Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Difference between revisions

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== Anime ==
 
* In ''[[Gun BusterGunbuster]]'', they make use of a more or less realistic interpretation of time dilation as they get closer to the speed of light. This resulted in one of the characters going from sixteen to mid-40's while the main heroine, Noriko Takaya, aged a mere year or two.
* In ''[[Rah XephonRahXephon]]'', {{spoiler|Haruka and Ayato were the same age in the past; at the time of the series, Ayato is 17 and Haruka is 29 due to time passing differently inside and outside of Tokyo}}
* Hotaru in the final season of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', after suffering a [[Fountain of Youth|plot-relevant age-]]''[[Fountain of Youth|down]]'' more than a season before.
** Chibi Usa also goes through this when Wiseman transforms her into the [[Dark Magical Girl]] villainess Black Lady. She is healed at the end of Sailormoon R and becomes a child again. It then happens ''again'' in both the manga's Dream Arc and a single episode of the SuperS anime, where she and Usagi actually swapped ages. The anime and the manga have different reasons and solutions for this problem.
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** There's also a more subtle version going on in regard to Negi's constant use of various [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]] items; he's aged himself up by at least a year, if not more, in less than six months. It mirrors his [[Wise Beyond Their Years|ever-growing maturity]].
* Instead of 8 year old [[Katekyo Hitman Reborn|Futa]] also being involved in the Future Arc, his 18 year old self stays to be a competent supporting cast. Doesn't happen with Lambo and I-pin, though.
* In ''[[DragonballDragon Ball]]'', Piccolo grows from a small child to an adult in a span of three years, probably because it would be a little strange for Goku to fight a little kid who wants to take over the world.
** This is made even more obvious by the fact that Goku himself [[Not Allowed to Grow Up|doesn't age]] at all until a [[Time Skip]] that is setting up [[Dragonball Z|the next series]].
* Kon from ''[[Amatsuki]]'' spends two years in the virtual world before his classmate Toki arrives there, allowing him to grow into a [[Big Brother Mentor]] figure for the latter.
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*** When you consider Skaar's the first Hulk "person" to grow up from birth on-screen, his growth, muscle tone and mental development rate may be the norm. To give reference, in Son of Hulk #1 even as a newborn Skaar appeared to be nearly as large as one of Miek and the Brood's offspring and stronger than them.
* Alexander Luthor, Jr. in ''[[Crisis Crossover|Crisis on Infinite Earths]]''.
* Right before the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic Adventure]]'' arc of the [[Sonic the Hedgehog (Comic Bookcomics)|Archie comics]], Amy Rose does this to herself with a wish to justify her joining the party; otherwise, the rest of the gang would've forbidden her from joining for being too young, and the whole game tie-in thing would fall apart.
** Apparently the same thing happened to her [[Evil Twin|negative-dimension counterpart]], [[Yandere|Rosy Rascal]], although her reasons for wanting to be older [[Love Makes You Evil|weren't quite so noble.]] [[Love Makes You Crazy|It had the side effect of breaking her brain]], turning her into a [[Ax Crazy|dangerous psychopath.]] And you thought ''Amy'' [[Clingy Jealous Girl|was possessive...]]
* Arisia from ''[[Green Lantern]]'' physically ages herself from about 13 Earth years to at least 18 Earth years so she can pursue a crush on Hal Jordan. Later, to make Hal Jordan not look like a skeeve, this was subject to several [[Retcon|Retcons]], and, in current continuity, 13 years on her world are equivalent to 240 on Earth.
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** Interestingly, the reason Wally was off on the other world was to deal with his speed-powered twin kids who were receiving the same treatment- they're chronologically less than two but look eight or so, {{spoiler|and nobody knows if their aging has truly evened out or if it's temporary: any given morning Wally and Linda could wake up to find them teenagers or senior citizens or dead,}} so they're being rushed into the [[Legacy Character|Family Business]].
* ''[[Gold Digger (Comic Book)|Gold Digger]]'' has Brianna, an accidental [[Cloning Blues|composite clone]] of Brittany and Gina. She was born fully grown, with both sets of memories, and had to establish an identity for herself. It was eventually established that some of her more childish personality traits owe to the fact that her ''soul'' is still her real, chronological age, and never got to experience a real childhood. Her {{spoiler|sadly deceased}} granny was the only person insightful enough to treat her with the level of affection she would give a little girl.
* While the [[Phantom Zone]] normally suspends aging, [[Superman (Comic Book)|Superman]]'s son Chris emerges from its imprisonment as a teenager.
* [[The Mighty Thor]] inverted this, giving Loki a Plot Relevant Age ''Down'' where he was reincarnated as his child self after dying. It avoided being [[Narm]] or too heavy-handed when an echo of the older Loki revealed his reasons for having it happen. Preteen Loki has been hugely popular, making it work very well.
 
