Vague Age: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Mireille of ''[[.hack//Sign|.hack//Legend of the Twilight]]'', who can be very knowledgeable at times, sometimes lord it over others, and sometimes just be cute and vulnerable. {{spoiler|She actually turns out to be the four-year-old daughter of an [[Identical Grandson|identical character]] from the first game, using her mother's file, and one of the other girls in Shugo's [[Harem]] is her home tutor, explaining some of it.}}

* ''[[Lupin III]]'': The characters of are certainly adults, but beyond that it's anyone's guess. The fact that they have been having adventures since [[The Sixties]] can be ignored since the series runs on [[Comic Book Time]]. However, Lupin himself is canonically the [[Identical Grandson|grandson]] of [[Arsène Lupin]], who first appeared over a century ago, already an adult. At this point, the timeline would make a lot more sense if it were called Lupin IV or even Lupin V.

* ''[[Baccano!]]'' makes it rather difficult to determine Ennis's physical ''or'' chronological age, as her origin is [[Artificial Human|somewhat]] [[Our Homunculi Are Different|complicated]] and not too many details are given on her timeline in either the anime or [[Light Novels]] beyond three tidbits: she was around before the commercialization of radio (with the given [[Historical Fiction|setting]], means she can be anywhere from eight to two hundred and nineteen), she's physically the same age as her "mother" was when she unwillingly "donated" some of her cells (nothing is given about this girl/woman other than that she was female, so that gets us nowhere), and that she identifies Firo on sight as "around the same age as her, or a little younger" (which, given that Firo's an eighteen-year-old [[Older Than They Look|regularly mistaken to be as young as fourteen or fifteen]], also gets us nowhere).

* ''[[Kobato.]]''. She certainly ''acts'' a lot younger than a teenager, but from her design and the way other characters treat her she seems to be at least twelve and probably not old enough to be in high school.

* Applied to Luna the cat in ''[[Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]]'', who despite sounding identical to the version in ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' (who was a Vague Age full grown cat until she briefly became a [[Human Aliens|human(oid)]]), was given the body of a young girl as a occasional human form. She was described by the mangaka as being a year younger than the lead character and became a teenaged girl when human, but also has been alive since the Silver Millenium.

* Satoko and Rika from ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]''. They're noticeably younger than the protagonists but how much younger is never quite stated. Satoko seems to have entered puberty but Rika hasn't yet. The closest we get to an age confirmation is in the original sound novels, and even then all we know is that Satoko is anywhere from 9 to 13 years old.

 

* ''[[Asterix]]'': Asterix himself is described as being "older than he looks", which is somewhere between 20 and 60.

* [[Donald Duck]]'s nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie in Carl Barks' comics. In one story they are in kindergarten; in another they are shown driving a car! (The "kindergarten" they are attending is a rather unusual one, however; in the background of the first panel, there appears to be an [[E=MC Hammer|integral equation written on the blackboard]].)

* [[Doctor Strange]] started out somewhere in his fifties, though the standard depiction is of a man somewhere in his mid-forties. Even so, the only real indication of his greater age are the [[Skunk Stripe]]s of greying hair at his temples.

 

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]''. Alison Doody was 22 when the movie was filmed, and while Dr. Elsa Schneider has no onscreen age, she has to be at least thirty.

* Jack Skellington from ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]''. In personality and voice, he comes across as being in his late twenties or early thirties, but he's an undead skeleton man, so this has no connection whatsoever to how long he's been around, and aside from being adult-sized it's impossible to gauge his age from his looks. He's probably older than thirtyish, though it wouldn't be impossible for him to be younger.

 

* Vardaman from William Faulkner's ''As I Lay Dying'' has no set age, and it is often debated as to whether he is young or just retarded (or both).

* In ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', Sunny is [[Wise Beyond Their Years|exceptionally clever for a baby]], and her physical development occurs in a deliberately uneven, contradictory way; for example, even after {{spoiler|she learns to walk}}, she is small enough to sleep in a casserole. Her exact age is never stated, and flashbacks to "before Sunny" carefully avoid giving the other siblings' ages at the time, forestalling calculation.

* [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampire|Garrid]] from ''Tales of the Frog Princess''. Yes, we know he's old, at least a few centuries, but we don't know ''how'' old, and he still looks like a young man.

