Examples where there's a parent remarriage, adoption, or gained custody through other means
Anime and Manga[]
- In Elfen Lied, Kohta and Yuka (both 18-19) are given custody of Mayu (~13) by her mother as she doesn't want her any more.
- The title character of Lyrical Nanoha officially adopted the then 6-year old Vivio when she was just 19. One fan comic had fun with this small age difference by having Nanoha introduce Vivio to her parents with no prior information, causing her father Shiro to have a breakdown when he thought that she got Vivio the usual way at the tender age of 13. See it here (comic is SFW, but ads may not be): [1] [2] [3] [4]
- Taking this even further, as of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Vi Vid, Vivio can transform into teenager/young adult version of herself, which, coupled with Nanoha's own rather youthful looks, makes it appear as if they are virtually the same age.
- There's also Fate, who's the official guardian of Caro even though they only have a 9 year difference between them[1] Erio would also count, but he's officially under the guardianship of the forty-something Lindy since he was rescued back when Fate was still too young to officially be his guardian. Fate goes on to become Vivio's other mother, as well as Lutecia's legal guardian for the time when her mother Megane is still in her coma.
- Averted with Subaru Nakajima who, while likely old enough to become Tohma's guardian in Force, despite being only six years older than he is, asks her father to take him in.
- Eureka (14-16) of Eureka Seven has three adopted children, all orphans. She's the one who orphaned them.
- In the epilogue, all three children are adopted by Renton as well, who is also 16, as Maurice, Maeter, and Linck all are shown to have the last name Thurston. It is also implied that Renton and Eureka are married, at least legally.
- At age 15, Fraw Bow from Mobile Suit Gundam starts taking care of the orphans Kikka (4), Retsu (5) and Katz (8). Seven years later, we see them again in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: 22-year-old Fraw has married her Victorious Childhood Friend Hayato and they have adopted the three kids, who are now 11 (Kikka), 12 (Retsu) and 15 (Katz, who even joins the cast as a regular).
- In Sailor Moon, the Outer Senshi (all 16-17) adopt Hotaru after she has magically regressed to an infant. She then magically re-ages to around 13.
- In Bunny Drop, 30 year old Dankichi pretty much adopts Rin, his grandpa's 6-year-old daughter (and technically his aunt).
- Yuuri (16), from Kyo Kara Maoh!, adopts the ten year old girl, Greta, who tried to kill him in her first appearance.
- Satoshi, from D.N.Angel, was adopted as a teenager by a man in his twenties.
Comic Books[]
- In the Age of Apocalypse, Rogue married Magneto and thereby became the adoptive mother of the sole survivor of his children, Quicksilver. He is an unspecified number of years older than her. (It could still happen in the main timeline).
Fanfiction[]
- There's a Touhou 4koma in a near-mundane setting in which Suwako and Sanae, who already have this kind of relationship in canon, are classmates of the 11-year old Letty and 17-year old Yuuka respectively (Usual warnings about Danbooru and NSFW ads apply). They are still mother and daughter, in that order, which has been commented on being a special case. It has been theorized that Suwako merely looks young... and also has the mentality of a child and still attends elementary school. It has eventually been shown that they both look their age and aren't related in blood, which does raise the question of what in her name Kanako was doing at a children's festival with a bag of sweets and a marriage contract.
Film[]
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Ted: [whispering to Bill] Your stepmom's cute. |
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- During their report, while chatting with Sigmund Freud, Bill claims his only problem is "a minor Oedipal complex".
- Then in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, we find out that she divorced Bill's father... and married Ted's.
- Diane, the mother from Poltergeist is far too young to have given birth to the family's teenage daughter Dana. The quandary is explained when a construction-worker quips to Steven that his daughter is as good-looking as her mom, and Steven gruffly replies that Dana's mother is dead: he's a widower, and Diane (mother of Carol Anne) is his second wife.
Literature[]
- Paige of Women of the Otherworld adopted Savannah when Paige was 23 and Savannah was 13. Then Paige marries Lucas Cortez, also in his mid-twenties, and Savannah has two parent figures less than a decade older than her.
- Twenty-five-year-old Kate Daniels becomes the legal guardian of twelve-year-old Julie. At first Kate refers to herself as a substitute mom, then as a crazy aunt, but she always refers to Julie as her kid.
- In the Flowers in the Attic series by VC Andrews, it's a significant plot point that Malcolm Foxworth fathered a child (Corrine) with his stepmother Alicia, who was sixteen when she married his father - a decade or more younger than Malcolm. He even states in front of his father that he cannot acknowledge a girl so much younger as his new "mother".
Live Action TV[]
- Kendall Casablancas of Veronica Mars has stepsons 7 and 9 years younger than her.
- After serving as the fake 18th head of the Shiba household, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger's Takeru is adopted into the family to become the actual 19th head in the finale. It's stated that the 17th head, Kaoru's father, died 17 years before, making the new adoptive mother 16-17 years old and younger than her son who, from his age in flashbacks, appears to be 6-8 years older than her.
- Ryouga in Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger is an Absurdly Youthful Father; he is 21 with parental responsibility for his orphaned 6-year-old niece.
- In Just Shoot Me, Maya's father marries a woman who's exactly the same age as Maya. In fact, they used to go to school together.
Theater[]
- In A Little Night Music, Anne is eighteen and her stepson Henrik is nineteen and madly in love with her. They run away together.
Video Games[]
- In Ace Attorney Trucy's dad Phoenix "Nick" Wright is 33, while she is 15. Protagonist Apollo does the math and is mind boggled by the implications of this fairly small age gap. However, it later, thankfully, turns out that Trucy was adopted by Phoenix. (Of course, long-time players of the series could guess that already long before that point) In a straighter example, however, her older brother Apollo is only 18 years younger than their biological mother.
- In Princess Maker 2, you can be a very young man when you adopt your daughter (in fact, you can adopt her at 11, and she starts at 10...).
- In Tales of Symphonia, 12 year old Genis's sister, sole caretaker and mother figure is Raine, age 23. She's been raising him since infancy, making her roughly 11 or 12 when she had to start taking care of him because their mother Virginia abandoned them. It's implied in a Z-Skit that she's been a school teacher in Iselia for around six years, but it isn't clear what she did to support them before that.
- Discussed in season 2, episode 5 of The Walking Dead if Clementine went with Jane, when Randy asks Clem if Alvin Jr. is her child. When all of AJ's biological and foster parents are dead or missing, Clem has to be this for AJ for the rest of the series. In one of season 3's flashback scenes, Ava also touches on this, before dismissing the possibility due to Clem only being thirteen. In season 4, AJ acknowledges that Clem is still technically a kid herself, there being an approximately 11-year difference between them.
Western Animation[]
- In Daria, Brittany 's stepmother Ashley-Amber is about 10 years older than Brittany herself.
- King of the Hill has Hank's stepmother Didi, who was his classmate in kindergarten.
Music[]
- This is how Willie Nelson became his own grandpa.
Real Life[]
- Too many to even start listing them. Let's just say that the above Bill and Ted example is not even remotely far-fetched.
- In some jurisdictions, the minimum age to be a foster parent is 21.
- ↑ Technically, Fate's younger than that, since she was a clone created only a few years before the events of the first season.
- Back to Absurdly Youthful Mother