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Controversial opinions

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Greninjaman said:
Why?
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Simple, fandom reactions. I live off of people trying to Death of the Author, ignoring that Death of the Author tends to be about explaining away questions not answered by the work itself and not completely disregarding canon itself, their way into rationalizing Ash is 16 and that BW and SM are not canon only to run into problems rationalizing it.

My actual reasons are that they haven't explored all they could possibly do with a child in the Pokemon World. Think about it, we've only seen Ash as a trainer and a student. We haven't explored other avenues of being a child in this world.

Also, I hate older protagonists for whatever reason. I think my mind has been poisoned by X-Men comics.
 
SM Ash is probably one of the most interesting Ash's in the entire series. He has a lot more personality in this series, and I think putting him in a wider cast of characters with a different dynamic really helped balance him out a bit more. After pulling through years of the same old Ash, this was a breath of fresh air.

This one might just be insane, but "Pokemon Johto" is better than the iconic Pokemon Theme.
 
Panky.. said:
The people who like to theorize him being older are equally valid in their reasoning, though 15-16 is pushing it far. A 13-year old can have the same mindset and appeal as a 10-year old.
Besides, most of this 10 year old nonsense started thanks to BW's single line in a single episode which gets contradicted by facts later on in the same series. I can't believe people use a single line that's pretty much contradicted, from the worst series of the anime, as canon when there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Before BW, his age was very ambiguous though he showed signs of ageing from both his physical stature growth as well as his mental maturity.
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I think the DP Dub made a joke about the sliding timeline with Team Rocket saying they've been chasing Pikachu since before Dawn was born.

However, my theory at this point is that four or five years have passed but Ash is also still ten, because he is a vampire and vampires don't age (the older type that isn't killed by sunlight, pre-Nosferatu). His Pokémon, know but none of the humans do.

That's also why he sometimes has freakish super strength (throwing giant trees, lifting Larvitar) but is sometimes weak--it's based on how recently he's fed.
Don't worry though; he's not jumping random civilians in an alley or anything. He just buys lots of meat at the butchers.
...and occasionally tracks team rocket down after a blastoff and bites them.
(Edit: Pikachu's inconsistent strength has the same explanation BTW.)

Farfetched?
Yes.
As farfetched as everything we've seen taking less than a year?
I think not.
 
Panky.. said:
Ridiculous, bizzare and stupid. But far more believable than the arguments for him being 10 year old.

Honestly, if you ignore the vague 10 year old references, it's easy to picture him as a 13 year old.
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I'm pretty sure there is no sane in-universe explanations for Ash's age.

If we're going to be serious, I think even three years is really pushing it at over 1,000 episodes, especially when some episodes have more than a single day pass (didn't he spend a month or more between Viridian Gym and the Indigo League?). The AG/DP era theory of each series being roughly a year seemed to fit alright up until BW.
 
Well, some Pokedex entries claim that Ho-Oh grants eternal happiness to the pure-hearted trainers, so I've always assumed that Ash seeing him at the end of the first episode resulted in the until then normal passage of time to warp into a more comic bookish one, since being an eternal 10-years old on a Pokemon journey would be an eternal happiness for Ash.

Alternatively, while some people consider it a joke theory, I've always seriously assumed that Ho-Oh is Ash's father in some way, and his lack of aging is simply result of his immortal phoenix minor god lineage.

Or, as a THIRD theory - humans in Pokemon world actually live longer and age proportionaly slower than in real life, and the planet may or may not move slower while orbiting its star, resulting in longer years.
 
Panky.. said:
The people who like to theorize him being older are equally valid in their reasoning, though 15-16 is pushing it far. A 13-year old can have the same mindset and appeal as a 10-year old.
Besides, most of this 10 year old nonsense started thanks to BW's single line in a single episode which gets contradicted by facts later on in the same series. I can't believe people use a single line that's pretty much contradicted, from the worst series of the anime, as canon when there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Before BW, his age was very ambiguous though he showed signs of ageing from both his physical stature growth as well as his mental maturity.
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What evidence are you talking about? I don't remember that Ash being ten years old line being later contradicted in BW or any of the other series following it.
 
Panky.. said:
Hmmm, magnet train, hmmm. Hmmm, Dawn stating it's been a year since the Wallace cup, hmmm.
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I'm not sure what you mean by the magnet train, but I don't remember Dawn saying that it had been a year since the Wallace Cup. I only remember her saying that she was going to compete in the Wallace Cup taking place in Johto. Plus, I remember reading on some of Dogasu's episode comparisons, mainly for AG, that Japanese version doesn't mention that each Contest takes place once a year. If Dawn did say that, it could have been a dub only line, such as Ash saying that it had been a year since they were in Vermillion City back in the original series.
 
I wonder if any of the lines saying he's still ten were in the English version?

Because if not we might be looking at a weird situation where Ash is older than Satoshi, so to speak.
 
Timaeus said:
I'm fairly certain that I remember hearing the dub say Ash is ten years old around the start of BW.
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I think it did, too. However, later on in the series, the narrator confuses Nimbasa Town for Nimbasa City. Now one can say that was for comedy reasons, but still, it shows that the narrator can get things wrong. And it was only the narrator that gave Ash's age at the beginning of BW.
 
Some people are really overthinking the Ash's age debate. It's simple: Time occurs normally but none of the characters age. They have to do this otherwise Ash would be 33 by now, and they never knew how long the series would last so it was a safe bet not letting him age. They're not trying to convince us that the 1,000+ episodes of the series took place in less than a year, I'm sure many years have passed but Ash stays 10 because that fits the story they're trying to tell. Sure it's not very satisfying to fans for them to ignore continuity like that, but the writers aren't concerned about it. Any further theorizing and speculation trying to explain this phenomena is strictly headcanon.
 
I like my explanation for why characters don't age. Their calendar is different. The seasons don't match up because like actual geography seasons change sea.
Daren said:
I'm pretty sure there is no sane in-universe explanations for Ash's age.

If we're going to be serious, I think even three years is really pushing it at over 1,000 episodes, especially when some episodes have more than a single day pass (didn't he spend a month or more between Viridian Gym and the Indigo League?). The AG/DP era theory of each series being roughly a year seemed to fit alright up until BW.
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I just blame their calendar system. The calendar system of this world clearly isn't 1:1 to ours.
 
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