This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
I think this is part of a larger trope family, of inaccurate heights based on age... Is there a name for the 'kids are ridiculously short' trope? Like, even anime does it. Any kid under 10 is infant-sized.. Simpsons does it, Bobby's World was particularly bad. Kids will be drawn positively tiny when in real life you have to be pretty young to be less than half the height of an equivalent adult character.
- Well, kids are shorter than teenagers, thus that trope might be the straight consequence of this. Rapid growth occurs mostly between 1 and 8 years and between 10 and 14 years. So the trope described here is more likely to be noticed - if the main cast is comprised of mostly adults, the teenager's shortness will be more obvious than the kids'.
- I don't find this trope to be justified, or else maybe only in some parts of the world? Here in France teens are on average NOT taller than their parents. Most boys at 14 are still short as they don't reach their max height until 18-20. I work with teens on an everyday basis and I've only ever had one student of the same gender who was taller than me, and she was 16.
JET73L: Can anyone make enough sense of this to rewrite it without losing something important the original poster might have meant to say? Particularly somewhere shortly after "and everyone else have either:"
- Kingdom Hearts has Sora, Riku, Kairi, Roxas, and Namine, the main characters of the games. All of them are 15 in the second game except Riku who's 16 in the second game. They're probably by FAR the shorted "Human/Counterparts" in the game. Sora and Riku do both hit a growth spurt in between Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, but Sora is still only up to the midriff of this games Leon Squall, and everyone else have either: normally short (if Kairi's tall/short Namine will be short/tall because Namine is Kairi's nobody/counterpart, same with Sora/Roxas). Played even more straight in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 days, when Roxas's eye level is only up the crotch of Leaxus, a villain. (But then again, Roxas is 15, and Leaxus has no known age, though his known age ring is 20-30)
Done, though if someone else wants a stab at this, be my guest.
