Actual or Approximate Ages of BBS Trio

[Neoshadow99 31]

Hello everyone!  I have been trying to figure out just how old Terra, Ventus and Aqua are, relative to their current situations.  For the longest time, we assumed that Terra was the oldest of the group.  Now, there is the major revelation that Ventus is in fact from the time of the Keyblade War/World of Light, and was somehow displaced into the future (BBS era).   

 

What I want to know is, did Nomura ever confirm the actual ages of TVA, or have they always been left open to interpretation?  We know that none of these characters have naturally aged since the end of BBS, due to bodily possession, being in a comatose state, and being trapped in a realm where time does not flow in a usual manner. 

 

Also, is it true that the Keyblade War took place only a century before the start of BBS/KH1?  I was under the impression that it had happened thousands of years ago.  If that is true, than it could be estimated that Ventus is over 100 years old, but hasn't aged due to some form of time travel, and being comatose for a long time.

 

Any help in clearing this up would be greatly appreciated!  If need be, I will try to find any (older) interviews from Nomura that may answer my question directly, though the new story/lore addition with Ventus certainly changes some conceptions many of us likely had.

[Solstice 749]

The only thing that's confirmed is that Ventus is younger than Terra/Aqua, which can be found in Ventus's Bio in the journal, if you play as Terra/aqua. The rest is just purely speculation.

[Neoshadow99 31]

The only thing that's confirmed is that Ventus is younger than Terra/Aqua, which can be found in Ventus's Bio in the journal, if you play as Terra/aqua. The rest is just purely speculation.

 

Oh, their ages are just speculation?  Ventus may in fact be "older" than Terra and Aqua, only by a technicality, and even THAT is a mystery.  I'm only going by the latest revelations in Unchained Chi/Union Cross.  However, it is absolutely true that T and A are physically older/more mature than him. 

 

I was hoping that Nomura would have cleared this up by now, considering how important the age progression of Sora, Riku, and Kairi has been for the fans.

[Solstice 749]

Oh, their ages are just speculation?  Ventus may in fact be "older" than Terra and Aqua, only by a technicality, and even THAT is a mystery.  I'm only going by the latest revelations in Unchained Chi/Union Cross.  However, it is absolutely true that T and A are physically older/more mature than him. 

 

I was hoping that Nomura would have cleared this up by now, considering how important the age progression of Sora, Riku, and Kairi has been for the fans.

Technically no. It does say in the game Ventus is younger, but if I had to guess, Sora and his friends are about in their mid 20's, Terra/aqua could be 22, While I suspect Ventus may be about 16.

[Neoshadow99 31]

Technically no. It does say in the game Ventus is younger, but if I had to guess, Sora and his friends are about in their mid 20's, Terra/aqua could be 22, While I suspect Ventus may be about 16.

Sora and Kairi are 15-16, while Riku is 16-17, going by the transition from KH2-DDD-KH3, I believe.  As for Terra and Aqua, I thought it was likely they would be anywhere from 19-21, though 22 isn't a bad guess, either. 

 

I always thought Ventus was 15-16, though his time displacement may change that, unless age was not a factor when he "traveled forward".  I really hope this is thoroughly explained, as the lore was confusing enough already!

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

You're thinking a bit harder about it than you need to if you ask me, but in general, Ven is the youngest. Yeah he came from the age of fairy tales originally, but we don't quite know what situation has happened that would have placed him in the more modern era just yet. Physically speaking, he's roughly around 15 or so by the time BBS's main events start happening (Mark of Mastery exam, Xehanort disappearing, etc.), since he pretty much resembles Roxas around that age. The events that led him to lose his Darkness, Vanitas, must have happened around 4 years prior, because he later connects his heart with that of a newborn Sora. The main events of BBS are confirmed to take place 10 years before the events of KH1, and Sora was 14 in KH1, so that would mean that he is 4 by the time he meets Terra and Aqua, which would mean that he was born 4 years prior to that. So keeping in mind Ven's relative age at that point, Ven would have been 4 years younger, so around 11 years old or so. He doesn't look too different because I guess they didn't want to make a preteen model or something since he already looks pretty youthful anyway, just remove some parts of his armor. If nothing else, you can at least say that Ven is physically 15 years old.

