Vague Age / Anime & Manga

• Anpanman: Due to how the series is aimed at preschoolers, quite a bit of the characters don't have exact ages. Characters that use the title "sensei", "ojisan", "obasan" and "san" are easy to figure out that they're adults, but there's some characters that might not use the term correctly that it makes the ages hard to track down.
  • It's unknown what Batako's exact age is as the term "san" means "Mr./Miss", meaning she could be a young adult as she is seen working with Uncle Jam. But her has tendencies to like childish things at times due to the nature of the show.
• It's never stated how old Omusubiman is. He is often seen with Umeboshibi Baaya and some of episodes imply that they're more than just friends, which parallels with Komusubiman and Umeko-chan (Umeboshibi Baaya's granddaughter). Which makes imply that he might be a senior. But then eariler episodes imply that Omusubiman has some feelings for Batako, who herself somewhat a young adult. Though because of the nature of the show's No Hugging, No Kissing policy, it's unknown if that is the case.
  • Despite having the title "man", Komusubiman has a very young voice and acts a bit childish around the younger characters. He might be at least preteen.
  • While Poppo-chan is clearly a baby, it's hard to determine what age she is between infancy and child. In her early episodes, she does say a few words aside from "poppo", making it sound like she's at least slightly older like Akachanman. But then later episodes regressed her mind to say "poppo" like Baby Donuts, making it hard to pin down her age.
  • It's never stated how old Hot Sandwich-chan is. Her behavior makes it look like she's a teenager, but she is the only one running the diner.
• Levi (and a few others) from Attack on Titan. Levi is noticeably smaller than many characters, including the adolescent protagonists, and looks younger than a few of the trainees, but in reality he has to be anywhere from three to ten years older than them. Word of God says he's "surprisingly old", later clarifying the age is past 30.
• Baccano! makes it rather difficult to determine Ennis's physical or chronological age, as her origin is somewhat complicated and not too many details are given on her timeline in either the anime or Light Novels beyond three tidbits: she was around before the commercialization of radio (with the given setting, means she can be anywhere from eight to two hundred and nineteen), she's physically the same age as her "mother" was when she unwillingly "donated" some of her cells (nothing is given about this girl/woman other than that she was female), and that she identifies Firo on sight as "around the same age as her, or a little younger" (which, given that Firo's an eighteen-year-old regularly mistaken to be as young as fourteen or fifteen).
• Berserk: The ages of the characters—and especially of the three main ones—has been a pestering question among the fandom since the character designs can be deceptive and the sparse information given leaves much to interpretation. Guts' age, at least, can be known at certain points in the story based on the number of years time-skipped since his birth. Unfortunately, although Casca says that she was twelve when Griffith took her in, she does not say how long ago that was and Griffith's exact age is not mentioned at any time. Everyone's guesses vary widely both on specific ages and on seemingly simple questions such as who is older or younger than who. An official guide book released in 2016 included the ages of major characters as of episode 347 (Guts, 24; Griffith, 24; Casca, 24; Serpico, 20; Farnese, 19; Rickert, 19; Isma, 15; Isidro, 14; Schierke, 13), but this raises as many questions as it answers since it sometimes leads to Improbable Age, goes against a characters' appearance and relationship with other characters, and/or leads to contradictions in the timeline. For example, if you accept that Guts is 24 now, then following the timeskips backward Farnese would have been 14 when she led to Holy Iron Chain Knights to the pool of blood left behind by the Eclipse. Not only did she look older than that at the time, but the dialogue in the later flashback to her childhood establishes that she was 16 when she burned the Vandimion mansion and got banished to a convent, the event which led to her being put in charge of the HICKs in the first place. Logically she would have to be at least 21 to Guts' 24 in order for these things to be reconciled. Because of this and other probelms, including speculation that these ages may have been decided by some editor rather than Miura himself, there's a risk that many fans will simply ignore the official ages and continue to bicker just as they've always done.
