fairness though...

Mothers are actively discouraged from pursuing careers in Japan in all likeliness likely systemically.

At least that is the DISTURBING thing I picked up on in a few animes (DAMN it Kaito Jeane... why is THAT what I remember most about your anime?)... But... as I've said before Japan is currently kind of in a severe transitional period.

-Note: For those who don't know in Kaito Jeane they make fun of a girl's ambition to be a detective and a mother because they are, in the anime's opinion, Mutually exclusive. Sure she says she will do it anyway but you are meant to get a naiveté from her.

Same reason why if we step back to the... 70s ALL mothers usually don't work in cartoons.

At least whenever George or Fred said "No wife of mine is going to work" they would roll their eyes and basically go "Your not the boss of me, I'll work if I want to"

Sorry for that...

Kaito Jeane just pissed me off... it is the one thing I can't ever forget about that anime.

[IronyOwl]

Are there many married men with careers in anime? As far as I've seen it usually never comes up unless they're a normalized support structure for the other characters' lack-of-family-ness. Formal, working-for-the-city detectives might be an exception, but even then I don't think it hits anywhere near 50/50.

[itisnotlogical]

Are there many married men with careers in anime? As far as I've seen it usually never comes up unless they're a normalized support structure for the other characters' lack-of-family-ness. Formal, working-for-the-city detectives might be an exception, but even then I don't think it hits anywhere near 50/50.

The husband in I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying makes money from numerous web blogs. Not sure that counts as a career, but it's the closest I can recall to any (married & male) anime hero having a job, let alone a career.

[Reelya]

BTW I found this nice little 3 minute short anime for you guys.

Thinking about it, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka had a non-villanized, married career woman who was even looked up to in the main character's mother.

Interestingly, Japanese Macross is less sexist and less xenophobic than the American adaptation "Robotech".

Spoiler: contains spoilers about the love triangle resolution (click to show/hide)

in the Japanese SDF Macross continuity, Hikara and Misa get married, and Misa (the woman) becomes an admiral and his superior officer (since her father was an admiral and she was trained as a bridge officer this makes sense). Her husband Hikaru being a fighter pilot, becomes captain of the fighter squad assigned to her flagship. Also shown in Macross is Milia the female fighter pilot who gets married to Max, who is also a fighter pilot. Milia (who was an alien with much more leadership experience and knowledge than the humans) becomes the commander of the Macross 7 fleet, whereas her husband becomes just leader of the Macross 7 fleet's escorts.

Whereas in the American adaptation Robotech, Rick and Lisa (the same characters) get married, and Rick, the fighter pilot becomes Admiral Rick Hunter, and Lisa is promptly written out of the story. I guess she's just Mrs Hunter in the American continuity. As for Max and Milia, it's noted that Max becomes leader of Skull Squadron after Rick leaves Earth, whereas it's only noted that Milia tags along wherever Max is going.

In Macross, the characters come from every continent on the planet (japanese, chinese, europeans, Russians, African-Americans). Whereas in Robotech they're mostly rewritten as American as apple pie. I guess this is excusable because it's a localization, but it loses one of the key things about Macross - that the crew was drawn from across the globe.

Spoiler: As for the aliens (spoilers about the end of the series) (click to show/hide)

In Macross, many of the high-ranking aliens become important leaders of the joint alien/human alliance after the war, because of their vast military experience and high tech knowledge. Human society becomes a blend of the original human culture and the alien culture. whereas in Robotech, we get hold the alien's tech, but every trace of the alien culture is ruthlessly stamped out of existence. any alien survivors are forced to assimlate with the humans, none of their leaders are left in charge of anything. This was mainly done for continuity reasons since they crammed 3 unrelated series together, but the implications are that the Robotech humans are like the Borg.

[JoshuaFH]

I watched 3 eps of Gargantia On The Verdurous Planet, and I had to put it down right there. Just something about it that gets under my skin.

I can't put my finger on it, I just feel disgusted and frustrated with it.

[IronyOwl]

Spoiler: As for the aliens (spoilers about the end of the series) (click to show/hide)

but the implications are that the Robotech humans are like the Borg.

Unintended implications are best implications.

I watched 3 eps of Gargantia On The Verdurous Planet, and I had to put it down right there. Just something about it that gets under my skin.

I can't put my finger on it, I just feel disgusted and frustrated with it.

That's interesting. If I were you, I'd probably try to pin down what it was out of curiosity.

Speaking of which, tried watching a few episodes of Nyaruko, but it was kind of blegh. I might give it another try later, but the setup feels underdeveloped and the main character relationship feels bizarre in a bad way.

[Neonivek]

Are there many married men with careers in anime? As far as I've seen it usually never comes up unless they're a normalized support structure for the other characters' lack-of-family-ness. Formal, working-for-the-city detectives might be an exception, but even then I don't think it hits anywhere near 50/50.