 

* [[Medical Drama]]s and [[Law Procedural]]s in general are often populated by [[Hospital Hottie|extremely pretty]] [[Hello, Attorney!|young people]] who look like they just graduated, but are apparently very experienced and often well known and highly regarded in their fields. You usually don't get a specific age for these characters.

** Somewhat subverted in [[Harry's Law]], where the young-looking characters have noticeably less experience than and not as much of a reputation as their older counterparts, even if their exact ages aren't given.

* ''[[Blue's Clues]]''. How old are the live action cast supposed to be? Apparently Steve is an adult, maybe a [[Dawson Casting|late teenage]], but what about his brother?

 

* In ''[[Little Nemo in Slumberland]]'', Flip's age is perennial a mystery, referred to at different points as a child and 23, and the same height as Nemo with a receding hairline and cigar.

 

* Early in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series, Link's age was indeterminate, and his sprite had too little detail to tell. In-manual art drew him like Peter Pan with more hair, making it more unclear how old he actually was. The exception is in ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Zelda II]],'' where he is explicitly 16 years old. Most of the more recent console games give him a more explicit age, but the handheld games are still vague. In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|Wind Waker]]'' Link's age is never mentioned in the game itself, but [[All There in the Manual|the official strategy guide]] pins him at twelve.''[[Ocarina of Time]]'' has Link flip between 10 and 17. His age isn't stated, but is generally assumed to be a between 10 and 17 in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask|Majora's Mask]]'', as he is younger than the 17-year-old model but it is stated to have been a while since the events of ''Ocarina of Time'', at the end of which he stayed 10.

** Link in ''[[A Link to The Past]]'' may be implied to be a kid, not only by the AV Famicom commercial (which oddly promotes the cartridge port of the first Zelda game), but also by the GBA port of the game, where he is given [[Ocarina of Time|young N64 Link]]'s voice.

** We do get one age confirmation on the DVD extras of the ''[[Super Mario Bros Super Show|Super Mario Bros. 3]]'' cartoon where she is supposed to be 17-years-old. But the cartoon isn't really canon...

** This may also apply to Mario, Luigi and Bowser. In [[Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time]], we see the three, plus Peach, as infants; yet in their adult years, Peach hasn't lost her youthful look.

** What about Yoshi? The official voice was introduced in Yoshi's Story for a group of Yoshi infants, yet in later games, the same voice is used for its grown form.

*** In ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]'', it gets even weirder as the Yoshi there apparently hatches out of the egg with vague knowledge of the world ("Is that one of those 'kiss' things? I've go to get me one of those!") and no name, but talks like a teenage punk and generally acts like an adult.

* Amareus of ''[[Yggdra Union]]'' is one of only a handful of characters in the game whose age is not explicitly stated somewhere or other. Instead, the official website gives us a ballpark-estimate quote: She's "2? years old".

* The three main characters of the ''[[Professor Layton]]'' series all experience this in the original trilogy. Layton himself, judging by what was learned of him in ''Unwound Future'', is in his mid- to late-thirties. His self-styled apprentice Luke insists that he's too old for most toys, but still wears short pants (the games are set in [[Anachronism Stew]] England) and is clearly shorter and younger than Flora. The only clue given for Flora's age is that the events of the first game happened after she was "out of childhood," but she's still young enough to require a guardian; most players estimate her to be between fourteen and seventeen.

* Characters from ''[[Parappa the Rapper]]''. For an example, Parappa himself is old enough to drive a car and go to military but not old enough to work.

* Kirby was discribed in the [[All in The Manual|Manual]] of Kirby's Dreamland to be a "little boy" but gave no age, and his age in games since then hasn't really been touched upon.

 

 

* The characters in ''[[What the Fu (webcomic)|What the Fu]]'' are only defined as somewhere in their twenties, mostly because [[Unreliable Narrator|Zac]] can't be bothered with details.

* In ''[[City of Reality]]'', none of the main characters have defined ages—this is deliberate on the part of the author so as not to trip himself up with potential romantic subplots. The cartoonish art style doesn't help matters. However, it is possible to extrapolate from their statements about graduating high school and the assumptions people on other worlds make about their youth, and they got a visual (though again not textual) age-up between chapters 5 and 6.

