Child Soldiers: Difference between revisions
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This trope blends imperceptibly with [[New Meat]]. Since even legal adults can be teenagers, old soldiers in particular may regard them as no more than children. This trope is [[Truth in Television]]; many armies in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have underaged troops. Furthermore, even Western countries such as Germany, Russia, and the United States have overlooked recruitment ages in major conflicts such as [[World War II]]. This was likely to happen before the late 20th century, because births were not as well documented and the recruiters took them at their word if they looked about the right age. Though it's frowned on by Western culture, there is a certain brutal logic to conscripting youth - everyone is under threat, so everyone fights. Sometimes the children are better off on the front lines than enduring [[War Is Hell|what would happen to them if the enemy takes their village]]. As a more pragmatic and ethical solution, many countries that feature soldiers in the 16-19 age range often utilize them in noncombat or support roles, and/or continue to train them until they're older, resulting in far better psychological health, effectiveness of personnel, and morale overall.
Some [[Super Soldier]]s probably started out early enough to be counted as this. The [[Tyke Bomb]] ([[Laser Guided Tykebomb|of all varieties]]) is what happens when this trope backfires. If a force is forced to recruit Child Soldiers due to a shortage of manpower, they're [[Fielding Old Men and Boys]].
Compare [[Little Miss Badass]], [[Creepy Child]], [[Cute Bruiser]], [[Enfante Terrible]], [[Kid Samurai]], [[New Meat]], [[Young Gun]], [[Recruit Teenagers with Attitude]]. [[Plucky Middie]]. The [[Shell Shocked Senior]] may actually be a high-school senior.
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{{examples}}
== Precociously Talented Type ==
=== Anime
* Sousuke Sagara from ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]!''. By the start of the series, Sousuke's 16 years old and has been fighting for pretty much his whole life, having been raised as a mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.
** This is apparently [[Truth in Television]], which is why many child soldiers are from the Middle East in anime. ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Gundam 00]]'' also uses this and ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' made a reference to it.
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** In the novels, it's mentioned that Gauron himself was one of these: he was fighting for the Khmer Rouge by at least age 12, and probably earlier.
** Sousuke's former comrade, Zaied is also an example, and unlike Sousuke, is played horribly straight, having grown up into an [[Empty Shell]] [[Sociopathic Soldier]], who seems to lack pretty much all social contact, drive and ambition. It makes him a dangerous antagonist and [[Evil Counterpart]] to Sousuke.
* Except for Pluto, all of the Sol senshi in ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' are in junior high when they show up—all of the Inner team are fourteen when they begin, and Venus begins even earlier as Sailor V. Even Uranus and Neptune, shown to be a bit older than the Inner team, are still no more than a year older and thus only fifteen or so. Even worse, Sailor
* ''[[Divergence Eve]]'' has Kotoko-01, though since she's an android it may or may not count.
* ''[[Gundam]]'', even discounting judicious use of [[Falling Into the Cockpit]], has a lot of this, starting with 16-year-old Amuro Ray.
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** Mangaka Masashi Kishimoto is queasy about actually killing off members of his young protagonist set outright (aside from [[Disney Death|feints]], [[Death by Flashback|flashbacks]], and [[Christmas Cake|characters over 25]]), but has no such qualms about having enemy shinobi bite the dust. Fair enough... [[Fridge Logic|up until you realize]] that all of Orochimaru's non-filler Quirky Miniboss Squads, minus Kabuto, are no older than the junior-high-aged protagonists when they die horribly.
** Some characters start even younger, as Kakashi graduated at the age of 5, became a Chunin at 6, and by 13, was a Jonin who would have died on several occasions if not for his teammate Rin's medical ninjutsu.
* The armed forces of the Space-Time Administration Bureau from ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' doesn't seem to have a minimum age requirement. Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate become active members at the age of nine and proceed to sky-rocket through its ranks. Unlike most examples, the child soldiers of the series all join out of their own volition. (However, there's unfortunate implications that this is a [[Boxed Crook]] arrangement for everyone except Nanoha, as these tend to be the opponents of previous seasons; and anyone ''not'' working for the TSAB is still in prison or at least confined to a frontier world.) In crossover fanfic it's not unusual for others to find this disconcerting.
