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key-faraday · 3 years ago

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Era-Adjusted TGAA Character Heights (via Basic Math and Attempted Guesswork)

Unlike the mainline AA games, most of the characters in TGAA aren't given heights - and the heights that are given to characters are completely insane. Granted, there's been plenty of argument about whether some characters in modern AA should have the heights as listed - whether some characters should be taller, or shorter, based on vibes and other things. However. None of them are as insane as Nuri simply REFUSING to acknowledge how much shorter the average Japanese man was in the 1890s as compared to now - and some of the British characters are a touch on the tall side as well. Without further ado, let's look at the canon heights, the real-life averages, and my altered heights as a result, as well as a small number of heights of characters not canonically given them that I just threw in to amuse myself.

(This whole post isn't an in-depth mathematical analysis or anything. It's just all in good fun. And to imagine how much more entertaining some of the height differences between characters, especially across countries, would/should be. Yes, I'm talking about the Dance of Deduction.)

(Also, fair warning, this post is quite long.)

Canon Heights

As an American, I cannot mentally picture heights using centimeters alone, so I had to plug all these into a centimeters-to-feet-and-inches converter. Thus, I have included both the original heights as given by Nuri, and their heights in feet and inches, rounded to the nearest half-inch, for your international viewing pleasure.

Ryunosuke - 168 cm (5’6”)

Kazuma - 174 cm (5’8.5”)

Hosonaga - 178 cm (5’10”)

Susato - 153 cm (5’)

Herlock - 183 cm (6’)

Barok - 192 cm (6’3.5”)

Stronghart - 196 cm (6’5”)

Gina - 160 cm (5’3”)

Iris - 120 cm (3’11”)

Lead-Up

(Feel free to skip all this if you’re not interested in how I came up with this. I don’t blame you lol)

Since average height is generally determined by birth year, for the purpose of this height chart, we’re operating by my assumption that TGAA Chronicles is set in the years of 1898-1899 (since it’s mentioned that the Great Exhibition is supposed to be the last hurrah of the nineteenth century, which suggests that it is almost but not quite 1900, and what better year to fit that description than the year literally right before 1900?). Yes, those dates are inconsistent with some aspects of actual history, such as Soseki’s period of study in Britain (which took place from 1900-1903), among other things like when Krakatoa erupted, when Darwin received the Copley medal, and when the Great Exhibition was actually held, but considering Menimemo and Gotts have portable instant cameras when those weren’t invented until the 1960s, and color photographs are inexplicably so easily available that they can be used day-of for crime scene photos (like that of Mason Milverton), I think dates are the least of our worries in whatever out-there alternate universe this takes place in. What this means is that Ryunosuke and Kazuma’s birth year can be assumed to be 1875, Susato’s to be 1882, Barok’s to be 1866, Herlock’s to be 1865, Hosonaga’s to be 1869, Gina’s to be in 1881, and Stronghart’s to be in 1846. (We already know Iris was born in 1889.)

For most of these adjusted heights, what I’m doing is taking the average modern height in both countries, and finding the difference between that and the Meiji/Victorian era height averages. Back then, the average height was 5’3” for Japanese male students born in 1875, 5’2” for Japanese male students born in 1869 (assuming Hosonaga attended university), 5’ for Japanese women born in 1882, and roughly 5’5.5” for British men born in 1865-66, as well as 1846. I could not for the life of me find any charts with specific dates giving height averages for adult women in the Victorian Era, but did find a post claiming the average female height in the era as a whole was 5’2”, so that’s what I’m going with for lack of a better option. And based on some recent height measurements listed on Wikipedia that cover a reasonable portion of the adult population, the current average adult height is 171.8 cm (5’7.5”) for Japanese men, 158.6 cm (5’2.5”) for Japanese women, 175.3 cm (5’9”) for English men, and 161.9 cm (5’3.5”) for English women (the averages in question only pertained to England and not the rest of the UK). This puts Herlock as tall, Barok as very tall, Stronghart as absurdly tall, and Susato and Gina as short and a bit short, respectively, when based on modern heights, as we can assume was perhaps Nuri’s metric. So these calculations are pretty easy: we just subtract 2.5 inches from Susato’s height (the difference between the current average of 5’2.5” and the past average of 5’), 5.5 inches from Hosonaga’s height, 3.5 inches from the heights of Herlock, Barok, and Stronghart, and 1.5 inches from Gina’s height.

But, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t include the heights of Japanese men born in Ryu and Kazuma’s year. Well, that’s because I had a slightly more fun way of determining that. You see, when Ryunosuke first climbs out of that suitcase he was shoved in on the SS Burya, Kazuma makes fun of him for being short - to the point that he suggests he’s barely even a real man. Now, aside from this being an honestly pretty mean thing to say, when compared to modern average heights for Japanese men, it’s also a little bit unreasonable as an insult. Being just an inch and a half shorter than average hardly warrants such a comment, especially from Kazuma, who would be only an inch taller than average. So I had to think that realistically, Ryu would be shorter than that. In order for Ryu to be considered short he’d have to fall well under it, while still having Kazuma be at least slightly taller than average. As a result, five inches have been chopped off both of their heights. So without further ado…

Era-Adjusted Heights

Once again, I am American, so I didn’t really know how to calculate this very well in centimeters. As a result, everything I’ve done has been knocked off in inches, then converted and rounded to the nearest half-centimeter.

