character birthdays

[codyne]

I just got my replacement copy of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Gospel of Truth! (For anyone not familiar with it, it's a character guide and story guide for the manga that was put out in Japan back in 2002.) It has profiles of all the major characters, including age, birthday, height & weight, favorite food, blood type.

The thing that was really interesting to me when I got my first copy back then was comparing the ages of the high school kids. I had read somewhere that in Japan, the grade you're in is determined by the year you're born, so Yugi and all his classmates would have been born in the same year. So it was easy to determine who was oldest: whoever's birthday came earliest in the year, and that would be Jounouchi, who was born on January 25. Then comes Otogi in February, Honda in April, Yugi in June, Anzu in August, Bakura in September, and waaaay at the end is Kaiba, whose birthday is October 25, making him the youngest of all the kids.

It amuses me to think that Yugi, despite being small and looking like a little kid, is actually older than Kaiba.

I was thinking about that this morning, and then I remembered another thing I think one of my Japanese teachers once told me, which is that in Japan, everybody is considered to be one year older on January 1, regardless of when their actual birthday is. So all the kids would be 16 all year long, even though their birthdays are spread throughout the year. That makes sense, and ties in with them being placed in their class depending on their birth year.

Anyway. That's today's ramble. If anyone is interested in any data from the book, I'll try to hunt it up for you.

Comments

[darjeeling]

Huh, that's cool about all the people in the same birth year being considered the same age, I'd never heard that before (although it's one of those things, unless you're specifically looking on information like that, why would it come up, right?)

[codyne]

Yeah, it's not a thing you would normally even think to wonder about. I have had an interest in Japanese culture and language for a long time, and have read lots of books about Japan and read articles online and such. I also took two years of Japanese language classes at SF City College some years back, and the teachers would add lots of interesting cultural info to the language lessons. So a lot of these little tidbits have stuck in my mind over the years.

Do we know Mokuba's birthday?

[fanficradio]

This is actually super cool. Can't believe Seto is the youngest. Kinda ... mindblown.

Did we ever know what Mokuba's birthday is?

Re: Do we know Mokuba's birthday?

[codyne]

Mokuba's birthday is July 7. The book says he's in grade school but doesn't specify which grade. Early in the manga, though, Mokuba says they were adopted when he was five and Seto was 10, so he's 11 when Seto's 16.

Kazoedoshi

[redswordheart]

Eastern age reckoning keeps everything nice and simple.

Re: Kazoedoshi

[codyne]

Ah, cool, I didn't know what it was called! Only sort of vaguely remember stuff my Japanese teachers used to tell us. (Also remember one saying that children used to be considered one year old when they were born, because they'd already spent most of a year in the womb. So a baby born in December was already one year old, then on January 1 they'd be two years old, when in fact they'd been born less than a month ago.)

Re: Kazoedoshi

[redswordheart]

That's exactly right.