24 Age Gap Romance Anime With Large Difference in Age

Relationships with a large age gap are still one of those things that have a bit of a stigma to them, and you know how much anime in the romance genre occasionally likes stigma.

As age gap romance isn’t actually that uncommon in real life, you can see them quite a bit in anime. However, age gap romance anime tend to highlight the larger, more problematic differences in age. It is interesting to see how the dynamic plays out when one side has maturity and experience and the other has youth and more than a bit of naivety.

If you are looking for age gap romance anime, then check out these anime recommendations. Unfortunately, while many age gap romance anime is a good exploration of the dynamic, some of them also get increasingly creepy as they seek to more grab an audience with taboo rather than explore anything more substantial. So, fair warning.

Best Age Gap Anime

Domestic Girlfriend

While Domestic Girlfriend is a love triangle between two sisters and their new dearest step-brother, one of those sisters is also his teacher.

While Domestic Girlfriend is amusing as you watch two sister play a sexual tug-of-war over the most boring male protagonist in the world, it does at least acknowledge that an adult teacher having relations with one of her students is a big problem. Usually anime doesn’t even give that a nod.

Please Teacher

Although one of the older school age gap romances, Please Teacher focuses on a student and his teacher who he was forced to marry by the principal because he discovered they were dating, which was all a misunderstanding anyway.

Of course, the teacher is also an alien, so that makes it less dubious, somehow, and allows them to be playful with the romance.

There are a few quirks at play here. As an alien, you don’t actually know how old she is, but old enough to be a teacher. The student has his own quirks too. He enters periods where time around him stops, so he is actually an 18-year-old in a 15-year-old body after a recent three-year time stop at the beginning of the series.

After the Rain

While many age gap romance anime are either played for comedy or drama, there is a small niche of romance anime that does examine the concept of an age gap under a serious scope. After the Rain is one of them, and honestly, probably the best one of them.

After The Raind focuses on a high school girl struggling to reconcile that she can no longer run track competitively after a foot injury with what her purpose in life is now. She gets a part-time job, and ends up developing feelings for the middle-aged manager there that conducts himself with a kindness and maturity she isn’t used to seeing in her peers.

It is a melancholic sort of show, but not one to be missed if you enjoy your mature romances and want an age gap anime that actually displays appropriate feelings between an adult and high schooler in a not creepy way.

Koikimo – It’s Too Sick to Call This Love

Koikimo features an affluent playboy that doesn’t really feel anything about anyone that he sleeps with because they do so due to his looks or wealth. However, he ends up falling in love with a high school girl – who turns out to be friends with his younger sister – after she saves him from falling down some stairs.

He aggressively pursues her and she is often disgusted by his advances because he is an older man she barely knows aggressively pursuing her, a high school girl. Yet, no one seems to consider her feelings as valid. He’s a rich hottie, after all.

Eventually she is worn down by his endless amount of affection and realizes her feelings.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Adding a bit of a supernatural twist, Natsuyuki Rendezvous follows a young man who gets a job at a flower shop in order to get close to the widowed owner that he admires.

The unexpected bit is that her dead husband haunts the shop. While there is much ghost cockblocking comedy, it is also flush with poignant feelings.

Sing “Yesterday” For Me

Sing Yesterday For Me has age gap romance in multiple levels.

It primarily focuses on a recent college graduate who is in love with a former classmate, but she is hung up on her own age gap romance that ended when that man died. The aforementioned aimless college graduate also has a high school drop-out that is in love with him.

While the age gaps aren’t large, Sing “Yesterday” for Me is an interesting exploration of adrift youth at various levels.

Ristorante Paradise

Grown, mature men are not always so prevalent in romance anime, but Ristorante Paradiso is flush with them.

Alongside overflowing with men who look like GILFs, Ristorante Paradiso also explores the growing relationship between a 21-year-old girl with familial vengeance on her mind and a middle-aged restaurant employee in the middle of a divorce.

It’s not a whirlwind of romance, but it is, without a doubt, the most charming romance on this list.