• While she's clearly older than Tsutomu, the age of the title character of Birdy the Mighty was never stated in the OVA or Decode. In the OVA series, Tsutomu chastises Birdy for drinking alcohol due to a combination of the possibility of getting drunk while on duty and her being underaged, which given the legal drinking age in Japan is 20, suggests Birdy in the OVA series is at the oldest 19. However, in Decode, Birdy's age is easier to determine as flashbacks to her are shown when she was 10, a friend of hers while she was that age says he hasn't seen her for 14 years, and Tsutomu only reprimanding her for getting drunk, but not her age, al suggest that at the youngest, she's 24 there.
• Captain Harlock: He is said to have a reputation that would have to have been years in the making. He usually seems to appear no older than about thirty. In Endless Odyssey, one of his old comrades assumes that "he must be dead by now" and is genuinely suprised when he shows up, many years after their old adventures (Endless Odyssey is allegedly meant to pick up many years after the 1978 series left off). Also, if one were to even attempt to fit all or even some of his appearances into a coherent timeline (especially Arcadia of My Youth, Galaxy Express 999, the 1978 series, and Endless Odyssey), you would end up with a Harlock that appears to have been active for decades.
• This was the case for most of the 00 cyborgs in Cyborg009, as Ishinomori never gave them established ages- with the exception of 009, who was 18 and 001 who was of (vague) infant age. The anime adaptations settle on 007 being the oldest (except for the '60s incarnations which made him a 9-year old Kid-Appeal Character) and in his '40s, 006 being a little younger than that, 005 and 004 either being in their late '20s or early '30s, 008 being in his early '20s, and 002 being in his early '20s or being 18 like 009. 003 either winds up younger than 009 in the earlier anime adaptations, being 16 or 17, or she's older in the '01 incarnation (physically 19, but chronologically much older due to being cryogenically frozen in the '60s).
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, there's many cases throughout the series regarding demons; while the human characters, and some of the previous human lives the demons have lived, have exact ages given either in the manga/anime or databooks, how old exactly the demons are in the present is never stated, rough estimates can be made through some details such as how many Japanese Emperors/Eras the demons have lived through, and what was the last time the Upper Ranks in the Twelve Kizuki had a meeting, as such all current Upper Rank demons are older than 113 years. The other demons with different estimates on their current age are Muzan, who has lived for a little over a thousand years, and Kokushibo who has lived for more than 450 years.
• Mireille of .hack//Legend of the Twilight, who can be very knowledgeable at times, sometimes lord it over others, and sometimes just be cute and vulnerable. She actually turns out to be the four-year-old daughter of an identical character from the first game, using her mother's file, and one of the other girls in Shugo's harem is her home tutor, explaining some of it.
• The three main Universe 6 Saiyans Cabba, Caulifla, and Kale from Dragon Ball Super physically they look like they're in their teens, but since Saiyans age slowly to keep in fighting shape they could be in their twenties, since Caulifla is the leader of a gang of adult Saiyans it seems to suggest the latter age range.
• Dream Hunter Rem: Rem. She's old enough to drive and own a car, but at the same time she can convincingly disguise herself as a highschool student, and she notes to Sakaki that she is pretty much one, though without stating her exact age.
• In Fairy Tail, Natsu's age hasn't been revealed even though most other members have a known age. Because he couldn't pass through Freed's barrier in the Battle of Fairy Tail, he is either 80+ years old (which seems a bit weird since he obviously has aged as he looked like a kid 6 years ago and a teenager now) or a stone statue (which makes even less sense). In terms of personality and appearance, he is probably supposed to be seen as being Lucy's age (17 years), as he looks a bit younger and acts more immature than 18-year-old Gray. Later chapters reveal that he is at least 400 years old, a fact that he himself is unaware of. Natsu is actually Zeref's dead younger brother brought back to life as a demon powered by Etherious. It later turns out that he is physically as old as he looks, but by technicality he and the other true dragon slayers are 400 years old due to being born 400 years ago and sent forward in time via the Eclipse Gate. Also, the reason he and Gajeel couldn't pass through Freed's barrier is possibly because they had their dragon parents in their bodies at the time and they were probably older than 80.
