Child Mage

The main magic user in the game or story happens to be the youngest person in the group. Possibly because the story writer wants to have a character that young for comic or dramatic effect (or just for sheer cuteness) and can't imagine said character being proficient in a sword or other conventional weapons, so they let them summon meteors with their mind. It also provides a convenient justification for keeping the mage squishy; they don't have the raw strength to move around in heavy armor. In any case, the implication is that either magic is just that easy, or they're just that good.

There's also the old standby that children have more magic potential than adults, presumably tied to their imagination/innocence/not-being-attached-to-the-mundane. As such, there's always a chance of Growing Up Sucks for a mage, as they may lose some of their power (or power growth) upon reaching adulthood.

This trope extends towards the Little People sometimes, as well, considering many have a child-like appearance (or even mannerisms). Just don't say that to the dwarves.

See also Tyke-Bomb, which is not necessarily a magic user, and Squishy Wizard, which a Child Mage is almost guaranteed to be, or Magical Girl, when a Child Mage is a cute little girl with fancy magic and outfits, or Cute Bruiser, when the character actually does have physical prowess instead of magic, despite their size, and Goo-Goo-Godlike, for a character even younger (specifically, they are infants) and more precocious than the Child Mage. Compare Teen Genius for the sci-fi equivalent.

If they have psychic abilities instead of magic it's Psychic Children.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Shiine from Akazukin Chacha is a junior mage-in-training and one of the besties of the titular Cute Witch. He borders on Inept Mage a few times due to his inexperience.
• Schierke from Berserk is the youngest member of Guts' new party. Her spells are incredibly powerful but needs time to cast (and she's in a trance whenever that happens), so Guts and the other fighters cover her while she gets ready.
• Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura was ten years old at the beginning of the story and not much older at the end.
• While many characters in Fairy Tail are mages, a few are also children:
  • 12-year-old air magician and The Medic, Wendy.
  • The Technicolor Fire mage Romeo joins during a Time Skip and is only 13 at the end of it.
  • The first Master and founder of Fairy Tail, Mavis Vermillion, at the age of 13 had already studied and mastered Illusory magic to bring to life numerous vivid images capable of deceiving the senses of most people and creatures (and unknowingly even herself). At the same age, she was also able to learn in a very short span of time some of the most powerful spells in the branch of Black Magic none other than the legendary dark wizard Zeref did; in particular, she proved to be able to use the dangerous Law spell that consists in partially rewriting the reality entered a certain area and over the years she has managed to perfect it by eliminating the side effect.
  • Even the younger version of Merudy qualifies for this trope during the events of Sirius Island.
• Nanoha Takamachi, and several of her friends/rivals from Lyrical Nanoha... she was nine when she started using magic, and yet, she was already one of the most powerful mages in the multiverse.
• Aladdin in Magi: Labyrinth of Magic.
• While he normally isn't shown casting a lot of magic, Shouta from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is implied to be very skilled for his age. He's capable of casually blocking Elma's attempts to find him via clairvoyance, and he took down an older mage with what is implied to be a high level sleep spell.
• Naruto: The titular character and a lot of his friends certainly qualify as this, on the grounds that Their Ninja Are Different.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Negi is incredibly proficient with magic for being only ten years old. He also is a partial subversion, as he becomes skilled with physical combat as well, but this is backed up with magic too.
  • The Big Bad is a subversion, as when he's first introduced he's apparently the youngest member of his team, and the most powerful magic user. Turns out that he's an Artificial Human who's Older Than He Looks.
  • Similarly to, and more explicitly than, Fate; Evangeline McDowell is a centuries-old Undead Child who has not aged a day since she was ten and usually gets the Expecting Someone Taller reaction when she does not have her illusions up.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Magical Girls are Child Soldiers.

Comic Books

• The aptly titled Klarion the Witch Boy from the DC Universe, who's appeared in the Etrigan comics and various cartoons.
• Wally The Wizard, from Marvel Universe, who has appeared in the homonym comic book.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Lyta Milton shows that she received her mother's immense magical power at a young age, she's just as much a casual shapeshifter as Circe and hasn't quite picked her favorite form yet though by nine she has settled her hair color as purple just like dear old mom.