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* Saphira in the [[The Movie|film version]] of ''[[The Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]''. In the span of exactly one minute, she goes from a cute baby/child dragon to a fully grown adult capable of speaking telepathically (in [[Rachel Weisz|an audibly adult female voice]]) and carrying Eragon on her back. This effect comes complete with flashing lights, sound effects, and a generous smoke screen to hide the actual transformation.
** Eragon blessed a baby who grows to about four years old in her next appearance. It turns out he actually cursed her, forcing her to eat huge amounts of food, making her mature mentally and physically at a rate far faster than normal. [[It Makes Sense in Context]].
* In ''[[Warlock (Filmfilm)|Warlock]]'' the titular [[Evil Sorcerer]] cursed the heroine to age by 20 years ''each day'' just [[For the Evulz]]. However, she managed to reverse the spell and restore her youth.
* In ''[[The Return of Hanuman]]'', Hanuman reincarnated as Maruti rapidly ages into an elementary school student in three months in order to quickly help an elementary school boy from being bullied.
* In ''[[Excalibur]]'', Morgana ages her son Mordred from a child to a young adult in order to face Arthur in combat.
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== Literature ==
* Used in [[Douglas Adams]]' novel ''Mostly Harmless''; Trillian's daughter Random goes into an intergalactic daycare as a preteen and comes out past puberty. It turns out the daycare was also temporally displaced, and the time you come back is random.
* This is the main plot of [[William Sleator]]'s ''[[Singularity (Literaturenovel)|Singularity]]''. One twin locks himself inside a [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]] device, so that he'll be a year older than his twin and thus no longer a twin.
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in the [[Discworld (Literature)|Discworld]] novel ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Wyrd Sisters|Wyrd Sisters]]''. A three-year-old Rightful King is useless, but an 18-year-old Lost Prince is generally pretty reliable when it comes to overthrowing the Usurper. So the titular witches send the Prince away, then move ''the entire kingdom'' 15 years into the future, so the people won't have to suffer under the mad duke.
* In the last of [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''[[Apprentice Adept]]'' books [[The Scrappy|Wunderkinds]] Flach and Nepe age a decade between chapters. {{spoiler|A good chunk of the cast is hiding out in a hidden underground stronghold, magically gimmicked to speed up time twenty-fold}}.
* In ''The Gap Series'' by [[Stephen R Donaldson]], Davies Hyland is force-grown from a fetus to a 16 year old teen. Of course, he's also implanted with the mind of his 22 year old ''mother''.
* In [[Cordwainer Smith]]'s story ''The Dead Lady of Clown Town'' the major character D'joan (later Joan) is force-grown from age five to age sixteen in one night.
* In the [[Magic: theThe Gathering]] book ''Legions'', the reincarnated Kuberr grows up in the course of a few weeks. Justified in that he is a reborn god (of wealth no less) born of Phage and the Patriarch who are basically incarnates of death themselves) and is actually growing at a rate that corresponds to the number of deaths in the world, while a war is going on.
* In the ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]'' companion and backstory book "The Andalite Chronicles", Loren ages from about 13 to around 18 in the course of a few minutes after a botched attempt at using the Time Matrix strands them in a weird, mixed reality: at the center is a time paradox, explained with lots of [[Techno Babble]], that basically runs much faster than normal. They have to enter here to regain the Time Matrix and travel back home. Loren uses it's ability to hedge the details of reality to make sure nobody at home notices, either.
* In 'the Snow Queen' by Hans Christian Andersen, the main character Gerda, rescues her friend from the snow queen after being inflicted by a shard of the devils mirror and turning cruel and cold hearted. But when they arrive back home in there garden they turn to find themselves both adults. Poetically the whole adventure portrayed their adolescence.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]] [[Virgin New Adventures]]'', teenage [[Action Girl]] Ace gets [[Sink or Swim Mentor|betrayed by the Doctor]] one too many times, and leaves him. Four books later, the Doctor arrives in ''almost'' the same time period, and cynical twentysomething mercenary Ace rejoins the TARDIS crew.
* ''[[Star Trek: New Frontier]]'' does this to Xy, the son of Burgoyne and Selar. In the three-year gap between ''Stone and Anvil'' and ''After the Fall'', he goes from young toddler to science officer. The reason is that the combination of Vulcan and Hermat DNA makes him age super-fast...but it also means that he'll die before either of his parents. {{spoiler|That is, until his mother [[Heroic Sacrifice|gives her life]] to get him a means to extend his life in ''Treason''.}}
* The first year in the mill in ''[[Krabat (Literature)|Krabat]]'' counts as three. Becomes important because at the beginning of the story, Krabat was too young to be interested in girls (and he needs a girl to defeat the villain). Justified by magic.
* About a third of the way through Jerry Ahern's ''Survivalist'' series, the Earth's atmosphere catches fire (don't ask; it's nonsensical but awesome). John Rourke and his family and two best friends have managed to gain possession of some suspended animation booths, and go to sleep for the estimated 500 years it will take for the oxygen level of the atmosphere to recover sufficiently. Unbeknownst to the others, John sets his booth to wake him up about twenty years early. When he discovers that there's enough air to get by Denver-style, he wakes up his 8- and 6-year-old children, spends a few years teaching them survival basics, and then goes back to sleep himself for another decade-and-a-half. Then all the adults wake up as scheduled to find that the kids are suddenly twenty years older than they remember (Mom, in particular, is pissed). John doesn't attempt to dress up the fact that he did this in order to make their little group into three possible breeding pairs rather than the two it would have been (no, not the siblings; the daughter with the other adult male and the son with the other adult female), just in case it turned out they were the only surviving humans. They weren't, but it was a very pragmatic plan, and the predicted couples did end up together eventually anyway.
* In [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]]'s ''[[The Dunwich Horror (Literature)|The Dunwich Horror]]'', [[Half-Human Hybrid|Wilbur Whateley]] grows to young adulthood within five years of his birth.
* In [[Time Scout (Literature)|Time Scout]] {{spoiler|Armstrong, Marcus, and his children}} run to Denver, then to London. They show up in London a few hours before they leave for Denver, three years older. Tragic, as it means that {{spoiler|Ianira has lost three years of her children's lives.}}
* In ''Darke'', the sixth book of ''[[Septimus Heap (Literature)|Septimus Heap]]'', Jenna and Septimus have gone from 12 years in the preceding book ''Syren'' to 14 years, where he will have to have the Darke Week {{spoiler|and she will become Queen}}.
 
