Thread: How old do you have to be to be a gym leader?

Was this done before? If so, then delete this please XDD

Title says all - how old do you have to be? From old guys like Pryce and Drayden to youngsters like Maylene and Iris. Is there an age limit?

And how old are the gym leaders anyway? How old is Cilan?

I don't think they mention how old Gym Leaders are, so it's hard to gauge the age limit. After all, like you said, there are senior and junior Leaders. I suppose it's not hard to believe if a kindergartener ends up as a Gym Leader, although if the games were to be believed, then you have to be at least 10 to be a trainer, so I suppose there's your minimum age limit there.

Thanks for reading.

Yeah, agreeing with winstein, though it's getting more and more unclear, from generation to generation. The youngest gym leaders would be Tate and Liza if I remember correctly, and I think they would be around 10, which is the minimum age for becoming a trainer, as it was stated above.

Also, I think Misty mentioned in the third movie, that it didn't matter how old you were if you wanted to become a gym leader, so based on that, it seems you could become a trainer even before you turned 10. And if you weren't allowed to become a trainer before you turned 10, how come you had to battle a bunch of kindergartners in B/W, who pretty much knew what they were doing?

So as I said, it's getting more and more confusing for each generation.

I think the only decisive factor for gym leaders is skill level.

Do the games ever actually state that you need to be ten in order to be a trainer? I could be wrong, but I thought that was an anime thing.
And of course, the games show us plenty of trainers below the age of ten.

Yep, it's an anime thing. I am not sure about the games, but I have the impression because most of the protagonists look like 10-year-olds. Like I said, it won't be hard to imagine a kindergartener as a Gym Leader because an age range isn't implied to be qualified.

That's it for now.

That's again one of the reasons why I don't like it when anime doesn't follow the manga/games. It's easy to get confused in all this, and to be honest, I think there have been a few trainers in the anime who wasn't 10 years old.

As for Cilan's age, I don't think it has been specified yet, but to me he looks to be somewhere between 16 and 18.

Not so much an age limit, as there is an skill and experience limit.

Generally most leaders are older because a requeriment to be a gym leader is to have more skill and experience than the average person, but some younger ones also have equally high skill and experience, so it makes sense to treat them at the same level.
So while Iris is a kid AND is quite childish on top of it, she still is highly talented as a trainer (both in battling and understanding matters of the pokémon world), thus a gym leader.

Also yes, age-restrictions is an anime-only thing. There is no such thing in the games.

The 2 psychic gym leaders is Hoenn look really young........................

Well trainers usually start their Pokemon journey from the age of 10, so I would assume that they can also be qualified (legally) to be a Gym leader just as much as they can enter Pokemon Tournaments and battles. That is if they have the skill level at that age to also be considered for such a position.

I think however old you have to be to be a gym leader is concurrent with the minimum registration age for Pokémon trainers: your 10th birthday.

Originally Posted by AlexTheRose

I think however old you have to be to be a gym leader is concurrent with the minimum registration age for Pokémon trainers: your 10th birthday.

That's only in stated in the amine, not the games, and It seems to come down to skill.does anyone know how old Tate and Liza are? they look rather young.

The gym leader that looked youngest to me was Candace, she looked 16-17. Skill seems to be the only real limiter.

I don't believe there would be a limit, game-wise. Obviously in the anime there's a trainer age of ten, so I'd go with that, but for the games I'd only assume skill/experience to be the benchmark.