I myself have some serious issues with the notion of child or child-like characters being involved in a real, romantic relationship. Even in an animated series, at some point you just have to go, "now THAT is just TOO unrealistic"! Having a crush is one thing, but being part of a real, I-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-only-you-and-have-your-children relationship is another, totally, when you are talking about characters that are, or should be, in elementary school. Even a bright child character still does not have the level of emotional developement to handle that sort of thing, let alone the hormones for it. The same more or less would apply to non-human characters who have basically the same level of emotional and intellectual developement as a young child. I've been around more kids as part of my career than most people will ever even see in their entire lifetimes(which is probably a good thing for those other people), and I have never known any two children to really be "in love" with each other. Yes, they have crushes, and those typically last no more than a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, but there's no romance involved, unless you can count a boy dropping a dead frog down some girl's back as a sign of "romance", since that's often how young boys display their crush on a particular girl. Like I said, with those who are emotionally undeveloped, they are not capable of anything that most of us would consider romantic love. My own feelings on the matter of child characters having love affairs is that kids already grow up soon enough, so there is no point in forcing a child, even an animated one, into adult behavior and denying them that very brief time of innocence. Let 'em be KIDS!
Kageri had a good point, though, about the continuity thing-most Western animated series are produced in such a way that the network can show re-runs in any particular episode, without the viewer feeling like they've "missed" something. Romantic relationships, at least those that are canon and fairly overt, develope over time and go through certain stages, and if that relationship plays a major role in the plot of the series, it sorta throws off the continuity, if say, a re-run is shown in which two characters are getting married, followed by an earlier re-run in which they don't even seem interested in each other. This specifically was the reason given as to why there is not, and won't be, any real romance in Foster's, although to be honest there have been other issues with the continuity that would still make a viewer not familiar with the show scratch their head and wonder what they missed, like the references to Uncle Pockets' "treasure" in "Squeeze the Day". If you hadn't seen "Bloo Done It", that part probably wouldn't make any sense. At least, though, when a relationship between characters is very subtle, the "are-they-or-aren't-they" type, viewers can draw their own conclusions and continuity won't matter very much.
pitbulllady
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