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Animal Crossing Aging Theory

Mayor Desi

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I grew up on Animal Crossing, and have played all the games. During the large number of hours I've played the combined games, I created a theory. What if, throughout all four games, your growing up?

In Animal Crossing: Population Growing, you're very young. Your town is small and fairly limited when it comes to activities. You don't leave town very much, and when you do, it's not that fun. Your little house resembles a club house, where you spent most of your days decorating and playing. You only have the villagers to talk to, and the all seem to take on the role of caretaker. Basically, there's less to do, because you're a toddler/preschooler, and the NPCs are looking out for you more.

In Wild World, you're a kid now! Your world seems bigger, and you start making friends. The villagers trust you more, therefore they aren't as invested. You live in one big house, with your family. You leave the town to visit friends, and there's more to do in general

In City Folk, you're a teenager. The city is just a bus ride away, and you love traveling there to spend your hard earned cash. You enjoy spending time with your friends in other towns and you even have your own place!

In New Leaf, you guessed it! You're an adult now. You've settled down, and you have a great job. The villagers treat you like a friend rather than a child, and even though you're busy being the mayor, you still make time to party with your old friends.

Those are the basics! Feel free to ask questions or give your thoughts.
 
Huh, that's really interesting! I didn't discover Animal Crossing until I was in my 20s, the night of my sister's 21st birthday dinner actually, so I was 23 at the time. I got the bundle deal with AC:WW and the DS lite, and then bought more cartridges and a spare DS from there. I've played the games since then, and knew there was an original AC on the game cube or something, but don't know much about the game except that it had an island and a lot of the basics of WW set up in it.

Because I missed the first game I hadn't noticed any particular progression aside from the obvious freedom. Your theory does make a certain amount of sense now that I think about it though! Thanks!

I wonder what that means for the next AC title? Yikes, it's food for thought!
 
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Never played the 2 in between, so this theory sounds pretty legit! Love it!
 
That is an interesting theory, so going by the pattern. Next animal crossing will be animal crossing hospital where you're old and have to keep going to the hospital.
 
Only problem is that if you'd age again in the next game, you would have to play as an old person and you have to use a walking stick to get around, lol. But seriously, I think the age of the player's character is the age of the player in real life. The taller characters in New Leaf onwards might be a sign that the characters are aging but it could just be a design change that Nintendo wanted and nothing more. The only character we know who has a revealed age is Crazy Redd, who is 35 years old in Wild World. Blathers is apparently in his mid-20's in Wild World which means that Celeste is a teenager as she is apparently 10 years younger than Blathers. Keep in mind that Wild World was released in 2005 so we don't know if they have aged or not. If they did then Crazy Redd would be 46, Blathers would be in his mid-30's and Celeste would be in her mid-20's. I personally think that each personality type has their own age category:

Lazy: Mid or late teenager to young adult,
Normal: Late teenager to middle-aged adult,
Jock: Young teenager to young adult,
Peppy: Young teenager to young adult,
Cranky: Middle-aged adult to old adult,
Snooty: Middle-aged adult to old adult,
Smug: Middle-aged adult,
Uchi: Late teenager to middle-aged adult or just middle-aged adult.
 
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Also, I've noticed something when playing the GCN Animal Crossing a few days ago. One of the villagers said something about me (well, my character) being a teen or a young adult (at least I remember, my memory is very faint but I'm sure they talked about the player being older than a toddler or a little kid). Maybe that will disprove this theory. Plus, one of the rumours in New Leaf is that the player is a 'freshman mayor'. A freshman is a first-year student at high school (around 11 or 12), college (around 16, 17, 18 or 19, depends on what they do with their education) or university (same ages as college) which proves that the player is definitely somewhere in their teens in New Leaf and most likely not an adult.
 
So AC for switch will be on an island to signify retirement and Tortimer and Isabelle will be your two most trusted friends.
 
Also, I've noticed something when playing the GCN Animal Crossing a few days ago. One of the villagers said something about me (well, my character) being a teen or a young adult (at least I remember, my memory is very faint but I'm sure they talked about the player being older than a toddler or a little kid). Maybe that will disprove this theory. Plus, one of the rumours in New Leaf is that the player is a 'freshman mayor'. A freshman is a first-year student at high school (around 11 or 12), college (around 16, 17, 18 or 19, depends on what they do with their education) or university (same ages as college) which proves that the player is definitely somewhere in their teens in New Leaf and most likely not an adult.