Ryunosuke - 5’1” (155 cm)

Kazuma - 5’3.5” (161.5 cm)

Hosonaga - 5’4.5” (164 cm)

Susato - 4’7.5” (141 cm)

Herlock - 5’8.5” (174 cm)

Barok - 6’ (183 cm)

Stronghart - 6’1.5” (186.5 cm)

Gina - 5’1.5” (156 cm)

Iris - 3’11” (120 cm)

Only Iris’s height remains the same here because for one, it is remarkably difficult to find the average height of young Victorian girls, and two, kids grow at wildly different paces. She’s still far shorter than everyone else currently, so I suspect it’s just fine.

Heights I Guesstimated

Since none of these characters are given canon heights, for the sake of my sanity, these are not all individually calculated with each character’s birth year, and are thus just gained from comparisons with the adjusted heights of those other characters in the game.

From rough comparisons with Ryu and Barok in in-game photos:

Yujin - 5’3” (160 cm): Completely average dude.

Jigoku - 5’7” (170 cm): Pretty damn tall for his era, but not Stronghart/van Zieks tall for his era.

Klint - 6’1” (185.5 cm): The only man who could easily look Stronghart in the eye. Nice.

Gregson - 5’11” (180.5 cm): Didn’t realize he was this tall until I saw he was barely shorter than Barok.

From models in credits roughly compared to characters with adjusted canon heights (limited this to reasonably major characters):

Rei - 4’7” (139.5 cm): She’s just a teensy bit shorter than Susato.

Soseki - 4’6” (139.5 cm): I compared him to Hosonaga for this but the important thing is, HE’S SHORTER THAN SUSATO AND REI?? At first I thought he was the same height as Rei but then I remembered from a Twitter post discussing Soseki height that he looked taller because of his geta and IT’S TRUE IT’S LIKE AN EXTRA INCH. (For the record, I’d have given Soseki his real-life height, but I never managed to find it. I don’t imagine he was quite this short, however.)

Albert - 5’1” (155 cm): Oh my God, I didn’t know he was this much shorter than Barok. This is life-changing information. He’s 4.5 inches shorter than average. He’s way shorter than me.

Courtney - 5’10 (178 cm): Wow, she’s tall. More so than most of the men. Technically her model looks slightly taller compared to Gina than this, but it looks like she might be wearing heels when Gina is not, so I knocked her down a half-inch.

Maria - 5’1” (155 cm): Since her head is slightly tilted down in her base model, it looks like she’s probably about Gina’s height - but she’s also wearing heels like her mom, so I knocked her down a half-inch.

McGilded - 4’8.5” (143.5 cm) : I wouldn’t say he’s a major character, per se, but did want to include him here because he’s one of the only characters whose height is talked about - he’s described as short even by the Japanese characters, enough so that his coat doesn’t even fit Gina. So I compared him to Herlock’s model height, and yeah, that sure tracks!

From absolutely nothing but height averages and the vibes I got, since they were not present in credits nor in any photos next to characters with established heights, but are important enough that they deserve heights anyway:

Genshin - 5’3” (160 cm): If we say that Genshin was 35 at the time of his death, then Genshin was born 21 years before Kazuma, so he would probably be slightly shorter than him given the upward trend of height over time. Completely average height for his country and era, just like Yujin. Extremely funny next to Klint’s tall ass, though.

Lady Baskerville - 5’7” (170 cm): I just thought it would be fun if she were pretty tall for her era. I want Iris to be tall. I NEED Iris to be tall. Because, listen, it would be super funny if the combined height of her huge parents meant she outgrew Herlock as an adult.

Fun Comparisons

Herlock legally cannot perform a dance of deduction with anyone that comes up higher than his ears.

Barok somehow towers over Ryu and Susato even more than he did before. If he was walking while looking straight ahead, he might not even see them. He probably could see Kazuma, but he also probably doesn’t want to.

You thought BAROK was tall compared to these three? Honey, you’ve got another storm (maelstrom?) coming.

Definitely never occurred to me how tall Gregson was until I looked at the picture of him with the van Zieks brothers again. Pretty good height to give Gina the head pats she deserves.

Definitely had NO idea Albert was THIS short. Perfect height for Barok to just use his hair as a face pillow after a long day of university studying.

the tall bestie and the two guys whose lives he’s going to ruin

Nuri is a coward for not letting us have a ten-inch height difference between the pretty boy prosecutor and dead dilftective duo.

Jigoku IS tall for his era. Just not if you’re a massive evil white man.

Source Charts

Basically the only height chart about Japan I can find anywhere. I’ve assumed that the student height is college students, and thus hope I am correct.

I used a different chart than this to get the height averages of the people in Herlock and Barok’s birth years, since this is ever so slightly different and much more general, but I can’t find that one anymore and this one is pretty close to what I determined, so I’ll at the very least include it.

The only one I could find that went back far enough to include Stronghart. Even if it just gave me the same number anyway.

No idea if this is even true, but it is literally the only information I could find about the height of Victorian women.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed, because I spent way too much time on this, and feel free to use these heights for whatever if you want. If you didn’t enjoy, well, too bad, because I (mostly) did.

#i’m PRETTY SURE someone calculated genshin as only an inch shorter than klint #<- really normal knowledge #this is cool though

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