Anime featuring adults

[sunnyside]

I'm looking for anime from any genre featuring primarily or entirely adults. With children/high schoolers appearing as secondary characters, or ideally not really at all. Also not anime targeted at the younger set. I.e. I'm not looking for Dragon Ball Z.

Examples I can think of off the top of my head include:

Monster
Ghost in the Shell
Bartender
Cowboy Bebop
Planetes

Any suggestions?

[StabWound]

Let's see...

Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Texhnolyze
Mushishi
Mononoke
Ergo Proxy
Berserk
Nodame Cantabile (college students)
Kaiji
Kemonozume
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Basically all films from Satoshi Kon

[Cobra Commander]

I've always wondered about this. Why is the world always in the hands of a high school student? I don't think that it detracts much from the character, and perhaps it's much easier to write a student than an adult...but still.

[MangaFanGuy]

Trinity blood
Black Lagoon
Black Cat
Hellsing
Elfen Lied (Although this one and Hellsing are a bit gory)
Ergo Proxy (As said)
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (At least the second part)
Witch Hunter Robin (Robin is young but has a very adult manner)

[The Grey Crane]

There's a lot...

Here are some:

Black Heaven - Features a washed-out metalhead-turned-office worker. Eventually, he is called upon to fight in space using his musical prowess. His fellow bandmates, which are all relative old, also appears in the series.

The Cockpit: Kamikaze Stories - Features ace pilots, scientists, admirals, low-ranking soldiers, and more as they deal with the horrors of war. While there are a FEW youngins present in the show, they are characterized as mature thinkers. After all, it is about WWII and a lot of the main characters are adults, some are even past 50.

Lupin III - Features a thief, a bombshell, a samurai, a sharpshooter, an inspector on the hunt... Yes, they're not kids.

Crying Freeman - The main character is a young man-turned-assassin who cries after killing his victims.

Initial D - A popular racing anime, most of the characters are young adults with ages that range from 18 to late twenties. Some are even at their forties.

A lot of mecha shows from the seventies to the eighties feature young adults (or at least they look and act like one) as main characters. The retro designs make the boys look like men and the girls look like women (Duke Freed, the getter trio, Boss, etc.). You could try 'em and pick randomly from the tons of shows during those decades, you'll most likely end up choosing one that features adults. Avoid the early nineties when the genre was dominated by shows which featured elementary kids as mecha pilots (Gosaurer, Raijin-Oh, etc.), there are a few with adults tho.

[AznOtaku]

Spice + Wolf

[TheSplundPopper]

I'll try listing some that haven't already been said.
Tokko
Speed Grapher
Mezzo
Burst Angel
Basilisk
Claymore
Witchblade

[ZenErik]

I've always wondered about this. Why is the world always in the hands of a high school student? I don't think that it detracts much from the character, and perhaps it's much easier to write a student than an adult...but still.

Easier for the target audience to relate to the protagonist.

[sunnyside]

First off thanks for the replies. Some of those sound really interesting!

I've always wondered about this. Why is the world always in the hands of a high school student? I don't think that it detracts much from the character, and perhaps it's much easier to write a student than an adult...but still.

I'll largely second ZenErik on that. It's critical to get the audience to connect with the protagonist, especially if they'd otherwise be a loathsome Mary Sue type character. Hence not only why they're often high schoolers, but why they're bad with women, shy, etc etc.

[.Sev]

Though one of the main characters is a teenager, I would still say samurai champloo.