History Main / CompetenceZone

Subtropes include AdultsAreUseless and TeensAreMonsters. See also ImprobableAge, where the Competence Zone is imbalanced enough for viewers to notice. In a TeenageWasteland, the characters may or may not have reached the self-governance Competence Zone.

* The two youngest kids of ''BackyardSports'', Luanne Lui and Ronny Dobbs, [[BrotherChuck were removed from the series]] after ''Backyard Baseball 2007''.

Subtropes include AdultsAreUseless and TeensAreMonsters. See also ImprobableAge, where the Competence Zone is imbalanced enough for viewers to notice. In a TeenageWasteland, whether the characters have reached the Competence Zone yet or not with respect to self-governance varies.

* In ChangelingTheDreaming, characters are divided into three age brackets to represent pre-teens (Childlings), teen-to-early-twenties (Wilders), and past twenty five (Grumps). New characters derive three critical stats based on their age: Glamour, or Magic Points, Willpower, and Banality, the game's loss of magic power. Childlings not only have to deal with all the restrictions of being kids, but they have untenable low Willpower scores. However, since magic is fueled by imagination, a Childling has an unbelievable amount of Glamour as a starting character. Grumps are too Banal (which eliminates your character) and have very low Glamour, though at least they have a decent Willpower and won't have to quit the adventure because it's nap time. Wilders - either high school age or early twenties - offer the best trade-off. Their Banality and Glamour scores are better than Grumps and their Willpower scores are better than Childlings, plus the WorldOfDarkness is not the kind of setting for FreeRangeChildren.
* DungeonsAndDragons and {{Pathfinder}} adjust the ability scores of characters based on age, with physical scores falling as mental scores rise over time. As a result, characters who value mental scores more than physical scores actually are most competent when they are older, while physical characters are at their best young. There are exceptions such as class abilities and magic which can screw with your apparent age.

* {{Super 8}} seems to suffer from this, with many of the children having adult competence levels and developed skills, and most of the adults (except [[ActionDad Jack]]) just following direction. And the young adults are [[DrugsAreBad potheads]].

* In ''Literature/TheEgyptGame'', eleven-year-olds April and Melanie worry about nine-year-old Elizabeth being outside the Competence Zone. She turns out to be more competent than they expect, although she's still portrayed as a NaiveNewcomer. Oddly, they had no such reservations about Melanie's four-year-old brother Marshall.

** Nah, Motoko is generally portrayed as being in the middle of the hierarchy, after accounting for the fact that she could kick the ass of almost every other regular cast member's ass, put together. Outside of fights, the regulars who were older than her keep calling her with the "chan" suffix and she follows all their leads without question (except, obviously, Keitarou's) and holds a similar position above those younger than her except Suu (who is, canonically, her best friend). Or Sara. Or Kanako. Okay, so Shinobu and Nyamo are the only people younger than Motoko that listens to her... or anyone else, for that matter, but she still seems to have more influence with the older cast.

** Well, Ritsuko is extremely competent in her area. Same for Misato, who's scarily focused and competent when she's not goofing around. And the Eva-pilots fare pretty well for emotionally disturbed teens in charge of kicking some giant monster butt with a giant [[spoiler: robot / cyborg / artificial human.]]
** Perhaps this belongs as a deconstruction of the Competence Zone in HumongousMecha. Every competent character is a pretty damaged individual, for every competent act onscreen the same character screws up in another aspect of life, and in the end competence counts for nothing.
*** Depends on what you mean by "competent". Technically, everyone followed through with EXACTLY what they were supposed to do. Said final goal, of course, is not exactly....something most people would want, but they indeed succeed in achieving it.
** It's not just about emotional states: only people born after the second coming can synch with the [[HumongousMecha Evas]], so anyone past their teens just can't pilot them.
*** Which in the end is still subverted [[spoiler: because the entire truth behind Eva's are covered up. The pilots can pilot Eva's not because they are kids but because their mothers souls were absorbed into the Eva's to power them. The Eva's only work for children rule was a lie because the Eva's only work for that specific character and not just children in general, and presumably anyone of any age could use an Eva if a loved one's soul was used to power it and they had the right mindset. Not to mentioned that in the end the pilots are just tools used by Gendo and Seele, who are adults. As are Misato for her tactics, Ritsuko and her mother for her science, and the bridge crew for their skills. So in the end all the competent people are being used for the goals of the older men who aren't competent themselves but manipulate the younger into doing the work for them.]]

* Apparently, except for Mazer Rackham himself, nobody over 12 is competent to command in the EndersGame universe.
** Of course, the books justify this by insisting that these kids are the first generation to be put through Battle School, where they are raised to think tactically -all the time-.
** Also this doesn't make older people incompetent - they're just using the children's special abilities in an all-out war. There are many types of leadership and competence.

** Which is almost identical to the setup in ''Jake Long: American Dragon'', only swap the genders (Jake and his little sister, and his grandfather are dragons) and make one of the parents clueless (Jake's mother is aware of their family heritage)
*** The father gets clued in eventually as well. Or least learns about the whole dragon thing...
*** This actually makes the Jake Long example a bit of a subversion: once his dad finds out about everything, he becomes pretty competent, singlehandedly wiping out an army of shadow demons that even the whole dragon council was having trouble with.