Koi Kaze

Taboo on several levels, Koi Kaze follows the relationship between an adult man, depressed about his lack of luck in love, who recently reconnected with his high school-aged estranged sister after not having seen her since their parents divorce.

Of course, when they met and these feelings formed, he didn’t know she was his sister.

Anime is no strange to incest. It loves to use the taboo for shock and fetish, but to Koi Kaze’s credit, it does explore the relationship in a mature and not fetishized way. It really tries to show how these feelings form.

Why the Hell Are You Here, Sensei?

Like the aforementioned Domestic Girlfriend, though without the love triangle, Why the Hell Are You Here, Sensei showcases multiple relationships between teachers and students.

Not only that, but it is pretty lewd. So lewd that the censored version is hard to watch because you can’t see what the hell is going on.

Unfortunately, lewdness and titillation was the aim here, so there isn’t actually any plot to speak of.

First Love Monster

While not the most in-depth romance, First Love Monster features a high school girl who accidentally goes out with a grade schooler. He, of course, looks like a high schooler, but acts like a grade schooler.

Luckily, much of the show is comedy as anything physical would get pretty weird.

Kodomo no Jikan

Personally, I like to pretend Kodomo no Jikan doesn’t exist as much as possible, but it fits the criteria.

Kodomo no Jikan is about a third-grade-teacher who gets consistently sexually harassed and propositioned by one of his female students (and sometimes her friends). While at first he resists her advances and tries to figure out why she is doing it, he eventually stops resisting.

Not only is the fact that it becomes a romance really quite problematic, but the reason that girl was making advances on him were caused by an even more problematic situation. Just a whole lot of child abuse going on in this one for shock value and titillation. It’s anime at its lowest point.

Loveless

Yaoi and shounen ai anime are frequent flyers of age gaps, which is why I have included a small chunk of the most prominent ones.

The plot of Loveless is more complicated than you would expect from shounen ai, and so nonsensical/not explored that it is hard to explain. It takes place in a world where everyone is catboys until they lose their virginity and their cat ears and tail fall off. Furthermore, they often form fighting pairs where one takes damage and one attacks. The main character suffers from amnesia and becomes increasingly entangled with his dead brother’s fighting partner.

Loveless likes to gloss over that the main character is a twelve-year-old boy that is being increasingly preyed upon by a twenty-year-old man, but that’s old school yaoi for you.

Super Lovers

In Super Lovers, the romance happens between a man and his newly adopted brother that he bonds with one summer when his brother was just a damaged adolescent boy being emotionally rehabilitated by his adoptive mother(‘s dogs).

Thankfully, any actual romance doesn’t start until after a time skip that ages up Ren a bit into his teenage years, but can you forget the first bit of the anime where he was essentially grooming a child?

Junjo Romantica

As one of the most popular yaoi series, of course Junjo Romantica features some age gap romance action. Junjo Romantica is made up of the story of three couples, and two of them feature an older man and a younger man.

The age gap here is often useful for stirring some drama up. Otherwise it is your standard older school yaoi anime where the top is aggressively horny and the bottom resists right up until he suddenly likes the sexual assault.

Mr. Nobunaga’s Young Bride

Mr. Nobunaga’s Young Bride addresses that awkward moment when you wish someone who loved you would just appear, and then the do, but they are a 14-year-old from the Sengoku era.

As a teacher, it is not an ideal situation and it becomes compoundingly less ideal as more girls enter into his growing lady stable.

It’s not the best romance anime, but it is a pretty good harem comedy consider it doesn’t take itself very seriously.

The World is Still Beautiful

You’d think more fantasy romance anime would have age gaps, but if you are looking for a royal marriage fantasy, The World is Still Beautiful provides a fun take on it.

However, the romance you expect is flipped. When a marriage is arranged, you expect a young bride to be given to an old king – even the main character expects that – but its not what happens.

The girl is an older teenager and the king she marries is still just a boy. As a king, he does have a certain maturity to him. However, when it comes to romance, he is still very much a kid with trust issues.

