elle-lavender replied to your photoset “listen i wouldn’t let your small child join the magical space...”
I know this ridic and all, but these are kids who are capable of shooting magical beams out of their hands and can use tactics on an adult level. Lindy goes out of her way to give Fate a normal childhood after Precia used her. But the show says they can make up their mind to SOME extent. Fate and Nanoha work occassionally for the TSAB.
In real life, Batman shouldn't have any kids superheroing with him. EVER! But it's like that kind comicbook logic tha lets kids do things they should never be actually doing.
This is only done so we can focus on child characters in fiction, and they are talking more about their future careers, not working full-time for the TSAB now. And they have to have this wacky, kids are capable of making the choice to fight for this organization nonsense for the plot to exist!
oh, I’m on board with kid heroes and Robins and all that. It’s just fun to poke fun at sometimes. You can tell me to lay off if that brings down the liveblog for you!
But I think a real (not strong unless i think about it too hard) issue I have with Nanoha is the reasoning of “we want to see how a child would handle this sitch” doesn’t really justify the fact none of them act like eight year olds. Hayate brings up the fact Nanoha doesn’t really act like one in this manga, but honestly that rings hollow when literally none of the characters do, including Nanoha’s civilian friends. They come off as more super-mature-14-year-olds in their social interactions and reasoning, and would be way more believable and serve the story better if they were around 14 (which...is the age of most magical girl protagonists!)
But even with that, Usagi Tsukino and co are examples of believable character studies of how a 14 year old might react to a harsh situations, in a way that justifies their age, and they act far more childishly than Nanoha and co tend to, even explicit supergeniuses like Ami.
Usagi and co are 14 to relate to the target audience, and because they actually generally reflect their young age in a way that serves the stories themes of exploring teen desires and coming of age. Robin was explicitly bought in to appeal to younger readers (and the parent-child relationship became a very important aspect of the Batman franchise and appealed to adult readers who like to see that aspect) and depending on the writer and their skill/interest in the character, will believably act their age (or, in Damian’s case, the comedy/strangeness will come from how LITTLE he acts his age in some respects due to a ridiculous upbringing but then shows it in other respects w/ childish actions-but his age is still generally a focus).
Considering their origins, Nanoha and co...most likely aren’t eight to appeal to readers of that age, and well, they don’t actually act their age hardly ever, and seem to be only aesthetically eight and that’s why it seems so jarring when the exact age is bought up and... it’s really best not to go down that rabbit hole any further okay.
And unfortunately, these conversations tend to remind me of that, and the fact that the franchise would lose absolutely nothing if everyone who’s 8 was around 14- we’d keep the exploration of parent child relationships and recovering from child abuse etc, we could even keep the moe aesthetics, but...
