Misused: Cutesy Dwarf

Essentially, it seems to boil down to 'Older Than They Look but short'. The description states being about drawing characters who are 'just' unusually small as if they're children.

The examples, however, seem to be a selection of 'characters who are short and look young'. Half the anime examples are characters noted for looking childish and thus consequently small (and 'children are small' isn't a trope), the comic and literature examples are 'this isn't actually a child but looks like one', the video game sections are Our Dwarves Are Different, and two of the webcomic entries (with description) boil down to 'indeterminate age, but REALLY small' and 'apparently, 5'3 and girly is a dwarf drawn as a child'.

Basically, everything on the page is either 'described as small for some other reason' or 'no information given'. Out of the not-described characters, at least one (Komoe) is in-universe also explicitly more youthful than she should be.

Short version: description suggests drawing dwarfism as a child. Entries tend to be just 'looks young, is small' even when there's other reasons for this. Including a literature example when this is a visual trope.

I'm not even quite sure what this is.

It sounds like it's supposed to be when a character who's older than they appear is depicted indistinguishably from a child, even though in real life, an adult would have different proportions even if they were short (and even someone with a condition like Gary Coleman obviously ages).

I think that could be something, but the examples are all over the place. Alice in Kiniro Mosaic is a high schooler who looks younger than her age, but she's still at an age where it's not that unbelievable (especially after you account for an immature cast who could be exaggerating and a style in which no one looks remotely realistic for their age).

Meanwhile, Komoe in A Certain Magical Index is an adult, veteran teacher who's visually indistinguishable from a child (a pink-haired one at that) in universe, which is explicitly odd and confuses the characters (and considering the fantastic setting, it might actually have an explanation that doesn't exist in real life).

edited 7th Aug '15 4:28:43 AM by Jokubas

So basically Older Than They Look but more specific to child-like appearances?

More specific and with slightly different connotations. It's a valid subtrope. There's a big difference in treatment between a sixty year old woman who looks thirty, and a grown mature adult who looks like a child. There's also third version of Older Than They Look where something has frozen their ageing at a certain point, and that doesn't really fall in here either though it should probably have it's own subtrope as well.

Current description is 'small and looks like a child because it's easier than drawing a dwarf', then goes on to list characters who're childlike for other in-universe reasons, aren't intended to be just small in the first place, and two entries of characters five feet or over.

'REALLY younger than they look' is a valid subtrope, but it's not what this page seems to be describing.

That's fair. There don't seem to be any examples of the current definition though which indicates to me that it's not really a trope.

Locking as part of New Years Purge.