* ''Sinfest'' is pretty weird with this. Word Of God is that Slick is somewhere between 14 and his early twenties, and the other characters rarely (if ever) get their ages touched upon. It's especially weird considering that most of the main male characters look considerably younger than the women (who all look somewhere from their late teens to twenties). It's not helped by the fact that just about every character lives on their own.

 

* ''[[Happy Tree Friends]]'': According to the creators, the Tree Friends are whatever age is necessary for the cartoon to work, aside from a handful of characters who are always portrayed as adults (though rarely competent).

* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' has only two or three confirmed "adult" regulars; the others can be, as the plot requires, young enough to be going to preschool or old enough to be drinking Cold Ones. Even the adult regulars aren't too old to play spaceman with tin foil outfits and cardboard spaceships. Don't even ask about Homsar.

* In ''[[Darwin's Soldiers]]'' this trope is made explicit by Ariol, Kain, Subject 19, Siren, Breathtaker and Stalker; all have their age listed in their profiles as "unknown".

 

* In a subversion of this, the personality of Stewie on ''[[Family Guy]]'' is [[Ping-Pong Naivete|constantly switching]] between a naive baby and essentially a forty year old man, despite the fact that everyone around him (with the occasional exception of the dog) consistently treats him like a baby.

{{quote|'''Brian''': Aren't you a little old to have a teddy bear?

* The ''[[Histeria!]]'' Kid Chorus is stated to be in middle school (even the clearly teenage Toast and Pepper), but their exact ages are never stated (except for Froggo, who's ten).

* According to [[Word of God]], the ages of the main characters of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' are purposly left vauge in order to allow a bigger range of stories. [[Enfante Terrible|Heloise]] looks like a little girl, but holds down a job as Misery Inc's top inventor, and all three live without parental supervision. Beezy can still get grounded and gets an allowance, but is old enough to [[Arranged Marriage|get married]].

** [[Word of God]] is that she was in her mid-20s by the end of the show, so basically between 24 and 26.

* Don't forget [[Mickey Mouse]] and friends. Even in some merchandise where they are shown as ''school students'', they still look the same.

* Warner Brothers didn't want the writers to give Bruce Wayne an established age when he and Terry were celebrating his birth in the ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' episode "Out of the Past". They said in the commentary that he would have been around mid to late eighties.

* We've got no idea how old any of the penguins in ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'' are. It's worth noting that apparently Private is younger than the rest (but interestingly had at least one earlier identity as the Mini Golf champion Mr. Tux). We're given a clue that Skipper and company weren't alive, or at least were not yet adults, in the 1960s as Skipper wants to go back in time and slap a hippie. It's also worth noting that Buck Rockgut had been down in the tunnel under the zoo for forty-seven years when the penguins found him, and that it's implied that he's much older than they are. That's around twice a normal penguin's natural lifespan.

** [[Word of God]] has Velma (the youngest) at fourteen in the original series and the oldest two being eighteen. In newer series they seem to have aged into their early twenties though, with some direct-to-VHS movies having them in their late 20s. However, in ''[[Scooby Doo Mystery Inc]]'' they're all explicitly still in high school, and though Shaggy and Velma's exact ages aren't specified Daphne and Fred are both stated to be Seniors.

* Similarly, ''[[The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan]]'' places the older kids in their teens and Flip in his preteens. Only the three youngest are given actual ages in canon.

** Spike, who is both younger than the rest of the main cast but apparently ''older'' than the other children in the show. He lives with another character and acts basically as their younger brother, but unlike the other younger characters he can be left on his own for long periods of time (even taking over another's duties) and rather than going to school has a job assisting another cast member.

** Throughout the series itself ''[[My Little Pony]]'' has fit this. Characters are explicitly referred to as adults and several of them even have children, however they're notoriously immature and love playing with toys.. Then again they ''are'' horses.

* How old Piglet in the Disney versions of ''[[Winnie the Pooh]]'' is never specified. His name and the fact Tigger often refers to him by childish nicknames should mean he's young, but his voice and mature personality make him seem the same age as the others.

* HBO Family sometime airs a show in the vein of ''[[Dora the Explorer]]'' called ''El Perro Y El Gato''. The two protagonists seem like adults but in one episode the dog asks the cat what he wants to be when he grows up, and the dog says he wants to be a veterinarian.

 

{{reflist}}