 

The Keyblade War actually is at least 1000 years old...maybe more...hopefully more, I think 1000 is still a bit too recent in history to be honest. Point is, it took place thousands of years ago, your first assumption is not wrong. If a thing did happen with Ven where he was comatose for that passing period of time or something, then he'd only be hundreds of years old in the same sense that Aang from Avatar is technically 112 years old since that's how many years he's lived on the planet, he just spent the majority of them frozen in ice. Though personally, I'm hoping that he just gets spirited away forward thru time like Samurai Jack instead, as we already have a plot of Ven being stuck in a comatose state right now, and even then he had a brief episode of that after he was split from Vanitas. It would just seem too redundant to me that the same exact thing keeps happening to Ven all the time, I'd much rather there be some sense of variety in the guy's life, even if he can never catch a break.

 

Anyway, Terra and Aqua's specific ages have never been explicitly specified, but one thing is for sure, at least physically, they are much older than Ven, at the very least old enough to be considered "grownups", albeit still pretty young ones at that. Safest bet would be to assume they are young adults, like somewhere within the range of 18-24 years old. Like clearly older than Sora, but not any older than Leon, that nice sweet spot where you can be considered as a main protagonist for a Final Fantasy video game (not even kidding, lol).Terra is actually considered to be the eldest out of all three of them, but the age gap between him and Aqua is much smaller than between them and Ven, so Aqua may only be slightly younger than Terra, I'd put it 1-2 years of difference at best. It's hard to say considering how mature Aqua tends to be, but there's plenty of girls around that age who can be mature beyond their years, it's all based on your personality. No exact number is give for their physical ages, but if I had to guess a number, I'd probably put Terra down as at least 20 and Aqua as at least 18, but even then that's being a bit safe in my eyes, I'm more tempted to say that Terra is around 21-23 and Aqua around 19-21. I only say this because in my eyes Terra must have been pretty well-grown for a while since he's comfortable enough in his own body to give Ven advice on how to "let his body move him" in fights, and he doesn't look that different in the 4-year old flashbacks (same with Aqua), so they must have passed the puberty barrier a good time ago before Ven ever showed up. So it makes sense that they'd be at believable ages where they would have had such developed bodies or at least close to that, so I guess my final guess I'll submit is that they were around 17 (Aqua) and 19 (Terra) years old when Ven first showed up, and after 4 years Aqua was 21, Terra was 23, and Ven was 15.

 

The thing about age in KH though is that the exact number is kind of superfluous. The only time ages were ever explicitly given was in KH1, back in the time where it made since to introduce your new game with characters that have a given age so that they are relevant with the audience. After that, age has been rather vague, to the point that the series really only cares if a character is either depicted as a child, an adolescent/teenager, an adult, or a very old person. There's less "ages" and more "age-groups". The only definitive source of ages we have are in Sora, Riku, and Kairi, the only characters of the series ever given actual ages (well actually I guess Selfie, Tidus, and Wakka were give ages too, being 13, 13, and 15 respectively...come to think of it, I think Cloud was given as 22, Leon as 25, Yuffie as 16, and Cid as 42, but I'm not entirely sure, I've only got one source so far and I'm not sure how accurate it is. Just take those as guesses for now). Any guesses we have about how old certain other characters are will eventually have to be compared against these three, since they're the only true figures we have to work with. So characters connected directly to Sora like Roxas, Xion, and Ventus are only considered 15 years old by proxy, because Sora is 15 years old, so they must be too. It's not going to get any less confusing, unless Nomura decided to bring back specific age numbers and gave each character a specific number in their character descriptions again like he first did in KH1.

 

Also, just because this topic tends to become a slippery slope, I'm just going to say that yes, Sora, Riku, and Kairi are STILL 15, 16, and 15 respectively even after Re:Coded, DDD, and 0.2. It's not explicitly stated that a whole year has passed like KH2, if anything you could just assume that it's been weeks or a few months since the events of KH2, and unless somebody's birthday just happened to coincide with those few passing months, it wouldn't make sense to think of any of these characters as being anything close to a year older than they were in KH2. Until they straight up say that it's been a year, it's safer to assume that not that much time has passed after KH2. Enough for a good-lengthed break for Sora and Riku, but not long enough to advance their ages.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Hero of Light XIV