• Gintama: The ages of certains characters like Kagura, Shinpachi, Kyuubei or Okita are known, but several other are only given a vague age. Gintoki and his companions from the time of the Joui war Katsura and Takasugi are in their twenties, but their exact age is not specified. Same go for Tsukuyo or Hijikata. Fridge Logic justify it in most cases, as the characters with unknown ages are thoses who had life circumstances that could have led to them losing track of it. For exemple, Gintoki was found and adopted by Shoyo at a young age, and as a orphan from the Joui war probably don't know his exact age himself, and Hijikata have been a vagabond for a few years before meeting Kondo. Generally the characters who are given a precise age are thoses who had a relatively stable life and/or are too young to have fought in the war.
• In Goodbye, My Rose Garden, none of the characters' ages are officially stated. Alice and Edward are engaged to be married, so they're presumably in their early twenties. Alice's sister Jane is close to her age, but Margaret and Mary are much younger- the former still relies on Alice to help her pick her outfits, while the latter is in the care of a nanny. Hanako was a teacher in Japan despite looking no older than 17 in Alice's eyes, but it's unclear how old she actually is.
• Gugure! Kokkuri-san: Putting aside the cases of the Really 700 Years Old Kokkuri and Shiragaki, how old exactly is Kohina is not specified. All we know is that she is a young child in elementary-school. And her behavior doesn't exactly help to pinpoint it either, since she is a wise beyond her years Emotionless Girl.
• None of the Gunslinger Girl cyborgs have a given age. Henrietta seems to be between eleven and thirteen, while Triela is a little older, and Petra is the oldest and has a romance with her handler but is still a teenager. To make it more confusing they seem to be stunted at the age they were Conditioned at and possibly years have passed between their backstory and the final chapter, so that leaves it vague what their biological ages are.
• Played with in Haré+Guu. When attending The City's school, Haré immediately notices all the kids are separated by grades. His own school is a literal one-teacher and his homeroom consists of every non-adult in the series, including teenagers. ^note Which incidentally is Truth in Television for extremely low population density areas; a single teacher is able to give individualized assignments for each student based on their age, when there's only a handful of them to begin with.
• Mikuru Asahina from Haruhi Suzumiya. Although she looks like a moe teenager, when Kyon asked her how old she really is after she revealed her true origin and purpose, she merely responded, "That's classified."
• Hello! Sandybell:
  • Mark is a wide-eyed idealist and tends to behave like a Kiddie Kid at times, but he's also of marriageable age^note In Scotland, the youngest age you can get married is 16 and has a crush on Sandybell (who, according to Word of God, is 12).
  • Kitty is old enough to drive her own car and get married (her parents arrange one with Mark), but she's also constantly involved with the other kids and has eyes for Mark, who has a crush on twelve-year-old Sandybell. Of course there's also the chance that she's the oldest of the friend group.
  • In Scotland, to get a license for driving you have to be at least 17 years old, unless you are getting or have applied for the enhanced rate of the mobility component of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in which case the minimum age is 16.
  • Not helping that the anime gratuitously shows Sandybell and Ricky as Kids Driving Cars, though that's only with one specific do-anything vehicle.
• High School D×D is rife with this, thanks to reincarnated devils having their aging slow down dramatically from the moment they're reborn. Rias is a high school senior, but as a pure-blooded devil it's plausible she's pushing quadruple digits. Akeno looks exactly the same age, but is significantly younger. Issei, Asia and Xenovia are exactly the age they look thanks to having been recently reincarnated, but Kiba is heavily implied to be decades older despite being in the same school year. And all three of them are stated to be much younger than Koneko, a tiny underclassman who could well be over a century old, and Gaspar, whose Dhampir nature only further muddies the waters.
• Hoshin Engi: We know that Taikobo is 72 years old at the beginning of the series, and that is all we know. Other characters' ages are never stated explicitly, and because how much time has passed between the beginning and the end of the manga isn't exactly stated either, even Taikobo's precise age is hard to pinpoint. Since many characters in the setting can live for centuries or even thousands of years, this makes it sometimes impossible to guess. Yozen is a bit more than 250, since a flashback set that much time ago show him as a very young child, and a flashback to Nataku's birth is set roughly ten years prior to his introduction, but he looks older than this and is a particular case due to being an Artificial Human (for example, his body was dead for around two or three of those years).