== Live Action TV ==
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* Isabelle in ''[[The 4400]]'', later doing the reverse and temporarily de-aging for plot relevant reasons.
* [[Star Trek]], from [[The Next Generation]] on, uses this a lot, almost always in the form of using [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] to [[Hand Wave]] [[SORAS]]:
** ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' actually did a one-shot of this trope, where the O'Briens' toddler daughter Molly is aged to adolescence by some [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. Thankfully, they find a way to make her young again by the end of the episode.
** They also did this with Worf's son Alexander, justifying it by establishing that Klingon children mature very fast. Alexander was played by several different actors and always behaved about as old as he looked. ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' really pushed it by making him physically and mentally a young adult at the chronological age of, oh, seven. (The fast aging is especially odd if you consider that Klingons also live longer than humans, a fact established so Klingons from [[The Original Series]] could show up.)
*** This troper had a good [[Fridge Logic]] explanation for why Klingons live so long. Klingon medical tech expressly ignores things like surgery or any procedure that would otherwise save a warrior dying from battle wounds. This is because Klingons believe that dying in battle is an awesome thing that should be devoutly wished for and that dying of natural causes is viewed the same way Catholicism views suicide (an abhorrent one-way ticket to hell). Therefore the Klingons must have developed some kind of medical technology to keep their warriors healthy and able to fight well into old age so that they retained a chance to die an honourable death in battle. A natural side effect of this is that their lifespans would also be increased.
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*** Deep Space 9 also has the Jem'Hadar, who age incredibly fast b/c of special genetic modifications.
** Voyager also has Naomi Wildman who is 1/2 Human - 1/2 Ktarian. At age 2 chronologically, she looks and acts like an 8-year-old Human. Like Alexander, this is justified that she's half an alien.
** Another ''[[Star Trek: theThe Next Generation]]'' example: At the start of season two, Troi goes from newly pregnant to having a baby in a few days. The kid then grows from babyhood to about ten years old in a similar space of time, before "dying". {{spoiler|Turns out the "kid" was a benign energy-based alien who wanted to experience corporeal existence, and was grateful for all the affection Troi showed "him".}} This was actually one of the first episodes to [[Good Troi Episode|really cement Troi's position on the show and make her something other than a walking plot device to read minds.]] This may be explained, however, by the fact that the episode was one of those originally written for ''Star Trek: Phase II'' before that series was scrapped and replaced by the first movie. The original script centered around Lt. Ilia.
* In the final season of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', cast-member Vala gives birth to Adria, who is introduced as a plot point. Adria is an engineered leader of the bad guys who grows to adulthood in just a handful of episodes.
** Adult character Teal'c was also aged to middle age for his species due to [[Time Travel]]. He had to go back in time to prevent the problem they'd spent the last fifty years on, so his change is for keeps, carrying over to ''The Ark of Truth'' and his ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' guest appearance.
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%The Zelda Ocarina of Time example actually goes in Time Skip, not here%
* In ''[[Final Fantasy IV (Video Game)|Final Fantasy IV]]'', Rydia, a young girl when the party first encounters her, is swallowed by the Leviathan and carried into the Eidolons' land of Feymarch. When she is reunited with the party, presumably no more than a few weeks later, she has aged into her early twenties because [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|time passes ''much'' more quickly in the Feymarch]].
** Notably, [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|when you actually travel there, you don't get any older.]]
*** If only because you don't normally stay there for very long like Rydia did. And with the time flow different between the two areas, when you spend some considerable amount of time in the Feymarch, mere minutes pass by outside by the time you leave.
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* In ''Super Marisa Land'' (A ''[[Touhou]]'' version of ''[[Super Mario]]''), Marisa starts as a toddler but ages up and down depending on how many power ups she has.
* ''The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble'' starts with Woodruff, a toddler, aging into an adult after his adoptive father Azimuth sticks a device on his head. This device turns out to be {{spoiler|an age-adjusting device Azimuth had built as part of a plot to kill the Bigwig. When the Bigwig's men came to capture him, he used it to age Woodruff up so that he could carry on the work; when you meet the (newly-teenaged) Azimuth later, he gives it to you, and you yourself use it to age the Bigwig to dust.}}
* In the [[War CraftWarcraft]] universe, the young archmage Khadgar vanquished his close friend turned [[Fallen Hero|fallen hero]] Medivh by magical means, and in the process suffered a one-off curse that caused him to prematurely age. By the time adventurers re-discover him in the Burning Crusade expansion, he is chronologically in his late 30s or early 40s but physically much older.
* In the ''[[Sengoku Basara (Video Game)|Sengoku Basara]]'' series, Ieyasu goes from a [[Bratty Half-Pint]] in the second game to a rather beefy teen in the third game. Particularly unusual in that all other returning characters remain completely physically unchanged.
* In ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]'' we have Esmeralda. At first she has the appearence of a 10-year-old girl. But after doing a certain [[Sidequest]], she gets the appearance of a 20-year-old woman.
 
