What happened to Wally?

[Almonds]

I was reading Wally's profile page on Bulbapedia and saw something that made me flabbergasted.

Wally's age in ORAS: 10
Wally's age in SM: 20-30

... ???

I mean, I understand that since Gen1 and Gen3 are on the same timeline, I it should make sense to assume Wally from Gen3 would have aged since Gen1 characters like Red and Green have aged.

But his design from Sun and Moon looks way too young. I'd say 15 at the most. I initially thought that maybe the Battle Tree is a special facility presenting the characters in their forms from their respective games - but Red and Green are there and they aged just fine.

Is this a messed up design? Or is Wally actually Peter Pan?

 

[Kharixi]

He probably saw Solgaleo or Lunala before their designs were settled on.

 

[Nicolas721]

He does look older if you compare them side by side with the ORAS sprite, even taking into account the chibi style.

Also, I'm 22 and my face hasn't changed since I was 15, and I don't expect it to change much.

Maybe new clothes would have solved the issue, but somehow they were busy giving a kimono to a gambler...

 

[Esserise]

There are three years between the Kanto/Hoenn stories and the Johto/Sinnoh stories, an indeterminate number of years between the Johto/Sinnoh stories and BW (though probably at least five - it has to be at least long enough for Caitlin to age a few years and for the Rocket grunt who stole the Machine Part to consider reviving Team Rocket, decide against it, return to Unova, find a woman who he will get married to, and have a child with her who has the Schoolkid sprite by the time of the BW story), two years between BW and B2W2/XY, and then two more years between B2W2/XY and SM.

So Wally was 10 in ORAS, and then by HGSS/Platinum he'd be 13, and then 17 when you factor in the four years between BW and his appearance in SM, and then you go back and add however many years you like to put between HGSS/Platinum and BW.

So yes, 20+ is probably accurate (30 is probably way off, though).

He doesn't "look" "older," but neither do a lot of young adult actors these days. Look at Thomas Brodie-Sangster, for instance.

On top of that, we've had a fair number of people in the Pokémon universe who don't quite look their age. Lusamine is 40, Leafeon User Linnea takes care of her skin to the point that she still uses the Swimmer model in comparison to all of her gray-haired compatriots, and then in XY, there's a Rising Star in the Battle Chateau who says that she's actually 39.

Most of all though, they probably just didn't bother to update his model since they'd just created a perfectly usable one for the previous games.

 

[PurplePopplio]

Cynthia is another trainer who ages, but doesn't look any different over the years.

 

[Almonds]

He does look older if you compare them side by side with the ORAS sprite, even taking into account the chibi style.

Also, I'm 22 and my face hasn't changed since I was 15, and I don't expect it to change much.

True, he seems to have aged when comparing the models.

Also, 15-> twenties doesn't quite have the same differences as 10 -> twenties, which should be more drastic. Teenagers are closer to adulthood and they already change during their teen years due to puberty. They'd retain most of their looks when they age. 10-year-olds, however, has a lot of potential to change in appearance.

He doesn't "look" "older," but neither do a lot of young adult actors these days. Look at Thomas Brodie-Sangster, for instance.

On top of that, we've had a fair number of people in the Pokémon universe who don't quite look their age. Lusamine is 40, Leafeon User Linnea takes care of her skin to the point that she still uses the Swimmer model in comparison to all of her gray-haired compatriots, and then in XY, there's a Rising Star in the Battle Chateau who says that she's actually 39.

Lusamine has an obsession for beauty so she may have done something to herself to look young and beautiful. Though I do agree there are cases of people - both fiction and real-life - looking hardly older than a teenager even as adults.

Most of all though, they probably just didn't bother to update his model since they'd just created a perfectly usable one for the previous games.

Probably. This may be the scenario for Wally.

Cynthia is another trainer who ages, but doesn't look any different over the years.

Cynthia is already an adult when she first appeared in the Sinnoh games, and adults barely change in appearance from aging.

 

[Kallyle]

Remember how Wally was said to have an illness, but said illness was never defined? I think it's likely that whatever Wally had ended up not killing him, but resulted in stunted growth. He's pretty much a midget due to his illness. At least that's my take on this.

 

[FroyoDragon]

I wonder if it was a mistake on someone's part. Should take a look at what they used for reference for his age.

 

[Muur]

He just ages slowly I guess. Although Red has sure aged a lot in the 2 years since BW2 in which they reused his sprite from gen 4... (same with Blue)

they were just lazy and reused his sprite. If he makes a relevant appearance - like Red - outside the tree, he'll be aged according like Red. Red still had his gen 4 sprite, even though in gen 5 he'd be a lot older than in gen 2...

 

[Silktree]

He was added to SM as an afterthought, much like Cynthia. The other returning characters actually interacted with the player outside of the Battle Tree.