It’s also more believable that someone in their teens or early 20’s could have experience and expertise especially across a wider range and so you can skip the character needing to have the same growth as a younger character might need and the generally slower pace. There is a level of inexperience though that is helpful. Often people in the teens to early 20’s aren’t expected to have spouses, children, dependents, overly complex lives- do we can optionally skip past making the loss of their life a central plot point. They may miss parents or friends or a crush or their home and life- but it isn’t in the viewers mind or needing to be addressed how their 5 years or whatever in fantasy land is time a child has no parent or that when they return after the family bread winner was away the family may be destitute or such things.

Two major factors are that is an age of maturity and immaturity. Inexperience and experience. Young people have a competence and ability that means it is believable that they could do amazing things, it’s far less of a stretch to think a teen could navigate combat or politics or save some far off world than to think that a small child could. But the character type also makes it more believable and forgivable when the character has certain moments. Mistakes or poor decisions that you would think a 30,40,50 year old would be a total idiot to make are like- well ok. That’s ok on a high schooler. They are learning even if they are smart they haven’t lived decades as an adult doing this sort of thing…

But fantasy is also commonly a sort of surrogate. We sort of place ourselves into the fantasy world. So involving our world also helps allow us to imagine being in that fiction ourselves. Seeing others stumble through our world from outside is a fun way to get different perspective on our own life and world. It’s about us, the viewer.
So it’s also common that the protagonist is a “geek” or “otaku” or such that might represent to some degree the fans (or some self image of fans) common to anime and itsekai. Anime is often made by fans who relate their own experiences and perspectives through their work. So while the “school kid” etc. handles both a grounding in reality and possibly a relatable character- there is another level to it and why characters of that age or type are so common.

So without touchstones you come in completely not knowing what is going on. Before the story can start you need to learn an entirely foreign system of concepts and language and politics and morality and such, and the story needs to pause or slow or it stumbles as you move through it because otherwise you couldn’t really get what was going on. So at least one of the worlds in an itsekai is usually our own because that at least provides an anchor for the viewer who is presumably- from our world.

Cool and immersive or as lame and annoying. While we can’t say with certainty what the language or culture or technology would be across time or reality- history does tend to serve as a template that often culture and other things in fictions are often remarkably and statistically unreasonably similar to our own. This is largely for two reasons- firstly that if you can’t understand what you are reading or seeing you probably won’t be interested. If it is completely unrelatable you’ll probably be lost and not engaged. Secondly, it saves time and allows a story to just proceed. Many fantasy properties do need quite a bit of world building for you to understand how things work and the world and the stakes etc. that’s WITH all the “touchstone” similarities to our world to make it easier to digest.

Now, genres don’t mean everything has to be the same, it’s a game of nuance. “Other world” anime don’t have to JUST be “person from our time/world in another..” or “person from another time/world in ours..” you can have person from a world that isn’t our own in a world that isn’t their own or our own or other things. But there are factors here. In the same way it doesn’t always have to be a teen or an otaku/geek type- but we have to understand the genre and some basic things about fiction.
VERY few generally widely consumed works of fictions are totally dissociated from our experiences. If you sit down and REALLY look at many fictions they are obviously fiction. Language almost always is understandable and close to or identical to our own regardless of time or place. Sometimes there is some slang or this and that but fake slang, especially in abundance, tends to come off as lame in most fiction. It’s a lot of work and skill and an element of chance wether your fake slang is taken as

The final factor is… what business is it or care of yours or mine or anyone’s? If a woman wants to dress a certain way- if her creativity or aesthetic or preferences are for a certain style of dress in general or on some occasion- what really does that have to do with anything?

But at the end of the day- ignoring all that and ignoring that the fact that for thousands of years across the globe we have records to show men and women enjoying the display and/or sexualization of the female form and the modern porn industry and the user demographics we have indicate that the female form and/or it’s sexualization are still VERY popular across a wide percentage of humanity regardless of their own gender- eg. In simple terms “sexy lady bodies” being shown off is generally something people on the whole enjoy whether they are men or women…

But when we combine the facts, “sexy” Halloween costumes aren’t really any more “sexual” than many common ways of dress and choosing an outfit to look good or look sexy or for various practical concerns isn’t uncommon. Here’s an obvious practical matter- generally it’s much cheaper to slap on some colored underwear and some makeup and/or a head fascinator and/or some small accessories than to buy an entire costume- and a “poor quality” costume that might be mocked vs. A similar or lower cost/effort costume that tends to be popular isn’t the hardest choice. I mean what are people going to say- “ha! Look at the sexy girl dressed as a ‘sexy’ Big bird. I can’t believe they didn’t spend thousands of dollars on a stage accurate big bird costume or want to look basic or be mocked for wearing a $60 spirit plastic one! How dumb are they buying clothes they might wear again or maybe using clothes they already owned vs. Spending $60+ for a one time use costume they know looks like crap?!”

