>>122367306>But Beanface designs are meant to appeal to an audience of depressed adults who thing of being 12 as the last time they didn't need to worry about money or dating or other adult problems in some capacity and school wasn't super serious. So 12 year olds here are basically 8 year olds and 8 year olds are closer preschoolers.Cute theory, but that's not the real reason, or at least a very small part of the truth. The actual target demographic of the "beanmouth" cartoons (which are mostly just Cartoon Network shows) are children aged between 6-11 years. Because of that, in order to appeal to any and all kids from that age group, the canon age of the child protagonists is sometimes ambiguous on purpose, their mental maturity might vary depending on the episode, or they might generally act younger/older than they should, because the creator wanted to make them younger/older but couldn't because of executive meddling. OK KO has a running gag about this phenomenon, pic related (the protagonist is literally 6 to 11 years old, and this doesn't change even after his birthday.)
Another thing is that beanmouth character designs are already very simplistic and cutesy, and childlike-looking because of that, so the actual child characters are drawn as much smaller and younger-looking to differentiate them from the teens and adults. It doesn't mean that said child characters are childish personality-wise, they can be actually quite mature (e.g. Dipper from Gravity Falls). It also depends on if the show has adult protagonists, or child ones. Main characters in kids' cartoons typically act childish regardless of their actual age, so if the main cast is full of immature adults and teenagers, who already act like kids, the actual child characters might be written as comparatively more immature, and therefore act younger than their canon age would suggest.
