How old is Ryne???? (Slight 5.2 Spoilers)

[YianKutku]

Remember that on Japan girls of 1'70m are considered very tall and on many japanese works is not rare to see a decent ammount of female characters shorter than 1'50m specially if they are still on their growing phase

Except we're comparing Ryne to other female characters in the same setting, though. Ryne is short even among FFXIV women. I think the only people shorter are the actual clear children, eg Khloe. (EDIT: And Lalafell, but that's assumed.)

[SannaR]

She's short because she didn't eat her sin eater.... kidding.. she's short because she's like Edward and doesn't like to drink milk. Umm maybe she's short to help shape the whole she's a small, weak child that needs to be kept in a cage like a fragile song bird. That gets treated like a small child by Thancred who along with a certain general see her as someone who needs to be protected. I'm just glad she's getting more respect from the adults in her life.

[Eloah]

She's probably short because of the inner turmoil her body was experiencing while housing her own soul, as well as the original Minfilia's. It's actually something quite common in real life too. Not the soul thing exactly, but throwing of your body's natural equilibrium can stunt your growth. To use the Edward Elric example someone joked about, that's what happened to him as well, with his body supporting Al's while it was in limbo. Isn't it fun when supernatural phenomena have roots in real life, lol.

[Limonia]

Except we're comparing Ryne to other female characters in the same setting, though. Ryne is short even among FFXIV women. I think the only people shorter are the actual clear children, eg Khloe. (EDIT: And Lalafell, but that's assumed.)

Exactly. She is tiny compared to Hyur standards, even to Au Ra standards. It's like they took a Hyur child and just used a Midlander model, without correcting the height.
The problem is that there aren't really any teenager models in FF14. They can either use children and make them look a little taller, or use the normal characters and make them look young by making them small and give them unique faces.

(Without heels, Gaia would be even shorter than Ryne... btw., I was so surprised as Ryne mentioned Gaia is about her age. I thought she was supposed in her late thirties...)

Remember that on Japan girls of 1'70m are considered very tall and on many japanese works is not rare to see a decent ammount of female characters shorter than 1'50m specially if they are still on their growing phase

To me women of 170 cm are huge as well. xD
Is it common for Japanese teenagers to grow later? Here (Central/Western Europe), even on the lowest percentile (about where I am on), you're supposed to be like 10-15 cm taller than Ryne is at about 14-16 years. If you're smaller than 150 cm at age 14-15, you're below the lowest percentile, which are about 3% or so. She is too small for her age. That's why I was surprised that she is so "developed" and thought they were just lazy and didn't want to give her a custom/child model.

[Brightamethyst]

The problem is that there aren't really any teenager models in FF14. They can either use children and make them look a little taller, or use the normal characters and make them look young by making them small and give them unique faces.

This is the biggest issue they have with characters like that. There are child models and adult models but nothing in between. You best they can do is make either a tall child or a short adult, neither of which really look like an actual 15 year old.

[QT_Melon]

This is the biggest issue they have with characters like that. There are child models and adult models but nothing in between. You best they can do is make either a tall child or a short adult, neither of which really look like an actual 15 year old.

Yeah this isn't the only thing that suffers this problem. There's a Chinese CG production called Soul Land - Douluou Dalu and I'm sure for production reasons they have some sets of models, but their 12 year old models look like they're in their late teens to early adulthood.

That's why I stopped trying to overly worry about the actual age of the models in game where they're using fuzzy age ranges.

[Eloah]

Exactly. She is tiny compared to Hyur standards, even to Au Ra standards. It's like they took a Hyur child and just used a Midlander model, without correcting the height.
The problem is that there aren't really any teenager models in FF14. They can either use children and make them look a little taller, or use the normal characters and make them look young by making them small and give them unique faces.

(Without heels, Gaia would be even shorter than Ryne... btw., I was so surprised as Ryne mentioned Gaia is about her age. I thought she was supposed in her late thirties...)


To me women of 170 cm are huge as well. xD
Is it common for Japanese teenagers to grow later? Here (Central/Western Europe), even on the lowest percentile (about where I am on), you're supposed to be like 10-15 cm taller than Ryne is at about 14-16 years. If you're smaller than 150 cm at age 14-15, you're below the lowest percentile, which are about 3% or so. She is too small for her age. That's why I was surprised that she is so "developed" and thought they were just lazy and didn't want to give her a custom/child model.

But see that mirrors real life though. Either you look like a child, or you look like an adult, there isnt really a major in between for anyone. We are only able to percieve someone's age based on societal conditions we become accustomed to over the years. That's why in settings with fictional people, if we aren't explicitly told an age we guess based on the cues we are given. Most prove correct but some don't always work because of other bits of information we are given.

This is why some teenagers ages are harder to grasp since the cues we have to go on are all jumbled. We get some that place them as a child and others that place them as an adult. The jumbled cues are actually what place them in the teenage range. But we look for other cues, like height, to try and figure out where in the teenage spectrum they might fall. However, certain life situations can affect us, altering these cues.

