9 Anime Characters That Don’t Look Their Age

On many occasions, anime has a very strange time with age. Maybe a character becomes so iconic, they just don’t want to age them. Sometimes, creators are trying to convey something by making a character deceptively young. Does it make them cuter or seem more mature? That’s up to us to decide, but here are some strange examples of anime character who aren’t the age they look.

Best Anime Characters That Don’t Look Their Age

Hagu from Honey and Clover

This is perhaps one of the strangest cases of this age phenomenon. Hagu is a perfectly legal 18-year old college girl, apparently. Except that she looks like a perfectly illegal 8-year old. Furthermore, she acts like a kid, too. I mean, being young at heart is fine, but there should be a line. The weirdest part is that she’s a major love interest in the show, so…

Honey from Ouran High School Host Club

Every guy in the host club has a niche they fill, and Honey fills the shotacon niche with his small stature and boyish looks. He looks like he is still a few years from his teens, but in actuality, he is the oldest member of the club.

Most Titan Shifters from Attack on Titan

(Spoilers) Age is actually pretty hard to discern by a character’s looks in Attack on Titans. While some characters fit this trope more naturally like Levi who is actually 30, but seems younger, it is most common in Titan Shifters. Eren’s Dad, for example, is 27, but definitely doesn’t look it. Ymir is another good example, since she was stuck in titan form for awhile and is actually close to her 70s.

Tatsumaki from One Punch Man

The young appearance of Tatsumaki is the butt of many of the jokes for her on-screen time. Despite her size and appearance, she’s 28. Her cold look goes to great lengths to age her up a bit, but even her younger sister still looks older than her.

Yoko from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Not all character are older than they look. In the case of Yoko, she is actually 14, the same age as Simon. This is particularly surprising considering she acts older, looks older, and is pursuing the love of an older man. Although, that last bit isn’t surprising.

Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun

One of these things is better explained in the manga, but both Vash and Wolfwood are not the age they seem. Vash, being an alien species, is actually much older than the young adult he seems. In fact, he’s about 130-ish years old as he was just a child before the crash and it took some time to colonize a whole planet.

Alternatively, Wolfwood, who looks like a gruff 30-ish man, is actually about 16. He was the victim of experiments that aren’t really mentioned in the anime, but made him age faster.

All the Saiyans + Piccolo from DBZ

Saiyans don’t age. There isn’t much that needs to be said. Sometimes they pretend to be older by growing an awful mustache in non-canon content, but mostly they just look the same. The biggest case for this is Vegeta’s brother, Tarble. He’s actually about 40, but looks like a teen.

Also, fun fact, at the beginning of DBZ, Piccolo is about 8 years old, technically. He was an egg produced by King Piccolo to be his reincarnation and seek revenge after he got a bit of a hole in the chest by Goku. The Piccolo we know grew up in about three years and has being trying to whoop Goku’s ass since birth.

Near from Death Note

Both Near and to a lesser extend L suffer from a older than they look syndrome. I guess being strange makes you forever young. At the end of Death Note, Near is 21, but he looks the same as he did in the beginning, that is, he looks like he’s 12.

Hotaru from Non Non Biyori

Finally, a realistic example of this phenomenon. Hotaru is 11, but looks drastically older than her peers because of the very real excuse of early puberty. Girls do tend to sprout up early when you are young, yes.

If you know of any more age-defying anime characters, let us know in the comments section below.