• Inuyasha:
  • Kikyo is accepted to be in her mid-to-late teens, but her exact age is uncertain. The InuYasha Profiles book states that she was eighteen when she originally died, whereas Rumiko Takahashi said she was "around seventeen" when it happened.
  • Likewise, the exact ages of all youkai and hanyou characters is left deliberately ambiguous.
• Kengan Ashura deliberately keeps Kaede and Sakura's ages ambiguous while leaving numerous hints that they're a lot Older Than They Look. Likewise, characters who hail from the Inside, such as Ohma and Agito don't have their ages specified, since people from the Inside all suffer from Parental Abandonment and never celebrate their birthdays (although Word of God confirms that Ohma is in his late 20s).
• Lampshaded in Kill Me Baby when Yasuna says that she's "probably in high school".
• Kobato. She certainly acts a lot younger than a teenager, but from her design and the way other characters treat her she seems to be at least twelve and probably not old enough to be in high school.
• Koroshiya Yametai: The protagonist, Rose Madder Shinagawa, looks like a young adult, but her age is obscured by the breath from her sigh. She appears to be old enough that her relationship with the teenage Benika is considered an Age-Gap Romance.
• Kuroko's Basketball: While it's obvious that Kuroko is a first-year at the start of the story, it's unclear whether or not he's the oldest or the youngest member of the Generation of Miracles. He was born on January 31st, and because a school year in Japan doesn't start until April, it'd still be possible for him to be in the same year with the other 5 members despite being born a year later. However, it's also possible that for whatever reason, he was born before Kise (June 18th) but studied in the same year with the other 5 regardless. So, if he was born after Akashi (December 20th), he would be the youngest member, but if he was born before Kise, he would be the oldest member. However, the mangaka doesn't specify the year so it's difficult to determine.
• Lupin III: The characters are certainly adults, but beyond that it's anyone's guess. The fact that they have been having adventures since The '60s can be ignored since the series runs on Comic-Book Time. However, Lupin himself is canonically the grandson of Arsène Lupin, who first appeared over a century ago, already an adult. At this point, the timeline would make a lot more sense if it were called Lupin the Fourth or even Lupin the Fifth.
• Satsuki Hyoudou from Maid-Sama!. Despite looking like a teenager, she is actually 30 years old.
• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has Trowa, whose age is almost always given as "unknown," or the writers can't seem to make up their minds whether he's 15 (like the other pilots) or 16. The Episode Zero manga gives his age as 16 at the blurb at the end of his segment, though that could be a translation thing. Many fans think he might be a little bit older, because of that blurb, and that he's slightly taller than the other G-boys.
• Mysterious Joker seems to be a world of characters with ambiguous ages.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto: Kakashi's age when he was on Minato's team is really confusing due to Writers Cannot Do Math, Artistic Age, and likely retcons. In the Chunin Exam arc it's mentioned that Kakashi graduated 6 years younger than Team 8, meaning he was 6 when he became genin. It's later mentioned that he graduated the academy at 5 and became a chunin at 6. His teammates, Obito and Rin, graduated at 9 and became chunin at 11. There should be an age-gap between them, except that Kakashi looks exactly the same age as Obito and Rin. Kakashi as a chunin doesn't look or act like a 6-year old. Maybe he's Younger Than They Look, but 11-year old Rin still has a crush on the apparently 6-year old Kakashi, which is likely not what was intended.
  • Boruto:
    • Unlike in the original, none of the character's ages are given initially. It's presumed that the characters are anywhere from 10-12 at the start. This is made more confusing because in Chapter 700 of Naruto, Boruto and his friends seemed younger (fitting since they just started the academy) than they do in the early episodes of the anime (which also starts with them entering the academy). This might be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness as Boruto bumped that kids join the Ninja Academy (10-12 instead of 6-8, with less than 2 years passing before graduation).
