It's time for another new blog post! For today's blog post, I will be talking about characters in anime who look younger than they are. Pretty much every anime fan knows the trope of a character who looks young but is really hundreds to thousands of years old. These characters can be gods, ghosts, vampires, or basically any other supernatural thing. There are even just normal humans who are adults that look like children. There's nothing wrong with them looking young, since there are real people who look much younger than they are. But if they're actually much older, then that's where the problems begin. You see, these secretly much older characters almost never actually go for adults. They pretty much always go for teenagers, which is incredibly creepy. Regardless of how they may look, they're still adults. Unless they're part of a race that ages very slowly, that is. But those ones aren't the ones I'm referring to. There isn't as much of a problem if the long-lived character is technically close to the same age as their love interest. But this almost never happens. It's very creepy and uncomfortable to see a romantic relationship develop between a teenager and a very old adult; regardless of how young they look. Real people who look younger than they are still date within their age group because it would be wrong not to. Although anime doesn't often play by the same rules as reality does, that doesn't mean this shouldn't be considered a problem. It is still a problem to a certain degree because media, especially popular media, has an influence on how people see things in the real world. So if a character is older, they should be treated and portrayed as an adult if they are one; and they absolutely should not have any sort of romantic relationship with a teenager or younger. But, those are mostly just my thoughts on this topic. I wanted to talk about this because the discussion of young looking characters comes up relatively often within the anime community. I personally see nothing wrong with a character looking or acting young as long as they are still treated as an adult. There are real people with real disabilities or genetics that can make them look or act younger than they physically are; and we shouldn't make them feel like they're doing something wrong just by existing because we find it weird or unusual. Regardless of this, I hope you all still enjoyed this blog post!