[Neoshadow99 31]

You're thinking a bit harder about it than you need to if you ask me, but in general, Ven is the youngest. Yeah he came from the age of fairy tales originally, but we don't quite know what situation has happened that would have placed him in the more modern era just yet. Physically speaking, he's roughly around 15 or so by the time BBS's main events start happening (Mark of Mastery exam, Xehanort disappearing, etc.), since he pretty much resembles Roxas around that age. The events that led him to lose his Darkness, Vanitas, must have happened around 4 years prior, because he later connects his heart with that of a newborn Sora. The main events of BBS are confirmed to take place 10 years before the events of KH1, and Sora was 14 in KH1, so that would mean that he is 4 by the time he meets Terra and Aqua, which would mean that he was born 4 years prior to that. So keeping in mind Ven's relative age at that point, Ven would have been 4 years younger, so around 11 years old or so. He doesn't look too different because I guess they didn't want to make a preteen model or something since he already looks pretty youthful anyway, just remove some parts of his armor. If nothing else, you can at least say that Ven is physically 15 years old.

 

The Keyblade War actually is at least 1000 years old...maybe more...hopefully more, I think 1000 is still a bit too recent in history to be honest. Point is, it took place thousands of years ago, your first assumption is not wrong. If a thing did happen with Ven where he was comatose for that passing period of time or something, then he'd only be hundreds of years old in the same sense that Aang from Avatar is technically 112 years old since that's how many years he's lived on the planet, he just spent the majority of them frozen in ice. Though personally, I'm hoping that he just gets spirited away forward thru time like Samurai Jack instead, as we already have a plot of Ven being stuck in a comatose state right now, and even then he had a brief episode of that after he was split from Vanitas. It would just seem too redundant to me that the same exact thing keeps happening to Ven all the time, I'd much rather there be some sense of variety in the guy's life, even if he can never catch a break.

 

Anyway, Terra and Aqua's specific ages have never been explicitly specified, but one thing is for sure, at least physically, they are much older than Ven, at the very least old enough to be considered "grownups", albeit still pretty young ones at that. Safest bet would be to assume they are young adults, like somewhere within the range of 18-24 years old. Like clearly older than Sora, but not any older than Leon, that nice sweet spot where you can be considered as a main protagonist for a Final Fantasy video game (not even kidding, lol).Terra is actually considered to be the eldest out of all three of them, but the age gap between him and Aqua is much smaller than between them and Ven, so Aqua may only be slightly younger than Terra, I'd put it 1-2 years of difference at best. It's hard to say considering how mature Aqua tends to be, but there's plenty of girls around that age who can be mature beyond their years, it's all based on your personality. No exact number is give for their physical ages, but if I had to guess a number, I'd probably put Terra down as at least 20 and Aqua as at least 18, but even then that's being a bit safe in my eyes, I'm more tempted to say that Terra is around 21-23 and Aqua around 19-21. I only say this because in my eyes Terra must have been pretty well-grown for a while since he's comfortable enough in his own body to give Ven advice on how to "let his body move him" in fights, and he doesn't look that different in the 4-year old flashbacks (same with Aqua), so they must have passed the puberty barrier a good time ago before Ven ever showed up. So it makes sense that they'd be at believable ages where they would have had such developed bodies or at least close to that, so I guess my final guess I'll submit is that they were around 17 (Aqua) and 19 (Terra) years old when Ven first showed up, and after 4 years Aqua was 21, Terra was 23, and Ven was 15.

 

The thing about age in KH though is that the exact number is kind of superfluous. The only time ages were ever explicitly given was in KH1, back in the time where it made since to introduce your new game with characters that have a given age so that they are relevant with the audience. After that, age has been rather vague, to the point that the series really only cares if a character is either depicted as a child, an adolescent/teenager, an adult, or a very old person. There's less "ages" and more "age-groups". The only definitive source of ages we have are in Sora, Riku, and Kairi, the only characters of the series ever given actual ages (well actually I guess Selfie, Tidus, and Wakka were give ages too, being 13, 13, and 15 respectively...come to think of it, I think Cloud was given as 22, Leon as 25, Yuffie as 16, and Cid as 42, but I'm not entirely sure, I've only got one source so far and I'm not sure how accurate it is. Just take those as guesses for now). Any guesses we have about how old certain other characters are will eventually have to be compared against these three, since they're the only true figures we have to work with. So characters connected directly to Sora like Roxas, Xion, and Ventus are only considered 15 years old by proxy, because Sora is 15 years old, so they must be too. It's not going to get any less confusing, unless Nomura decided to bring back specific age numbers and gave each character a specific number in their character descriptions again like he first did in KH1.

