57
Ok Japan, now you're just taking the piss
(hexbear.net)
Cid from Final Fantasy 9 was 35?! THIS GUY, with the steely grey beard and glorious regal moustache?! He's clearly 20 years older than that!
As an adult I thought it was kind of funny that Steiner, at 33, is the designated doddering fussy comic relief old man of the party but this is just nuts.
I keep being confounded by the way Japanese media treats age. 6-21 is prime adventuring age, you're practically done at 25 and afterwards you should just shuffle off to a retirement home
The most reasonable explanation I've seen for at least part of that is that you get authors writing stories about adult characters and drawing them that way, except they're targeting the series at a teen demographic so they age them down and depending on setting maybe have them going to school instead of a job or something, leading to a weird compression that's oddly reminiscent of Hollywood casting aging actors in much younger roles. You get 14 year old characters drawn as 18 year olds, 18 year olds drawn as 20 somethings, 20 year olds drawn as 30 somethings, and 30 somethings drawn as ~60 year old Sean Bean playing a 35 year old in Game of Thrones.