About

I Like 'Em Younger. As Young as Possible refers to a quote from the Danganronpa character Haiji Towa in the 2017 game Ultra Despair Girls. It became a meme on TikTok via an original sound that slowed down, sped up and distorted the soundbite. Inherently, the phrase infers that Towa is predatory towards minors, comparable to the term "groomer." TikTokers humorously used the sound to highlight scenarios in which an age difference is present or parody outed groomers.

Origin

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls was released in 2014.^[1] On January 29th, 2019, YouTuber^[2] Translation Hell posted a scene from the game where the character Haiji Towa is with Komaru Naegi and Toko Fukawa. Towa says to them, "I… I like 'em younger. As young as possible." Over five years, the video received roughly 121,900 views (shown below).

Spread

On August 8th, 2021, YouTuber^[3] Danganronpa_Chick posted a video compilation of YouTubers reacting to the cutscene, gaining over 74,200 views in three years (shown below, left).

On March 30th, 2022, YouTuber^[4] posted a meme with the scene that used the Npesta's Kenos Verification Reaction format, titled, "Making Haiji Towa the worst Danganronpa character Any% speedrun," gaining over 3,400 views in two years (shown below, right).

On February 27th, 2024, TikToker^[5] @sillyludenberg_001 posted the scene but slowed down and sped up Towa's quote, adding a text caption making fun of Minecraft YouTubers, receiving over 1.8 million plays and 284,400 likes in three weeks (shown below, left).

Many started to use the sound^[6] of @sillyludenberg_001's video, such as TikToker^[7] @eggs1ayer on March 9th, 2024, who captioned her video, "how it feels when I tell people how old my bf is (one year age difference)," gaining over 2.6 million plays and 536,600 likes in nine days (shown below, right).

By March 18th, 2024, the trend's primary TikTok sound^[6] had amassed over 7,900 posts.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References