 

Also, just because this topic tends to become a slippery slope, I'm just going to say that yes, Sora, Riku, and Kairi are STILL 15, 16, and 15 respectively even after Re:Coded, DDD, and 0.2. It's not explicitly stated that a whole year has passed like KH2, if anything you could just assume that it's been weeks or a few months since the events of KH2, and unless somebody's birthday just happened to coincide with those few passing months, it wouldn't make sense to think of any of these characters as being anything close to a year older than they were in KH2. Until they straight up say that it's been a year, it's safer to assume that not that much time has passed after KH2. Enough for a good-lengthed break for Sora and Riku, but not long enough to advance their ages.

 

Thank you for the detailed, well-thought out post!  I agree with your age estimates for TVA, though I had Terra and Aqua at around 19-21, but Terra could be a little older than that.  As for Ventus, I always thought he was 15-16, around the same age as Sora and Roxas.

 

My confusion regarding the Keyblade War bit comes from Ventus' character page on this site.  It states that he was chosen to become a Union leader a century before the events of KH BBS/KH1, and had met other survivors of the war in the Keyblade Graveyard.  The description made it sound like the war and the selection of new leaders all took place a century earlier.  Could a massive amount of time have passed between the war and the meeting of the surviviors, or was this all around the same time? 

Before this major story update for Unchained Chi/Union Cross, I think it's safe to say that many of us had assumed that the Keyblade War had taken place thousands of years before BBS, especially since it was considered the end of the "age of fairy tales", whatever that even means.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Neoshadow99

[Komali 594]

I hope Terra is much older in KH3. It doesn't make sense that he didn't age because of body possession. His body technically aged, whether it's possessed by Xehanort or not. Only Xehanort himself didn't age, because his physical form disappeared. So I expect Terra to be over 30 years old in KH3, while Ven didn't age because of his heart's absence and Aqua just aged a little bit but it doesn't make a real difference appearance wise (though I wish she would get longer hair).

[KeybladeMasterBalo 504]

I'd go with Terra and Aqua being 19 and Ventus being 15.

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

Thank you for the detailed, well-thought out post!  I agree with your age estimates for TVA, though I had Terra and Aqua at around 19-21, but Terra could be a little older than that.  As for Ventus, I always thought he was 15-16, around the same age as Sora and Roxas.

 

My confusion regarding the Keyblade War bit comes from Ventus' character page on this site.  It states that he was chosen to become a Union leader a century before the events of KH BBS/KH1, and had met other survivors of the war in the Keyblade Graveyard.  The description made it sound like the war and the selection of new leaders all took place a century earlier.  Could a massive amount of time have passed between the war and the meeting of the surviviors, or was this all around the same time? 

Before this major story update for Unchained Chi/Union Cross, I think it's safe to say that many of us had assumed that the Keyblade War had taken place thousands of years before BBS, especially since it was considered the end of the "age of fairy tales", whatever that even means.

First off, keep in mind that is a wiki entry, it's not exactly the same thing as an official statement from Square Enix. It's something made by another fan on this site who is in charge of making those entries, so they may have assumed that it was a century, but I specifically recall Nomura saying the events of X/Unchained X take place at least 1000 years before KH1. I don't remember which interview it was specifically, if anyone can help me source that, that would be great. But no, a century was never stated by any official source at any point, I've never heard that before until now, and I tend to be pretty on top of keeping up with official sources half the time.

 

My point is however much time has passed since X up to 0.2 is kind of irrelevant when it comes to Ven's exact age in my opinion. All you have to know is that he is biologically 15 years old now and he has chronologically been around for a while, UNLESS he was thrown forward in time (what I'm honestly hoping for) rather than just being comatose for hundreds of years, then he would still have only existed for 15 years plus the 11 additional years he's spent asleep in the Chamber of Waking. And no, it sounds as though the events of Union Cross are happening directly after Unchained, unless they have a scene later that explains some weird time thingy happening.