Fan Works

• In brilliant lights will cease to burn, Izuku is a 13-year-old who is responsible for collecting the Sakura Cards, giving him access to powerful magic that puts most Quirks to shame. He subverts the Squishy Wizard part by being skilled in the use of a baton as a melee weapon and his extensive use of Sword.
• In Guardian, Lulu is shown to have an affinity for black magic since childhood. Her unusual level of ability is why Ginnem allows her to become a guardian.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fanfics: Most young unicorns can perform a little telekinesis with their magic, so there are a lot of examples, or at least, implied ones.
  • The Story Shuffle series:
    • The first anthology, Story Shuffle: Twilight Sparkle, at age 7, is one of these and also a Child Prodigy, performing magical feats thought impossible for someone so young. What did she do? She made a golem.
    • Story Shuffle 2: Double Masters: In "Melting Of The Minds," a one-shot set in the Oversaturated World universe, where everyone has magic. But in this instance, Wallflower Blush and her friends at Ravnica High. Wallflower had Power Incontinence with her memory magic which can mix with her with Technopathy.
• In Raven Child's The Smurfette Village series, Baby Smurf's Distaff Counterpart Babette is also born one, and over time grows into her adult role as Sorcerette while Baby becomes Sorcerer.

Literature

• Played around with in The Candy Shop War. While all the actual magicians are grown-ups (and nearly all are Really 700 Years Old, because nearly every magician knows how to freeze aging and it takes a while to learn magic), magic is much stronger when used on or by children, and it is all but impossible to reverse non-magical aging. For that reason, mages can grant tremendous power to children but not use it themselves. The plot of the first book hinges on this catch-22, as the villainess is trying to acquire a drink from the Fountain Of Youth. The combination of childish power and adult knowledge makes her a Physical God.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Lessar of New Light is a middle-schooler wind magician.
  • Leivinia Birdway is the 10-year-old leader of a magical cabal.
• Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Changeling keeps it charmingly ambiguous whether the three-year-old Josie is this or whether her sister and friend just convince themselves she is.
• Petra, the younger sister of the protagonist of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is the most powerful telepath of the group. It's the strength of her powers that bring the woman from Sealand to rescue the group.
• In The Death Gate Cycle, Bane is a ten-year-old magical prodigy. Unfortunately, he's also evil.
• The Discworld series:
  • Esk in Equal Rites, who was bequeathed a wizard's staff at birth and whose powers start manifesting at age eight. And since she has both wizard and witch magic feeding off each other, she's able to do things adult wizards and witches can't.
  • A much more extreme example occurs in Sourcery with Coin, who is not only a wizard, but the most powerful one since the mage wars thousands of years ago because Coin is a sorcerer, which effectively gives him an infinite amount of magical energy, unlike ordinary wizards who have to work with the background magic field. Being around Coin (or on the same world as him) makes all the wizards a lot more powerful as they can use the magic he constantly leaks into the world.
  • Tiffany Aching becomes a witch at the age of nine.
  • Parodied with a throwaway comment in The Discworld Companion to the effect that there is officially no minimum age requirement to matriculating at Unseen University, but these days few new students are still clutching a toy lamb.
• The Archive in The Dresden Files, a young girl who serves as the embodiment of the collective knowledge of all mankind... including magic, as demonstrated when she takes down four fallen angels all by herself.
  • Harry's first spell was to propel himself really far in the long-jump at school. He fought off his first Eldritch Abomination and won his first Magical Duel by eighteen.
  • Elaine, DuMorne's other adopted child, was also this.
  • Molly's first spell was to try and break her friends' addiction to drugs. There's a reason that mind magic is usually punishable by death.
• In The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean, all young children are "magicians", while older magic users are "wizards". Most magicians lose their powers around age ten, a few years before coming into their "knowledge", the one area or subject that they understand instinctively and completely; the exceptions are future wizards, whose knowledge is magic.
• In the Fairy Oak world, Magicals start expressing before their premolars finish growing, so at 12 years old at most. When they do, they are taught by their aunts or uncles how to fly, transform and do other spells, which usually end up being used in games and pranks, but can also be used in life-or-death situations. The most powerful character in the series, Shirley Poppy is barely 10 years old.
• In The Inheritance Cycle Riders, Elves, and Dragons all live a really long time because of their magic. When Eragon is crushing on Arya, she explains that in her culture, she's the youngest of adults and he's barely out of diapers. Even ignoring the fact that it's his job to defeat Galbatorix and she's not helping with that and the fact that she's affectionate for him, she tells him to wait a few decades before she'd really consider it.
• KonoSuba has Megumin, the party’s main offensive magic user. Unfortunately for the party, Megumin is a young Chuunibyou with terrible skill-point management. She refuses to learn any offensive spells but Explosion, the most powerful spell possible... but also the most demanding in MP. Since she refuses to learn simpler skills and refuses to invest any points in more MP, her contributions to the party are a once-a-day nuke that leaves her exhausted to the point of being incapable of moving.
• The Locked Tomb: In her backstory, Harrowhark was the most talented Necromancer of the Ninth House, even managing the impossible feat of opening the Locked Tomb at age 10. However, she was nearly Driven to Suicide by the knowledge that her parents sacrificed 200 children to conceive her, and, in the present day, is desperate to accomplish something to make it all worthwhile.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • Justified and downplayed with the Wickan warlocks intoduced in the second volume, Deadhouse Gates. They are all children attached to the army as if they were grown adults. It is then shown that all of these children are the reborn warlocks that were executed by Empress Laseen ten years prior to curb a Wickan rebellion. They retain all of their Past-Life Memories, knowledge and skills. However, Imperial Historian Duiker theorizes that all of them, as knowledgeable as they might be, still lack the physical stamina for the really powerful stuff they used to be capable of. This is confirmed when Nil and Nether have to sacrifice a mare, an animal that is sacred to their tribes, in order to cast a truly powerful spell, which then takes its toll from the mare and still leaves both Nil and Nether exhausted. In fact, all the child warlocks and witches but these two die during the course of the book from their bodies being unable to handle the strain.
  • Deconstructed with Sinn. When she is introduced in book four, House of Chains, she is a young girl with magical talent who has allied herself with a troop of soldiers in order to avenge her family. Kalam immediately notices how she seems a bit off but explains it away by her losing her family and everyone assumes she'd get better once she is reunited with her brother. Sinn quickly grows in her power and is attached to the Bonehunters as a mage, partly because she refuses to part with her brother. Unfortunately, she turns out to be completely insane and it is later revealed that her latent magical abilities were awakened when she was raped. In the last book, she turns on her allies in search of ever more power and has to be killed by the two people who manage to look past the fact that she is still a child.