    • Boruto's sister Himawari is 2 years his junior. This would mean she's likely 8-10 years old, but she doesn't act like one. She's treated more like a 4-7 year old.
• One Piece; Jewelry Bonney is one of few characters in the series that does not have a specified age. In his commentaries, Oda referred to her being somewhere between 22-24 years of age but was otherwise unspecific. Come the Egghead Arc, and it's revealed she's twelve, and uses her Devil Fruit powers to age herself up to a young woman so she can better hide from the World Government.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Unlike the games, the protagonist (Ash) is given a clear age of ten years old, however, the Pokémon themselves are a mystery. Meowth is apparently an adult but everyone else is up in the air. Do Pokémon age when they evolve? If a baby Pokémon never evolves are they always considered a child? Is Donphan a Manchild or a large child? Bulbasaur and the other first-stage Pokémon are largely assumed to be 'child Pokémon', but an early joke had them drunk and their species can breed. In another episode, an elderly Treecko was seen. It's never specified whether Pikachu is an adult or whether he's a Kid Hero like his trainer. Pikachu in Pokémon: I Choose You! speaks for the first time and has a rather high pitched, childish voice, implying that he's considered a child by Pokémon standards.
    • Most characters besides the protagonists have no age. Brock is fifteen according to supplementary material and Misty is ten like Ash, but unless their ages are given in the games it's unlikely anyone's age is given in the anime. May, Dawn, Iris, Serena, and Clemont all seem the same age as Ash but Cilan's age is just vaguely "mid-teens" from the looks of it (like Brock, his game counterpart seems to be an adult but the anime aged him down).
    • Jessie and James. The only certainty is they're older than any of Ash's tagalongs. Jessie once said she was seventeen but that's probably her trying to seem younger than she is, and flashbacks imply she finished high school. The Japanese version has implied they're twenty-five in one of the movies and according to Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo Radio Drama Jessie is over twenty. The radio drama supports Jessie being in her mid-twenties as the first part takes place twenty years before the series and Miyamoto (Jessie's mom) states her daughter is starting school. On the other hand, an in-series flashback to Jessie ten years ago has her seem much younger than fifteen, which would fit with her possibly being in her late teens. James is the same age as Jessie, but otherwise a similar mystery.
  • Mitsumi from Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure! seems to be a teenager but her exact age is never given. She seems older than Jun, but he in turn seems older than his game counterpart so that doesn't help much.
  • Jasmine is clearly in her late teens to early twenties in the Pokémon Gold and Silver. In Pokémon Adventures she is the same size as the preteen Silver when she first appears.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Applied to Luna the cat in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, who despite sounding identical to the version in Sailor Moon (who was a full grown cat until she briefly became a human(oid)), was given the body of a very young girl as a occasional human form. She was described by mangaka Naoko Takeuchi as being a year younger than the lead character and became a teenaged girl when human, but also has been alive since the Silver Millennium.
  • Usagi's younger brother's age can fluctuate from between two and four years younger than her depending on whether you're watching The '90s anime, the live-action series, or reading the manga.
• In Rebuild World, Akira's age is never mentioned. He's consistently treated as a child by the other characters in the story and he's mentioned to be malnourished, short, and underweight. But he's not so young that he doesn't understand the value of sex appeal, implying that he's somewhere in his early teens.
• Amae Koromo from Saki. Though she appears very child-like, she is a second-year student as opposed to the majority of Kiyosumi High's players like Saki, Nodoka, and Yuuki who are first-years, and it's been hinted that she's older than Nodoka.
• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: Princes Syalis' age is never explicitly stated, her profile listing it as a line of question marks. She looks like she's still in her early teens at best, but she was apparently old enough to be given a significant amount of paperwork to handle as part of her daily duties back in the human realm before being kidnapped. She also hasn't visibly aged in all the time she's spent a prisoner, despite the fact that as of the 11th volume, she's spent three Christmases in nominal captivity. She eventually mentions she's an adult when talking to Poseidon.
