Rename (alt titles crowner 2/24/12): Cute Shotaro Boy

As far as I can tell, the Cute Shotaro Boy is "a child who behaves like an adult but is never taken seriously and just labeled as cute". The bold part is the basic shape of the trope, while the actual "cute boy" trope does not exist to my knowledge, while a "cute girl" trope does (I think).

But in order to keep myself from going on a tangent, I'd say this trope should be split; one trope for the "cute boy" aspect and another part for the aforementioned "attempted maturity". A good name for the latter would be something like Seen But Not Heard, in my opinion.

And as I keep pointing out we already have a bunch of tropes around this concept.

We need to catalog them first to figure out if this trope has a place or not.

We already have Wise Beyond Their Years and The Linus.

We don't need to copy those.

Now it's possible that we have space for a trope about young boy who is considered cute because he tries to act mature and responsible beyond his years.

edited 9th May '11 6:23:11 AM by Sackett

The you read my first post. This name is beyond bad but not for the reasons you state. The name sucks because it is barely related to the trope. Even the English part of the name is misleading.

Also, your complain is dumb, as 'shotaro' pretty much means 'cute boy' anyway. This is like complaining of the La Brea Tar Pits because the name is incomprehensible due to gratuitous Spanish (hint: 'brea' means 'tar').

So, lets get back at doing something.

Following Sackett suggestion of defining how it is different from other similar tropes (so we can decided if we cut or rename): I interpret this trope differ from Wise Beyond Their Years and The Linus as Cute Shotaro Boy don't need to be wise not bright. He just need to act as he is. How successful he is is also irrelevant. This is often played for cute, instead of annoyance.

Edit:Woah, Ninja'd.

See my post. I think your last line is more or last what this trope is.

edited 9th May '11 6:27:23 AM by Heatth

Still, if the tropes is about a boy who is considered cute because he acts like an adult, "Cute Shotaro Boy" only capitalizes on the "cute" part, and thus a lot of examples are just saying that X Character is a cute boy.

Yes. I don't think anyone ever disagreed of that. The raname is a given now, as there is no on against it. What we are discussing now is what the trope is so we can start thinking in better names.

Cute Little Man?

That seems to be a phrase I've heard before: "Aren't you the little man." Spoken in amused praise of the little boy trying to act all mature.

Well these guys are not always The Linus they might not be very mature. The may try to be but not always. The kids just try to put on a straight face do their best in the face of something that is entirely over their head. The moments when that armor breaks down and they act their age (if it's having fun like a kid or a woobie type breakdown.) only adds to the cuteness and I think is an important part of the trope.

I am all for making this gender neutral though.

Now do we have a trope for what this is currently being misused as? "A Moe little boy" aka Shotacon bait.

edited 9th May '11 10:00:13 PM by Raso

There's one thing that makes the Shotaro different form just being a cute boy, these kids usually have some kinda job or responsibility like solving crimes, partnering with the world saving robots, being the family head or looking for missing parents etc, that responsibility is usually what makes them try to act like adults.

Negi Springfield, Ciel Phantomhive, Mayuki Hyuga, Garcia Lovelace, Shotaro Kaneda himself

The misuse here is people mistaking this for just a cute boy page.

edited 9th May '11 11:37:49 PM by No9

Bump.

So, we appear to have two tropes shoved into one: Mature Shotarou Boy, and Shotacon Bait. Did I get that right?

I think someone's asked this already, but do we have a separate article for just a cute little boy?

If I'm not mistaken, Shotacon also originates from the Trope Namer of Cute Shotaro Boy, which could be another source of confusion. Could we maybe redefine Cute Shotaro Boy as just a moe little boy and have a different trope for a child who tries to act mature but just ends up being cute or would that be too much?

edited 26th Jun '11 10:39:40 AM by Ein

Bump....

Splitting off Cute Little Man seems to be the best course of action - I had no idea "Cute Shotaro Boy" meant anything other than what it looks like(I actually thought "shotaro" was a genre or something like that).

So is this happening, or what? I mean, a vote was already held... do we need another?

Seeing how this would be a big page change we probably need a page action crowner.

• make the page match misuse as and Moe / Adorable little boy and transplant the trope to a new trope.
• Rename Cute Shotaro Boy Clean up misuse and bajilion wicks.
• Make Cute Shotaro Boy gender neutral. (with a rename or gender inverted redirect.)
• Clean up misuse don't rename.
• split and rename both.

Missing anything?

Oh yes, PLEASE change the name of this trope. I dunno about the rest of you, but I am tired of seeing Japanese thrown into trope titles.

Yes, you missed the fact that the rename crowner already occurred, and the rename was approved, but no further action on it was ever taken (no new name was ever chosen).

Thus, we don't need to do another one on whether to rename it... just on what to rename it.

edited 31st Oct '11 6:50:04 AM by Worldmaker

Since there is consensus to rename, I've created an alternative titles crowner here.

I didn't find any evidence of a rename crowner anywhere.

There is no Page action or Single Prop Crowner for renaming Cute Shotaro Boy, open or locked.

An Alternative Names crowner is premature.

I've locked it an unhooked it.

I made a Page Action Crowner here.

Page action crowner hooked.

Bumping for more votes...

Really surprised that the make gender neutral is so low there are many examples of this (described more in a previous post) like almost all the Elementary School age MagicalGirls (especially the Magical Girl Warrior ones) such as Ako from Suite Precure (who is like 10 but became a Magical Girl after her father was mind controlled by the Big Bad in an effort to find a way to stop it... And it is a long story.) or Nanoha and Fate in Nanoha (The latter is trying her best to please her mom.), then non magical girl Becky from Pani Poni Dash (Who is 10 trying to teach High School but prone to breakdowns even in the first episode... Gender flipped Negi in a lot of ways.) etc.

edited 9th Nov '11 5:55:26 AM by Raso

The make gender neutral has the highest ratio of approval. This does need more votes though.

The top two options are redundant. One says rename, the other says make it gender neutral and maybe rename.

A crowner option should not be ambiguous on whether it is about renaming or not. As far as options go, splitting between "keep the current definition and rename" or "make it gender neutral and rename" would make more sense.

No, the make gender neutral option is simply not exclusive to the rename option. If rename is high and gender neutral is high (like now), then both will happen. If rename is low but gender neutral is high, then the trope will be changed to gender neutral, but not renamed.