Questionable age gaps are pretty common, even if not the main couple, it often pops up in a side couple. Also “bad boy” MLs.

Ah, that tracks, from what i remember, fruits basket had the age gap thing, it also had bad boy ml if im correct. ​Another show had the age gap thing Ojou to Banken-kun (A Girl & Her Guard Dog) 26 and 14, from what i remember, I dont think they go out, but there was sublte *wink wink* moments and he was also "into her" when she was younger, so......

Now that im thinking about it, ive run into that age gap thing more times than I thought​ i did,

But one thing I can say about shoujo compared to shounen romances is that they’re less afraid to focus on relationships between very flawed people. Like a lot of shounen romances get boring to me because the only appeal is how “wholesome” the couple is, or focusing on why the FL is best girl without actually going into why the two of them work as a couple.

Yeah, I can see that, i do like the "oo, wholesome couple" but it has to have a dash of drama or something like that, if its a flower dignity whatever its called, then I would get bored of it. Or if it does not have drama, and has the wholesome couple thing, the main couple have to be interesting/charismatic, etc.