The Ages of Team MZ

[bedes]

There's quite a lot of evidence for Team MZ being much older than previous protags — the minimum being 20 years old, or 18 years old, depending on how you look at it.

In the Rust Syndicate bit (AKA: Urbain/Taunie Gets You In Trouble With The Mafia), your rival signs a legal contract that is legally binding (as explicitly stated by Lida). If they were minors, the contract would be void, and Corbeau couldn’t do anything.

This means that Urbain/Taunie are minimum 18 (if we're working under France's laws), or minimum 20 (if we're working under Japan's).

Additionally:

• The main character arrives to Lumiose by themself, as a tourist, with no parent, which would only make sense if they were an adult themselves.


• Lida lived in Lumiose with a roommate, and it is specifically namedropped that Lida had to pay rent (minors cannot rent locations — again, making her a minimum 18 or 20, depending on which laws we’re applying).

The only character without a direct implication like this, to my knowledge, is Naveen, who only lives in Hotel Z part-time while living with their grandmother the rest of the time (potentially their legal guardian). This could be argued to be supported by Naveen being the shortest of the group, and their name meanings across languages being various versions of "pure, naive, innocent".

However, I'm obliged to think that Naveen is the same age as the others. They talk about taking commissions for sewing, which, while they could be doing that as a minor, I find it less likely than the idea of them being an adult (their grandmother would need to handle their finances as a minor, which wouldn't really work, given that she disapproves of the hobby).

Also, if they were the youngest, the others would 110% tease them for it. They (and we) would never hear the end of it.

I think this is all very cool! I've been wanting an older/adult set of protagonists for Pokemon for a long while now, and I think this fulfillment of that wish is done super well!