to better elicit a more emotional response with the audience for a certain character, a manga artist or animator will sometimes use certain traits in the character's design. the most common features include youthfulness as a physical trait (younger age or pigtails) or as an emotional trait such as a naive or innocent outlook, a childlike personality, or some obvious sympathetic weakness the character works hard to correct (extreme clumsiness or a life-threatening disease) but never really succeeds to get rid of.