Manchild / Anime & Manga

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• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: On the surface, Kishika Torotoro is the responsible and knightly third year captain of the school kendo club; however, her responsibilities growing up starved her of the chance to enjoy being a kid, which resulted in a secret desire to be pampered, mentally regressing to an infantile state whenever someone indulges her desire.
• After God: Obikawa is irritated by "intellectual" topics, likes to pester people to act in the way he wants, and is generally impatient. Him being the Snake IPO explains him not being familiar with social norms, but even after being exposed, he's still bratty and likes games.
• Aoi from Aoi Destruction is 38 but looks prepubescent and acts like an elementary schooler.
• Discussed in Asteroid in Love. When Mira shows she is very good with children, Yuu wondered alound whether that's because she's "more similar to a child", given her cheerful ditz demeanour is rather child-like. Chika immediately shuts Yuu up (again).
• Azumanga Daioh: Yukari Tanizaki is rather immature despite being the main characters' teacher, which is lampshaded by her students and her fellow teachers. She tends to throw tantrums or sulk like a little kid when things don't go her way; she has been known to get bored enough with her own classes to ditch them to go swimming or rope her students into playing sports instead. At one point, she arrives late to class because she was stuck in line to buy a PlayStation game. To top it all off, she is unmarried and still lives with her parents.
• Bleach:
  • Unohana compares Kenpachi to a child when he screams at her not to die after killing her, saddened that they won't be able to fight anymore.
  • As if to play on the above, the anime adaptation of Kenpachi's fight with Gremmy has the former visually regress to a smiling child when he cuts down the meteor Gremmy just summoned after releasing his Shikai.
• Cells NOT at Work!: Instead of the young children seen in the main series, the Erythroblasts of NOT at Work are a group of immature young adults that still live at their nursery.
• City Hunter: Ryo's emotional maturity outside of work is questionable at best, especially with how much of a lech he is. Although considering how utterly FUCKED his childhood was, it’s somewhat understandable.
• Claymore has one of the few, female examples. The warrior Helen is more often childish. She likes and teases other warriors or provokes them for fun. She was so annoyed by Clare that she said Raki would be her "nocturnal toy". Later in the manga you can see her celebrate with other warriors and, although all the warriors can control whether they let alcohol come to them, Helen is the only one who drinks without restraint because she enjoys it.
• Death Note:
  • L sits like a kid, eats a lot of sugar, plays with his food, and in the anime, after hearing something important, ran and dove headfirst on the couch like a ten-year-old boy would.
    • They give the reason for his sitting position being that the brain gets the most oxygen from that posture. His liking of sugary foods has been explained in special material as being necessary for his brain, which burns calories like mad. Brains do consume a large number of calories and given L's job, his must be working around the clock.
  • Near. He's 17-18 in the post-timeskip (21 in the post-series one shot) and he's always seen playing with toys.
• Digimon Tamers: Growmon/Growlmon is just a larger (though notably shorter than Greymon) Guilmon. Growlmon is mentally slightly older, but he carries most of Guilmon's childish personality. Averted with Wargrowlmon, who is pretty snarky and serious.
• Dragon Ball:
  • When there isn't something to punch, Goku embodies this trope, often acting less mature than his granddaughter. Super really plays this aspect up by making him whine about not training and him having petty rivalries with Vegeta like who can cut grass the fastest.
  • The Ginyu Force would qualify, playing jan-ken-pon to see who gets to fight who, and betting chocolate bars on the outcome of fights.
  • The future variant of Android 17, in all his fascination with his own personal entertainment, is the kind of Psychopathic Manchild that borders on this trope.
  • Fat Buu once he turns good and becomes Good Buu. He no longer devours people and is overall a nice guy. Doesn't stop him from throwing tantrums when he wants to eat and refusing to share his food with others, something that gets him in trouble with Beerus. It was also his innocence that allowed Babidi and his father to take advantage of him.
  • Broly is a tragic example as while he’s more polite and far less battle hungry than Goku and Vegeta (whom he is the same age as), due living decades on Vampa, Broly has got the mind of a wild child. He tries to eat snacks with the wrappers on before Cheelai stops him, and Broly still wears the ear of an alien he befriended as a child. Broly also freaks out at the death of his father Paragus the same way a small child would, albeit with more destructive results.
• FLCL: Amarao is a subtle example, established early on when it's revealed that he has a serious Sweet Tooth and hates spicy food ("spicy = adult and sweet = kiddy" being a recurring motif in the series.) He spends his whole time in the series trying to turn Naota away from his Coming of Age Story Character Development, and Word of God confirms that he's basically an older version of Naota without said Character Development.
  • Many of the adults in the series are irresponsible and/or immature, though Naoto's dad Kamon Nandaba stands out the most. Who gets jealous of their own kid getting into a relationship with a girl?
