While going on Pinterest, I had a realisation: The MHA fandom doesn't see 20+yo people as adults.
I was looking for EndHawks fanarts and blocking the antis in the comments when I stumbled upon an art showcasing EraserMight, MiriTama and EndHawks. People in the comments were complaining as always about EndHawks ("Endeavour is in his 40's" blah blah blah) but what I noticed was that people were just.. okay with EraserMight (except some who thought EraserMic > EraserMight).
I found it weird because well.. the age gap between EraserMight and EndHawks is.. basically the same. I could even say worse in the first one.
Iirc, Aizawa is 31, Hawks in his early/mid 20's, Endeavour in his mid/late 40's and All Might in his 50's. 30-50 vs 20-40.. there's literally no difference in age gap. Furthermore, Aizawa got like ~5 years over Hawks while All Might got ~10 over Endeavour. And yet, People complained about the age gap (not any maturity shit, JUST the difference in age) for EndHawks while the only people against EraserMight were saying that they preferred EraserMic.
I found it really weird, idk. What do you think?
This is very much part of it but I would describe it as characters that Look like adults tend to avoid age gap discussions more easily. People constantly forget that All Might and Endeavor have a 10 year age gap and no one who's high school/college age in fandom (the vast majority of people that have the time to waste making arguments like that) would consider 30 young (unfortunately).
Hawks, meanwhile, has a bit of a babyface, his more loose canon attitude screams "punk kid", he's extremely short compared to other pros, and several lines of dialogue emphasize how young he is. He's a much more relatable character to younger fans. But he's also a highly trained, highly skilled, highly aware adult. He does not need to be infantalised to the point where him actively pursuing an older partner is a problem (which is how the majority of endhawks content writes them).
But there's a very big piece of the puzzle that's missing here. The entire reason this argument exists at all is because of Endeavor. People do not like Endeavor, but instead of leaving it there, they need performative justified reasons to hate him to show they are engaging with this show in a Good and Moral way. It's not enough to not like Enji as a character and not feel any emotional connection to his character arc. He needs to be a Bad Man which means everyone who likes him is Also Bad!! Obviously getting into a relationship with a coworker who is not in any coercive position of power below you just means you're a pedophile because he's...in his mid twenties. I'm fully confident this nonsense comes primarily from wanting more obvious reasons to hate Endeavor more than babying Hawks, although both definitely do happen.