• In Septimus Heap, the titular character is an adolescent who has the makings of becoming a powerful wizard one day.
• Lina Inverse of Slayers started out with magic pretty young, and still gets mistaken for a kid occasionally due to being short and, ah, petite.
• This is deconstructed in A Song of Ice and Fire with the character Bran Stark. At seven years old he's the most talented skinchanger in the world, capable of taking over the consciousness of other humans while other skinchangers can only manage to control animals. However, despite being a basically good person, Bran lacks the emotional maturity to use his powers wisely or understand how they hurt others, particularly his mentally handicapped companion Hodor. Bran, having lost the use of his legs, likes to use Hodor's body as a substitute for his own. He justifies it to himself like a typical seven-year-old boy might talk himself into "borrowing" his brother's bicycle, but for Hodor it's an absolutely horrifying experience. It's also implied that the ritual that unlocks his full greenseer powers is Blood Magic that's Powered by a Forsaken Child, a level of moral compromise that Bran is most definitely not prepared for.
  • Bran's little brother, Rickon, is in a similar, yet different, pickle. Bonding with a direwolf at the age of three-almost-four... has problems attached. As in: (Canis Major + Accidentally Isolated Tot)(Stress + Loss) = 2(RAGE). Many people get mauled/killed by the two berserkers working in tandem. Now, remember that regular wolf puppies go through puberty after only several months, so direwolves might be only a touch slower... Yeah: at about the age of five, Rickon is having to deal with Shaggydog's maturation into young adult as they practically share each other's skulls 24/7. Nobody at Winterfell has the first clue how to bring a warg and their Bond Creature up together healthily, let alone with this age complication in the mix. In return, the developmentally maturer Shaggy is left more or less having to babysit Rickon from the inside to a great extent since the war started... thus, Wild Child. The power dynamic between the two is about as messed-up and confused as the pair is. If they're lucky, the Skagosi they may have been sent to by Osha know more about bringing up skinchangers than even most Free Folk.
• Spellster: Spellsters can start to use magic even while young children. It's one reason they're put in the tower, as this can lead to inadvertently killing them and other people.
• Split Heirs: Wulfrith began to learn magic at age two. He was impressing his master Clootie with the spells he could already do by age three.
• In the Sword of Truth, most of the wizards at the Palace of the Prophets are Really 700 Years Old because the palace was designed as a spell-form. Richard, and Zedd (despite him being one of the oldest characters in the series otherwise), are as children to them.
  • Zedd refrains from teaching Richard magic so that Richard will default to his instincts, which seem to be magically augmented by being a War Wizard and honed so that he was worthy of being named Seeker. It turns out to be justified; the conventional understanding of how magic works turns out to be limited, Richard has more powers than anyone in the last several thousand years and he accesses those powers in a different way. If anyone had explained their understanding of the limits of magic, he'd have doubted himself in critical moments and been unable to use his power.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Magdelene at twelve already showed incredible magical strength, and apprenticed to train. Joah, a thirteen year old girl, later apprentices to Magdelene and has great power too.
• Ged is this early on in A Wizard of Earthsea before he goes on to become Archmage. His aunt, a witch, notes that he has unusual magical power, and when he was eight or nine, he saved his entire village from the Kargs using a spell he essentially made up on the spot. Some time after, he goes to Roke, which, as it's the Hogwarts of Earthsea, is also full of child mages.
• The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane states this trope a good number of times in many books. Child wizards are naturally stronger because of their imagination and removal from a serious life. Older wizards balance this out with their knowledge and experience.

