ANIME: Age Problems

Anime has a number of positive traits, and several odd ones, and several bad ones. The odder trait of anime is the ages are wrong. I will explain.

In anime, elementary kids talk like junior high school kids. This allows them to make funny observation jokes.

In anime, middle school kids talk like high school kids. They're still focussed on kiddy school things, but they're also throwing in romance, which is too young for their apparent age. I think this is because Japan as a whole objects to the imposed age of consent rules. As a culture, and in their constitution, Japan has age of consent rules similar to Utah and Mississippi, though they provincially adjust to older. This means that in anime, they often use the high school behavior to offer up the first innocent steps towards crushes and harmless blushing dates. But they're doing this with middle schoolers.

By they time anime depicts high school kids, these kids are talking and socially behaving like college students. They are also physically developed, and there's frequently at least one episode with partial or full nudity hidden with "steam". But they never kiss, because that is illegal pornography. In many anime, telling the girl you love her is a marriage proposal and the story ends there. In Japanese culture, marriages are starting to get arranged at 16 years old, and happen at 18, 19 or 20. Any woman unmarried over age 23 is considered an old hag and treated like a slut by the entire culture. Obviously, if she isn't married at 24, she's running around with other women's husbands and causing trouble. Japan is not in favor of welfare moms. Abortion is free, and having a kid out of wedlock is a major insult.

High school kids act like college students. Silver Spoon is a great example of this. I keep thinking they're in college but they sometimes have to tell you they're in high school.

I think this is why they treat stories about college students in anime (like Moyashimon and Honey and Clover and Golden Time) as stories about adult life, only with work replaced by college classes, which aren't often shown actually. The social side of things tends to dominate the story.

So basically, Japan is telling you their characters are 4 years younger than they behave or look. Its baffling, but its one of those cultural differences. If you find yourself feeling confused, just remember this.