Never Grew Up: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

As you know, [[Growing Up Sucks]]. Some children, however, have found a way to halt their aging at childhood via [[Applied Phlebotinum]] or some supernatural means. Most of the time they'll have the mind, emotional maturity, and/or sensibilities of a child as well as a prepubescent body; adults in children's bodies are more likely to find it inconvenient or downright [[Not Growing Up Sucks|sucky]], although not always.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* One episode of ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' features a [[Creepy Child]]. Supposedly, whatever stopped his aging also made him bullet- and explosion-proof.

* The ''[[Trigun]]'' anime {{spoiler|reinterpreted Zazie the Beast this way, apparently. Since the eternally-respawning humanoid avatar of the sand-worms' group intelligence would have been too complicated to deal with in one episode. Hell, the manga doesn't really deal with it completely.}}

* And Kaori Yuki's ''[[Cain Saga]]'' manga series features an extremely sympathetically-presented member of the [[Evil Organization]], Cassian, a middle-aged man in the body of a prepubescent boy, formerly employed as a knife-thrower in a circus. He joined the organization because they have weird, futuristic occult-medical hybrid technology in development which might give him some way to get an adult body. He's assigned to be the primary minion of a high-up member of the organization, Jizabel Disraeli, who's around twenty and {{spoiler|as we get his backstory, increasingly pitiful.}} Dealt with well in that Cassian, even though all visual cues are against it, sees Disraeli as a kid. {{spoiler|Cassian is fatally wounded about as soon as his pseudo-paternal attachment to Disraeli is properly developed, and Jizabel transplants his brain into the head of a fellow villain they both hate who was recently thwarted by hubris and idiocy. And the hero, in one of the hero's few success stories. He goes on the lam, and reappears as a handy plot device toward the end of the series climax. Disraeli eventually dies in his arms, lamenting the fact that he spent all this time trying to please the wrong father, Alexis, the twisted [[Man Behind the Man]], when he should have been looking up to Cassian.}} Cassian has many levels in awesome.

 

== Films - Live Action ==

* There's a SF short story called "Start the Clock" that features this. Basically, one day everyone on Earth stops aging, and stays in whatever "state" they were at the time... little kids have it the best, in a way, because their brains stay in the "good at learning" state... and at the point in time the story's set, they've gotten the same rights as adults (they can hold jobs and live on their own and such). Anyone going through puberty got the worst deal, since it just ''keeps going'', deforming them and giving them health problems. Infants tend to get cybernetics, and are ''scary'' and powerful.

** Although by the time the story is set treatments to allow people to continue to age have been developed.

* [[Harlan Ellison]]'s short story "Jeffty is Five" is about a kid who is always five. Not only that, but he is also seemingly an unconscious [[Reality Warper]]; he continually gets to see new movies starring actors who've been dead for years, new episodes of radio shows that have been off the air for decades, and read new issues of comics that don't exist anymore. This leads the narrating character, who's highly nostalgic for the [[Good Old Days]], to spend a lot of time with him... until, as usually happens in an Ellison story, it all goes horribly awry.

* {{spoiler|The Gull}} of "The Age of Five" trilogy by [[Trudi Canavan]] is sort of an example of this trope. Whilst his body is that of a seven or eight year old child, he has the knowledge and maturity that he has acquired over thousands of years of life {{spoiler|(he's also the oldest of the surviving immortals, a fact which, when revealed, causes his fellow immortals to lapse into a thoughtful silence as they wonder just how old he is.)}}

** But as seen in Wind Waker, they can have their form changed by the Deku Tree in order to protect them (in this case, {{spoiler|the great flood}}) so the tree may have given them this attribute.

* Seere from ''[[Drakengard]]''. It is more apparent in the sequel which takes place eighteen years later.

* ''[[Breath of Fire]] IV'' has an entire ''town'' of these; the town of Chek is entirely populated by what appear to be kids but are actually people in their teens on up to elderly people. {{spoiler|It's also a town entirely populated by summoners and shamans, and it's outright stated in the game that it's their proximity to the summoning temple for the gods in that universe that keeps them young.}}

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

 

== [[Real Life]] ==