Live-Action TV

• A grade-school aged male witch with psychokinetic powers appeared in the first season of Charmed. Once the Magic School was introduced, there would be several more.
• Legend of the Seeker: Renn is a Listener, meaning he can read minds. He's been a victim of Superhuman Trafficking as a result, and compelled to use his gift serving an evil queen. It turns out there are many other children with magical gifts like him, with Renn sent to a refuge for them after Richard saves him.
• Eden and (arguably) baby Jewel in Maddigan's Quest, young even by the other Kid Heroes' standards.
• Merlin. Mordred, Merlin counts also, since out of the six main characters, he is the youngest. All mages in the series were once this if they had innate gifts. Merlin could use his magic before he could talk, and Gaius also mentions in an episode that Morgana had prophetic dreams as a little girl.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: We can assume that witches have powers from a young age. Khalida of the Tarim is the only child we see in Season 1 with powers and she's able work a spell that affects Alder who is the leader of all witches.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons both inverts this trope and plays it straight in 3rd edition - of the two major arcane spellcasting classes, wizards have the highest minimum starting age while sorcerers have the lowest. The idea being that Wizards gain their power through countless years of study, while Sorcerers have an innate gift, and so can cast magic at a much younger age.
  • Eberron has pope Jaela Daran, the eleven-year-old girl who is the head of the Church of the Silver Flame. She's a 3rd-level cleric (which is by itself pretty impressive for an eleven-year-old) on her own merits... but when communing with the Silver Flame, she's one of the most powerful spellcasters in the setting.
  • The Mystara setting used these in The Principalities of Glantri, a supplement describing a nation ruled by wizards. Because only wizards can inherit noble titles in Glantri, magic-user families teach their kids to cast spells at extremely young ages, so if their parents should die prematurely, the title will stay within the family.
    • And one B-list schemer described is one of these, a necromancer with a level beyond his age. It is noted that treating him as a child is a very bad idea.
    • Also, if using the rules as found in The Principalities of Glantri, young children casing spells have a chance of causing a spell misfire, some of the suggested effects causing effects over a mile radius.
• Early supplements for Mage: The Ascension gave the possibility of Child Mages some attention, but the idea rapidly fell out of favor with gamers who saw it as "cutesy"...or incredibly dangerous. They may have had a point.
• While averting the trope with magicians, 3rd Edition Shadowrun had the Otaku- children capable of accessing the Matrix without any technological apparatus, who lost their abilities as they aged. 4th Edition changed this, however- the abilities stay with age and they're known as Technomancers.
• The most powerful wizard in the Warhammer Fantasy world is the High Elf Archmage Teclis. His magical abilities were phenomenal and precocious even as a small child (as detailed in the novel Blood of Aenarion, where he is barely into his teens), and while he is all grown up in the modern age of the setting, he's still only a couple of hundred years old, which is practically nothing for an elf.