 

And again, I just want to stress that no one other than Riku can be confirmed to be 16 at this point. Unless they say otherwise, Sora is still to be considered 15 years old, with Riku being 1 year older than Sora, and Sora and Kairi being the same age. There's no 15-16 range because no other alternative age has been suggested by Square yet, it's just 15 until they outright say otherwise.

[Kaweebo 3,617]

My head canon is that Terra and Aqua are 19-20 and Ventus is 15.

[Headphone Jack 1,147]

i just assumed Ventus was 15 and Terra and Aqua were 18. 

[Dracozombie 4,554]

Ventus is identical to Roxas who is similar to Sora who is 15, so I peg Ventus as the same age. His actual physical age is beyond me, since I don't keep up with Unchained. I personally headcanon Terra and Aqua in their early to mid 20's, but considering how they behave in-game, late teens isn't a big stretch...

[Keyblade101 526]

I always thought that Terra was 18/19, Aqua was 17/18, and Ventus was 14/15.

[The Transcendent Key 12,109]

You know, the funniest thing here is that we've never actually quite known just how old the BBS trio is! I've always believed Terra and Aqua to be in their early to mid twenties, while Ventus, like others here have mentioned, is probably 15! I think that's the safest bet! I think someone should ask Nomura about this in an interview one day!

Edited April 13, 2017 by The Transcendent Key

[Movies798 1,358]

In Birth by Sleep Ventus said "He said to take two grown ups." and Aqua said "You mean us?"

So to me I want to say that Terra was at least 20 or 21 in Birth by Sleep and Aqua was like 19 or 20 in Birth by Sleep. Ventus on the other hand was definitely like 15 years old in Birth by Sleep because his appearance and body structure was very identical to Roxas who look like a 15 year old boy.

[Rob 5,571]

The Keyblade War actually is at least 1000 years old...maybe more...hopefully more

 

The events of X take place more than 100 years before BBS. That was stated by Dengeki and Famitsu after 2.8's announcement in 2015. Nomura never stated the exact number. He was just vague stating it happened a long time ago, etc. Dengeki and Famitsu obviously got their info from SE.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Rob

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

The events of X take place more than 100 years before BBS. That was stated by Dengeki and Famitsu after 2.8's announcement in 2015. Nomura never stated the exact number. He was just vague stating it happened a long time ago, etc. Dengeki and Famitsu obviously got their info from SE.

Just 100? Geez, that's barely even enough time for a war like that to turn into legend. WWI is over 100 years old now, and it's not like it's been lost to time or anything, how the hell am I supposed to buy that the Keyblade War happened only about a handful of generations ago!?

[Philip Ellwell 5,487]

I'd put Terra at 20-22, from height and body type, and Aqua at 19-20. She's shown as being way shorter than any of the human characters she comes across (Prince Philip, Maleficent, etc,) and the only height she seems to match, roughly is Cinderella's, who is 18 or 19. Excusing the possibility she's simply a shorter person, she doesn't come up higher than the chest on most "adult" characters, so I'd stick with 19 to 20, as a decent enough estimate. 

Plus, the "Two grownups" line seems to indicate Aqua and Terra are old enough to be considered adult socially, so that's either 18 or 20.

As to Ven, I always assumed 15-16ish, maybe 14, since he acts a lot like KH1 Sora. 

Maturity is a rough graph with KH, though, because all of Org. 13 is canonly adult, and they act like kids and teens most of the time.

 

Unrelated, Master Eraqus strikes me as late 30's, possibly extremely early 40's. 

Edited April 13, 2017 by Philip Ellwell

[Neoshadow99 31]

Thanks for all the replies, folks!  I think there is a consensus among us that, until stated otherwise by Nomura (or someone else from Square Enix), Terra and Aqua are roughly anywhere from 18-24, and Ventus is definitely 15, not counting his time-travel shenanigans.

 

I do find it hard to believe that Terra and Aqua are any younger than 18, or even just 18.  Both of them are much more physically developed than Ventus, so I personally think they are 20-22.  Who knows, I could have this all wrong, as appearances can be deceiving, especially with age.