== Web Comics ==
 
* ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]]'' has the unusual situation of {{spoiler|1=two characters having their ''souls'' aged by having them experience the normal lives of [[Alternate Universe]] versions of themselves during their dreams. It is [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2006-05-03 explained later] that this was done to prevent insanity caused by them having been [[Cloning Blues|created with adult bodies and minds but newly-formed souls]], by giving them their own childhood memories.}}
** Also in EGS, the ''in''ability to rapidly age the Lycanthropes plays a part small but important in Grace's [[Backstory]].
* Happens twice in a loudly lampshaded manner in ''[[PvP]]'' with Francis and Marcy, the first time with some [[Fourth Wall Breaking]] and the second revealing [[It Runs Onon Nonsensoleum|questionable rules of ageing]] for the webcomic's world. Technically, they should have already been at that age anyway, but rather than draw them aging in a natural manner from strip to strip, the artist opted to update them all in one shot.
** It also has something to do with Brent's prediction of {{spoiler|when Francis would lose his virginity}} way back when the comic was still comedic.
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' Molly, Galatea, and Djali are species that age from babyhood to vague teenagerdom in the span of one month.
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== Western Animation ==
 
* Lion-o from ''[[Thunder CatsThundercats]]'', due to [[Human Popsicle|stasis failure.]]
* Enzo and AndrAIa from ''[[Re Boot]]'' age from children into adults while trapped inside a game due to time flowing faster there.
** Then the writers missed the young Enzo. So they cloned him and made the copy younger.
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* The Tweebs in the fourth season of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' are an interesting variation: although their art makes them look older, they are not acknowledged as such, but merely advance-placed into Kim's high school during the [[Post Script Season]]).
* Professor Farnsworth had his crew go out and get "chronotons" for the purpose of doing this to a team of super-mutant babies in ''[[Futurama]]''.
* At the end of the second season of ''[[Adventure Time (Animation)|Adventure Time]]'', {{spoiler|Princess Bubblegum}} is reverted to age 13. In the second season episode "Too Young" {{spoiler|she}} has to age back to eighteen years old in order to {{spoiler|take back the Candy Kingdom from one of her creations}}. {{spoiler|Princess Bubblegum}} tells Finn that {{spoiler|she}} always had the means to age up, but was having too much fun being a child again.
 
{{reflist}}