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Tokai as painted by Rafiqun Nabi. Tokai is the oldest and most famous Bangladesh cartoon character. One Jump, ahead of the bread line
One Swing, ahead of the sword
I steal, only what I can't afford - And that's everything!
A kid, usually an orphan, who has lived on the streets for most of his short life. Survival is a matter of stealing whatever they need, doing odd jobs, and/or stuff you'd probably rather not think about. He may actually have a home or family, but the situation there may be so bad that living on the streets is preferable, or they're out stealing for their family's sake.
The vast majority of them usually grow up into street gangs or worse, but the ones we usually deal with have a run-in with the hero of the story. Older characters usually end up becoming an older brother or father to them, or at least friends.
Street Urchins are usually boys, but having the character suddenly revealed to be a girl is just as common. Not quite a Wholesome Crossdresser, she just really doesn't have the money for any feminine clothes. Not to mention that, in many places like this, it's probably for the best that some people not know you're a girl.
If the character seems perfectly happy with their lot in life and practically seems to thrive on the streets, then you have yourself The Artful Dodger. If this character grows up into a hardened survivor and is proud of his hungry years, you've got a Satisfied Street Rat.
A very sad case of Truth In Television, but far, far worse out here.
Examples
Anime
- Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing is shown to have run in a gang of urchins in the prequel manga, Episode Zero. He ends up getting set on the path to being a Humongous Mecha pilot when terrorists hold his friends, and the Nun and Priest caring for them, and offers to steal a mobile suit to get them freed. He actually pulls it off, too, but true to his later persona as a Broken Hero, it doesn't end well.
- Kotaro Inugami in Mahou Sensei Negima is a Half-Demon who, thanks to his nature, was able to survive by performing work as a mercenary. He ends up becoming a rival to Negi, follows him to Mahora, and ends up getting unofficially adopted by one of his students.
- Also, Tohsaka used to be one as a kid.
- Yahiko Myoujin in Rurouni Kenshin, after his Ill Girl mother's death.
- In Bleach, Renji and Rukia were like this when they were kids. Kenpachi Zaraki and his lieutenant were a Darker And Edgier version of this.
- Neneko in Yumeria seems to live on the streets most of the time.
- In the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga, a young Ryouji Kaji grows up among a gang of war orphans; of course, since this is Evangelion, it all eventually ends in terrible tragedy.
- Baccano!'s Firo Prochainezo used to be one, being orphaned at age nine (and fatherless before that) and forced to make it on his own in one of New York's seedier neighborhoods. He stumbled into the Camorra after attempting to pick-pocket one of their higher-ranking executives.
- This is part of Chibodee Crockett's history, before he was scouted by an agent and made it big in boxing.
- Same goes to his Four Girl Ensemble, whom he specifically took in as he saw his past situation reflected in theirs.
- Garrod Ran from After War Gundam X. He tells Tiffa in the second episode that he was at first raised by his widowed father, but then his dad died and found himself completely alone.
- Meg from Burst Angel.
Comic Book
- Storm from X-Men started out as one of these after an airplane crashed atop the Cairo home of her Black American father and Kenyan mother. She had a solid claim to being the best pickpocket and escape artist in the city by the time she hit puberty only to wander south along the Nile on impulse, have her powers kick in, and spend the bulk of her adolescence as a Weather Deity made manifest on the Serengeti.
- Jubilee too. After the murder of her parents she spent a few years living on the streets of LA, doing fireworks shows with her abilities, before being picked up by the X-Men.
- Batman: The Post Crisis incarnation of Jason Todd (Robin II).
Film
- The Kid in Dick Tracy.
- Jamal and his brother Salim in Slumdog Millionaire grew up like this after the slum they lived in was attacked during a religion riot.
Literature
- Oliver Twist, anyone?
- When Sherlock Holmes needed info from the street, he could always count on the Baker Street Irregulars, a gang of street urchins who have eyes and ears everywhere on the streets of London.
- Most of the characters in Les Misérables had this kind of childhood, but Gavroche in particular embodies the trope.
- Vin from Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson was a street urchin who survived in relative physical and psychical health only because of her yet undeveloped but useful awesome magical talent.
- In the Discworld novel Night Watch, the young Nobby Nobbs is described as a street urchin, on the grounds that he's small, prickly, and smells like fish. As the book was a pastiche of Les Miserables, he served as the stand-in for Gavroche.
- Arya in A Song Of Ice And Fire spends some time playing the street urchin, both genuinely and as part of learning to be a magical assassin. In the Dunk and Egg stories, Dunk recalls his earliest memories as an urchin in the slums of King's Landing. The streetfighting skills he learned there have saved him on more than one occasion.
- Bean of the Ender series was one, as revealed in Ender's Shadow. His friend Poke was the cross-dressing kind, though everyone knew she was a girl.
- Briar of Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series.
- And all the kids he deals with in the aptly named Street Magic. Evvy later got her own book.
- Flinx from Alan Dean Fosters Pip and Flinx series. Not only is Flinx an orphan who lived on the streets, as an adult after being adopted he takes some under his wing that fit the definition perfectly.
- Lyra from His Dark Materials is a rare voluntary example: she was born and raised among the posh, wealthy nobility of Oxford and knows every single licentiate in the Jordan College, but being a Little Miss Badass, she spends her days fighting against the kids from the other neighborhoods, stealing stuff from the docks, and climbing and sneaking around Jordan College during the night.
- Zael in Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 novels of Ravenor.
- Nan from The Wizard of London is a good example of one.
- For that matter so was Skif, at least to start out with.
- There was also another young Herald-Trainee in Arrows of the Queen who gets a mention on one of the Mage Winds books. He was one used for unsavory purposes.
- Sahar, in the Whateley Universe. You do not want to be a girl who's an orphan on the streets of Baghdad. Her powers kick in when she's being dragged off by a pimp who plans to make some money using her body.
- Kim in Patricia C Wrede's Mairelon the Magician. A girl disguised as a boy, and for good reason.
- In the Outlander series, Fergus grew up this way, living in a whorehouse, unsure which of the ladies was his mother, until adopted by Jamie. In places it's a very dark take on this trope — for example, the fact that Fergus had also prostituted himself for money.
- Stevie in the Caleb Carr novels The Alienist and Angel Of Death is a street urchin.
- The Westmark Trilogy has the girl Mickle and the sister-and-brother duo Sparrow and Weasel.
- In the Borribles trilogy by Michael de Larrabeiti, street urchins are sort of the embryonic form of the immortal, elfin Borribles — particularly successful and cunning urchins "evolve" into Borribles.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- In the first Discworld game. there is a stereotypical Street Urchin.
- In Angband, there's the "Filthy street urchin". Being a roguelike, you can kill them.
- Marco from Skies Of Arcadia.
Web Original
- Cathalie Meguro and Mitch Gunther of Survival Of The Fittest, though they lived in an orphanage instead of on the streets.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Tim Drake is portrayed like this in Batman The Animated Series, an amalgam of his comic origins and those of second Robin Jason Todd. His father was a criminal who ended up on the bad side of Two-Face, and he quickly found himself an orphan, just in time to get far too deep in the middle of one of Batman's cases.
- The title character of Disney's Aladdin is, more or less, a slightly more grown-up version, and both in the full-length features and the series many young children are shown starving on the streets of Agrabah.
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