Video Games

• Trucy Wright from the Ace Attorney series is a realistic example, being a talented stage magician at the age of fifteen. Pearl Fey, if spirit channelers count. She's only nine and is already at least as powerful as her eighteen-year-old cousin who is of the more powerful 'main family' bloodline rather than Pearl's 'branch family'. If Maya was out of the way she'd probably be first in line to be the Kurain Master. Which is why Pearl's mother secretly concocted a plan to kill Maya.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Enforced. Sigrid is a 8-year old girl who possesses Reality Warper powers that activates when she mentally focuses on what she wants to occur. Though she is a Nice Girl, her caretakers decided to use fantasy terminology to have her better understand her abilities, and often refers to it as 'magic'.
• Arknights:
  • Amiya, the leader of Rhodes Island, is a 14-year old girl with immense Originium Arts powers due to her status as the Lord of Fiends, and display multiple impressive feats such as absorbing a fireball with a black hole or forging a fully functional sword out of pure Arts.
  • Shamare is a young Vulpo girl with unstable curse Arts due to high Originium concentration near her home, causing her to become ostracized by her neighbors before Rhodes Island recruited her. She is classed as a Hexer Supporter and boasts the most powerful physical damage debuff in the game at the time of writing.
  • Darya from the spinoff "Records of Originium - Rhine Lab" manhwa is also this, being a four-year old Ursus girl with devastating water-controlling Arts.
• Skulls in Disgaea games are shown to be young boys. Their female counterparts who also appear in other non-Disgaea Nippon Ichi titles look no older than grade school-aged as well. (Interestingly enough, the Cleric class is always depicted as older, and the female Clerics in particular much better stacked.)
  • Emizel in Disgaea 4 is this for the group.
  • Majolene in Disgaea 6 looks like one, but she was a 10,000-year old lady before her irreversible transformation.
• Toyed within the mage origin of Dragon Age: Origins. The campaign starts with the player character finishing his/her Harrowing, marking him/her as an adult and fully-fledged mage, but is noted to be young to be taking the Harrowing, and is almost certainly the youngest member of the party aside from perhaps Alistair, whose mother met king Maric in 9:10 Dragon, making him 18 or 19 during the siege of Ostagar.
  • Arl Eamon's son Connor is a straight example. As a very young mage, he can barely cast simple spells, but is just as capable of not so accidentally tearing the Veil to the Fade (the realm of demons, spirits, and dreams) as any other mage.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest V has Bianca and Madchen. While Bianca is not that strong until she grows up, Madchen, however, has no excuse for being able to cast powerful ice spells and transform into a dragon at the age of 8. Her twin brother Parry also learns some of the strongest spells in the game, including the Zap line of Lightning spells, exclusive to the Chosen Hero.
  • Veronica in Dragon Quest XI is the party's resident child-sized Black Mage, but she only looks like a child because she was cursed shortly before you meet her. She's actually as old as her White Mage sister, Serena.
• Playable mages of either gender in Dungeon Fighter Online look like children, and females usually have the Genki Girl personality to match. As all PC mages are nonhuman immigrants (and the males may be undead), this may be only skin deep, and roleplayers often play them as adult. The mage character in the Anime of the Game is of similarly uncertain maturity.
• In Fantasy Life, if you take the mage path, the first of your colleagues that will be willing to accompany you in battle is Nox, who's still a child.
• Fate/stay night, Illyasviel von Einzern appears to be one, but she's actually an 18-year-old homunculus that only looks 10 years old.
• Fate/Grand Order has Altria Caster, who is proficient with magic despite her young age (and is the best playable Servant in the game). This became a plot point in Lostbelt 6 Avalon le Fae as the prophecy states that a child called the "Child of Prophecy" will be the one to defeat Morgan and save Faerie Britain from her tyranny.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Rydia in Final Fantasy IV is your white/black mage the first time she joins the party, though after being separated, she spontaneously ages several years before she rejoins later on; it's also specifically noted that children make good summoners because of their pure hearts. From the same game, Palom and Porom are five (and Half-Identical Twins), and serve as your major magic source for about the second fifth of the game. However, none of them lose their magical prowess (outside of the usual between-game level resetting) in the sequel, though none of them gain any physical prowess, either.
  • Krile is introduced this way in Final Fantasy V. When she's still an NPC, she's shown to fight with spells, and she has the second-highest raw magic stat. Spinoff games usually (though not always) give her a Squishy Wizard build. However, if you made Galuf your tank, she will become a tank herself once she inherits his abilities and joins the party.
