Anime and Mental Health: Growing Up on Your Own Terms

A personal reflection from Langalihle Msika (aka Custardbaby) on why anime stays meaningful in your twenties and how it quietly supports mental health by offering emotional space and stories you never have to justify loving.

Find People Who Get You

Somewhere between starting a new anime and telling myself that I would only watch “one more episode” I’ve come to realize that I’ve developed a habit that has stayed and will probably stay with me a lot longer than I expect.

I started watching anime properly around 2019. I didn’t grow utterly obsessed with it and I never could have imagined that by 2026 I would be a full fledged “weeb” still getting emotionally invested in animated worlds that make no sense on paper. Fake families, Reincarnations, Overpowered characters hiding in plain sight and so much more has become a part of my weekly routine and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Over time, I’ve started to see a quiet connection between anime and mental health. Not in an obvious or dramatic way, but in how it gives me room to think and feel.

Lately, I’ve been watching My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, Hotel Inhumans, The Eminence In Shadow and That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime. If you put them side by side, they don’t belong together at all. They have completely different contradicting tones, themes, worlds and stakes and yet they all do the same for me — they hold my attention without asking me to justify why.

Growing Up and Finding Space

At this stage of my life, I think a lot. About who I am, about where I’m going, whether I’m doing enough, being enough or becoming the “right” version of myself. Anime doesn’t try to answer those questions for me. It gives me stories that don’t demand realism but still invite emotional investment. I don’t need to see my exact life reflected on screen. I just need to feel something — curiosity, comfort, excitement or even calm.

There’s something liberating about stories where the rules are different. Where identity isn’t fixed. People get second chances, secret lives or entire new worlds. Anime allows for exaggeration in a way that feels honest rather than childish. It doesn’t pretend that life is neat, but it also doesn’t insist that it has to be miserable.

Watching Anime as an Adult

Watching anime at 23 — well almost 23 — sometimes feels like a quiet rebellion, especially as an African woman. There’s an unspoken expectation to mature quickly to gravitate towards serious stories, grounded narratives and “grown” entertainment. There’s a sense that animated worlds are something you’re meant to outgrow.

Anime gives me a space where I’m not performing adulthood. I’m not watching as someone’s daughter, future wife or responsible young woman, I’m just a person enjoying a story.

As a girl, there’s also the assumption that certain kinds of anime, especially the strange, fantasy-heavy ones aren’t really “for” me. Anime has never demanded that I prove my relatability. I don’t have to see myself on screen to be invested. I can enjoy the softness of Spy x Family, the absurd confidence in Eminence in Shadow, or the emotional persistence of My Hero Academia without needing them to justify their existence or mine.

Structure, Comfort and Over-stimulation

What keeps me coming back isn’t nostalgia. It’s the structure. Short seasons. Clear arcs. A beginning, middle and end. In a world where everything feels endless — the news cycles, social media, expectations — there is something comforting about knowing a story will resolve itself in 12 or 25 episodes. I can commit without feeling overwhelmed. I can care deeply without feeling overwhelmed. I can care deeply without being consumed.

In a time of constant over-stimulation and quiet anxiety, that kind of contained storytelling feels grounding. What some people call escapism, I’ve started to understand as emotional regulation — something that’s become unexpectedly important for my mental health.

I don’t think this is just about anime though. I think it’s about how people my age choose comfort. Some re-watch sitcoms. Some binge reality TV. Others disappear into books or games. For me it’s a culmination of all these plus the added bonus of animated worlds that let me pause without switching my brain off. Anime meets me where I am — inquisitive, overstimulated, tired and still open to wonder.

Loving “weird” anime has also taught me that interests don’t have to be logical to be valuable. Being drawn to unconventional stories has sharpened my curiosity and my appreciation for storytelling that doesn’t follow the usual rules. In a world that rewards originality, liking what’s different isn’t something to outgrow, it’s something to lean into.

I don’t watch anime because I’m avoiding reality. I watch it because it gives me space to sit with myself without explanation and in 2026, as an almost 23 year old African woman still figuring things out that doesn’t feel immature. It feels intentional.

Maybe that’s why anime and mental health resonates so deeply in your twenties — not because it fixes you, but because it allows you to simply exist.