• With the exception of three characters- Maka, Kilik, and Black*Star who are all confirmed to be 13 years old in the first half of the series- none of the cast in Soul Eater are given specific ages. This is not helped by the fact that the DWMA doesn't sort its students out by age, but instead by when the student enrolled and what skill level they are at. Tsubaki and Liz are hinted to be at least 2-3 years older than them, while it's unclear if resident Shinigami Death the Kid is either Older Than He Looks or ages just like them. When it comes to the adult cast, given that Spirit had Maka when he was 18, it can assumed that they are around their 30s. If the character is either a Witch or related to magic, they're even harder to pin down given that they can live for centuries.
• In SPY×FAMILY, Anya claims to be six, but there are multiple implications that she's not: She's noticeably small for her supposed age (Loid initially assumes she's four or five), and shoddy record keeping at the orphanage means that nobody can track down her actual birth date. The fact that she was previously a subject of human experimentation muddles things further, as it's impossible to know if her development was stunted or accelerated as a result. She could plausibly be anywhere from four to seven.
• While the titular protagonist of Squid Girl is definitely young, her actual age is unknown. Not even she knows how old she is, as sea-dwellers don't count birthdays and she didn't even know how long a human year was until she came to the surface.
• Sunrise has been rather opaque about the ages of the heroes in Tiger & Bunny. So far, they've only given out two and a half: Barnaby's 24, Kaede's 9, and Kotetsu's kinda sorta probably somewhere between 33 and 39. Maybe.
• 'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess: None of the characters in this series have definite ages, but you can at least divide them into "children" (Maomao-chan and Insuke) and "adults" (the Hell-Lord, his wife, Torture). Enki and Youki are... harder to place, though they're at least old enough to have jobs as torturers. Where this really comes into place is the Princess herself. She looks like a teenager, but unless Ex is heavily embellishing her career as Commander of the Third Legion, she either has years of fighting experience or rose up the ranks really quickly.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • As stated in the current page quote, it's never clearly stated how old Noah, Kaiba's stepbrother is. But if we were to make a guess, then he looked about twelve when Gozaburo showed him the photo of Kaiba, who was about seven at that time. So it can be guessed that Noah is five years older than Kaiba and would have been twenty-one had he been alive. (Part of it is when the group meets Noah in person, they're in a virtual world, and Noah had been there for some time. That would affect anyone's visible age.)
  • Shizuka's age is also a myth. She looks about the same age as Anzu, but is definitely younger, due to being Jounouchi's younger sister. Her age is guessed to be between 12 and 15. She is seen wearing typical middle school attire in a photo seen in Jounochi's wallet.
  • Mana's age is never stated clearly by Takahashi either. The anime made her younger than Atem for about 2 years, but then she is too big-breasted for a mere fourteen-year-old, so she can probably also be a case of Older Than They Look and is actually older than Atem. We can't be sure, though.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS: Galient Tazaki is initially stated to be in sixth-grade, and styles his sideburns to look like a moustache to look older as well as calling other people "younguns". It's later revealed that he's been taking care of the currently sixth-grade Asana Mutsuba since she was a toddler, but Galient's exact age hasn't been given in-series.
• In YuYu Hakusho most of the characters all have their ages clearly defined. Yusuke is 14, Kuwabara is 15, Shizuru is 18 in the manga and 21 or so in the anime, Kurama's human half, Shuichi, is 15, Koenma is centuries old, etc. That makes the characters we don't know quite odd. Botan is a spirit being, so she's justified. Hiei and Yukina on the other hand, no one knows. They're twins, meaning no matter the number they are the same age. Yukina belongs to a Lady Land race that reproduces asexually once every 100 years, since she's never had any children and she's half the size of the others in her race (Hiei too) she's obviously a "child" (at least in a demon sense). There is some knowledge that they're at least 16, which means they're 16-99 years old. Vague age indeed.
• In Yuri is My Job!, Mai Koshiba, the manger of the Liebe Girls' Academy salon, looks like the youngest character in the cast, but is actually the oldest of the main characters, although the story doesn't specify how old, since a rabbit head obscures her true age. A the time of Liebe's founding, Mai was apparently older than Nene at the time, according to a bartender at a lesbian bar, but Mai shushed the bartender before she could disclose Mai's age.