** Jet is about Zuko or Sokka's age, which isn't so bad until you realize he's been fighting the Fire Nation since he was much younger than the current cast of heroes, and has apparently gathered an entire following of children a la Peter Pan's Lost Boys. Smellerbee and Longshot are probably teenagers, but The Duke is ''8''. He seems to know a fair bit about explosives...
** This is [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the war has been going on for 100 years and most of the adults are either off at war, or back home trying to keep things together. Or dead.
** Well there are the elite top-members of the White Lotus Society, an entire group of {{Badass Grandpa}}s who [[spoiler: reconquer Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation.]]
*** It's inherent to the franchise, actually. The adults' short sighted pragmatism led to a hundred years of war, so it's up to a new generation of heroes to tackle the problem with naive optimism.
*** Mainly because the only one who ''can'' end the war is currently twelve and the only ones available to go with him are similar in age -- all the adults are fighting the war that's going on.
** Flat-out [[AvertedTrope averted]] with ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra''. Most of the cast is in the 16-18 range ([[PhysicalGod Korra]], Mako, Bolin, [[BadassNormal Asami]]), but then there's the older generation ([[TechnicalPacifist Tenzin]], [[MemeticBadass Lin Bei Fong]]) who can kick some serious ass, and then there's the ''really'' young kids (Tenzin's kids; Jinora, Meelo, and Ikki) who can take out [[TheDragon the Lieutenant]] and a squad of [[EliteMooks Chi-Blockers]] single-handedly. Rule of thumb is that if a character has a backstory, they're competent.

* In {{Naruto}} the zone is similar. If you're a twenty-sixty something adult ninja, even if you have years of experience, you're nothing but a mook. Even if you ''are'' competent, it'll just be used to [[WorfEffect Hype up the bad guy]] so the kids look better when they win.
** Although the few characters who are genuinely getting on in their years (Onoki, Hiruzen, Madara and arguably the sannin) tend to be just as,if not more competent than the main characters. This makes sense in context though, there's not many elderly ninjas around; those that do show up are the ones competent enough to actually survive to old age.

** Flat-out [[AvertedTrope averted]] with TheLegendOfKorra. Most of the cast is in the 16-18 range ([[PhysicalGod Korra]], Mako, Bolin, [[BadassNormal Asami]]), but then there's the older generation ([[TechnicalPacifist Tenzin]], [[MemeticBadass Lin Bei Fong]]) who can kick some serious ass, and then there's the ''really'' young kids (Tenzin's kids; Jinora, Meelo, and Ikki) who can take out [[TheDragon the Lieutenant]] and a squad of [[EliteMooks Chi-Blockers]] single-handedly. Rule of thumb is that if a character has a backstory, they're competent.

* ''[[DotHack .hack]]'' averts the trope. Yes, a lot of the main characters are teens. However, in the first four games, we also have three adults (Helba, Lios, and [[spoiler:Mistral]]), and one pre-teen kid (Wiseman), all of whom are thoroughly competent, and play major roles in the story.

* To a certain extent, science. Most work, especially experimental or programming, is done by Ph.D. students or postdocs that are in the 20-30 bracket. Older researchers are not incompetent, but they are overwhelmed by the bureaucracy or ignore the new techniques.

* Played straight, almost to an extreme in ''FinalFantasyIX'' in regards to the six-year-old CheerfulChild and [[SquishyWizard summoner]] Eiko. She is equally as capable as her older comerades in surviving and tackling dangerous situations head on, and garners her PrecociousCrush on the sixteen-year-old Zidane with poetry, cooking, and ''quoting classic literature.'' To top it off, when two members of the group go into a HeroicBSOD, Zidane ''puts Eiko in charge.'' If Eiko was the same age as Garnet, Zidane's actual LoveInterest, it would be highly likely that some serious [[DieForOurShip shipping]] would ensue.

* Handled with unusual specificity in ''FinalFantasyVIII'', where nearly all the principal characters are 17, except for Quistis, their instructor, who is 18.

* Addressed in [[http://www.goldcoincomics.com/?id=34 Gold Coin Comics]] when asked about their age.

* In the ''Great Brain'' books, boys start leaving the Competence Zone around age 13, when they start working and develop an interest in girls and therefore have less time for kids' games.

If the older/younger characters ''are'' just as competent, there's usually some inherent quirky trait allowing them to be so. A CreepyChild, a ManChild, a [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld pseudo-child]] and WiseBeyondTheirYears are ways to play with personalities to make them fit into the CompetenceZone where the writers want them to, while {{mascot}}s and {{Team Pet}}s have a [[VagueAge vague enough age]] that you can fit them anywhere you want. Occasionally, someone is far enough out of the CompetenceZone that they become useful again -- [[CoolOldGuy grandfatherly mentors]] are more useful than [[ParentalAbandonment parents]], and [[TeenGenius genius pre-teens]] are more useful than the average high school student. This may be because authority conflicts or their notable absence are less likely to distract from the story this way. A pre-teen genius would be less likely to conflict with adult characters and demand more autonomy than a 17-year-old, whereas a grandfather would be less likely to attempt to exert control over a teen cast because it's not his job to be the strict authority figure.

