In cartoons, kids are portrayed as being way shorter than adults, even kids who are seven to twelve years in age. In real life, seven year olds are on average four feet tall, but in cartoons, seven to eleven year olds are often drawn to be only half adult height. Despite that children are rather small when they're young, it doesn't stay this way for long in real life (unless that is, they have a growth condition but that's another story entirely), especially when puberty sets in and they outgrow clothes faster than they get new ones. In some cartoons however, it's much more exaggerated. Even ten and eleven year olds only appear two feet tall.
Usually, this is done as an exaggeration and to play around for fun with. Because children often feel overpowered by their parents and other adults, they're drawn much shorter. Especially when it's told from their point of view. Sometimes, all that's visible of their parents are their legs. Bully and jock characters tend to be shown at heights that are more realistic for their age, however.
However, this is not a
Universal Trope and sometimes children are scaled to a more realistic size. Having said that, though, it's prevalent
enough that averting the trope may lead to the audience being confused about how old a child character is actually supposed to be.
Teens are Short refers to simply having most teens be identified by being shorter than adults, especially in
Dawson Casting. This applies to four to twelve year old children being RIDICULOUSLY small for their age, to the point that they are only as tall as toddlers. Classic cartoons often invert this trope and
Teens are Short for laughs.
This is seen to a much smaller degree in live action television, where smaller actors may be chosen instead of a taller actor.
Related to
Animation Anatomy Aging.
Teens are Short is the teenage version. Compare
Miniature Senior Citizens.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- The main character in the Pokémon anime, Ash Ketchum, is 10 but younger kids can be about half as tall he is.
- Leon, Rebecca, and Mokuba on Yu-gi-oh. And Yugi...except he's the same age as the rest of the cast.
- Detective Conan comes to mind. He comes up to the knees of most adults, as does most of his classmates. Particularly funny since Genta, who is around the size of an ACTUAL kid that age, looks like a giant in comparison...
- Yachiru and Nel in Bleach are drawn like this. Yachiru seems even smaller than she is because she hangs out with Kenpachi, who is very large.
- In Gurren Lagann, Simon is 14 at the start of the series, but looks like he's 10. Other characters his age have more realistic heights. Supposedly, he just has stunted growth.
- Mamoru and his friends on GaoGaiGar are lucky if they come up to an adult's waist.
- Chiyo-Chan in Azumanga Daioh was often so much shorter compared to the other girls, her head was barely visible in the frame. This was relaxed later in the series, though whether it was due to Art Evolution or just her growing taller is debatable.
- The students of Hanamaru Kindergarten are probably some of the smallest in fiction period. Their teachers have no difficulty picking them up.
- The kids at Crayon Shin Chan are tiny. Despite being 5, they're the size of babies!
- Saint Seiya is weird for this one. Kids 9 are under are tiny. Anyone who is at least 10 looks like an adult. Everyone in this world gets a giant growth spurt when they become 10, it seems.
Film
Literature
- Berenstain Bears. One of the books shows Sister as being small enough to cling to papa bear's head. And as usual, the leader of the bully squad, Too-Tall is even a hanging lampshade.
Newspaper Comics
- Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes despite being 6-years-old is shown as being only about 2 feet tall, about as tall as a toddler, and his parents are both normal height. Just about every one of his peers except Moe (the school bully) are also about as tall as he is. Amusingly, Hobbes (when he's not a plushie) is taller than Calvin is.
- This can be extended to pretty much every non-Moe (No, not that kind of Moe) child in the comic.
- He even mentions in one strip that short pants touch his feet, and another when he follows the wrong woman around the Zoo that "From the knees down, she looks just like you".
- The kids in Family Circus are all disproportionately tiny.
- Averted in For Better or for Worse, which not only had the kids grow up in real-time but portrayed them as being more closer to the adults in terms of size when they hit double-digits.
Video Games
- In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Link is only 12 years old and comes up to the waist of most human adults. The Bomber Kids, however, only come up to his waist. How they manage to form a working club that helps people, when realistically they shouldn't even be able to talk yet, is anybody's guess.
- The campers in Psychonauts, all roughly ten years of age, only reach about the waists of the councilors. Except for Oleander.
Western Animation