There are different models of economics but that is the dominant one.

But it gets more complex- because land lords need to buy food too right? And suddenly they are paying 200% or more above and their job pays the same or less. They own property for wealth. So they can simply raise rent. Then the people who have less wealth than landlords feel additional inflation and that inflation is compounded with each tier of wealth passing down to the next lower so that they can maintain their higher socio economic status.

Which since many people literally live in places that are uninhabitable without technology and infrastructure or can’t support populations of the size that exist etc- so long as the population is larger than can be supported with “natural” means not everyone or most people CAN be self sufficient.

But let’s say that is handled by healthy inflation. More money is printed and people can afford things. Ok. But… what happens if people stop buying anything except the BARE ESSENTIALS and start saving money under a mattress? Everyone does it? Suddenly Bezos is paying employees but he isn’t getting his money back. He isn’t making a subtle profit. Do you think he will let his money dwindle until he is no wealthier than anyone else despite owning every business in earth, or will he raise prices on the things people ARE buying because he knows they can afford to pay more because he knows what he pays them and what things cost? He can make a healthy profit selling items for 200% or more what he would before and just not selling the other things people don’t buy can’t he? Because at some point you have to buy something unless you are a self diffidence rural agrarian.

Conceptualize the scenario where Jeff Bezos owns EVERY business on earth. Everything is Amazon. Everyone works for Amazon. Ok. Bezos loses potential wealth each time he pays his workers, but normally the money comes back to him- you will buy his products and use his services at a mark up. Even if no new money is printed. The problem being that as the population grows and the amount of money stays the same- even if prices on goods stay the same- there is less money for each person right? It’s simple on a small scale. You have $5000 to throw a party for 4 people. Each person can have good food and lots of drink and you have lots for entertainment and party favors. If you still have $5000 and everything costs the same but you have 500 people- you have less to spend per person right?

So that’s all that is really happening is an engine that is powered by the movement of money from the top to the bottom and back to the top.

The people making the least don’t make enough to accumulate near the wealth of the 4 tops even if they save every Penny. But they will probably spend most of that money- investing in businesses and products owned in whole or in part by one of those 4 people and or their friends. The money paid out to make the movie finds it way back to them.

So at a certain point when the wealth is consolidated it tends to mostly stay there- except when it is divided. A rich producer pays a rich actor and rich director and they but the rights for a story from a rich ip holder. So $50, $100+ million dollars might change hands between those 4 people. Then another $50 million might be split between 500+ people to make a movie. Those 4 people who got most of the payments will get most of the profits and the 500 will likely get nothing beyond what they were paid out if that one time por of $50 million divided 500+ ways.

What do you buy? How many shoes or cars or iPhones or watches can you buy? Will you buy? What do you buy when you have everything you want? What would you buy if you had to spend $1 million dollars all at once on a single thing? Now do that 100 more times. Ten times.
So that’s the thing- the billionaire is not inherently inclined to spend money back towards the “average” person- what do they have of substance they want? They may pay a few hundred or thousand dollars here and there- someone to clean their home or what not- but nothing substantial really. Not a lot of folks making minimum wage have a mega yacht or a door made of ivory to sell, or much chance they’d be able to make or get one.

So I mean- it’s often not the best and generally shouldn’t be the first strategy to simply print money- policy and law and other measures can be used to stimulate spending and growth and wealth inequity- consolidation of most of the wealth tends to cause problems. You can’t really buy things if you don’t have money. Do the math- a billion dollars- how long would it take to spend that money living even remotely prudently? Even if you drove a super car and lived in an opulent home and took regular vacations and such- it would be relatively difficult without being a complete fuck wit or very unlucky.

In other words you can likely drive them out of business by outlasting them and then raise prices again in a cycle after leveling out. There’s more to it- but in simple terms that’s an easy example.

If you’ve accumulated years of 200% profits, when a new seller enters the market and is selling at 30% less than you, you can often sell at 40 or 50% less or offer other incentives so that you are actually losing money with each sale. But you can endure losses for longer. So to stay viable in the new market against you, the new seller would need to cut prices or increase service or perks to compete- but they are often already operating at a negative balance as a new company. So on top of their already negative ledgers they’d need to decrease their ability to profit or even sell at a loss to compete.

As the prices increase slightly over time the profits tend to increase compounded by the scale and volume of their sales and the fact that they control most of not all the customer base already. Their increasing profitability also allows them to generally more easily weather rough periods as well as to sell at losses in periods where competition enters the market and undercuts them.

This will almost always end up with workers who are doing more work for less money and over time as fewer suppliers are able to afford the overhead to compete at that scale, the market becomes consolidated- you end up with only a few sellers and a few suppliers and then prices tend to rise again- but because the suppliers and resellers have agreements it often isn’t possible for new sellers to renter the market and undercut the existing sellers even as they raise their prices.