Subtropes include AdultsAreUseless and TeensAreMonsters. See also ImprobableAge, where the CompetenceZone is imbalanced enough for viewers to notice. In a TeenageWasteland, whether the characters have reached the CompetenceZone yet or not with respect to self-governance varies.

* ''Franchise/MetalGear'' is notable in that it has a much older cast than usual in video games or media in general - much of the cast is in its thirties or forties or beyond. The result is that the {{Bishonen}}, in his mid-twenties, falls outside the CompetenceZone and becomes ThisLoserIsYou. [[spoiler:Until the fourth installment, where he goes cybernetic BadAss on us.]]

* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' is a rare case where ''nobody'' is in the CompetenceZone. The older generation has both brought ruin upon the world, and left the younger generation too emotionally crippled to fix it.

** Perhaps this belongs as a deconstruction of the CompetenceZone in HumongousMecha. Every competent character is a pretty damaged individual, for every competent act onscreen the same character screws up in another aspect of life, and in the end competence counts for nothing.

* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' takes the CompetenceZone to extremes: anyone 13 or older is a threat to the Kids Next Door, and must have their memories of the organization erased. In this universe, unlike the real one, teenagers serve as loyal minions for adults. The show eventually subverted this in the episode "OP MAURICE."

* Parodied in an episode of How I Met Your Mother, when Robin has a 40-year-old boyfriend who the narrator admits probably wasn't as outrageously old as the group imagined. In the show, the 40-year-old is played by a man in his 60's to demonstrate the exaggerated imagination.

* In the earlier ''Literature/HarryPotter'' books, Ginny was outside the Competence Zone and in general portrayed as a helpless innocent. This is despite the fact that she is only one year younger than the trio and thus ''always the same age Harry was in the last book''. This was subverted in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'' when Ginny is allowed to help after pointing out she is four years older than Harry was during his first confrontation with Voldemort, giving her the opportunity to show that she TookALevelInBadass.

** Even Count Olaf isn't exactly competent by himself, it's just that he has a lot of resources to work with and usually only has to fool incompetent people. This becomes most apparent in the final book where his usual PaperThinDisguise doesn't fool anyone.

* Played with in ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice''. While there is a CompetenceZone, the main protagonists are just barely inside it. They need numbers and alot of dirty fighting to defeat the average villain they are faced with and when they take on an adult member of the Justice League they are effortlessly curb-stomped. They get tougher over the course of the first season and the TimeSkip in between seasons 1 and 2 ages them up to be within the CompetenceZone anyway.
** To be fair, even your average villain has TakenALevelInBadass in this series. Not to mention that some of the villains they face are FlyingBricks that usually fight with members of the Justice League.

* ''Literature/TheBible'' has an exceedingly large competence zone, with quite a handful of figure's ages going into the triple digits.

* ''TheBabySittersClub'' takes this trope UpToEleven.[[hottip:*:[[JustForPun Eleven is the minimum age of competence.]] Mallory and Jessi are mature enough to babysit and be trusted to wander around Stoneybrook alone among other things. Most ten year olds are not. It becomes a major plot point a couple of times.

* ''MySoCalledLife'': 15-year-old Angela's 10-year-old sister Danielle is too young to be part of Angela's group, but does have sarcasm down....

* Angela from ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' is a little girl of highly VagueAge, surrounded by teenagers. Her sole purpose on the show is to be a pure innocent who cannot be exposed to the typical SoapOpera nightmares happening around her; the other characters know they've gone too far when something they do affects Angela.
* 15-year-old Angela's 10-year-old sister Danielle in ''MySoCalledLife'' is too young to be part of Angela's group, but does have sarcasm down...
* The 13-year-olds of ''Series/{{Ghostwriter}}'' were competent, but anybody younger become a comic-relief sidekick. Particularly strange was when Gabby got too old to be comic relief, became competent, then was replaced with a younger actress who acted even more naive than the original Gabby did.
** They did subvert this once: When Jamal's family takes Casey in, they try to keep the truth from Casey about her alcoholic mother, and this is more trouble than just telling her would have been.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' treated Jack O'Neill's teenage clone as just a kid and [[CompulsorySchoolAge sent him to ''high school'',]] even though mentally he was no younger than the original.
** Then again, mini-Jack doesn't seem too upset about being surrounded by teenage hotties who are clearly no match for his superior maturity and experience.
** Alternately, he may have no intention of ''staying'' in high school. Jack probably knows how to disappear, and who would think a fifteen-year-old actually had the memories of a fifty year old special ops officer?
* On ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', Dawn is a clueless freshman when first introduced, despite being at most one year younger than Buffy was when she started killing vampires every night. Lampshaded on multiple occasions when Buffy is being protective (over- or not).

* Subverted in ''DrakeAndJosh'', in which the main characters' younger sister Megan is portrayed as being more competent than most of the adults around her.