** Played more darkly in Runessa Magnus' backstory in ''[[StrikerS Sound Stage X]]''. She fought in wars on her homeworld of Orussia, but was rescued by an NGO after being severely wounded at the age of 9.
** The TSAB looks more like a police/firefighter force. The characters' job is to arrest bad guys, avoiding lethal force as much as possible, and to rescue people from disasters. Definitely a dangerous job, but far less scarring than a "job" where you have to kill or be killed. But even that is darker in SSX, where we're reminded that working in Disaster Relief means that when you fail, you see people die.
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* The oldest member of the [[So Ra No Wo To|1121st Helvetian Tank Platoon]] is 18 years old. The youngest is 14.
* ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman]]'' has the titular team fighting against a terrorist organization, despite the fact that most of them are teenagers and [[Kid Appeal Character|Jinpei]] is only about 10 or 11.
=== Comic Books ===
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=== Tabletop Games ===
* The citizens of the planet Cadia in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' are trained from birth for combat, mainly due to the fact that their planet is parked riameght outside a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] that leads straight to hell, and frequently spews forth the [[Legions of Hell]]. The birth rate and recruitment rate is the same thing. Their soldiers enter combat as part of the youth army, the "Whiteshields," at age 13. They only get promoted to the full army by earning a medal. And they are ''badass''. A common saying is that any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by the age of ten was born on the wrong planet. While Whiteshields do have stats, the only official miniatures ever printed for them look like adults.
** [[Space Marine]]s, due to the requirements of their [[Applied Phlebotinum|implants]], are inducted into the chapter at around the onset of puberty, and the [[The Spartan Way|entry requirements]] make sure they must be well-versed in the act of war before they're even considered. Their transformation into full-fledged Space Marines isn't complete by the time they're seeing battle as part of the chapter's Scout Company.
*** As in so many other things, [[Space Wolves]] are the exception. They take in valorous young men on the brink of death, usually in their twenties (leading the population of their planet Fenris to see their order as a [[Warrior Heaven]] in itself, but that is neither here nor there). Although we're never given figures on the success rate, the [[Honor Before Reason|wisdom]] of this is uncertain; when Leman Russ was found by the Emperor, his [[Band of Brothers|associates]] all volunteered to become Space Marines, and over half died from implant rejection. On the other hand, few of them were young in any way, and several were downright [[Badass Grandpa|elderly]].
* The premise of [[Bliss Stage]] is that the only people left who can fight the [[Alien Invasion]] are teenagers.
* A number of races in Warhammer Fantasy do this as well. Dark Elves begin training the moment they are strong enough to pick up a sword or spear. All Bretonian knights start off as a Knight Errant. Once the young knights have proven their worth in the field of battle, they are knighted and receive a small plot of land to rule.
=== Video Games ===
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** Kog'Maw, who's still an infant, but because he's an infant [[Eldritch Abomination]] who destroys everything in his path, no one minds.
** While she's grown up now, Riven's backstory indicates that she was a fanatical child soldier for Noxus.
* ''[[Blitter Boy]]'' is this, acording to [[Word of God]].
=== Web Comics ===
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** Thousands of children served in rebel militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the First (1996) and Second Congo War (1998). Trained to be cold-blooded killers by all sides.
** Sierra Leone Civil War (1991) in where else but, Sierra Leone. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) recruited/kidnapped thousands of children to serve in their armies by means of brainwashing, threats, and grooming. They were trained to massacre villages with machetes and machine guns, killing people indiscriminately. The government itself also wasn't against using children to fight the rebels.
***According to James Dunnigan, that sort of thing is a lot of what people find disgusting about the idea. It's not like the [[Master and Commander (film)]] ideal of a [[Plucky Middie]] being raised by reasonably civilized officers and comrades in arms, but more like the male counterpart to sex trafficking. The former could make men but the latter tends to make orcs. [[Your Mileage May Vary]] on the point.
* Many 'developed' countries have soldiers who are 16 or 17 years old.
** In Sweden, career NCOs (i.e. corporals and sergeants) used to enlist straight after leaving primary school (i.e. 9th grade) at age 16 or 17. (That practice has since then been abolished, because those chaps were too uneducated to deal with the modern military environment.)
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