Take Ryne for example. She is a female Hyur with a young appearance and is quite naive about the world around her. This suggests she is a child. Her height however is about 145cm or 4'9", she is about twice "my height" and I'm about 84cm or 2'9". This would place as an older child/young teen. With most people guessing the 12-14 range. But with the reveal that she's "near" Alphinaud and Alisaie's age, placing her in the 16-17 range, seems to confuse some people. But the only thing really placing here in the younger range is her naivety, which can be explained by her upbringing. Barring that, she fits into the mid teen range of 15-17.

We humans are strange. Because we don't just suddenly become adults. It's not like on our 18/21st birthdays we go through a metamorphosis and suddenly poof, adult. It takes time, and is different per person. I myself was under 5 feet when I was in 6th grade, about 12-13, and reached my full height of 5'9" at around maybe 17 or so, and for me it was gradual. For others they stay shorter longer and grow faster later on. Plus puberty is active for about 10-15 years in humans. It can start as early as 9 and can last until around 26.

So while I can see people taking issue with Ryne's new interpretation, there is nothing "wrong" with it per se. I mean how can we in the US view it as wrong, when we take toddlers and parade them around in much worse for entertainment. Personally everything feels more stylistic, and not "sexual"

This is the biggest issue they have with characters like that. There are child models and adult models but nothing in between. You best they can do is make either a tall child or a short adult, neither of which really look like an actual 15 year old.

But that's a trope so ingrained in TV that we believe it's real, but it's not. Depending on their biological factors a teenager will either look like a child or an adult, there isnt really a major in between.

Have you ever seen Avatar the last Airbender and the legend of Korra. In the original Avatar, all of the "teenagers" were short and looked like "children" next to the adults. Some like Aang and Toph made sense. But Katara, Sokka, Zuko were 14, 15, and 16 respectively. They should of had more adult appearances. This was averted in Korra, where the main cast look more like actual teenagers in real life, meaning they had younger appearances, but more adult bodies. Compare Bolin and Zuko, both are 16, but Zuko, stylistically, is drawn more to look like a child. Notice how in the later episodes/seasons of Korra, the characters show gradual aging, but nothing too drastic since they were "technically" already on par with the adults.

Additionally, if SE wanted, when creating Ryne, they could have easily made her model different than it currently is.

[MikkoAkure]

I think the weirdest part of Ryne potentially being 16 is that there's already two 16 year old hyur girls in the game and they both use the adult model, Edda and Leveva. Leveva grew up in a privileged home in Sharlayan, but Edda grew up dirt poor in a mountain village.

I've always figured that Ryne is 14 at best and the line mentioning others being her age wasn't to be taken extremely literally.

[lycropath]

I think the weirdest part of Ryne potentially being 16 is that there's already two 16 year old hyur girls in the game and they both use the adult model, Edda and Leveva. Leveva grew up in a privileged home in Sharlayan, but Edda grew up dirt poor in a mountain village.

I've always figured that Ryne is 14 at best and the line mentioning others being her age wasn't to be taken extremely literally.

I mean some kids are late bloomers anyway, its not like there is a hard cap Ryne can hit before she uses a standard hyur model.

[YianKutku]

To me women of 170 cm are huge as well. xD
Is it common for Japanese teenagers to grow later? Here (Central/Western Europe), even on the lowest percentile (about where I am on), you're supposed to be like 10-15 cm taller than Ryne is at about 14-16 years. If you're smaller than 150 cm at age 14-15, you're below the lowest percentile, which are about 3% or so. She is too small for her age. That's why I was surprised that she is so "developed" and thought they were just lazy and didn't want to give her a custom/child model.

It's one of those things that's ongoing in terms of data collection. Average height for women here in East Asia is about 155-160cm, which does mean it's not uncommon to see people shorter, even as adults. (It's also not uncommon to see people taller; for example, my extended family doesn't have any women below 160cm, once they reach adulthood.) I believe Northern Europeans tend to be way taller, at about 170cm average for women.

However, there's also a clear trend of height trending upwards, and I would not be surprised if the data I know (from the 90s) is now outdated, and average height for women is above 160cm now. I believe it has to do with health and diet, but I haven't really looked deeply into that. This also has apparently resulted in children maturing earlier, so I don't know what the current data is now.

(Before anyone raises the possibility of Ryne having a different diet due to being in a fantasy world on the brink of oblivion, recall that we're also comparing her with characters from the same world. Who use the same character creator as characters from the Source.)

In any case, it's kind of an issue of presentation: it's plausible for Ryne to be at the bottom percentile of height for her age, but in a work of fiction, such outliers either have to be explained (eg that Xaela tribe with allegedly super-tall males), or have other examples shown (which we've not seen). Otherwise, we're going to have to work on the assumption that she's around the mean height for whatever her age is, and then work out her age from there.