Regarding MC's Age..

[Zaspien]

Could the statement of "Every trainer leaves home when they're 10" simply an assumed one? Seemingly, the legal age for a trainer to leave home and start their own journey is ten, however, the "every" part of that statement seems a little odd to me. For example: if I say "everyone my age has a mobile phone" - I don't actually mean every seventeen year old in the world has mobile phone, I simply mean most of the seventeen year olds I know have mobile phones. To emphasize the amount, I utilise an exaggerated term (every) to put a stronger point across. Maybe this is a similar situation. Because most trainers leave home as soon as they turn 10 doesn't mean all of them do it. However, since it's almost seen as a norm, people throw around the connotation of "every" instead of something more suitable such as "most" or "some".

This is obvious when there isn't an explicit state of the trainer's age in the video game series or the anime (I think the manga is slightly different). This means that the developers want to make the age relate-able (we know that they are young adults - which, coincidentally, is the target audience of the series) but also open for prediction (so they could be any age within the bracket of that age group without an explicit setting or statement; e.g. a 13 year old could see the main character as a similar age to them, but a 17 year old could also see a similarity all in the same character.)