Compulsory School Age: Difference between revisions

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' has Pride, {{spoiler|a.k.a. Selim Bradley}} who has the appearance of {{spoiler|an eight-year old}} but is {{spoiler|[[Really 700 Years Old|over 300 years old]]}}, and posesses {{spoiler|living shadow that will cut you to pieces and eat your soul}}.

* Variation: In ''[[Ojamajo Doremi]]'', Dokkan has two-year-old Hana-chan undergo a [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up]]. Off to the sixth grade for her! (Justified in that it was what she wanted in the first place—to be with her moms.)

** Also [[Cute Ghost Girl|Sayo]], although it's kind of justified as she's bound to the school until Evangeline and Asakura give her a doll to possess that allows her to leave the campus.

* [[Astro Boy (manga)|Astro Boy]] is sent to grade school with human children of his apparent age despite being a robot with a super-advanced AI. Sometimes this is explicitly said to be for the purpose of socialization, sometimes not. Subverted with Astro's robot "parents", who are also sent to school in a lower grade because they're actually younger than him.

* Subverted in ''[[xxxHolic]]'' with {{spoiler|Watanuki. Doumeki tries telling him he can't just stay in the shop, he has to go to school. Actually, no Doumeki. Cause I've made an agreement to run this shop and live without aging until Yuuko returns, and I can't leave until that happens.}}

* In ''[[Space Pirate Mito]]'', the titular character is an alien who is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|Really Twelve Thousand Years Old]], but looks like a third grader. While spying on her half-human son in high school, she's caught by a teacher and sent to elementary school, and she continues to attend, as seen in later episodes.

== Comic Books ==

* Raven from ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' got placed in the body of a teenager. Back to high school you go!

** In this case it was intentional—she wanted to get a taste of the "normal" teenage life she hadn't had originally.

* Happens in an issue of ''[[Hack Slash]]'', where Miss America On [[Phlebotinum]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong]] joins a boarding school with a secret [[Les Yay]] club looking for human blood to keep her body young and beautiful.

* Sometimes seen in fanfics, especially of the [[Self-Insert Fic|self-insert variety]], to allow the [[Author Avatar]] to interact with the main cast of a high-school/college-set show or vice-versa.

== Literature ==

* Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, Emmett, and Edward from ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' all go to school, though Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper eventually graduate. Over the years, however, all of them have done this repeatedly. This is supposedly necessary because the younger they claim to be at the beginning, the longer they can live in one place without arousing suspicion because they don't age. Plus, it just looks weird to have a couple move in with their 5 barely-adult kids. But if the kids are still minors? Not odd at all.

** Of course, the constant lies regarding [[Our Vampires Are Different|sunny days]] and <s>feeding</s> field trips make it seem like it would be easier to say they were being homeschooled.

* In ''The Dangerous Days of Daniel X'', Daniel tries to avoid this by using his powers to create clones of his parents to tell people he is homeschooled, but he does go to school eventually for a short time.

* ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'''s Tommy is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]], but he got the teenage body, so he has to go to [[High School]]. In fact, he was specifically put into a teenage body ''to'' go to High School. (He was awfully ticked about that, though.)

** In fact, in an early (perhaps the first) episode, he explicitly states that he's older than Dick and wonders why ''he'' has to be the adolescent.

== Video Games ==

* Eve from ''[[Parasite Eve]] 2''. Clone of Aya, looks like an 11 year old, in the [[Multiple Endings|good ending]] ends up going to school for children of her apparent age.

** Not that she learned much from her former caretakers besides how to control genetically-engineered monsters and [[Scrappy Level|stand perfectly still in the wake of poison gas]].

* In ''[[The Sims]] 2'', if your Sim's age is reduced, either by cheating or legitimate means, to the point that they regress back to the "teenager" life stage, they'll have to go back to school-even if they were gainfully employed as an adult.

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'':

** Grace's first day in high school provides an aversion. She's having a hard time due to her genius-level intelligence and [[No Social Skills|lack of real-world knowledge]], and in the most recent strips it has been suggested that she be put in a remedial class.

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Whateley Universe|Whateley Academy]]'' has a few students who were originally well beyond high school or even college age: Sara Waite was once a best-selling author and Caitlin used to be an instructor at the school and a former Marine.

** In both of those cases, part of the in-world justification is the need for a safe hiding place (it seems that the word 'safe' has a different meaning in the this world...) where their apparent age wouldn't be a problem. However, this same logic applies to Samantha Everhart, except that she appears to be over school age, so she became a member of the Security force instead; why Carmilla and Eldritch needed to be students instead of, say, instructors, was always a bit shaky, especially in Sara's case (she's [[Shapeshifting|perfectly capable of taking on an adult form]]). Added justification does come from the need to master their new abilities (and hormones), however.

== Western Animation ==

* Inverted in ''[[My Life as a Teenage Robot]]'', in which, despite being mentally and physically a teenager who happens to be made of metal, Jenny is assigned to a class matching her ''chronological'' age and has to survive a day in kindergarten. She gets to go back to high school when her 'mother' tells them "she was designed as a teenager".

* ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'': Jimmy is most obviously a scientific genuis, with an IQ well over 300, and ''still'' goes to school to [[Fridge Logic|learn about things he most likely already knows]].