Well let me see:
-Ash Ketchem's Dad
-Yugi Moto's Dad
-The Mighty Sunfighter's Dad
-Ichigo's Dad
-Ichigo's Dad
-Serena's Dad
-ALL the dads in Digimon... period...
-TECHNICALLY the Dad in Prince of Tennis has a job (a Shinto Priest or Monk) AND his Mom has no job.

[Frumple]

... Ketchum's dad is... we don't even know who that is. He gets like zero screen time, and we have no idea what he does.

Yugi's is pretty much exactly the same. Conceptually (word of god) he works, but doing what, and where? Zog if anyone knows. Functionally (actually?) zero screen time, the dude could be freaking dead for all anyone actually knows.

Not sure why you've got two ichigo's on there. The bleach one... not married. Widower, and his career is specifically a front. Same with many of the dads in digimon, actually -- divorced or widowed is common in those ones. Digimon's definitely better about it than a lot of things, though.

Tsukino'd definitely work as an example -- he's actually there and has a job the viewer can identify. Chunk of that particular list is iffy at best, though...

[Neonivek]

It was a joke about how common the name Ichigo is in main characters

It could have been Ichigo from Tokyo Mew Mew for example.

Also having "Once been married" totally counts... Given the sheer number of mothers in anime who have a dead husband, or husband who doesn't send money, and yet still don't work (In all fairness... Japan is one of those places where this totally can happen mind you. Usually by getting money from the main family)

[Spehss _]

Wait, I always figured Yugi was just raised by his grandpa and his parents had some reason or another to not be there. Like dying in an accident. Or losing their souls in a children's card game.

[Neonivek]

Wait, I always figured Yugi was just raised by his grandpa and his parents had some reason or another to not be there. Like dying in an accident. Or losing their souls in a children's card game.

Well in the anime I believe they never mention his parents ONCE... so you are totally correct... except that I believe he is still confirmed to have living parents.

Manga? They are just deadbeat parents and they never appear.

[Frumple]

If the wiki's to be believed, yugi's mom actually shows up once or twice in the anime (though one of the appearances was stripped from the english dub for some godsforsaken reason). The father never does, and may have never even been mentioned. Can't even find reference that he actually appeared in the manga in any way, either... the entirety of his existence is basically WoG derived. The mother's marginally more active in the manga than she is in the anime, though. Not quite as deadbeat as the father who probably has fifty kids in other countries or somethin'.

[Neonivek]

Mind you the reason so many dads in animes work over seas is two part
1) To get them out of the way
2) Japan had a lot of bad depressions and so this has actually become common in the childhoods of writers.

Think of this like School Clicks in cartoons... They were accurate when the writers were children...

I think there is one HUGELY unique aspect to Anime and Western Cartoons.

Western Cartoons are sort of dominated by "liberal" ideals so to speak. There is just one lesson to learn. It can get nuanced but otherwise it is the same thing.

While Anime, because the country is divided, actually has multiple lessons. You can get a episode about how "it is good to conform and lose your identity" and about "How it is bad to conform"

Well because the country is divided AND because I THINK Japan has less of a "Think of the children!" attitude.

I guess I find Japan so fascinating because it is both progressive and regressive at the same time in both extremes... relative to America.

[i2amroy]

I'd say that the main reasons of absentee parents in anime come down to something pretty simple:
1) If the show is focusing on characters old enough to be independent, then it's generally assumed that they aren't living with their parents anymore (and thus the parents can be no more than side-characters).
2) If the show is focusing on characters too young to be independent, then it is rather likely to be a "school focused" show, (since that is where the characters will probably be for most of their time and interactions). The parents in most cases aren't going to be at the school, thus preventing them from being much more than side characters.

Either way you end up with parents that aren't really relevant to the story as a whole. This means that oftentimes it just comes down to a gamble of what exactly gets shown in the very slim amount of time that the main characters are home, or whether or not we get a "tragic parent accident" arc happen in the case of independent characters. Heck, even characters we've already mentioned often fit in this way. For example in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Madoka's mother is on screen for maybe 15 minutes out of the entire 12-episode season, and like 90% of that is her either answering Madoka's questions or worrying about her, and she's one of more concrete examples.

Thus really the only times you are going to get a fair bit of parent characterization is when a show does one of about four things that can bring parents and children in contact with one another as individual characters rather than just "protagonist" and "protagonist's parent". (I was going to put some show examples here, but a fair number of them were significant spoilers so I deferred. )
1) The kids became independent on their own, and then go into a business that one or both of their parents were involved in/keeping secrets about.
2) One or both of their parents are immortal/long lived. This often has crossovers with #1.
3) It's a generations show, especially in a sequel style. If you've got a show about the "next generation" the parents are usually already pretty well characterized, which makes it easier to write more using the same details.
4) It's a show about characters right at the verge of independence, and their is a parent/child desires conflict arc.

[Zangi]

Kids in anime/manga can't be up to the shenanigans they get into if their parents are around. 
Plus, active parental figure for X main character tends to clash with the story that the author wants to play out.  Since their very presence can change how the story would play out.