  • Relm of Final Fantasy VI has the highest natural Magic stat in the game. At 10, she's the youngest playable human in that game.
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • The party's Black Mage, Vivi, appears about eight or ten years old but is actually less than a year old. This turns out to be an Enforced Trope: Black Mages in the setting are actually a kind of golem with a very short lifespan. Vivi is a Super Prototype who might live longer than the rest, but still isn't likely to make it out of childhood.
    • Eiko, a White Mage who also wields powerful Summon Magic, is only six years old. Justified as she's the Last of Her Kind, so the party don't exactly have the option of choosing an older, more experienced summoner to accompany them.
  • Final Fantasy XI distills this trope into a race, the Tarutaru. Tiny, child-like, wickedly magic inclined.
  • Final Fantasy XII has Larsa, a Magic Knight with healing powers who's about twelve. Oh, and he's also the Big Bad's little brother, and the heir to The Empire.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Hope, once he is given his l'Cie powers, is statistically oriented to become the party's Squishy Wizard. He is the only character in the game to learn every offensive spell.
  • Alphinaud and Alisaie in Final Fantasy XIV are about sixteen years old and are the youngest members of the Scions. Both of them are powerful Arcanists, but their fighting styles change by the Stormblood expansion; Alphinaud further refines his class, allowing him to summon a more powerful Carbuncle that boosts the party's attack power while Alisaie becomes a Red Mage where she mixes magic with sword fencing.
    • There's also Taynor the boy mage you rescue on the Shadowbringers expansion pack who wields some elemental magic and can open and close Unrealistic Black Holes.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The party members are all depicted as youngsters no older than fourteen or so, based on interaction with their family members. This includes the magically-inclined Yukes, who despite their age, are around the same size as adults from other tribes...
• The Fire Emblem series has many mages that are children.
  • Lugh in Binding Blade is about thirteen, and his adult support partners express surprise or dismay that a child like him is on the battlefield until he points out he's not much younger than Kid Hero Roy. (Lugh's twin Raigh is also a magic user, but he avoids getting those comments thanks to his "jerk facade" while Lugh is kind and cheerful.)
  • Nino in Blazing Sword is fourteen, but her appearance and personality strongly evoke this trope too—she's a kindhearted, cheerful, lonely girl who's starved of affection from her "mother" and treats the other members of her organization as elder brothers (except Jaffar, who's a potential love interest). She also has major Magikarp Power and is indicated to be a magic prodigy in her support conversations, which is why she was abducted and raised by a group of assassins.
  • Ewan from Sacred Stones is an apprentice, not even part of the full-fledged mage class, and he starts as the weakest spellcaster in the game, but if you spend the effort to train him...
  • Also Subverted in Radiant Dawn with two of the most important mages, Soren and Micaiah. they're both products of breeding between the two species, meaning they age slower. By the end of the second game, they're both in their twenties while still appearing to be in their mid-teens. Empress Sanaki and Tormod before he grew up, however, fit this trope.
  • The twins Yubello and Yumina, a mage and cleric respectively are, at 13-14 years old, the youngest party members you can have in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem.
  • Ricken from Awakening certainly evokes the trope. Although his age is never given, he is the youngest member of Chrom's Shepherds, looks like a kid, and is treated as the kid of the group even though he is of marriageable age. This can be somewhat amusing as it is possible that his child from the future will look older than him.
• Ivan from Golden Sun is the youngest party member and he's the Black Mage. In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Sheba also fills in this role. In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Himi is even younger at twelve.
• Roan from Grandia II.
• Annie from League of Legends. Doubles as a Creepy Child because of her propensity for burning things.
• Cooke and Mack from Lost Odyssey. These two get a bonus for being only eight and six.
• Yuu in Luminous Arc 3.
• Ram and Rom from Neptunia. Gust fits the bill as well, but only in appearance.
• Oliver in Ni no Kuni. He subverts the Squishy Wizard status when he gets to a high enough level, due to him being The Hero.
• Caillou from Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. He's rather adamant that people don't treat him like a child, though... right before he demands you to sell him some candy.
• RuneScape has Kennith. He's first met as a child in a quest. The next quest in the series, he's a young adult, and together with two other characters and the player he forms a party of four. The player's age is discussable, but Kennith most probably is the youngest member of said party. And he can cast even the high-level spells without any effort or even material components usually needed for casting.