As The World is Still Beautiful moves slowly and steadily as a romance, it provides a pretty satisfying relationship of two people getting to know each other and building a nice foundation of trust. However, it still lets you know that the king still has some growing up to do in a lot of ways.

A Girl and Her Guard Dog

There are plenty of childcare anime about children being cared for by nice men who are not their fathers. However, they usually don’t grow up and want to date those men. Well, that bit is usually left out of the anime, anyway.

A Girl and her Guard Dog is about exactly that. A girl was raised as a very young child by a man in her grandfather’s yakuza clan, and as a high school student, she has recently developed romantic feelings for him.

As this is a very shoujo romance anime, his own feelings are kept vague, but his actions speak very clearly.

A Girl and Her Guard Dog is presented like a perfectly standard shoujo high school romance, but while a high schooler dating a 26-year-old pretending to be a high schooler is pushing things a bit with the age gap, more than a few people find it a bit unnerving that he literally raised her from a very small child. I feel like there is a term for that. “Grooming,” wasn’t it?

Kamisama Kiss

Supernatural age gap romances are easy, but often less appealing as age gap romance. For example, Inuyasha is technically one, but the 200-year-old half-demon still acts like a high school boy.

In Kamisama Kiss, a high school girl develops feelings for a thousand-year-old fox demon who may have been in love with her past self, unknowingly to them.

Yet, even though he has his moments of immaturity, the fox demon does have that distinct air of being an older entity. It is that alone that makes this a more satisfying age gap romance anime than many other supernatural romance anime with a similar dynamic.

Rurouni Kenshin

While Rurouni Kenshin is many different things as an anime, one thing it also covers is age gap romance.

Kaoru is young and fiery while Kenshin is older, and although silly, is mature in many ways.

The potentially disappointing thing is that their romance is handled much the way any shounen romance is handled. As Kenshin has a bit of silliness to his personality, it sort of limits the appearance of age, I suppose.

My Wife is a High School Girl

You know how some romance anime here are interesting explorations of older people dating much younger ones? My Wife is a High School Girl is not that. My Wife is a High School Girl is all about the fetish of a man in a relationship with a high school girl.

Unlike other anime that fetishizes the age gap, My Wife is a High School Girl skips any dating and just makes them married. That means they can do all the things people want to see like have them sleep together or bath time shenanigans. While it isn’t graphic, it does seem to wish it could be.

However, while My Wife is a High School Girl glosses over all the problematic parts of this relationship, it is pretty focused on comedy and suggestive situations for those looking for exactly that.

Inu X Boku SS

Inu X Boku SS follows a sheltered 15-year-old girl that, in search for independence, moves into an apartment. She, however, must have a bodyguard present at the request of her wealthy family.

She then develops feelings for this older man who protects and cares for her so diligently. Being that she is also a half-demon, there is also a supernatural element at play.

In truth, Inu X Boku SS doesn’t draw much attention to the age gap and just lets the romance be like many other romance anime.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

In the face of magic in a fantasy land, age ain’t nothing but a number.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride features the titular ancient, aged magus with a skull face, buying a girl who sold herself into slavery. This set up for romance, however, is actually more wholesome than it seems.

Instead of aggressively pursuing the woman he bought to be his eventual bride, the magus treats her more like an apprentice. Teaching her to control her own rare magic that will shorten her life as well as teaching her to have value in herself.

That said, the romance in this series does move rather slowly because of this. Further complicating things, the magus isn’t actually a traditional human and has trouble understanding some concepts of the human experience.

Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway

When this first premiered, a good portion of the anime community worried that it would be as gross as the title makes it seem, but Higehiro is actually quite grounded and a very nice approach to age-gap romance.

The series follows a man in love with his boss, who rejected him. On his way home, he found a runway high school girl and sheltered her for the night. Being a runaway girl, she is accustomed to doing certain favors for men, but like a normal man, he shuts that down.

While you see the high school girl developing feelings for him and he develops affection for her, a boundary is set and respected by them both. You see the potential for romance later, but the series instead focuses on her past abuse and trying to better her situation.

Do you have more anime recommendations that feature age gap romances? Let fans know in the comments section below.