That sounds about right. All child soldiers seem to do is fight and are usually forced to fight while they sound more like kid heroes as they choose to do it, don't always fight, and have normal lives when not fighting.
How does this trope differ from the kid hero one? From what I gathered, the children here are forced/expected to fight whereas kid heroes aren't and completely volunteer to fight? I also gathered that child soldiers don't have much of a normal life whereas kid heroes do whenever not fighting? I also wonder how do the Links fall under child soldiers?
Hmmmmm I think we should replace the image with the Infamous picture of Child Soldiers from the MGSV redband trailer, since, in my opinion it fits the theme of Child Soldiers better then the anime one.
Even after reading that entire unending summery, I'm still not sure exactly what qualifies.
Would the Zoldyck family from Hunter x Hunter work as an example? Their children are all assassins. I considered Kid Samurai, but that one said it was for kids who hadn't actually done battle.
What about children of a hypothetical Proud Warrior Race who are given martial training long before they are expected to participate in actual combat? Shouldn't they be more the precociously talented type then the just plain tragic type?
Mah boi!
Y'know, some of the examples listed in the Real Life "Just Plain Tragic" section would be more fitting under "Precociously Talented" and only seem to be there because that section doesn't seem to have a Real Life list, like Jack Lucas, the Lwow Eaglets, the Los Ninos Heroes, Willie Johnston, and Aldie Murphy. While I accept that most people don't see this kind of thing as being good, ever, I think that the "Precociously Talented" section could use a Real Life portion for these ones.
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If I remember Audie Murphy enlisted of his own free-will and lied about his age. He was in a regular army and not in the infamous warlord-bands of human orcs made up of kidnapped and brainwashed children, that we hear so much of and he was only within a few years of his minimum age. He was a hero not a victim and is generally regarded as such. And while his life was as tragic as any soldier's it was not more so.
Eureka from the Eureka Seven anime is a Child Soldier. Renton, Anemone, those kids Dewey has working for him and probably Dominic also count.
Moved the following example from Section 1:
- The Metal Gear series has several former child soldiers as characters. Gray Fox was successful because he didn't look like a combatant, so enemies didn't shoot him. Then he stabbed them with a knife. Already being a child soldier, he broke pretty much every rule in the Geneva Convention. Then, he was recruited by the US, who turned him into the next-most-lethal man on Earth by the age of sixteen.
- Both Solid Snake and Liquid Snake were trained very young nearly from birth, in point of fact, given that they're both clones of Big Boss, with Solid joining the US Army and Liquid heading over to the British SAS. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker implies in its secret call that this was an insurance policy by Major Zero/Cipher/The Patriots to get rid of Big Boss in case Zero failed to both bring Big Boss back into the Patriots/gain the use of the Militaires Sans Frontieres, and frame the MSF by launching a nuke at the East Coast of the United States if he refused. Later, Raiden would be discovered to have been a child soldier in the Liberian civil war, serving under Big Bad Solidus Snake, the latter of whom was also technically a child soldier (he served as a teenager).
- One episode of the Japan-only Metal Gear Solid radio drama involved Snake and Mei Ling fighting over whether killing child soldiers is any different from killing normal combatants. Snake didn't think so.
- Drebin 893 was a former child soldier as well, and has a large scar to show for it.
The reason being it's also listed under section 2, and I'm not sure which one should stay. Or if both types are covered, it should do a better job of differentiating the two.
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.
8th_Pacifist
There seem to be two extremely distinct tropes here, enough so that I think we could justify splitting them into two pages. Leave the "Just Plain Tragic" type in Child Soldier, which I'm sure is what first comes to mind for most people, and move the "Precociously Talented" type to its own page. Call it Badass Anklebiter or something.
Thoughts?
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If you can word the new trope title so that it's obvious you're talking about a soldier, go right ahead.
Edited by SalFishFin
Should the Sailor Moon characters really count here? The Senshi live normal lives when they're not fighting, they're more just "magical girls" than equivalent to real soldiers. Because if they count, then other magical girls like Wedding Peach, Tokyo Mew Mew and Pretty Cure would count. Them being Senshi is more of a part-time job than a full-time job.
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