This is something I've been curious about ever since I first heard it used commonly in an anime. The Japanese, or at least anime characters, seem to love using the term "darling" to refer to significant others. I find it kind of comical considering that's a fairly outdated term, to say the least, here in the states. I don't think you'll find many people willing to use it very often, especially nowadays. I certainly wouldn't. It's gotten a reputation as a very old-fashioned term. Or so I think.

Is "darling" very close to other Japanese terms of endearment that it was easy to incorporate, or do they just love how it rolls off the tongue? I'm not necessarily criticizing them for using it, but it does seem kind of odd that, at the height of Japanese inclusion of English words into their daily speech (and songs and marketing, to name a few), they would incorporate what is becoming more and more of a rarity here in the nations that first used English and still use them as first languages.

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