• The Secret World features quite a few mages who are either children or young teenagers - comparatively rare in the setting given that most forms of magic require years of education to master:
  • Carter was telekinetic at birth, and eventually grew so powerful that she was accepted into Innsmouth Academy at twelve - the youngest student on record. At the start of the game, she's about sixteen years of age and capable of causing thaumonuclear explosions at will.
  • Hayden Montag, Headmaster of Innsmouth Academy and Carter's tutor, actually started out as one of these: despite not having the genetic capacity for magic that distinguishes most of the child mages in the setting, Montag was casting eldritch magic at an early age simply because he had the intellect and the drive to learn it; tragically, his early experiments resulted in the accidental deaths of his mother and neighbors - which is one of the reasons why the adult Montag is so insistent on Carter learning control of her powers.
  • Callie James, a fifteen-year-old homeless girl, demonstrates a powerful grasp of pyromancy - having accidentally burned down school buildings when her powers were awakened. As such, she's had recruitment offers from both the Templars and the Illuminati, but for now Callie's okay with serving as a squire to John Gallahad.
  • Uta Bloody Valentine AKA The Rabbit Killer also started out as this, having been born with powerful Blood Magic as a result of her assimilating her twin sisters in the womb; indeed, given that it's not established how old she really is and you never see her face, it's possible she's actually a teenager.
  • Emma Smith takes the cake: she's an unimaginably powerful mage capable of blasting massive craters in the Earth, cutting down whole swathes of Filth-monsters, telepathically sensing events in the past, leaving ghostly "memories" of herself to guide players, teleporting with the same ease that most people walk, curing the Filth with a kiss, and even controlling the Gaia Engines ... and she can't be a day older than twelve.
• Played with in Simon the Sorcerer games, where Simon is a regular British kid from our world who ends up in the magical realm. However, he doesn't have any magical abilities on his own.
• Ernie Eaglebeek in The Spellcasting Series may possibly be considered this, except he's in his late teens and has plenty of sex, something not normally associated with a child mage (especially a nerd).
• Leon of Star Ocean: The Second Story is the youngest potential recruit, being only twelve, and is a prodigy who excels at magic. He's also a bit of a jerk, though he softens up after having a Heroic BSoD after his parents and everyone save Claude appear to be wiped out in a shipwreck. This is also the point where he becomes permanently recruit-able, though he's only accessible if you're playing as Claude.
• Tales Series:
  • Meredy from Tales of Eternia is 16, and looks about 12. However, on her home planet, not only is she considered an adult and and owns her own lavish house, she's one of the most accredited and famous engineers in the world. Beryl Benito from Tales of Hearts likewise looks prepubescent, but is actually 18, and simply revels in her youth.
  • Genis from Tales of Symphonia is the Black Mage and the youngest in the group.
  • Rita from Tales of Vesperia is the second youngest member of the group at age 15, and the party's only Squishy Wizard. Handwaved with Rita being a prodigy in the fields of magic and blastia.
  • Elize from Tales of Xillia and Tales of Xillia 2 is the youngest member of the group at age 12 (13 in the sequel). Her magical prowess stems from the fact that her living doll Teepo is actually a booster; a device that increases one's combat capability at the expense of their lifespan.
• Charlotte of Trials of Mana plays with this. She's fifteen, but for half-elves in this game Immortality does not begin at twenty, so Charlotte is roughly as physically and mentally developed as a human five-year-old.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Maria is one of these, but she's a little bit... different. Her claiming to be a mage can also be seen as just a way to cope with being friendless.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Mint, a Red Mage who's a 12-year-old ill girl.
• Warframe: The Tenno are considered this due to being Touched by Vorlons children with unstable Void powers. They are capable of fighting by themselves, though most of the time combat is done by channeling said powers into the Warframes that serve as a stronger vessel than the Tenno's preteen bodies.
• Alvin from The Witcher has an inherent gift that makes him the most powerful mage known. Unfortunately, it's so powerful it's a hazard to himself and others, and he needs help keeping it under control. In the books, Ciri had a similar role, but she managed to seal it and swear off magic when she grew up.
• Wizard101: Player characters seem to be teenagers at most.
• MOMO from Xenosaga. She's the youngest party member, a robot girl who looks like a preteen (and may even be Younger Than She Looks) and the best healer, a user of ranged magic-like attacks, and a part-time Magical Girl. However, this is because she's an Artificial Human, not because she's a child.

