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Then let me repeat the subsequent sentences:

I read plenty of shonen work, maybe more than you, and there's no shame in it. Art is art.

I've been exhibiting a silly bias that because I'm past a phase, I expect that everyone else either is past it too or should be even though you're probably also a bit younger than me . . .

If you'll allow me the silly comparison, you're effectively doing tailism. I'm sure that you know that media's primary market being children does not invalidate it as art or mean that it's invalid to be interested in it if you're not a child. There's plenty of media, including in the west, that is written with the intention of adults and children alike having something to enjoy from it, and also children's media should still be good art that isn't held to a lower standard, but that's a different discussion. By choosing to basically completely accept the backwards framing they have but then just make a frivolous argument that something that is plainly mostly targetting teenagers isn't actually for children, you inevitably aren't going to make much progress (and even less so if your best argument is "his whole family got killed by a demon and there was like blood everywhere man!" which is the argument a teenager would make that their favored media is "mature," oblivious to how such a line of argumentation would look absurd to an adult).

I compare it to tailism because tailism is ceding ground to reactionaries, endorsing their ideas and proposals because you think that it will get you accepted instead of agitating to raise consciousness, to make the positions that you really believe in more popular. Art is broadly not politics* as much as cultural critics wish it was, but in this case I think the attitude you describe others as having is genuinely culturally backwards and I doubt you'd disagree, so don't feed into it!

If for some reason it's important to you that someone watches anime -- and that's fine, there are good reasons to care -- you really should be having a more thoughtful conversation with them about what their claim even means and what its significance is. An accessible framing might be: What do you like in media? What do you dislike? What are you trying to get out of it? What does the medium have to do with those questions? If they make an effort to really answer those questions, it shouldn't be too hard to explain why some series (maybe not your favorite, but one you know) might appeal to them, and if they like that one, they'll be at least a little more open to others (perhaps even your favorite!).

*Which is not to say that it's not political, of course it is, but it is not itself the political arena most of the time, and no amount of art can substitute for actual politics.