How old are the Butterfly triplets, anyway?
A minor point of contention in the KNY fandom is the age of Sumi, Naho, and Kiyo, the three girls who help out Aoi, Kanao, and Shinobu at the Butterfly Mansion.
Their age is never explicitly stated in the canon series, and a lot of fans just guess their age. Some have stated they're as young as eight or nine, whereas others have suggested they're twelve to thirteen.
Is there a way to tell how old they are, or are we just supposed to guess?
Well, the official high school AU, Kimetsu Gakuen, places them in the sixth grade:
This would make them twelve to thirteen.
However, if you don't consider Gakuen a trustworthy source because some characters had their ages messed with--though keep in mind there was always a reason for an age change in Gakuen (such as aging down Yushiro to make his crush on Tamayo less weird since her family is around in Gakuen)--then we can also look at the canon series.
Here's a panel from chapter 163, at Kanae Kocho's funeral:
They're clearly being depicted mourning her. They are old enough to understand death as a concept--and Kanae died four years before Tanjiro's Final Selection, when Shinobu was 14.
So if they're shown here, clearly understanding that Kanae is dead and mourning her, that means that when we meet them, they could not possibly be eight, nine, or even ten.
That would put their ages at Kanae's funeral at four to five, or six if you think they're ten. A four to five year old is not going to understand death as a concept fully, and certainly not enough to actively mourn Kanae. A six year old is just starting to understand death, but their mourning looks vastly different from that of an older child, teen, or adult.
Additionally, Sumi, Naho, and Kiyo look roughly the same here as they do in the main series. That would not be the case if they were 8, 9, or 10 years old in the main series (post Tanjiro's Final Selection). There is a massive amount of difference physically between a 4, 5, or 6 year old and a 8, 9, or 10 year old. I know that this is a manga, but if they were intended to be that young, then they would have been drawn noticeably younger than they are in the timeframe of the series.
This means that they are 12-13 in the main series when we meet them, lining up with Gakuen's age. It's a lot more believable, given how they're drawn at Kanae's funeral, than the idea they're intended to be 8 or 9.
They're also shown in the series carrying out medical procedures under Aoi's orders that an 8, 9, or even 10 year old would struggle with, further implying that they're closer to 12-13 than 8-9. They do occasionally display some childlike innocence, but nothing that's unusual for 12-13 year old noncombatants. They're clearly intended to be younger than Nezuko (who is 14 after the 2 year timeskip), but not by that much. They don't act like elementary school aged girls; they act like young middle schoolers learning to take in important responsibilities in the medicinal field.
They are drawn small, but short people exist, and they aren't so tiny in comparison to say, Nezuko, that it seems like they're any more than 2 years younger than her. Additionally, they are constantly surrounded by older teens, which make them seem young and people treat them as younger than they actually are as a result.
Sumi, Naho, and Kiyo are most likely 12-13, and them being younger doesn't make any sense.
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