Presented by me (I’m anti weird Zim ships but I’m not discussing that here)
I could just post this screenshot and move on, but it’s fun to look at everything
So here’s the rest:
For consistency’s sake, here’s an old source affirming the same thing. From JV in the 2004 dvd commentary for The Megadoomer:
“The saddest thing is Zim’s not a kid, ya know? He’s not a little kid I mean he acts like- he- I mean he’s like an old man basically.”
Now here’s the stuff based on the series itself:
1. The “Zim is 160 Earth years old” thing has no basis, I don’t know where it came from but there’s not a reason in canon to believe it. (That first post I showed from JV also addresses Zim having no confirmed age)
Even with all that, the statement as a whole goes against canon;
We could’ve figured that Earth and Irk have different lengths of years, but this part does confirm it (I know it’s a simulation, but it’s one made by Zim and we can see how other aspects of it were true, like things about The Massive.)
However we have no idea long an Irken year actually year is, they give us no info on it. The 10 Earth years thing could be true, but as far as I know this is purely fanon.
Now even if that system were true, the claim that Zim 160 and therefore 16 in Irken years is disproven by Tak:
Tak wouldn’t need to adjust the years to Earth years or anything since she’s an Irken speaking only to another Irken. I’m pretty sure this is 50 Irken years. So if that were the case it would mean this happened 500 Earth years ago.
That timeline feels a little far-fetched in the first place, but it also would mean that Zim is a lot older than 160.
Now that was only addressing the planetary concept, the idea that planet Irk takes 10 Earth years to orbit their star and that therefore that’s how long a year is for them.
I didn’t actually address the Irken aging/maturity side of that, and the concept seems like it would make more sense when arguing about an Irken’s lifespan rather than Irken maturity, but either way it just isn’t canon.
This headcanon implies that Irkens mature slower than humans (like implying Zim is still a teenager after 160 years) but I’d argue it’s a lot more likely that they mature faster than humans, at least mentally. Irkens have the whole of Irken knowledge downloaded into them from birth, and in the glimpses we see of Zim’s life we see him working in military research and then in invader training, all before he was fully grown.
Now maybe he was at a different mental maturity, I’m sure the Irken empire would want its soldiers able to work as soon as possible (hence, the download of data) but since that was in Zim’s past and he’s already grown now, this is fun speculation that doesn’t quite matter to the current topic.
Just because Zim is an immature character doesn’t mean he’s not an adult. And when it comes to maturity I’d say that being entitled, hateful, and selfish, are all things that can make a character act or come off as more childish. There’s stupidity too, but that’s pretty prevalent across the whole show. We won’t get into Zim’s insanity here, yet another contributor to his immaturity he probably needs a whole other post about that. (Maybe after my rewatch)
2. “The Tallest are adults and Zim is a kid”
This was disproven by The Trial, wherein Red and Purple were shown throughout Zim’s life to be about the same age as him.
I already talked about The Trial in my previous points so I’ll put this here for all that:
“But The Trial was never animated!! So that’s not true!!” At this point in canon it’s very possible Zim never went on trial, but the fandom widely accepts Zim’s history as shown in the flashbacks.
3. Why Zim is a fully grown an adult
A few times in flashbacks from The Trial, we see Zim throw around “when I’m Tallest”
Firstly in the ‘education plug’
And again during invader training. (We know he’s still growing both because of that statement, and because Red and Purple are clearly not done growing either.)
Obviously Zim aspires for the best and highest status he can possibly get (he believes it’s what he deserves) so of course he’d be planning on becoming the Tallest, but that was only possible while he was still growing.
In later flashbacks from The Trial, once Zim looks the way we’re used to, we can assume he’s finally reached adulthood. This is backed up because we never see him bringing up becoming Tallest again, instead he’s fully focused on being an invader.
(We don’t have all the lore on Irkens, but from what we do see I think invader is a pretty prestigious position.)
I think it’s nearly impossible for Zim to give up on most things (it’s clear the early on it was ridiculous for him to think he’d ever become Tallest) so the fact that he’s not expecting to be Tallest anymore means, to me, that he knows he’s never getting any taller. As I said, he was only gunning for it because he was still growing, and therefore it was still technically possible.
Additionally, we see Zim 50 Irken years ago on Devastis looking exactly the same, and 20 Earth years into Dib’s simulated future he still looks the same. (Again, I know it’s a simulation, but it is made by Zim.)
There’s a few smaller things but people have already pointed them out before, and this really is sufficient.
I think I especially wanted to address Zim’s desire to be Tallest because it’s so funny and so Zim and I never seen anyone talk about it.
Anyway, people who think Zim is a kid are missing out on how hilarious that concept is, it’s way more enjoyable this way.
Disclaimer that analysis like this is for me, I think it’s fun to break down things like this. If someone does get mad about this for some reason, as the internet is wont to do, I will not care. I probably won’t argue with you either.
No matter what you think of it I pray blessing over your health, emotions, and finances In Jesus’ name :)
While rereading the transcript of The Trial, one question kept nagging at me: can Zim’s memories actually be trusted? I mean the memories shown throughout the episode itself.
What if they function as an unreliable narration?
One of the first memories we’re shown is Zim being connected to his PAK when he’s barely two minutes old. Right after the data upload, he reports that the system contains 40 shmillion encoding mistakes. It’s easy to brush this off as a throwaway line, or even a joke.
But those memories are being recorded by the PAK itself. And if the system responsible for storing and encoding them was already malfunctioning from the very beginning, then maybe The Trial isn’t showing us 'what really happened' at all.
Maybe it’s showing us whatever the corrupted system managed to preserve...?
You can argue against this. Red and Purple clearly share some of Zim's memories — Spork’s death on Devastis, for example. But their reactions don’t really confirm that what we’re seeing is accurate.
Red even says that what he sees is worse than he remembers. And honestly, that might be the point. If the data is distorted, it would explain why the memories feel exaggerated, harsher, more horrific than the original events.
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