Quote Originally Posted by GhostZukin View Post
People in JP -- including the devs themselves, obviously know they're adults.
Japanese media has a long and storied history of trying to build plausible deniability around blatantly child-coded characters. Plus, there's an FC in JP that throws kindergarten roleplay events, so I don't think it's fair to say they don't see them as childlike. Official sources describe Lalafells as appearing childlike, and have even stated that the inspiration for their racial outfits came from kindergarten clothing. It's really not a crazy mental stretch to perceive them that way, and it doesn't help that the Lala community is basically a revolving door of people getting outed as pedophiles.