Web Comics

• In Haru-Sari, magic can only really be used by "elves", people born with a mutation, either naturally or more commonly artificially induced. The downside of that power? Elves physically stay prepubescent children forever, at least until their thirties — when their magic has poisoned their bodies enough to kill them. And that does not even count in the common psychological disorders and bad social standing.
• The children of Hathor the Cow Goddess are unusually smart. But this is just to illustrate how well she thinks unschooling works and to make her adult Straw Loser opponents look even dumber by comparison.
• Holly in Leif & Thorn is fourteen, while the rest of the team consists of adult knights.
• Most magicians in Never Satisfied develop their magical abilities before the age of ten.
• In the nation of Alderode in Unsounded, the Platinum caste are taught pymary from a young age due to their innate magical talents and very short lifespans. Alderode also makes extensive use of Military Mages, so Plat Child Soldiers are far from unheard of; co-protagonist Duane Adelier commanded such a unit in the past.
• Ariana Rael in Van Von Hunter.
• The students in Wizard School are already experienced mages — as opposed to Graham, the adult, who is clueless. Alas, everyone is subject to Good Is Dumb.
• Yokoka's Quest has a few examples:
  • Mao is shown casting a (tiny) fireball as a child during a flashback, and states that he and Yokoka have known a spell to see in the dark since they were kids.
  • Kalliv is a 13 year old boy whose only meaningful contribution in combat was to bind the king centipede with magic vines.
  • Inky is a 14 year old boy who provides Light elemental healing and support magic for his party, as his father won't let him use attack magic until he's older.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation have convinced SCP-239 that she is a witch in an attempt to keep her Reality Warper powers (which operate under Clap Your Hands If You Believe logic) under control and to boost morale of personnel.
• Whateley Universe:
  • The Three Little Witches, who are a preadolescent example of The Weird Sisters.
  • Paige St. Claire from Written In Blood: Part 1, the protagonist's preteen younger sister, who has been learning magic all her life.

Western Animation

• In the Batman Beyond episode "Mind Games", Terry has to rescue a psychic little girl from an evil organization of telepaths who want to initiate her via kidnapping. While he saves her, he also gets her help since she's a pretty powerful kid.
• Kyle the Conjurer and Sigmund the Sorceror in Fanboy and Chum Chum.
• In Gargoyles, in the backstory of "Long Way to Morning," the Magus was both very young and a good enough mage to cure the prince. (Granted, he did need the Grimorum to do it...)
• Orko from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983). Very small compared to the others, Really 700 Years Old, but he certainly acts like a kid.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, while Twilight Sparkle is no longer a child, she showed immense magical talent from a very young age.
• The Smurfs (1981): Baby Smurf, believe it or not. He was occasionally seen casting spells (although none of the others see this), and is heavily implied to be Papa Smurf's successor.
• Young Justice (2010) reimagines Zatanna Zatara as one, joining the Team at age 14.

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