Ash Ketchum's Age

Submission 48,654

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About

Ash Ketchum's Age, also postulated in the question "How Old Is Ash Ketchum?", is a popular topic of debate among the fans of the Pokemon franchise regarding the ageless appearance of the main protagonist character in the animated series.

Origin

On April 1st, 1997, the Pokemon animated series began airing in the Japanese network TV Tokyo. The story follows Ash Ketchum, a ten-year-old boy who goes out on an adventure to realize his dream of becoming a Pokemon master. While the series has been running on a continuous timeline over the course of 19 seasons for more than 18 years, most of the recurring characters, including Ash Ketchum, do not age at all, in the vein of the long-running Not Allowed to Grow Up trope often found across many genres of fiction.^[1]

Spread

Online discussions regarding Ash's agelessness in relation to the timeline of the series can be found on a wide range of Nintendo and Pokemon fan community sites, including PokeCommunity^[2], PokeMasters^[6], DS Database^[3], as well as TV.com^[5] on Yahoo! Answers^[4]. The mystery surrounding Ash Ketchum's age has also served as one of the main inspirations for the fanmade Pokemon creepypasta Ash's Coma^[7].

On an unregistered date, 9gag user LLOYDBLAZE uploaded an image which compares Avril Lavigne's seemingly youthful appearance throughout the years with Ash Ketchum (Shown below left). As of May 2015, the image has gathered 16,750 points^[8]. On June 28th, 2012, Funnyjunk user sexwithyourwife uploaded an image which places Ash Ketchum with other known cartoon figures who have never age throughout the years (Shown below right). Within 2 years, the image has gathered more than 47.800 views and 2.390 upvotes^[9].

On September 12th, 2013, famous Youtuber TheJWittz uploaded a video titled "Ash Ketchum's Age – Pokémon Fact of The Day" wherein he discusses canonical facts about Ash's age and the fan theories that surrounds it. On the following day, the video was featured on Kotaku^[10], and within a year, the video has accumulated more than 2.6 million views.

On June 1st, 2014, an entry regarding the fan theories surrounding Ash's age was submitted to FanTheories Wiki^[12]. On June 9th, 2014, DeviantArt user Garbanosian uploaded a webcomic which juxtaposes Ash alongside his more aged looking friends Misty and Brock. As of May, 2015, the webcomic has gathered more than 82.000 views and 2.212 favorites^[11].