I read the term 'freshman mayor' less literally, like a new/inexperienced/first year mayor.
Google says definition another definition of freshman: a newcomer or novice, especially someone newly elected to Congress

I like the theory, OP. It's my head canon now whether or not it's intended by the developers.
 
Yesterday, I've noticed something: in Animal Crossing GCN around the 8th or the 9th of January, you will receive a letter from the player's Mom. It mentions how the player is old enough to remember what happened when s/he was a kid. This pretty much disproves the fact that the player is a kid or a toddler in the GCN game. So according to the GCN game, the player is at least a teenager or older.
 
That does make a lot of sense. Sounds a lot like the 'purgatory' theory that I keep on hearing about.

Oh God, not the purgatory theories. I absolutely despise them. Thank goodness YouTube Video Blocker exists so I don't have to see those crappy theory videos in the suggested videos.
 
Also, I was playing Happy Home Designer today and a lazy villager, Cranston, was in my shop. He said that he hates being an adult. Seeing as how he's not used to being an adult probably means that the lazy villagers just turned into adults in Happy Home Designer. Only speculating.
 
I enjoyed reading that theory just because I was actually a kid in real life during the first two games, a teenager during City Folk and an adult now with New Leaf. I like the ambiguity of the player's age in the games. I always just figured it's similar to in Pokemon when a kid leaves home at the age of 12 or whatever and is "all grown up" but not really.

But again, the ambiguity is great because you can imagine whatever you want. It's your world, after all. :)
 
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The player being customized have no actual influence in the previous games which is as if he or she never existed so for Nintendo it's not a problem giving better proportions considering the processing power of 3DS.
So, the player from the previous towns never returned and neither existed.

We must not forget that the duck species were not that tiny in previous games as they had almost the same size as the player.
Curiously, snooty characters will usually act as if they never meet a human before while saying they're lack common features like feathers, tail, etc...

Funny that most of the TV shows which they watch features humans on it.
 
I grew up on Animal Crossing, and have played all the games. During the large number of hours I've played the combined games, I created a theory. What if, throughout all four games, your growing up?

In Animal Crossing: Population Growing, you're very young. Your town is small and fairly limited when it comes to activities. You don't leave town very much, and when you do, it's not that fun. Your little house resembles a club house, where you spent most of your days decorating and playing. You only have the villagers to talk to, and the all seem to take on the role of caretaker. Basically, there's less to do, because you're a toddler/preschooler, and the NPCs are looking out for you more.

In Wild World, you're a kid now! Your world seems bigger, and you start making friends. The villagers trust you more, therefore they aren't as invested. You live in one big house, with your family. You leave the town to visit friends, and there's more to do in general

In City Folk, you're a teenager. The city is just a bus ride away, and you love traveling there to spend your hard earned cash. You enjoy spending time with your friends in other towns and you even have your own place!

In New Leaf, you guessed it! You're an adult now. You've settled down, and you have a great job. The villagers treat you like a friend rather than a child, and even though you're busy being the mayor, you still make time to party with your old friends.

Those are the basics! Feel free to ask questions or give your thoughts.

Tbh I was literally thinking this exact same things earlier. I have known for a while that the players in ACNL are obviously older than the ones in the previous games, but I don't think of the players in the GCN and DS versions as being any younger than the ones in City Folk. But they are definitely shorter than players in New Leaf. ^^

I also don't think of my player in ACNL as an "adult". More so, around the age of 15-18. For example, in the AC fanfiction I write, my player (from New Leaf) is 17 years old. Any ones I have from earlier games are about 12-14. I think it makes sense that way.

I think Players in Animal Crossing look too cute to be adults ^^

Interesting theory nonetheless.
 
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I can't help but think about that thing in the very first game where if you haven't played for a long time, your face begins to resemble a gyroid, which as I think we all know by now is something that is traditionally buried alongside the dead.

I don't have any huge theories about the story of the games, but I'd sure like it if they explored it more. Just a little more, like the Phyllis and Pete thing, and the Labelle story.
 
Hopefully by this theory we're going to be Tortimer in the next game!

Retire to a really nice island, do nothing but watch kids run around madly playing games you've created. XD
 
Honestly I always thought of the PG, WW, and CF characters to be young adults. I don't know anywhere that would suggest that they're kids- other than the movie I guess, but honestly I think in this universe humans are just that small. But a fun theory!
 
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