• Food Wars!: Asahi Saiba, the main antagonist of the final arc, has many tendencies like this. For starters, he holds an Irrational Hatred for protagonist Soma Yukihira, simply because he's the biological son of his mentor Joichiro (Soma's mother had recently passed and he had to go back home to raise him). When first introduced, he's shown trying to court Erina Nakiri but drives her away with his advances, not realizing how toxic they are, and resorts to kidnap her and practically blackmail her into competing with him to force her to marry him (and at the time, unaware that she was his half-sister). Growing up with an abusive alcoholic mother gave the guy serious issues and much of his actions are motivated for a desire to have a family who loves him.
• Milla Ackerman from Godannar before regaining her full memories.
• A female variant is the high elf archer from Goblin Slayer. She is quickly excitable, makes fun of others and generally behaves childishly. She is also idealistic to the point of naivety. Since she lives in a brutal world, she is inevitably becoming more serious in some episodes.
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • How an irresponsible and immature drunk like Yukiji Katsura, Hina's older sister, hasn't been fired from her job as a teacher is beyond any conceivable logic, but luckily for her logic doesn't apply here. Case in point: the superintendent is far crazier.
  • Hayate's parents probably qualify too, since they don't seem to even realize how their horribly selfish actions affect other people, especially Hayate.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Yes, new viewers, the character throwing a tantrum and beating a dragon with a Hello Kitty doll is a four-thousand-year-old man.^note Referring, of course, to China.
  • There's also America, who acts like an overexcitable and loud Love Freak teenager at most, to say nothing of his tendency to step on others' toes and his Attention Whore attitude. However, this could be a clever nod to the USA's relative youngness (being under 250 years) compared to many other nation states in the world, with some around for centuries or even millennia.
  • Russia started out as a creepy, pretty threatening Psychopathic Manchild, but as his cutesy, giggly and more harmless traits were emphasized, he became Lighter and Softer.
  • Poland had a strong attitude of It's All About Me early on, with his tendency to push and drag around his best friend Lithuania, though with Character Development he becomes less selfish and much more patient.
• Rino Juse from I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying whines and flails her arms like a little kid when complaining about things she doesn't like, her husband Nozomu views her more as his child than his wife, and she likes omelet rice (which is often viewed as a kid's meal).
• Inuyasha
  • Inuyasha looks like a 15-year-old boy, but he's more than 200 years old. However, he does not show a trace of maturity and sometimes behaves like a child. Even Shippo, who is himself a child, feels sometimes annoyed by this.
  • Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon: The sequel series has Moroha. Obviously the apple didn't fall far from the tree, because for a girl of fourteen, Moroha behaves very childishly.
• Usagi from Junjou Romantica appears to be this. He's actually trying to simulate a child's environment because he wanted to "recreate what normal kids do in their childhood".
• Apachai Hopachai in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is known as the "Death God of the Muay Thai Underground" and is a deadly fighter in combat. Outside combat, however, he's very innocent, gentle, and childlike.
• King Dedede in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, he tends to act childish, constantly whines and demands his way and orders monster to sick on the Cappy's and Kirby For the Evulz.
• Ryotsu of Kochikame shows shades of this. He still rides a bicycle, likes things like video games and model kits, enjoys pulling pranks on people and generally acts immature most of the time. He can be competent if the situation calls for it, but that isn't often.
• Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout:
  • Tachibana is thirty-two years old, but his personality better fits the younger body he's transformed into. He rarely plans anything ahead, throws tantrums when he can't get his way, and is heavily reliant on Jinguuji to take care of everyday tasks.
  • Although much higher-functioning, Jinguuji is Not So Above It All himself. His social skills only hold so long as he believes others are treating him fairly, otherwise Jinguuji shows himself to be very short-tempered, selfish, and impatient.
• Deconstructed with Ilulu from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. She lost her parents at a young age which, combined with being raised to be an Ax-Crazy Chaos Dragon afterwards, left her emotionally stunted. She is shown to identify with children more than adults post-Heel–Face Turn despite being the same age as Tohru. Scenes featuring Ilulu, but not focusing on her, often treat her no differently than Kanna, an actual dragon child who attends elementary school, and Kanna's human friends, also elementary schoolers.
• Skadi Dragenfelt in Monster Girl Doctor, after having the parasitic growth on her removed, is shown act just as childish as she looks, whether it's enjoying being pampered and hugged or referring to Glenn as "big brother" and teasing him about whether or not he finds her attractive, even though she's the chairwoman of the town and is nearly a thousand years old.
• Papi from Monster Musume looks and acts childish, gets easily confused, forgets things immediately, and loves playing video games. She also is shown to identify with children more than adults despite being as old as Miia.
• Tomura Shigaraki/Tenko Shimura, the main antagonist of My Hero Academia, is a twenty-year-old Psychopathic Manchild who often describes things in video game metaphors and is motivated by a childish, shortsighted desire for revenge against the whole world. However, it's revealed that his father, Kotarou Shimura, abused Tenko due to the boy's interest in heroes, and that when Tenko's quirk Decay manifested, it ran out of control and killed his dog, sister, mother, maternal grandparents, and eventually father. Afterward, Tenko was found by All For One, who took him in and raised him as a successor, encouraging his hatred of everything in order to make him the ideal person to bring down hero society.
• Catarina in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is a bit of an odd example since she's physically only 8-16 depending on where in the story you are. However, since she remembers the entirety of her seventeen years of living in her past life, she considers herself to actually be 25-34. And yet she still behaves like a hyperactive six year old half the time. Brain damage may or may not be to blame.
• My Roommate is a Cat: Kawase shows a lot of childlike enthusiasm for his age and is generally oblivious to the fact that his friend's cat doesn't like him because he's too noisy and overbearing. Unsurprisingly, when children end up being in said friend's house at the same time as him, Kawase joins their games without a second thought and gets along with them swimmingly.
• Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Downplayed, and played for tragedy instead of humour. Her flighty, immature behavior when she's not on duty (which is reminiscent of someone who never grew out of their wild college years) is a cover for serious emotional issues, and hinders her ability to connect to her wards and pilots, Shinji and Asuka.
• Luffy from One Piece is either one of the top codifiers of this trope or a Ditzy Genius with a playful way of approaching things. Either way, the guy is an infant trapped in a young adult's body, always thinking about the most childish things and having no mature aspects outside of fighting and being a beacon of Heroic Determination for the crew and his allies.
  • Speaking of the crew, there are many manchildren onboard: Usopp is as childish and stubborn as Luffy is, and Word of God is a bad influence on his own captain. Franky is in 30s but wears no pants, plays games, and is as silly as younger crewmates while still remaining Team Dad. Brook is 99-years-old, but has been a goofball all his life and beyond as a living skeleton. Sanji seems very mature at times, but frequently proves to be a silly girl-crazy Manchild whose behaviour has been present since he was 9-years-old. Zoro almost averts this, as unlike previous examples, he remains stoically mature and Comically Serious nearly all time... except when interacting with aforementioned Sanji, as Zoro proves to be a childish, petty, competitive Man Child when bickering with the cook.
  • On a darker note, Boa Hancock is a Womanchild. She is one of the strongest females around and one of the Seven Warlords. However, when around Luffy, she acts much like a preteen girl in love and disregarding that, can act like a sulky teenager when it comes to her mother figure and demanding as a queen. Painfully justified by the fact her and her sisters were traumatized by their years of slavery and for Hancock, the experience utterly stunted her development growth. Her sisters are more mature, but they still show their PTSD in different ways.
  • On an ever darker note, there’s Charlotte Lilin, who is an 68-years-old woman along with being an Emperor of the Sea. She also has 85 children and is a complete Psychopathic Womanchild who hungers for sweets and goes on an Unstoppable Rage whenever she doesn’t get what she wants. It becomes more tragic as we learn from her Dark and Troubled Past that her behaviour at age 5 wasn’t much different than she is now; she was just poorly raised and Easily Forgiven for her violent actions, which turned Linlin from a sweet girl to a violent Pirate.
• Doctor Tokita in Paprika. His workplace has action figures all over the place, he wears t-shirts for the amusement park he went to as a kid and he tends to get too wrapped up in the cool-factor of whatever he makes to consider the actual ramifications. He’s a pretty decent guy though.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Jessie is in her mid-20s, but she is extremely immature. She's prone to having hissy fits and even lashes out at James and Meowth when they say and do things that she doesn't agree with. Ash and his friends are much more mature than her.
  • Brock's Missing Mom Lola was immature and flighty to the point that she walked out on her family for years on a whim with his dad Flint being too much of a Henpecked Husband to fight her on it, before returning to the Gym like nothing happened.
  • In Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon in a case of Adaptation Personality Change, Lusamine is an immature Woman Child and an Amazingly Embarrassing Parent to her daughter Lillie, giving her own daughter a noogie and acting more like a big sister than a mother. Lusamine even has a thing for sentai. This gets exaggerated when she fuses with Nihilego. In contrast, her daughter is an Adorably Precocious Child.
• Ranma ½:
  • Hinako Ninomiya is somewhere in her mid-to-late twenties; however, thanks to Happosai, her body ages incredibly slowly, so she currently looks like a ten year-old girl. She can only grow up to reflect her true age by absorbing the Battle Aura of highly-combative people around her, and even then, only temporarily. How she acts depends entirely on how she looks — she could be watching Doraemon, reading Shojo or gushing over the giant panda in the living room as a child one second, only to suck out Ranma's ki and try to hook up with Akane's father as a grown, mature woman the next.
  • Happosai's general outlook on life can be summarized roughly as "five year old child with the hormones of a stereotypical boy just hitting puberty".
• Re:Zero shows the half-elf Emilia. She is older than Subaru chronologically and physically, but she is much younger emotionally. She is so inexperienced and innocent that she even believes that kissing can make you pregnant.
• Atsushi in Recorder and Randsell is an unusual variant — he really is a child, but looks like a grown man.
• Sailor Moon: Despite being a Stern Teacher, Miss Haruna is often shown to be just as immature as Usagi and her friends, as she is consistently shown to be boy-crazy and even wears Goofy Print Underwear as seen in one episode.
• Galactic otaku Sergeant Keroro of Sgt. Frog is this. He followed Pekopon anime as a child, then was subjected to Training from Hell until he was assigned to Pekopon to lead the invasion... making it far easier to follow his old hobbies as a result. Just picking up where he left off in life.
• Naki from Tokyo Ghoul. Emotionally immature, easily confused, and surprisingly childlike when he isn't being psychopathic. He frequently misunderstands conversations, is prone to screaming/crying meltdowns, and at one point proudly explains that he is writing a letter to his beloved Cool Big Bro in Heaven.....and it will be delivered as long as he addresses it to "Heaven". While an antagonist, he is portrayed as one of the most sympathetic characters due to his childlike nature.
• Trigun:
  • Vash the Stampede is a donut-loving goofball who frequently plays with groups of children, chases girls and in general loathes violence. This doubly ironic since he's actually a 131-year-old Humanoid Plant who has a genius-level IQ, though Vash is technically Obfuscating Stupidity a lot of the time.
  • Milly Thompson is prime female example, being a 5'10-inch-grown Womanchild who easily gets upset over things such as pudding and is almost painfully naive at times. With that said, being so innocent, she's one of the few people who can get away with giving All-Loving Hero Vash a slap when he steps out of line.
• The title character of Tonari no Seki-kun. A high-schooler with a lot of imagination, who spends all of his school time playing with various toys, or doing other things that have nothing to do with schoolwork.
• Yotsuba&! has Yanda. The chapter introducing him shows him having petty arguments with the 5 year old Yotsuba, aiming childish insults at her, and taking a big bite out of her ice cream. This and later chapters portray him as a major moocher when it comes to food and vacation time, and the chapter where he tags along on a trip to a ranch shows him to be just as easily amused by the animals there as Yotsuba. This is all despite the fact that he's a grown man and the coworker of Yotsuba's dad.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!
  • Pegasus J. Crawford/Maximillian Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh! despite being Younger Than He Looks is a large fan of cartoons, talking about them fondly in his youth to Kaiba and vividly recalling all the episodes. This led to him using a Toon deck, though being the creator of the game, he gave his Toon monsters effects based on Toon Physics, making them near unstoppable in the anime and while they were nerfed for the actual card game (and later episodes), they are still a serious contender. That being said, Pegasus has also his serious and dark side, which is reflected by some of his other cards, especially Relinqueshed and Thousand-Eyes Restrict.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba can fall into this through obsessing over being the best at games like Duel Monsters, bullying and talking down to people particularly Jonouchi, refusing to move on from the past until he delivers a defeat to his enemies to satisfy his lust for power and his reputation, and he also has childish arrogance of where he frequently boasts about his successes saying that he never needed help from anyone and doesn't rely on anyone to succeed even though he gets help from people all the time like Mokuba and his KaibaCorp employees.
• Zettai Ni Furo Ni Hairitakunai Kanojo Vs Zettai Ni Furo Ni Iretai Kareshi: The title translates to Girlfriend Who Absolutely Doesn't Want to Take a Bath VS Boyfriend Who Absolutely Wants Her to Take a Bath and, just as that suggests, the girlfriend Hina is constantly opposed to taking baths, necessitating her boyfriend Teppei finding ways to cajole, trick, or bribe her into it much like an uncooperative child. Hina would just rather play games, watch videos, or otherwise laze about. Specific examples include distracting Hina with a game of shiratori, bathing her as she's distracted struggling to come up with a long phrase due to a rule they added, or turning the bath into a pretend pool to beat the heat.
• In Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, Akira is determined to live life to the fullest now that he's freed of his abusive job, indulging all of his hobbies as he and Kencho scratch things off their bucket list. This also means they get outrageously excited over silly things that fly in the face of logic when it comes to survival, such as acting as superheroes or building a treehouse. Unfortunately, their shouting also tends to attract the zombies, much to Shizuka's chagrin.
• Tae from Zombie Land Saga is an interesting variant. As time goes on, she goes from being mindless to demonstrating curiosity and interest in the world around her, albeit in a very basic manner. In essence, being a woman child is a step up for her.

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